Hi!

I posted this on coffeegeek last night here, and I haven't got any responses yet. Thought I would extend the coverage to HB as well.

I had a really strange thing happen yesterday. I've had my gs/3 now for about 5 years and I've descaled every year and made sure I cleaned it well. It runs on the Chris' Coffee softener + carbon filter and I haven't descaled it for a few months. Early today, I noticed a couple of hisses coming out of it. It wasn't the hisses like the pressure valve was stuck, but a different hiss. It stopped and I didn't think anything of it.

Later tonight, I turned it back on and after making two espresso's, I heard this awful noise. I ran over to the machine and saw the steam pressure gauge up around 2.75 to 3. I immediately pushed the tea button so it relieved the pressure and turned the machine off.

This has never happened to me before and I usually keep the steam boiler pressure around 1.5 max. I've actually never seen it go over 1.5 before. I'm concerned about it and not sure where to look. I'm pretty handy with it as I've changed the vacuum breaker before, and outboarded it about 4 years ago. The coffee boiler pressure was fine; it was just the steam. Does anybody have any suggestions on what's going on with it?

Some additional info is that I took the panels off and saw a small water leak where the water line goes into the flowmeter. I'm not sure if it was from too much pressure or what. I turned the machine back on last night, and there seemed to be a *lot* of steam in the steam boiler. Normally, when I make tea, I get about 3 or 4 presses before it stops steaming and just releasing hot water. Last night, it took about 10 to 12 fills before it stopped releasing the steam. I also turned the steam wand on, and it was spittering a lot. It was weird, it was a dry steam, but was still spiting.

Any help on diagnosing or fixing is appreciated.

Thanks!

Hard to say what the problem is, but let me take a stab at some possibilities based on what you've reported.

First, the loud noise was almost certainly the sound the steam boiler over-pressure valve (OPV) makes when it opens. I've heard it a couple of times and it made me jump. This is consistent with the high reading on the steam boiler pressure gauge. When the pressure gets well over 2.0 BAR, the OPV will open (not exactly sure about the exact pressure that trips it.)

There are two possible causes of an over-pressure condition. One is that the steam boiler over-filled with water. If the line pressure is greater than the OPV trip point, which it usually is, the OPV will open. In this case, if you remove the drip tray you will see water streaming out of the OPV hose into the drain box (the hose is about in the middle of the rail above the drain box.) The other cause would be overheating of the water and resulting buildup of steam pressure beyond the trip point. In this case, you would probably see a combination of water and steam (lots of it) flowing into the drain box.

Since you didn't report seeing steam rising from the drain box, I would speculate that the boiler over-filled. This could be caused by failure of the level probe or, more likely, by a problem with the logic board. I have seen this at least three times with my machine, and in each case it was due to water from a leak flowing into the brain box and getting on the logic board. It seems that one of the early symptoms of a compromised logic board is failure of the steam boiler auto-fill circuit. The good news is that if it is caught early enough, the logic board can be dried out and restored to normal operation (with small leaks, this can happen by itself through evaporation.) If not caught early or the leak is larger, the logic board can be permanently destroyed.

I should point out that, in theory, a logic board failure could cause over-heating of the water and a high-steam pressure situation, though I've never seen that with my machine. That seems more consistent with your report of sputtering at the hot water wand. The steam wand condition sounds more like the consequence of an overfill: water gets into the steam wand tubing and valve, and takes a while to purge. Note that overheating would also be accompanied by a higher-than-expected reading on the steam boiler gauge. Are you still seeing that?

Regardless of the failure mode, I strongly suspect that water has gotten into the brain box and is affecting the logic board. You have seen water in the machine, and that's bad. Did you actually see water dripping from the flowmeter fitting, or did you just see water under the fitting? If the former, then it's probably a bad fitting or a bad gasket in the flowmeter and needs to be repaired. If the latter, then the water could have come from above -- from a stuck vacuum breaker (a good candidate since you haven't descaled in a while), from a bad fitting on the steam boiler, or even from the steam boiler seals. You need to carefully examine the machine to determine where the leak is coming from.

Do you run your machine 24x7, or do you let it cool down? If the latter, then the water may be leaking only when the machine is cold. If you can't find a definitive source of the leak while the machine is on, turn it off and let it cool down. Then look for tiny drops leaking slowly from the edges of the triangular plates on both sides of the steam boiler. If that's happening, the seals are bad. Don't panic. It happened to me and I was able to replace the seals successfully. If you have a dealer/servicer nearby, it would be no problem for them.

If it was my machine, I would examine the inside of the brain box to look for water. This is electrical/electronic work and not advisable unless you know what you're doing. If you don't, you could further damage the machine.

If you decide to check out the brain box, turn off the machine, unplug it, remove the back cover screws, pull out the brain box and pop the cover. It's not all that hard to do, but you must be careful with the many wires that enter/exit the box, especially when you push it back in. The ribbon cables going to the front panel pull out of the logic board fairly easily.

If there's any sign of water in the box, you should take a photo of the connections on the logic board and then remove the board. Dry off the water with a cloth and use gentle heat from a hairdryer until there's no sign of moisture (do not overheat the board -- it should not get hot.) Store the board overnight in a bag of rice, then re-install the next day, using the photo to guide reconnection of cables.

I drilled some small holes in the drain box under the board to provide a path for any water that gets in there. This won't guarantee that the board won't get wet, but it won't hurt. I've tried to tape up my brain box, especially the screw holes in the top, but I think that's probably a futile exercise: water gets on the cables and drips through the inside of the cable bundle into the drain box.

So the two tasks are: 1) find and fix the leak, and 2) make sure there's no water in the brain box.

One comment: If I were you, I wouldn't descale the machine. The CC cation softener removes all hardness, so descaling shouldn't be necessary. Running acidic water through the machine isn't a good thing to do. It's not a given that descaling has caused a leak, but it's a possibility.

If you have more questions, post them here or PM me. Hope this has been helpful.

Wow... I don't have a lot of time to respond yet because of a crying baby....but I just wanted to say thank you very much for the information and taking the time to write all of that. I'll respond more tomorrow, but I took it all apart today, let it heat up, had it on for a couple of hours, and no problems. No high pressure, no leaks, nothing.

I just wanted to send a quick reply and tell you thank you for taking the time to write all of that and help out. I'll write more later and an update.

My GS/3 exhibited similar behavior when I first got it. It turned out to be a small brass shard in the steam boiler fill solenoid valve. I wonder if a but of something could have gotten stuck in yours?
The tech that fixed it put his ear to the valve and could hear a small trickle of water moving through the valve. I believe that was with the machine still on. I think he had asbestos ears!! Seriously though, in that situation I think it does not matter if the machine is on or off; something sticking in the valve will let enough water to trickle into the steam boiler to cause the over pressure valve to blow.
The fix was simple; just remove the valve from the boiler, open it and look inside for a bit of foreign debris. Rinse, reassemble and good to go.
Peppersass has many good points for you to check also. I would check out the brain box and see if it is wet. Mine (#1700) has a hole drilled at the factory in the bottom of the plastic box. But, there was still a little bit of water inside the box that dripped from the leaky catch can that houses the over pressure valve.

I'd be looking for burnt points in the pressostat, particularly in a situation where the user turns the machine off and on frequently. I've never seen a logic board cause an overheating problem but maybe this will be a first.

I agree that descaling is not necessary or advised when using a water softener.

normriff wrote:I'd be looking for burnt points in the pressostat, particularly in a situation where the user turns the machine off and on frequently. I've never seen a logic board cause an overheating problem but maybe this will be a first.

The GS3 does not have a pressurestat, so there isn't one to look at. It uses a thermocouple with electronic control (on the logic board) to signal a solid state relay to activate the heater. It's entirely conceivable that the logic board could get stuck with a closed circuit on the SSR and overheat the steam boiler as described.

Excellent!! I had in mind one of the older models.
But then, they never did fix the problem of the logic board getting wet besides drilling holes in the bottom?

As far as I know, there has been no change to the GS3 brain box layout and the potential for water to fill the brain box still exists. Any further discussion of that should go in the thread dedicated to that topic.

Hi!

First, I want to say thank you all for the responses and the information on what to look at. It was all pretty scary when this occurred and I had no clue what to look for. While I know my way around the machine, I'm not a tech expert and all the help and responses has been great.

A couple of questions that I had about this whole thing. Peppersass talked about the OPV blowing if it gets well over 2.0 bar. I was wondering how this exactly works. Ah, scratch this. I had the antisiphon/vacuum breaker valve (part L190) in mind. Now that I know what I'm looking at, the parts manual shows L180/2.5 for the OPV. Does this mean it should release if the pressure gets over 2.5? There's a little plate on top of that. It's part number F.1.019. When the OPV does blow, does it blow it up, hit the plate, and spill on the counter? The other option is it goes through the clear flex tube into the drain tray...but since the clear tube attaches to some other part and not the valve, it makes me think it blows it up, hits the plate, and drains on the counter. When I took the side panel off the next day, I did see some water in the clear tube.

When I popped the machine open the next day, I just saw water around the flowmeter. The majority of water was probably under the OPV area on the counter. I'm wondering if the OPV blew and tossed the water all over, which dripped on some piping and flowed down into the flowmeter area.

I let my machine cool down, so it's not on 24x7. I'd say maybe 10x7. When this happened, there was about a 4 hour cool-down point. Thanks also about checking out the triangle plate and the drips. I did check this out, and there was nothing.

I took it apart the next day (before posting this at HB), took the antisiphon valve off, drained the boiler, filled it with a little descaler and rinsed it about 5 times with a manual fill (funnel in the antisiphon valve) and then drained it. After all that, I turned it on and let it run for about two hours. I didn't see one leak anywhere, no sizzles/water evaporating, or anything like that. The pressure on it was fine and it was pinned at 1.5, which is where it has always been in the past. I activated the steam wand and the tea buttons so it would run water through the steam boiler, and it was still fine.

I unplugged the machine after the test, but I think I will still take the brain box out and make sure it is dry, has a hole on the bottom of it, and try to seal the top someway....maybe rubber cement?

I'll also have to cool it with the descaling. I have done it once a year, and just got the softener/filter combo from Chris. Before that, it was going through the whole-house softener. I should add that we have extremely hard water. I have been blessed by living in an area that mined limestone. We get the local community water and it's not lake michigan water. This makes it extremely hard and just horrible.

Derekb: Thanks for the response. It crossed my mind that something may have been stuck in one of the valves and prevented it from opening or flowing water through it. Even though I'm a handyman, I'm a little iffy about removing the heating elements from the tank and taking a peak in. If it continues, I will think more seriously about doing that.

Shadowfax: When you say that the logic board could get stuck with a closed circuit on the SSR, how would that happen? Just a fluke? Would water in the brain box do this, as others have mentioned? Also, what's an SSR?

Thanks again everybody for all the responses and great information. I'm hoping that it may have been a fluke that the boiler overheated, blew the OPV, sprayed water all over, and that's it. I will check out the brain box though and see what can be done about it.

Thanks!
Mike

wiz561 wrote:Shadowfax: When you say that the logic board could get stuck with a closed circuit on the SSR, how would that happen? Just a fluke? Would water in the brain box do this, as others have mentioned? Also, what's an SSR?

An SSR is a Solid-State Relay. It takes a low-current, probably DC signal from the logic board and uses it to switch the high-current AC circuit that powers the heating element. There's one for each boiler in the brain box. It's pretty unlikely that this would get stuck closed even if you got water in the brain box, but certainly possible.

wiz561 wrote:When the OPV does blow, does it blow it up, hit the plate, and spill on the counter? The other option is it goes through the clear flex tube into the drain tray...but since the clear tube attaches to some other part and not the valve, it makes me think it blows it up, hits the plate, and drains on the counter. When I took the side panel off the next day, I did see some water in the clear tube.

There is a big cup with a lid around the OPV. The base of that cup hooks up to the tube that drains it to the drip tray. Most of the water should go into the drip tray, but it's probably possible for some to leak and drip through the machine to the counter if a great deal of water comes out quickly. Also if the water is steaming hot (often will be), steam can escape the top seams of the enclosing cap and condense all over the inside of the machine.