ACS Vesuvius intermittent flow failure

slidingmike

After 3 years of great service, my Vesuvius is starting to act up a bit. Once, every 5-10 pulls up on the lever (to pull a shot, to flush, or backflush), the pressure shoots up quickly but no water emerges. Usually, I bring the lever down, wait a few seconds, and can pull out water normally. Today it happened several times in a row, and I had to turn the power off and back on. Has this been reported before? Any suggestions on what I should check? It’s not something that I’d seen on normal (non-pressure-profiled) E61s over 25 years, so I assume it has to do with the profiling system or its response to an issue.

(Side question: is there a way to search just the “Pressure profiling machines” topic area, or do I have to search the entire forum?)

DavecUK

slidingmike (Side question: is there a way to search just the “Pressure profiling machines” topic area, or do I have to search the entire forum?)

The forum search isn’t great and has got progressively more broken with each update. At one time it was possible to go to the tag area, before or after the search and filter to those tags. this doesn’t work now!

I’ve added a google site search link to top of the forum

DavecUK

slidingmike After 3 years of great service, my Vesuvius is starting to act up a bit. Once, every 5-10 pulls up on the lever (to pull a shot, to flush, or backflush), the pressure shoots up quickly but no water emerges. Usually, I bring the lever down, wait a few seconds, and can pull out water normally. Today it happened several times in a row, and I had to turn the power off and back on. Has this been reported before?

It has not, I’m wondering if the problem could be limescale blocking the outflow into the group (intermittently)?

prezes

I’m following this as this happened on my machine which is under year old. Two or three times couple months apart.

Very odd as it sounds like the pump is going from 0 to 100 in 2 seconds but no water coming out.

DavecUK

prezes Very odd as it sounds like the pump is going from 0 to 100 in 2 seconds but no water coming out.

Are you sure the pump is not running dry or a restriction in the inlet pipe, split, hole, above water line etc.. That’s a classic symptom of where the pump can’t make pressure the sensor says “full speed ahead”?

How about a video, if you have a smartphone. Just direct upload to youtube, make it unlisted, then paste link here.

prezes

DavecUK it only happened on mine literally three times, once every couple of months and completely unexpected so ignored it till this post.

slidingmike

I don’t see any visible kinks or blockages in the hoses, but I have yet to remove all the cowling – I suppose that’s next. I am good at keeping the reservoir filled and hoses correctly threaded. Odd that it’s intermittent.

slidingmike

No hose constrictions, but the problem is becoming more and more frequent. Video would not be instructive; the pump just runs and no water comes out. If I’m lucky, it’s just a clogged filter (even though I only use twice-filtered water). I’ve reached out to Chris Coffee service, who may have some ideas.

slidingmike

So this turned out to be the harbinger of a pretty serious problem. It kept getting worse, so I had to seek some real help.

Some background: I had my previous machine, a Quickmill Anita, for 16 years, and had to scrub out the grouphead brass bits a few times due to scale buildup. I had asked the great Chris Coffee support team about descaling, and they recommended never to do that because it would likely lead to more issues than it would love. Something akin to breaking off a bit of blood clot in your veins, causing a stroke. When @DavecUK recommended regular descaling for Vesuvius, I decided to ignore this piece of advice.

So I checked Vesuvius’s grouphead, and there was no scale buildup at all.

Vesuvius, however, has another valve system located just behind the grouphead (between the grouphead and the boilers, in an impossible-to-reach-yourself location). The Chris Coffee support team believed that I was getting scaling in there and would need to try descaling. Gulp. I did it, and my machine got a little worse. I did it again, and my poor Vesuvius got a stroke and pretty much completely stopped being able to either pull water through the grouphead or even refill the steam boiler. Crap.

Figuring that I needed to take apart and clean the valve system by hand, I took the panels and frame off the machine and discovered how completely screwed I was. I was going to have to remove both boilers, and a majority of the electronics to get anywhere near this valve system. And when I tried to do that, I discovered that the system was put together and sealed so tightly that I was likely to break a pipe before the nuts holding the piping to the boilers would loosen. Oh, and you can’t ship this thing anywhere for repairs; it’s too big.

I thought about trying to find a place to repair it, but the one in the SF Bay Area was so busy with commercial work that they couldn’t even get me on their calendar.

So my Vesuvius sat there. Full of vinegar. And after 2 months like that, the valve system descaled. I flushed it out with water for 2 days, and it seems to be working fine again.

Moral of the story: when @DavecUK recommends frequent descaling, listen!

DavecUK

slidingmike Moral of the story: when @DavecUK recommends frequent descaling, listen!

Unless you are definitely using totally boiler safe water that cannot scale. Glad it’s sorted. Oh, removing boilers is much easier than you think.

John_Yossarian

slidingmike Great to hear you “cured” your machine. Citric acid usually works better/faster than vinegar but as long as you have solved it this is fine.

I too did not listen to @DavecUK advice back in 2019 (I had an Appia Nuova Simonelli) when he told me it was my heating element. As usual, he was spot on, I bought a new heating element from Italy and everything (almost everything as in the process I suspected that the reason was my rotary pump and broke it trying to “repair” it, so a new pump was bought too) was fine.

Moral of the story, when @DavecUK suggests something (not only on descaling) just stick with it 😀

slidingmike

Dave, perhaps my piping was over-sealed (glued?) or drastically over-torqued. I was really cranking on the nuts and the only thing that was going anywhere at all was the boiler supports and the piping itself.

DavecUK

slidingmike Which fittings, the pipes use compression fittings?

slidingmike

Both of these: (tried to upload or paste photo but it doesn’t seem to be working)

DavecUK

slidingmike To remove them use 1 open ended spanner and with a reasonably heavy object (bigger spanner, give sharp raps to loosen it…the repeated shocks will allow it to come off. Don’t try and move it in one by clouting it really hard.

When you refit, use a smear of Molykote III or similar on the nut and compression fitting, this makes them much easier to tighten correctly…..you don’t get that scrch, scrch sound

slidingmike

@DavecUK Thank you, I may have to give this a try – the flow is still pretty strange since the stroke!

slidingmike

So my happy ending was too good to be true… She started freezing up again (zero flow) while pulling shots or flushing. I dug back in, took her apart, ordered some special tools, somehow managed to get the boilers out (how in the hell will I get them back in???), and, after weeks of effort, I finally pulled out the valve system. Sadly, the boiler check valve looked pristine. But I did see that the chamber below the boiler check valve was heavily deposited, and there was a lot of corrosion in the system below it.

Any suggestions on my next move to get my poor Vesuvius working again?

(BTW, I now have a full RO system installed so that I hopefully won’t have to deal with this again!)

slidingmike

Valve assembly; boiler check valve looks good.

slidingmike

Bottom of the blowoff valve next to the boiler check valve – looks suspect

slidingmike

Inside the blowoff valve… Lots of buildup, seal looks pretty abused.