The S1 Cafe - Helping Your Espresso Dreams Become Reality

I recently purchased a used Vivaldi 11 from a closing restaurant who had removed the steam wand as they only wanted to serve espresso with the option of steaming milk taken off.

When I finally set the machine up at home with my flojet pump I noticed that there was no steam being produced when I opened the steam dial and there was no hot water being dispensed either when the hot water button was pressed, I could hear an electronic type of noise clicking when I pressed the hot water button which I assumed was the solenoid valve but no hot water being dispensed.

I thought maybe there was a blockage somewhere so after reading the instructions on how to descale the boilers I thought I’d give the steam boiler a decale first as the brew boiler was working fine and dispensing water as normal.

I dismantled the casing and the steam boiler was heating up fine as it was warm to the touch, With the machine turned off I went about trying to unscrew the various bolts on top of the steam boiler lid.

I managed to unscrew the boiler lid nuts all around the boiler lid along with the vacuum breaker nut until I hit troubled waters when the screw of the thermostat broke off inside the boiler lid hole thread!

I knew that this would have to be either drilled out or some other clever way of removing the stuck screw bit inside the thread that was beyond my skill level so I just left it still connected to the wiring as before with the only difference being that now the bimetal plate on the thermostat was not in contact with the boiler lid as before because I couldn’t screw it in place so I just left it hanging in the air with both cables still attached it.

I realised that I could just pull out the boiler lid without having to undo the other various bits and pieces on top of the boiler lid and there was no need to remove the heating elements either as the lid came out with the heating element still attached to it.

Using a small cup I removed and emptied the water from the boiler and then added a citric acid solution and left it over night.

The next day I again removed and emptied the citric acid solution from the boiler and there was about a full cup of black flaky limescale resting the bottom of the boiler which I removed and then I filled the boiler up again with another dose citric acid solution and put the heating element back into the boiler and let it soak over night again to descale.

After decaling the inside of the boiler and the heating elements I replaced the lid, secured the vacuum breaker valve nut back into its place however I left the thermostat hanging out and not in contact with anything else as I couldn’t screw it back into its place because of the broken thread stuck in its place, I filled the boiler half way to see if the steam boiler would fill when turning the machine on again.

The steam boiler filled up however now the steam boiler does not warm up!
No matter how long I wait there was no heat to the steam boiler, there was no fault codes either on the machine just the boiler light blinking away after brew boiler set temperature was reached.

I was very careful when I removed the boiler lid and am pretty sure that I didn’t dislodge any wiring out of its place and the only thing I unscrewed was the vacuum breaker and the thermostat.

I don’t think I’ve burnt out the heating element as they never really got hot however my knowledge is pretty limited regarding these things.

In the manual, it mentions that there is a fault diagnosis code if the triac is damaged, as mentioned before there was no fault codes when turning the machine on.

I thought I’d post this long thread here and pick the great minds of this forum before sending the machine away for a costly repair.

First about that thermal thermostat that you broke off. I had the same thing happen to one of my S1 machines. Rather than buying a new part and paying someone to tap out that hole, I bought some thermal epoxy and just glued it back it place. It worked fine.

As far as your boiler is concerned the first thing you should do is it allow the machine to heat up until the group boiler goes off, this is when the steam boiler should be turned on. Use an AC voltmeter and measure the voltage across the steam boiler element terminals. In your case I assume it should be 220V. Of course before that you should always be sure that the Boiler button on the front of the machine has been pressed for the boiler to turn on and that the red button on the thermal breaker has been pushed.

Once you report back with those results we can go to the next level, if necessary.

Hi Chas,

Many thanks for the thermal epoxy advice, that will save me alot of running around.

I did wait for the group boiler to heat up first and waited about 5 mins after the group boiler set temperature had been reached and turned the machine off and steam boiler was completely cold whereas before this problem the steam boiler would heat up after group boiler heated up.

I will get my hands on an AC voltmeter and report back!

A quick update, I turned the machine on earlier just to play around with turning the steam boiler on and off and after about 20 minutes with the machine turned on I got a fault code; The lights 19-20-21 turned on which indicated in the manual that there is a steam boiler temperature detection system Failure, It states in the manual that this occurs when the temperature probe of the boiler is in short circuit or it is in open circuit, I'm wondering if this was caused by the temperature probe being left over night in the citric acid solution?

This is a blocking alarm so I assume this is why there is no heat to steam boiler.

It is possible that some citric acid got inside the probe housing and shorted it out.