When your DeLonghi La Specialista fails to pump water, there’s a systematic way to fix this. The machine may stop working sudden, even if it operated correctly the night before. Before calling in the technician, you might be able to try some fixes on your own.
Power and placement matter. Start there: Check to see if the power cord is inserted tight. Loose connections will shows odd behaviors.
Checking Internal Components
Pull out the water tank and inspect it. Even though the tank may appear full, it’s possible it isn’t sitting right. Push it back in and wait for it to click into place.
Also ensure your machine is level on the counter. A tilted machine can throws off the sensors.
These are such easy things to do and shouldn’t be ignored.
So you look at the water flow. It’s weak. It is barely trickling. Hard water gets scale buildup. So you run a descaling cycle through the system.
When the descaling process finishes, the machine has a message on its display. The flow may improve slightly, but it doesn’t pump proper. Descaling cleans the internals but it’s not a cure-all for mechanical failures. You figure that the problem is deeper inside.
These days when you have software glitches on your other appliances, you think that’s what it is. So then you reset it and all those error codes is cleared out of memory. You do the reset exactly right. You see the screen flash indicating it reset correctly. There is still no change. Water is still not pumping through. That means it’s a hardware issue different than a digital issue. A reset is not going to address this problem.
Look in there you say? Open up the machine and take a peek. Maybe some trash got blown into the water inlet. A little bit of something block everything. Manually remove it. The water might begin flowing again. Just for a second. But that’s not always what it was either. Next thing you do is check the valves and tubes.
The solenoid valve controls the flow of water into the boiler. Because you’re having trouble getting water into the boiler, the valve could be stuck partially shut. So you look at it closely. Sure enough, it’s covered with mineral deposits. Carefully clean it out.
The valve is the gate that opens and closes to let water in. When it’s blocked, then the pump is running but there’s no water movement. Ugh! That means removing a few thing to get to the valve. After cleaning it out, you get it functioning again (but not always).
Listen for pump noise. Try to brew but there’s no sound. A silent pump usually means failure, but it might not be the only problem. Located way back in the heart of the machine, the water pump isn’t easy to reach.
If it sounds OK, then look at the pump motor housing and connections. Often, the pump just looks bad and doesn’t turn on. This is not a good sign. Pump replacement is a big job.
Finally you check the flowmeter. This measures how much water flows and tells the control board if there’s flow. If not, the machine believes that no water is going through. To protect itself, the machine turns off the pump. The flowmeter might be dirty. You clean the impeller inside.
Water begins flowing once more through the machine.
And it springs back to life.
And it was the flowmeter.
Replacing the pump would of been much more complicated. Thankfullly, this wasn’t necessary.
Glad you looked at that one.
