Yikes. This morning I made my usual americano w/ 2 doubles with my 4-month old Vivaldi (which I love), left the machine on, and went to make a latte at noon. When I hit the double button to do a warm-up flush, nothing but the pre-infusion water. When I drew 3-4oz. from the hot water tap, that was fine, but then it began to refill the steam boiler and never did; the pump continually ran until it shut off and gave me the flashing boiler light alarm.

A little more detail... At idle, the manometer reads ~4bar. When I hit the double or single button, the pump runs, the manometer goes to its usual ~9.5bar, but almost immediately the 3 LEDs flash as when it is choked or back-flushing. This is with the steam boiler off; if I turn that on, it immediately tries to refill, but can't.

The first thing I checked was the incoming water. Right after the charcoal filter and softening cartridge, there is good pressure and flow. Tried unplugging the machine, thinking something may have to reset, nada.

I called Chris' which is where I bought this last May. Their tech asked a bunch of questions, and at first thought it might be the screen going into the fill valve. But then realizing the group had no water coming from it, he backed up on the water path and thought it might be the piston, which is part #280 on page 12 here;
http://s1cafe.com/s1v2/V2%20Manuals/RIC ... %20NEW.pdf.

So I took off the front, back and right side panels, and all the fittings on that valve body and the expansion valve to get at that piston. No signs of any mineral deposits or shavings, or any obstruction. Put everything back together, tested it, same symptoms.

The best thing about this fiasco is that I now understand the path of water, from the inlet to the pump, to the tee and then either to the flowmeter to the group boiler, or the fill valve to the steam boiler. There's still more about the innards that I don't know, but I know a thousand times more now than I did this morning.

By that time Chris' was closing, and now we will continue over-the-phone troubleshooting on Monday. I was hoping there may be some input from the wizards here so that I can tinker over the weekend. I do read the S1Cafe forums, and have looked all through there, but thought this forum gets some more current traffic, and want to abide by the cross-posting guidelines.

I figured since I asked for help, it's a good idea to report back.

Other than the mystery ailment that kept water from the group, which somehow fixed itself over the weekend, the real problem was an improperly installed screen just ahead of the fill valve for the steam boiler. As soon as I opened up the port on the solenoid I could see the problem. It's not really a screen, but a sintered metal disc w/ a thin brass ring. It was wedged in there sideways and squished, leading me to believe it was a Friday afternoon after a long lunch of sausage and Sangria. The tech at Chris' said that the factory puts that screen in because they can't count on people using a filter upline, and that I can run w/o it. I don't know why it worked for 4 months as it was; maybe in its squished shape it finally wiggled in close enough to interfere with the solenoid.

This would've been a fairly easy fix and it would've been up and running Saturday a.m., if the group problem wouldn't have been there. To get at what they thought was the problem meant undoing a bunch of fittings and lines, and then dismantling the valve with the spring/piston. The headache there, apart from just getting the valve out is that the factory doesn't use teflon tape or thread compound; they use some sort of Loctite. It works, until you have to take it apart, that is. So a couple of fittings were leaking, and even though I got the screen in the fill valve square away easy enough I still had to take that valve out along with the expansion valve, and clean up the threads and redo that work from Friday. I'm still scratching my head as to why there wasn't any water at the group on Friday and why there was on Monday, but I'll be happy it resolved itself.

I'm glad to have this first episode out of the way. Like people say, any espresso machine will need repair eventually, and now that I've cut my teeth on this repair the next one won't produce as much nervous anxiety. The older I get, the more stuff like this rocks my world for the first time through something. When I was younger I liked a challenge, now they seem to scare me.

Chris' techs are very good.

I'd be kinda anxious if I had to work on a machine that new as well. Good job tracking it down and congrats on your repair. Now you know more about your machine, something you'll probably never regret. I bought a machine with known problems and am still going through the process of getting resolved, although I now know more details about it's insides than I ever wanted to.

I certainly am grateful for the opportunity to learn more. That said, the last thing I wanted to do was send it back to Chris'.

The other small kicker was that three days before it went down I had roasted some Vivace Dolce. After reading about it in the Blends of 2010 thread and finding out they sell it green, I had to try it. It may take some tweaking to get it just right. I certainly find it drinkable, oak, leather, some caramel, but not quite a favorite just yet.