Trips circuit breaker yesterday and works today. What next?

#1: Post by **jgrosjean** » January 19th, 2020, 1:39 pm

I have a Rancilio s27. It's old but has been working well for the last few months.

Then yesterday it would:

Heat up and maintain heat
Trip circuit breaker when asked to dispense water. This wouldn't happen instantly... maybe 1 second in. Water would come out group head, then circuit would trip.

I tried this 4 or 5 times, while turning off other things on circuit, and got same behavior.

And today everything is back to normal. Works great!

Any thoughts on what would cause this would I should do next. Good to just keep going and pretend it didn't happen, or is there some problem that I should check for?

Thanks,
Jesse

#2: Post by **Nunas** » January 19th, 2020, 1:55 pm

Could be it had some moisture in the electrical circuit, which has since dried out. Look for evidence of leaks. I once spilled water down the top of one of my machines and it tripped the GFCI. I let it sit a short while and it did the same thing. So, I moved it to a non-GFCI outlet, turned it on for a few hours and put a sign on it DO NOT TOUCH. The internal heat dried it out and the problem never recurred.

#3: Post by **Scott_G** » January 19th, 2020, 2:02 pm

Is it tripping the breaker at the box or a GFCI?

January 19th, 2020, 4:39 pm

It was tripping the breaker at the box.

January 19th, 2020, 4:43 pm

Nunas wrote:Could be it had some moisture in the electrical circuit, which has since dried out. Look for evidence of leaks

Of course possible, but no leaks or spills that I know of.

#6: Post by **Jake_G** » January 20th, 2020, 10:09 am

If it does it again, try to isolate if it is the pump or the group solenoid tripping the breaker.

To do this, I would reset the breaker and pull hot water out of the hot water dispenser instead of the group and see if it can top off the boiler without tripping. Breaker trips are going to be an overload condition, which is generally (though not always) a phase to neutral short and those don't generally come and go like a ground fault can due to things like moisture in the heating element terminals.

If the pump runs to top off the boiler, but not to pull a shot from the group, I would look into the circuit for the coil on the 3 way valve for the group.

Not sure if you still have the spare machine laying around, but swapping for a known working coil is always a solid troubleshooting step if you've ruled out the pump as the culprit.

Cheers!

- Jake

January 21st, 2020, 11:08 am

Jake,

Thanks... just what I needed. So far it's still all working fine, but if it happens again I'll have a few things to try instead of just staring at the thing with a frown on my face!

Jesse

#8: Post by **belegnole** » January 21st, 2020, 12:08 pm

If there's nothing wrong with the machine it could be just that you were drawing to much on that line at the time. What all is plugged into that line and was it running when the circuit breaker tripped? I've had breakers trip when running one to many appliances. Especially if the breaker was on the way out. Not that I'm saying that there's anything wrong with your electrical system. Just that the problem may not have been the machine you were looking at when the breaker tripped.