DavecUK Sorry, you must have posted your question as I was typing my real-time commentary on what was happening as I was turning on the machine and pulling a shot. Because of that I hadn’t seen your question until this morning, when I read your admonition for not answering your question. And @Adrianmsmith I don’t think it helps for you to ‘like’ @DavecUK ’s somewhat annoyed reply to me, perhaps you both were having a bad day ;-)
To answer your questions Dave:
- it says A7, just as you would imagine after the 2 minute timeout period
- I’ve had the machine about 2 years I think
- The water isn’t hard but nonetheless, following some very good advice here, I put the water through a zero-water filter, I add 0.5g of bicarb to 1 ltr of such water, then I add 100g of that to 1 ltr of purified water, and I use that mix to fill the Minima, so does that work out to be 0.00005g - not sure; but either way, not hard water
- I rarely forget to fill the machine with water, perhaps only twice in the two years of ownership has it warned about low water when pulling a shot, so no issue with the water probe; which I always make sure is seated after a refill.
So, with those answers, I guess we’re talking about "so the area you need to check is very limited… one hose from the pump outlet ending at the solenoid. And ‘no’, the pump doesn’t sound odd.
At the moment, the A7 error is not repeating, and the manual does say that, occasionally, the error can ‘just happen’ and will disappear when the machine is turned off and on again. I did do that but the error didn’t go away, but, as I said, the following morning, after the machine had been off for 24 hours, it did disappear and hasn’t reappeared.
I did a back-flush set of cleans yesterday (good video of yours Dave by the way) and the machine did get up to pressure normally with the blind filter. So the fact that it’s not getting up to pressure with a shot, together with the flow and timings for the shot suggest, as I mentioned and Adrianmsmith seconded, must be because my grinder - coincidentally, and at the same time, had thrown a wobbler. So, I recalibrated, but to no effect, so I’m going to clean the grind wheels again re-do all my settings. They haven’t changed much for the past year since I use the same coffee, the same roast and it rarely varies but now, suddenly everything is off.
Let’s assume it all works out, if not I’ll come back to you. Many, many thanks for your help, and thanks to everyone who’s replied.