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Permalink Reply by Daniel Williamson on June 1, 2011 at 11:18am

Disclaimer: I'm not a tech, nor do I have experience with the GB5.  I have worked on Lineas before, though, and they are very similar.

 

The fact that water is in it every time you turn it off would indicate that the boiler is full.  A little water will come out if it's been a while since last using the steam wand.  That sounds like a lot of water, though. 

 

As to bleeding the groups, you've got different boilers for the steam wand/hot water spout and the other is for the groups only.  Bleeding the groups won't help the water level on the steam boiler.  Using the hot water dispenser will, momentarily.  But then the autofill will kick in and fill it back up.  Sounds like the real issue is in the water probe in the steam tank.  It shouldn't be allowing it to fill that much if it's calibrated properly.  Also, when was the last time you descaled? Scale on the probe will negatively affect the probe's performance.

 

Hopefully someone will jump in here to give you a better explanation

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Permalink Reply by Jason Haeger on June 1, 2011 at 11:37am

Both symptoms imply that the steam boiler is too full.  

 

You can remove the water level probe and clean it manually pretty easily.  That would be step 1.  Step 2 is to diagnose how this happened in the first place.  How "clean" is your water? 

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Permalink Reply by Christopher on June 1, 2011 at 1:42pm

Thank you both for your suggestions, I really appreciate you taking the time to respond.

The machine was serviced recently and I was kind of thinking the long purge issue could be because the steam tank is a bit too full also. With the GB5 there is no sightglass so I might carefully lower the probe a very small amount and then drain the tank until the autofil kicks in and see if that reduces the amount of water being expelled through the steam wands.

 

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Permalink Reply by Brady on June 1, 2011 at 6:39pm

Hi Christopher.

 

I have a couple of initial ideas of what may be going on with your machine, though I am by no means a GB5 or FB80 authority.

 

However, to better answer your question, some additional information would be really helpful, for all of the LM people here:

 

1. Please time exactly how long you get water out of the wand after a short break, and also after a longer break... lets say 2 minutes and 5 minutes. Is it more or less than 1 second? How much water are we talking... less than half an ounce? An ounce? 4 ounces?

2. Once the water has been purged, do you get reasonably dry steam?

3. After steaming, does the autofill kick on right away? If not, do you find that the next burst of steam (after a pause) is drier?

4. Exactly what message are you seeing, and when do you see it? Is it the "Coffee Boiler Filled?" message? Are you turning the machine off or otherwise interrupting power to the machine? How are you making the message go away?

5. You say it was recently serviced... what exactly did the tech do? Regular maintenance? Descale? Drain the boiler? Work on the steam valves? Change your water filter/softener cartridges, or anything water-related? Change any programming? Re-level the machine?

5. Did the problem begin right after service, or some time before or after?

 

A couple of thoughts, that may prove irrelevant:

Some amount of condensed water is to be expected after the wand has been idle. This might last a second, depending on machine, presence of a vacuum breaker in the valve, and position of the wand when idle. This is why purging the wand before and after steaming is standard procedure. You probably already knew that, but I figured I'd mention it anyway.

Your machine has a programmable probe sensitivity, to allow for variations in water conductivity. If overfull is your issue, this may be related.

If your machine were overfull, I suspect that you'd get a continuous stream of water that would last for far longer than you've described, and dispense several ounces in volume.

 

Not sure what your error message is about, but if it is "Coffee Boiler Full" I don't think it's related to your problem.

 

Have you or your manager asked your tech about this? Many are happy to answer questions like this on the phone, and they know your machine better than we do. If you haven't, it might be worth a try.

 

Looking forward to more info and a resolution to this. Good luck!

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Permalink Reply by Christopher on June 2, 2011 at 9:11am

Hey Brady! Thanks for your suggestions. I can answer a few now but will do some of the other checks you mentioned and answer everything in one go ASAP.

 

Thank you!

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Permalink Reply by Mickael on June 2, 2011 at 9:47pm

its either the probes or your fill valve could be leaking

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Permalink Reply by Ron Ingber on June 3, 2011 at 5:50am

Please move to "Equipment & Tech"

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Permalink Reply by Scott on June 7, 2011 at 11:28am

1 - fill probe. Or connection at the board. Even if there isn't a site glass the probe is probably a set length.  Just remove it (after depressurizing the boiler), clean and reinstall.

2 - I'm not sure of the GB5, but the fill valve to the boiler on the Linea can be installed backwards, though I think this leads to water hammer not leakage. 

3 - preheater pipe (for the coffee boilers) on RHS of steam boiler could be leaking into the tank and causing a slow overfill.  

 

My bet would be on the probe or bad connection to the board, cause if you had a leak and overfill situation, it would fill completely overnight and you would have steam at all.

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Permalink Reply by Bill P on October 28, 2012 at 11:35am

I have the same problem.  I cleaned the probes but the problem persists.  Does anyone know which thingy is the fill valve? Seems like I should work on that next.  Thanks!

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