Yes totally agree and have been using just normal tap water as of now with TDs of 110 ... But still this happening ... will try the steam technique for next 2-3 days and keep my fingers crossed

Thanks Jim for being so helpful ..yes I have already got in touch with the vendor since machine is only 2 months old ..let's hope a positive outcome comes through ...though even I feel PID is having some issue ...but my expertise is not in this field..... whatever happens I will keep the forum updated...

Am having the exact same problem as you have described, and don't think it's a water problem, didn't mess around with any PID settings either.

Am using regular tap water run through a countertop filter then the lelit water softener.

I contacted my vendor in Malaysia and he wants to have a look at it and maybe change these parts in addition to a relay of some sort http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SGMRDq13zk

With covid travel restrictions in my country and the vendor being 400km away, I'm living with this intermittent problem for now. Am not using the steam boiler half the time, only making espresso mostly.

The steam gauge is showing an accurate pressure when it shoots off the charts as the steam power is crazy high. I find that if I mess around with the machine when it is heating up e.g. pull some water from the brew group, release some steam from the steam wand as it's heating up, it doesn't seem to happen as often (?) - may not be true, just my non-scientific observation so far.

Will keep you guys updated.

Pls let me know if you managed to sort this out on your end.

Thanks all and take care.

Got my brand new bianca just 2 weeks, same problem from yesterday.

Is it safe? what should i do now?

Reply from lelit:

Hello, thank you for the details. We believe that the probe #9600092 needs to be replaced with a new one. Please get in touch with your reseller for assistance. Thank you! Best regards,

I am seeing similar issue with my 3 weeks old Bianca starting yesterday. No matter what the steam boiler temp I set(or see) in the LCC, the steam pressure gauge is registering 2.25 - 2.5 bars of pressure. And I do see the difference in steam power since I have been using it around 1.5 - 1.75 bar for last couple of weeks, so the increase in steam pressure is clearly evident. I just reached out to the seller and waiting for their guidance. I feed normal filtered tap water to the reservoir where the Lelit resin filter is already attached.

How much more steam do you get with the increase in pressure? If it hasn't changed much it might be your pressure dial



Randy

So I have posted this ins the 3rd water thread and also in the Bianca User experience thread but this seems to be the right thread to talk about this topic.

I am also experiencing the same issue in my 3 week old Bianca, it started at about 2 weeks after purchase.

The problem is intermittent and only happens on cold start, sometimes the needle goes all the way past 3, and some steam will vent, some times just up to 3, my Boiler temperature is set to 268 F, but when it goes this high I notice the boiler surfing at 280-290 F. After a while it stabilizes and then it is peachy perfect. If the machines hasn't been cold for too long then it also doesn't happen and everything works well.

Based on my experience I don't think it is the water, I have installed a BWT water filtration system for LA's very hard water and run it in setting 1. My TDS is around 340 after the filter.

My retailer, 1st-line suggested I take out the steam PID probe and clean it, I haven't done this but I will soon.

I first thought it was that the boiler was overfilling but yesterday I got lucky and observed a new piece of data I hadn't before, and it has changed my assessment. When warming I was closely observing the steam boiler temp and it slowly got to about 240 F - 250F and it became very erratic fluctuating up and down not by much, but the pressure was still increasing surpassing 3 bar even which doesn't make sense for these temperatures , and then all the sudden the temperature jumped from 252 to 291 at once. It was like if the temperature probe was not able to measure the right temperature and all of the sudden it did. as expected at this point the boiler turned off and the pressure slowly went down and stabilized.

This last piece of the puzzle points to either a faulty sensor or dirty sensor, this is a 3 week old machine.... I might have a feeling this might be a more widespread issue, my machine production date is OCT 2020. This behavior could also be due to moisture getting inside the sensor which could explain why after reaching higher temperature the moisture dissipates and the sensor starts working fine again. This is my opinion, I am not an expert and know anything about this, please you are all welcome to refute it with other hypothesis that maybe make more sense!

I will report my new findings to 1st-line and then see if their recommendation changes.

I have lowered the steam boiler temperature from 268 to 260 to see if the sensor is more susceptible to these failure since I am pushing for higher steam pressures than factory setting. I will be checking the next few days.

Osanties

Pretty similar experience for me as well. Only difference is, this issue happened when I turned off the machine and then again switched it ON back after couple of hours. Today morning the dials looked perfect from a cold start and even on a restart after 2 hours( I generally tend to switch off the machine if I plan to not have another cup within an hour). For now the issue seems intermittent in my case, but the frequency of this issue is increasing. Yesterday was the worst where even when I was turning down the steam boiler temp by 10 F, the manometer reading remained unchanged(2.25 - 2.5 bar) and so is the steam pressure intensity. It was clearly more than what I see usually(1.5-1.7 bars)
Cleaning Steam PID probe might be the solution but its surprising to have these issues with a 3 weeks old machine and the symptoms seems to be happening for multiple machines. Sounds like a PIP probe production issue for a particular batch ?