ACS Leva Pump not drawing water

IridiumBlackberry

Morning all,

This morning my machine did not detect a low amount of water in the tank. As a result my machine was continuously trying to pump water from the tank with no water in it. This all happened during my shot so the last shot protection protocol didn’t seem to work. My issue is now though, that even after I filled the tank again the pump is running but doesn’t seem to be pulling any water. Has anyone experienced this before?

@DavecUK Was this something that you’ve run into?

thank you for the help all!

DavecUK

IridiumBlackberry When first filling the Alpha I had a bit of trouble getting the pump to prime. Open steam and water wand, water tank full, machine cold, lever pulled down. See if that gets it to prime.

Otherwise squirt some water in tube til it primes.

LMSC

IridiumBlackberry I think you need to manually prime the pump through feeding some water through the tube, if I am not wrong. @DavecUK will confirm. The below steps are reproduced from the Leva FAQ doc. Please let Dave confirm if priming is required and below steps are correct.

Priming the pump

Upon taking delivery of the Evo Leva, or after a period without using it, it might be necessary to prime the pump. The usual symptom is that when turning on the machine, the pump makes a buzzing sound as if working but without drawing any water from the tank (After a while you’ll get an AL 10 error). Priming the pump can be a bugger to do, but @DaveUK suggests the following steps (which others have confirmed to be quite easy):

1. Pull off the gauze filter on the water inlet tube

2. With the machine switched off, pull the lever down

3. Use the switch to start/stop the pump and squirt some water down the inlet tube to fill the pump as the pump is running

4. When it picks up, stop the pump, fill the inlet tube with water, pop the gauze filter back on and drop it in full in the tank

Cuprajake

prob has air in it, sure dave will be along soon

DavecUK

LMSC I’d forgotten I wrote that in the user guide.

LMSC

DavecUK That’s why we need to document it. I have merged the user guide and FAQ. Now, editing and adding on top Eiffel’s FAQ. 😊

CoyoteOldMan

I don’t think the Leva has “last shot protection”.

You have an air bubble in the pump - often the pump will self-prime, but sometimes it needs help. What I’ve done when that happened to me:

Let the machine cool down and switch off the boilers (no point in wasting energy, and there is less pressure in the circuit)
Fill the tank as much as possible, and make sure the pump feed pipe is as close to the bottom as it can be
Remove portafilter, then cock the lever so that the pump can ‘feed out’ with as little resistance as possible
Wait a few seconds, when water starts coming through, carefully uncock the lever holding it with two hands until it’s fully released (vertical)
Enjoy your coffee

(alternative workflow to the suggested priming process above)

LMSC

CoyoteOldMan I have added this alternative as a part of priming in the FAQ.

DavecUK

CoyoteOldMan I don’t think the Leva has “last shot protection”.

I don’t really know as my Alpha didn’t even have a sensor for low water level…I just had to keep checking.

LMSC

DavecUK - We don’t have it.

Last shot protection

The Evo leva pump will stop working soon after the tank sensor detects that water is low. This can happen while filling the brew chamber but usually doesn’t result in a wasted shot as there should be enough water to complete the shot as intended. I guess adding a conventional last shot feature would have required a redesign of the low water detection system (so that it triggers a ‘warning’ when there is still enough water left to complete the shot) and some clever electronics to control the pump and detect that a shot is in progress… which isn’t something which the Evo Leva has.****

IridiumBlackberry

Hey All, thanks for getting back to me so quickly! I received a response from @Paolo_Cortese who resolved my issue. I’ll document it here for future leva users. But I think it’s essentially what @LMSC describes above in his Priming the Pump reply.

So I followed the following steps after completely filling my tank.

Turn off the machine and let it machine cool down a bit
Turn the machine on again
before letting the machine heat up, without the portafilter present, pull the lever down to pull some water through

After step 3, the machine began to pull water again.

Thank you all again for your fast replies. Glad everything is up and running again. 😌