Hi everyone,
I bought a 920 as a repair project (not complete suicide, I have a lot of experience (too much?) repairing my old 900 ). The previous owner said it tripped his circuit breaker in the middle of the night and had a warm top cover in the morning. I assumed it could be a damaged triac board making the steam boiler go loco, which was caused by leaking o-rings of the steam boiler. I've seen some threads here describing these same symptoms.

When I opened it for the first time it didn't look too bad. Turned the machine on the boilers heated up, so no problem with fuses. I could already see four leaking connections straight away, so might've been the cause of the nightly party of the machine. Draining the steam boiler didn't work at first, spraying some water in there it seemed it was clogged up with a lot of scale and some weird brown stuff... Could the brown stuff be from the heating elements overheating?


Investigating some more I also noticed some scale on the side of the boiler, I think it's the connection where the heating element goes into the boiler. Or maybe condensed water from the steam leaks just dripped down? Has anybody seen this before? Is it even fixable? (sorry no photo, hard to make a picture and I brushed most of it away....)

And the brown stuff from the steam boiler, should I be worried the heating element is damaged? I turned the machines on and off a couple of times and used some steam and I've never heard the pump for filling the steam boiler. Maybe that's broken too and cause some of the problems later on?

That looks like my first 920 that blew the element during the first descale (what was later found to be an issue with every 920 released). Thankfully replaced under warranty. The elements in these aren't replaceable, need to replace the whole boiler, as far as I know.

Oef, that doesn't sound good... It's still heating properly and as far as I know, I've drained the boiler but manually filled it with water to avoid it heating up whilst dry. Maybe I should test the boiler pump before it runs dry (again).

Weird that it heats though, mine wouldn't. Maybe it's just really old scale. Scale goes brown with heat and time. Doesn't bode well for the rest of the machine condition though.

Is it normal for these units to need service every 6-12 months of moderate use? (making about 6 shots per day).

Steam is leaking in mine and the unit is about 7 months old. Breville support blamed it on my not descaling? I am using a BWT water filter.

Well, the short answer is yes. The link below will provide some insight.

https://perfectdailygrind.com/2015/09/e ... ssentials/

Duplicate of this post (including fix) of leaking boiler probes.

Breville Dual Boiler Mods and Maintenance

Is it possible to have a leak in the actual tube itself? I have a leak after replacing the o-rings and I'm thinking the tube itself is leaking.

razor488 wrote:Is it normal for these units to need service every 6-12 months of moderate use? (making about 6 shots per day).

Steam is leaking in mine and the unit is about 7 months old. Breville support blamed it on my not descaling? I am using a BWT water filter.

Seems to be somewhat normal for a Breville machine, but is definitely far from normal for most quality machines. They REALLY need to redesign those problem areas and clearly use a higher quality part(s). No excuse for such common o-ring failures and for them to blame it on the lack of descaling shows their level of 'engineering' when that clearly worsens things based on lots of complaints I've seen mentioned.

Anyone know a good place to order replacement tubes? I ordered one from ereplacment parts but it was too short. I need the one that connects both boilers.