# Silvia not heating - help with diagnosing and possible repair



## pauljos1 (Sep 27, 2016)

Hi Guys, first post here for me so thanks for any help and advice you can give me.

I have an old Silvia which stopped heating up over the weekend. The BOL is constantly on but not getting hot and the pump is working as water is passing through the group head.

I have taken the lid off and tried the thermostat reset but it hadn't tripped. I have since broken the little red button as it was very brittle.

I then researched and figured it could be a whole host of things and would likely need a multimeter to test. Having disconnected the machine from the mains I put the meter into ohms mode and put each pin on each side of all the thermostats (2 on top and also reset thermostat) and all gave a reading of around 0.3ohms

I then put the meter across the two terminals for the heater element and got no reading at all. I then tried red lead to each terminal while black lead on boiler earth point and got no readings back from both of those.

What exactly is this telling me so I can get the correct parts to repair it?

The silvia is the old boiler type with the welded in element. If the diagnosis is a faulty element can I upgrade to the newer type boiler with screw in element?

Thanks everyone.


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## grumpydaddy (Oct 20, 2014)

I have no knowledge of that specific machine but if the heater element is open circuit as you say (meter reads 999.99 direct on the heater end connections) then it is toast


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## pauljos1 (Sep 27, 2016)

grumpydaddy said:


> I have no knowledge of that specific machine but if the heater element is open circuit as you say (meter reads 999.99 direct on the heater end connections) then it is toast


The meter doesn't change though. Before I hook up the cable to the terminals on the element the meter reads 1, after i hook them up the meter still reads 1.


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## grumpydaddy (Oct 20, 2014)

As long as when you touch the two meter leads together it reads zero (ish) then ...... Toast


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