water with steam

This forum contains various threads with photos on how to perform various maintenance and repairs on your S1.
Post Reply
michael
God Shot
Posts: 214
Joined: Tue Jun 03, 2008 9:30 am

water with steam

Post by michael »

im getting a lot more (too much it seems) water on my vivaldi II when i give the steam a quick blast to clear what used to be a small mount of water before steaming milk

any idea how to fix :-(
JohnB

Re: water with steam

Post by JohnB »

Possibly your water level probe is allowing the boiler to fill higher then before. More water in boiler = wetter steam. Descaled lately? Remove the probe & have a look at the tip. Clean it if its covered in scale.
zoey

Re: water with steam

Post by zoey »

I've noticed the same thing. Our water is pretty darn soft so I can't imagine scale??? Is it a false sense of security on my part?

If I have to pull my machine apart one more time, I'm going to either leave the panels off or fabricate some quick releases :lol:
JohnB

Re: water with steam

Post by JohnB »

Could be just more condensation due to the cooler temps. How warm is your kitchen compared to 4-6 weeks ago? How many seconds does it take to clear the wand of water? 3-4? Is the steam wetter or is it just the initial purge? Any drips when the steam valve is closed?

No need to remove much to inspect the level probe. Just remove the cup warmer cover, unplug the wire from the probe, completely loosen the small retaining nut & wiggle the probe back /forth until you can lift it. There is only 1/4"-3/8" of the metal probe exposed from the lower end of plastic sheath so if you can lift it that much you've probably knocked off any excess scale build up. Just make a mental note how far the upper end of the probe extended before moving it. I haven't replaced the hold down screw in the tea warmer cover since the second time I had it out as that screw was miserable to get in & out on my machine. If yours is the same just leave it out as the plastic surround & the cups keep it in place

I had the probe assy out recently as I was trying to see how much more water I could get into the steam boiler before getting wet steam. As set from the factory my S1V2 steam boiler only holds 44 oz of water which is just slightly over half full. Since we draw 4 cups at a time several times a day I wanted to try to raise the level so less of the heating element is exposed each time. Mine is now set slightly higher then the original setting but even if you raise it 1/4" you will only see another couple ounces at most. The plastic sheath would have to be cut back to allow any meaningful gains in boiler water. I may try that at some point but with a .9 oz per second refill time I'm not too worried about element damage.

With the probe raised slightly it still only takes 3-4 seconds to clear the wand.
JohnB

Re: water with steam

Post by JohnB »

zoey wrote:I've noticed the same thing. Our water is pretty darn soft so I can't imagine scale??? Is it a false sense of security on my part?
I ran some water tests recently to try out my new TDS meter. I was surprised to see that running our well water through the CC softener/carbon filters did little to lower the TDS reading (140). Even with the post softener water testing very soft (0-17ppm) the TDS reading was still almost as high as our moderately hard well water. This explained why I was still seeing quite a bit of scale on the steam boiler element even though I was running softer(45ppm) water then last year (80ppm).
MDL
Barista
Posts: 329
Joined: Sat Apr 07, 2007 11:29 am
Location: San Diego

Re: water with steam

Post by MDL »

A TDS meter is not going to show you "softening" with an ion exchange resin type softener (like the CC system that many of us use). All the resin does is exchange the "hard" minerals for "soft" (soft being Na in most cases). The TDS (total dissolved solids) remains essentially identical.
Mark
michael
God Shot
Posts: 214
Joined: Tue Jun 03, 2008 9:30 am

Re: water with steam

Post by michael »

thanks for the instructions; i definitely have too much water at the initial purge; its a bit of an initial stream, rather than a blast

are there any pictures available to point out the sensor stem, screws etc; i havent done this before :?:
JohnB

Re: water with steam

Post by JohnB »

MDL wrote:A TDS meter is not going to show you "softening" with an ion exchange resin type softener (like the CC system that many of us use). All the resin does is exchange the "hard" minerals for "soft" (soft being Na in most cases). The TDS (total dissolved solids) remains essentially identical.
Mark
I knew the meter wouldn't show how hard or soft the water was, I have a liquid test kit for that. I did think that the softening process would knock down the total minerals but I guess that isn't the case. Since I'm not seeing any reduction in scale/mineral build up with the softer water I added more hard water back in once again. If I'm going to have to descale anyways I might as well have the better tasting water.
JohnB

Re: water with steam

Post by JohnB »

michael wrote:thanks for the instructions; i definitely have too much water at the initial purge; its a bit of an initial stream, rather than a blast

are there any pictures available to point out the sensor stem, screws etc; i havent done this before :?:
You can see it here in the top right photo: s1v2/S1vsVII.php Its the one with the red (pink?) wire attaching to the probe rising above the large nut/small nut front right. Loosen the small nut completely as it compresses a teflon seal which pinches the nylon sleeve so the probe can't move up or down. Twisting the probe from side to side should loosen it up enough that you can lift it up without the white sleeve rising. Alternatively you could just remove the entire assembly with a 17mm wrench for inspection which shouldn't disturb the factory setting. This might be the better option as you could shine a flashlight into the drained boiler & see how much scale is on the heating element. If its bad you will want to remove the boiler cover & descale.
cruiten

Re: water with steam

Post by cruiten »

I ran into a similar problem with my Vivaldi S1V2 yesterday morning.

I had finished making a cappuccino for my wife and a macchiato for myself and I was enjoying my breakfast when I heard the machine start filling the steam boiler. I thought that was strange because it had been several minutes since I had used the machine, but I didn't think too much of it and I went back to eating. A couple of seconds later the machine started filling again; it did this a couple of times and then I noticed that my steam boiler pressure was slowly creeping up past 1.6 bar which was odd because I have never seen it exceed 1.35 bar.

Something strange was definitely going on...

I turned the steam knob to blow off some steam, but instead of steam it was spraying out water, lots and lots of water; for all intents and purposes the steam wand was behaving and sounding just like a mini hot water dispenser.

At this point I was running late so I turned off the machine, sent a quick email to Chris Coffee, and went off to work.

Jason at Chris Coffee quickly responded to my email and he knew exactly what had happened. It turns out that the fill probe had moved up as far as it could because the small nut must have loosened up. I pushed the fill probe back down where it belongs and tightened the small nut, making sure not to crack the teflon sleeve, and everything was back to normal after I used the hot water dispenser to bring the water in the boiler back to normal.

Luckily I was able to do all this without having to take off the side panels...

Take care,
JohnB

Re: water with steam

Post by JohnB »

With the probe raised as far as it would go under the drip tray cover it would be up inside the nylon sleeve inside the boiler & would not send the signal to cut off flow during refill. Good thing you were home as it could have gotten messy!
Post Reply

Return to “Maintenance and Repair”