# Alex Izzo duetto IV leak, high boiler pressure



## Kosta (Jul 20, 2016)

Hi Folks,

I've got an Alex Izzo duetto which is maybe 2.5 years old. I normally have it on a timer so it goes on about 40 minutes before I wake up. Today I woke up to a pool of water on the kitchen top, the machine was making a noise (something between pumping and hissing) and the tank was empty. Some kind of protection must have kicked in because the PID was turned off (similar to what happens when the water level is low) but I couldn't hear the normal beeping sound I hear when the water level is low. The boiler pressure stays above 2bar (above the red warning area on the indicator) even with the machine turned off for a while. When I added water in the tank and turned it on again, the PID shows only about 70 degrees Celsius in the boiler(s), which I can believe because the pipping/boilers are cool to touch but the steam boiler gauge still stays at about 2 bar. Btw. there was water all over the place inside the machine (and on the outside of the top cover) as if some safety valve had opened.

Nothing had prepared me for what was about to happen...machine was operating normally so far. No hissing sounds, no oddness at all, no water temp problems. It's always been run on volvic water and descaled twice in it's lifetime(once a year).

Can someone help me identify what's going on?


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## DavecUK (Aug 6, 2013)

You should open the top of the machine and observe, find out where the hissing/water is coming from. Also from your description "pumping and hissing", it sounds like the rotary pump is running, *you need to confirm this is definitely the case. *Then report back with photo and clearly identified componenet you think is causing the problem.


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## Glenn (Jun 14, 2008)

Give Jordan at Bella Barista a call and let him know.

It's likely they will need to replace the same parts as they did for mine (symptoms were a prolonged hissing during heating and a pool of water on the bench)

The parts involved are likely to wear out so its probably time for its maintenance check anyway.


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## Kosta (Jul 20, 2016)

Many thanks for the answers guys! I managed to identify and fix the issue after finding this older post and a bit of detective work! So it appears that the autofill sensor had scaled up to the extend that the bottom of it was actually black so the steam boiler was overfilling with water which caused the pressure to go off the charts. The hissing (and probably water release) was coming from the safety valve which (luckily!) operated as designed. I also removed and inspected the solenoid but I couldn't see anything visibly wrong with it. I lightly sanded the probe and the scale went away immediately, put it back in and it's working fine for now!

Now the weird thing is that I've strictly been using volvic water, the machine is on normally only for about 3 hours/2 coffees per day and I descale once a year so I wasn't expecting this. Do you think that's normal/expected?


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## DavecUK (Aug 6, 2013)

Kosta said:


> Now the weird thing is that I've strictly been using volvic water, the machine is on normally only for about 3 hours/2 coffees per day and I descale once a year so I wasn't expecting this. Do you think that's normal/expected?


Depends on the amount of minerals etc.. in the Volvic (mineral water), just cos it's bottled doesn't mean it's boiler/espresso machine safe. 90%+ of espresso machine problems are caused by the water used.


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## HizerKite (Feb 25, 2011)

Very surprised the probe was scaled if using Volvic, I ran a machine (not an Izzo) for 6 years with no descaling at all and the probe, element and boiler were like new when I inspected them.


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