The S1 Cafe - Helping Your Espresso Dreams Become Reality

Hi,
As a preamble, my S1 is not plumbed into a water line, but a water jug with no flojet. The setup has never caused any issues, aside from when it runs out of water and pumps a little air. This happened recently, but I am not sure if it's related to the issue or caused by the issue.
The machine, when turning on, pumps a tremendous amount of water into the steam boiler, eventually stopping. The steam is consequently extremely wet and needs long purges, after which the machine refills.
I had recently (1-2 years ago) replaced the water level probe and I pulled it out now again. It doesn't seem to have much scale at all. I am descaling the probe.
When I pulled the probe, the water level was up to the thread of the screw. Is it possible that the probe is not shoring out the circuit anymore and it shorts out once it touches its contact at the top?
Can probes fails some other way than scale build up?

Thanks so much!
Matteo

First of all, the Plumbed S1 is not designed to pull water out of a jug without using a Flojet so you may just be lucky so far. What kind of water are you using in the jug? The S1 design requires a certain amount of mineral content the water so that you get some conduction to the grounded tank between it and the water level probe through the water. You can try an ohmmeter from the probe to the tank while the tank is full. If the water is OK then you should see some resistance on the meter. If it is at or near infinity then your water doesn't have enough mineral content.

Pretty much the only way that the water level probe can fail are as follows:

1) Mineral build-up on the probe.
2) Bad wire between the controller board and the probe
3) Bad controller board

The probe itself is just a solid metal rod.

You are right that it was not built to do that, it has been doing it for a year, so I can't complain, but the pump might die.
I use Rao/Perger water from here: https://coffeeadastra.com/2018/12/16/wa ... xtraction/

I ended up buying a new probe and, when I was putting it in, I noticed that the ground for the probe was loose. Hence my probe was most likely fine, I should have just looked a little harder...

Thank you, Chas.