Breville BES900 Dual Boiler - Owners thread

[NmBeasy]

Hey guys,

Just wondering if someone could help me out also,

I have a breville dual boiler and smart grinder pro. Im roasting my own beans but I'm finding even on finest setting, burr setting 1,2 or 3 even and on LCD 1 shot at times still can run too fast for my likes. I haven't yet chocked the machine either so not sure whats going on.. I'm also using 20-23 grams in the basket and tamping pretty firmly.

Any ideas?

[Wazzak]

Quick question - have you left the water to settle after you've poured it? I seem to remember that at times if you have tiny bubbles in suspension in the water (from air, steam, whatever) it can make the water look turbid. Give it a little time to settle and observe the little bubbles raising to the top and the water clearing nicely.

I thought the same about the air bubbles when I first started flushing the boiler, but the water was cloudy with no air bubbles. It took about 25 times flushing out the boiler for the water to come out clear. I think the residue from the descaling settled on the bottom of the boiler. Next time I descale it will interesting to see if a similar problem happens again. Thanks for your response.

Warren

[Wushoes]

Hey guys,

Just wondering if someone could help me out also,

I have a breville dual boiler and smart grinder pro. Im roasting my own beans but I'm finding even on finest setting, burr setting 1,2 or 3 even and on LCD 1 shot at times still can run too fast for my likes. I haven't yet chocked the machine either so not sure whats going on.. I'm also using 20-23 grams in the basket and tamping pretty firmly.

Any ideas?

http://coffeesnobs.com.au/grinders/3...inder-pro.html

See photo on first post.

[Killericon]

Hey all,

I'm sure I'm just going to need to wait for customer service to be open, but I thought I'd check to see if there was something missing, or maybe if you guys know what the problem is.

My wife and I just got a BDB second hand from her godmother and it was shipped here. We set it up per the initial setup procedure, but the machine does not seem to want to heat past 155F. Is there any obvious reason this might be happening aside from "it's broken?" Just thought I'd check.

EDIT: It's alive!! Turns out the boilers were empty, and they didn't fill until the 4th time we tried it.

[gmeddy]

Hi again, so as I mentioned in an earlier post, my BDB has a strange problem with its computer I guess, it starts pumping water out of the group head as soon as I turn it on, and won't stop until it runs out of water or I turn it off.
After it ran out of water, I topped it up and turned the hot water tap on and off and right away it started pumping water again...

So here's the work around:

Enter the service mode which you use to see the shot count and when you exit that mode it will function as normal again.

And I've worked out that once I've done that, the problem won't occur again until the power is turned off at the plug.

It's obviously a computer problem and I guess the CPU needs firmware upgrade, and probably a new battery for memory retention.

Anyone know if that can be done at home?

[Barry_Duncan]

Last week I bought a new BES920 to replace my old BES900 which has become old, tired and slow, just like me. Read my story on the BES920 page,
http://coffeesnobs.com.au/brewing-eq...tml#post606941
Post number 1539

Barry

[sammys]

Additional faults to check when steam boiler is not heating up.

I have a BDB that is about 4 years old now and it won't heat past 68 degrees C, it just gets there and drops to 67 and then heats back up to 68. Any ideas or anyone experience a similar problem?

Hi mickybobby. Besides the already mentioned NTC (temperature sensor), there are a few things that can prevent the steam boiler heating element from working. If the small pump continually pumps then see #1 below. Otherwise, detach the red wired probe and partially insert a large syringe with some silicon tubing attached to it (or a straw) and mark the tubing or straw with a permanent marker so you can repeat the insertion depth again. Suck some water out of the steam boiler keeping the insertion depth at your mark until you no longer get any water. Turn on the machine and wait for the pump to stop then insert the silicon tube/straw again to the same mark and see if you can suck out some water. If you can the pump is working. If not, service or replace the pump.

These are the possible other faults:

1. Continuous pumping means that either the pump is faulty and/or one of the level probes is faulty (they could have too much scale on them also). Clean the probes and check again. If they still don't work replace the set of them.
2. Thermal fuse, which is attached to the boiler on the side closest to the machine's side. If this is open circuit then you have to replace it. It could be corroded too making it intermittent or a poor conductor. To access this you must remove all top connections from the boiler and both pumps.
3. Thermostat, which is the round thing on the other side of the boiler. Open circuit one will need to be replaced. Same difficulty as accessing the thermal fuse.
4. Triac board has a fault. This is the board attached to the machine lid. The heating element is driven by the brown cable part of the board.
5. Worst case, the heating element is faulty. In this case you need a new boiler.

There might be some more that have skipped my mind. For example, the control board is faulty. Eliminate the things above first.

[sammys]

Has anyone out there had to replace one of the thermal fuses in the unit? They appear to be welded onto the heating element and I'd like to know how to remove and replace them properly using proper tools.

[mickybobby]

Hi Sammys,

I think I may have diagnosed the problem. I manually filled the steam boiler with water through one of the holes on the top and then powered the machine up and it worked fine! I figured maybe it was the pump that was faulty. I removed the steam boiler to get access to the pump so I could have a look. The pump was quite corroded so I pulled it apart and it looks like the internals of the pump were scorched! I suspect that the pump had failed and therefore was not putting water into the steam boiler so the machine wasn't heating up to protect itself from damage. Would that be a correct assumption?

Anyway I have ordered a new steam pump and look forward to seeing if that works. I am just fixing this to give as a gift to a family member as my Dual Boiler is working great after almost 4 years. Really hope I can get it working as it would be a shame to throw it out!

[sammys]

Sounds about right. Good job. Are you taking any measures to prevent pump corrosion?

[inorog]

What could be done about pump corrosion, other than put 2 dollars a week aside for buying a new pump in 4 years time? :P

[sammys]

That's the reason I'm asking. I'd like to know if there's some way to prevent corrosion to prolong the use of the pump because the coil has a long life span (if not corroded). The non-return valve and ball tend to have a limited lifespan and I've found replacement balls on eBay. Am yet to find replacements for the non-return valve though.

[inorog]

Well well well! My turn with my tale of woe...

My BES900 takes a long time to reach nominal pressure (17-20sec), and even then - it fluctuates... My first suspicion is that the solenoid gasket has just about had it...

The other thing that I've noticed is that the max pressure has dropped to about 7 bar, which I suspect is related to the OPV opening too early (which I can then adjust easily enough)

Could someone from the illustrious public confirm if my suspicions are correct?

If so - any ideas where I could source a couple of gaskets for the solenoid? is the need-a-part site from NZ good enough?

Cheers,
Ino

[sammys]

I will also pipe in with a query. I've traced a temperature fault through to the voltage divider surrounding the shower head NTC. So, I have to now check the components in this circuit because my brain can't figure out which one is faulty based on the 2.5V found at SHOWER_HEAD_NTC when the shower head is at operating temperature (I think it should be around 4.5V like the others). I managed to remove the SMD resistor (R99) and it measured 6.8k and then fell on the floor never to be found again. I also removed the SMD capacitor (C66) and my multimeter has ranges 20uF to 2nF but doesn't show any capacitance for it.

Can anyone tell me the values I should be expecting for R99 and C66? I will probably replace them with non-SMD parts just to save the hassle of buying and soldering some SMD components.

[beezneez]

We bought the BES900 some 4 or so years ago but after 2 years it was giving problems so we bought the BES920. Now that machine is at the doctors awaiting a new fuse we have resurrected the old BES900 and it has been working okay until today, the only visible thing wrong is the steam wand leaking a bit. The temperature reaches 93 and then keeps climbing, along with a lot of peculiar noises so now we have no coffee....husband is a coffee fiend and very unhappy. This old machine had quite a few visits to the repairer in its day, at one stage we had to get a new boiler as the old one had a hole in it. I am reluctant to spend any more on it so am wondering if anyone has an idea as to what is causing the problem. Probably a lost cause but my son is very handy so might be able to do something with it as I see from other posts people doing their own repairs.