I own a coffee/espresso truck here in Louisville, KY. This winter has been worse than normal and it's been giving me a lot of trouble trying to keep heat going so that we don't freeze the inside of the truck.. Anyways, heat ended up going off in our truck the other night (ran out of propane) and the truck fell below freezing. Next morning I go out there and see that my pump and boiler gauge are completely haywire. I re-filled my propane unit and immediately put some heat on the machine. Within a half hour, the steam pressure went back to normal, however the BAR pressure hasn't changed from its reading of 18 BARS.

I went on to check to see if the machine would still pull ok shots and maybe it was just a frozen gauge.. Unfortunately not that simple. Now the machine will not generate enough pressure to get through the puck of coffee. It will push a weak stream without a puck, but again not enough for a shot. Machine warms up fine, I can hear the machine draw in water, but my gauge is not coming down from the 18 and it doesn't move when the water pump is on either.

I had heat on the machine nearly all day yesterday and nothing has changed. Draining water out of it hasn't changed anything either. Does it sound like I destroyed my pump? I would hope that if it did freeze inside of it that it would eventually thaw out..

Anyone have any advice as to what I could do or try? I was thinking about adjusting the pressure higher in case the ice may have caused some sort of issues. Otherwise, I think Im going to need a new pump.

Thanks for any info that could be given.

I would assume that, as a minimum, the pump housing has distorted due to the freezing. The source water for the pump has thawed ??

As you drained the boiler(?), I would definitely not power (fully) this machine up until such time that the water level in the boiler can be ascertained.

This is likely a two group machine and thus a bit heavy BUT I would get the machine inside where you can more easily evaluate the condition in its entirety.

thanks for your reply.. the water source is from a freshwater tank inside the truck. we have a 30 gallon tank with a water pump and complete plumbing inside. I thawed everything out before before fully warming the machine up. i did drain the machine and everything with the steam seems to be working fine. holds nice normal pressure between 1-1.5.

it is a 2 group and i am taking into the shop tomorrow. they mentioned that they had a pump for our machine. so hopefully that is the only problem and will be addressed tomorrow. if the housing of the pump distorting is our only problem, i will feel lucky.

as of this morning the gauge is still stuck on 18. only thing that has changed with it is that it does move up 2-3 bars when water plumb is hooked up. however, when pump runs, gauge doesn't move at all. i hope this is just a product of a weak/damaged pump. Upon visual inspection inside, everything looks normal. no bent pipes, boiler looks fine, etc. pump does fire up, but just doesn't seem to be putting out the pressure it had been before.

Is a faulty gauge a a product of a bad pump typically? The steam side works fine, so i would think that this gauge is still functioning correctly. Hoping it's not a separate issue.

I did drain the machine and everything with the steam seems to be working fine. holds nice normal pressure between 1-1.5.

If you drained the machine, how did you fill it? I suppose the water pump inside your 30 gallon tank could do it via the machine's pump. Your brew pressure gauge is a "goner" - freezing will do that.

i had filled it up again since draining it and steam worked fine.. might have mistyped that causing the confusion

update:

had the machine looked at yesterday and guy who we have been working with for awhile checked everything out. other than the gauge, everything seems fine. he did mention that our pump was sounding louder than usual and we began to suspect the on board water pump for the plumbing in the truck..

we brought the machine inside and hooked it up to their in line water plumbing. machine worked great and pump inside the machine ran super quiet..

so at this point, all i can suspect is that our water pump for our plumbing in the truck is the victim of the cold weather.. which i am absolutely sick of. worst winter in 20 years here in KY.

put a pressure gauge in the truck last night and we were running 25 PSI. It's supposed to be pulling 40-45 PSI @ 2.8 GPM. Bought a new pump on Amazon and it should be here tomorrow. 55PSI and 3.0 GPM.

Hopefully this takes care of our problem. I guess the espresso machine pump was louder because it was starving for water due to the low pressure.