Refill boiler issues after descale
Posted: Fri Mar 11, 2022 9:38 am
Overfilled Issues after descaling.
I decided to do my yearly descaling a couple of days ago, I descaled with about 4 tablespoons of citric acid in about a litre of water and fed that through to the machine via the machines own brass pipe pulling the citric acid solution from a container.
I used about 4 litre of this citric acid solution altogether as I live in London and have really hard water, I thought I'd descale thoroughly before moving on to bottled water to protect the boilers.
I would draw about half litre of the solution through the steam boiler and less through the group boiler and let sit for a couple of hours until I repeat the procedure
After the descale, as I was flushing the machine from the citric acid solution, I used about 3 gallons of water drawing clean bottled water through the boilers via my flojet pump.
I noticed with the steam boiler that as I was drawing a large cup of water the machine wouldn't refill straight away, usually after drawing a cup of water through the steam boiler the refill kicks in straight away but yesterday I'd have to draw another full cup of water from the steam boiler until it starts to refill.
What was strange was once the steam boiler refilled, about a minute or so after it would do another mini refill for about 3 to 5 seconds, this would be repeated about 3 or 4 times and at the time I was thinking maybe the fill probe is coated with citric acid solution and needs to be flushed properly.
The steam coming from the steam wand was a very wet steam.l also and the the temperature was going a bit beyond the set temperature of the steam boiler.
I turned on the machine this morning and as the machine was warming up, I noticed from the other room a loud wooshing/ /water hammer sort of noise, as I came to check on the machine, it was heating up as normal and then I noticed that I all the water from my 5 gallon water bottle was all used up in yesterday's flushing, I refilled the water bottle that my flojet pump's wand is in and then noticed the same weird water hammer noise. I thought maybe the steam boiler is trying to refill whilst full and then after about a couple of minutes the machine turned off tripping the RCD mains with it.
Now whenever I switch the machine back on, the group boiler reaches temperature and as soon as the Steam boiler turns on the RCD is tripped and the machine turns off.
I took off the panels this morning and there is no leaking of water on the table top or within the machine apart from some small water dots /deposits inside one of the plastic sheating covering one of the heating element connections.
I'm assuming that the temperature or pressure of the steam boiler has set of the pressure relief valve which explains the loud noise and a tiny bit of steam/water got inside the plastic sheating and shorted out the boiler heating element?
If I replace the heating element, I wonder what was causing the steam boiler to play up like I mentioned above?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
I decided to do my yearly descaling a couple of days ago, I descaled with about 4 tablespoons of citric acid in about a litre of water and fed that through to the machine via the machines own brass pipe pulling the citric acid solution from a container.
I used about 4 litre of this citric acid solution altogether as I live in London and have really hard water, I thought I'd descale thoroughly before moving on to bottled water to protect the boilers.
I would draw about half litre of the solution through the steam boiler and less through the group boiler and let sit for a couple of hours until I repeat the procedure
After the descale, as I was flushing the machine from the citric acid solution, I used about 3 gallons of water drawing clean bottled water through the boilers via my flojet pump.
I noticed with the steam boiler that as I was drawing a large cup of water the machine wouldn't refill straight away, usually after drawing a cup of water through the steam boiler the refill kicks in straight away but yesterday I'd have to draw another full cup of water from the steam boiler until it starts to refill.
What was strange was once the steam boiler refilled, about a minute or so after it would do another mini refill for about 3 to 5 seconds, this would be repeated about 3 or 4 times and at the time I was thinking maybe the fill probe is coated with citric acid solution and needs to be flushed properly.
The steam coming from the steam wand was a very wet steam.l also and the the temperature was going a bit beyond the set temperature of the steam boiler.
I turned on the machine this morning and as the machine was warming up, I noticed from the other room a loud wooshing/ /water hammer sort of noise, as I came to check on the machine, it was heating up as normal and then I noticed that I all the water from my 5 gallon water bottle was all used up in yesterday's flushing, I refilled the water bottle that my flojet pump's wand is in and then noticed the same weird water hammer noise. I thought maybe the steam boiler is trying to refill whilst full and then after about a couple of minutes the machine turned off tripping the RCD mains with it.
Now whenever I switch the machine back on, the group boiler reaches temperature and as soon as the Steam boiler turns on the RCD is tripped and the machine turns off.
I took off the panels this morning and there is no leaking of water on the table top or within the machine apart from some small water dots /deposits inside one of the plastic sheating covering one of the heating element connections.
I'm assuming that the temperature or pressure of the steam boiler has set of the pressure relief valve which explains the loud noise and a tiny bit of steam/water got inside the plastic sheating and shorted out the boiler heating element?
If I replace the heating element, I wonder what was causing the steam boiler to play up like I mentioned above?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.