The time has come for the Lovely Anna to develop a couple of problems. I have changed the pump which has helped a lot of problems but there are two more I just wanted to get some advice on.
The simplest is the vacuum valve on the boiler. It hasnt always been closing properly following a recent boiler descale. I have removed and soaked it in citric acid (assuming the problem might be a small piece of scale) which I hope will resolve the issue but was wondering about the tiny rubber seal at the bottom of the valve and if it occasionally needs replacing.
The second but much more annoying problem is the water level sensor in the reservoir. There are two sensors (i.e. bits of wire sticking into the water). The top one indicating a full tank works fine. The second one that indicates if the tank is empty is not. It seems to work fine if you test in when you first turn the machine on, but can stop working after everything heats up. On L'anna this stops everything else from working. I have gone through the connections to the controller (not sure of the name of the part) and pulled apart and pushed everything back together. I am now wondering about the controller itself. Is there anything that I can do to that if the problem continues? Or am I looking at getting a new controller.
In the short term I think I can swap around the sensors - as the 'too full' sensor seems to overide the 'empty' sensor - and then just be careful about overfilling, but its not a long term solution.
Putting in a little more water seems to also sort it out for short time also, but its no fun when it cuts out mid extraction