Replacing a Keurig Water Pump

Worn water pumps are a common cause of leakage …

A common cause in the need to replace the water pump in a Keurig machine is leakage around the base of the unit or no water at all being drawn from the water reservoir into the boiler unit. The breakdown of the water pump can be caused by just normal wear and tear, but often with these brewers it is the result of internal leakage from a solenoid unit that sits above the water pump and over time causes the pump to fail.

Two other failures this type of leakage can contribute to are problems with the air pump and the solenoid unit. Both of these we also have a guide – which you can access by following the links.

Health Warning: if your brewer is around one year old or less do not attempt any repairs but instead get hold of Keurig Customer Service and get a replacement brewer sent out under their one year warranty. Any repairs you attempt yourself will invalidate any warranty you may have left.

Parts and Equipment Required

The equipment list below excludes what you need for Step 1, ie removing the outer casing of the brewer. Please refer to our separate comprehensive guide for this process by following this link, where you will find a specific list of tools for this more complex process.

Parts

One new or reconditioned water pump. We personally always like to go for a new part, in particular with Keurig pumps, as you just don’t know how many cycles they have been through nor any damage sustained. The pump in the photo below can be purchased through ebay.com and at the time of writing this guide it costs around $20.

Do make sure the pump you are buying comes with the main circuit board connector with its red and white wires, as you can see in the photo below.

Equipment

For the replacement of the air pump itself you will only need:

• Phillips head screw driver.

Steps to Follow

Step 1

As we mentioned above, the removal of a Keurig outer casing, or cover, is a difficult process and requires some patience and time. As it involves quite a few steps we have produced a separate guide for this, which you can find here.

Don’t be put off about this step. Paying out for a new Keurig is a lot of money for most of us and for a bit of effort and a lot less money for a part, it can be very rewarding to get the brewer working again.

Step 2

With the cover of your Keurig now off you can see that they are quite complex machines with a lot of parts and wires. But just remember that in substance its just a big boiler with a few bells and whistles.

If you would like to know a bit more about the different parts that go into making up your Keurig, check out our video that explains these components. Having an understanding of how they all work together and what they are called does help understanding why a certain repair is required.

Now on with the step 2. Looking straight on at the machine you will see on the right side is a large black plastic covering. This housing protects the power circuit board, which we need access to. So we are going to need to get this protector cover off. As you can see from the photo below there are three screws securing the cover to the board underneath. You need to move the top center, directly below this the middle center and then right at the bottom there is a third screw.

Once these are all off the black covering should come off, swinging right (as it is still attached by some wires). But it should swing enough so you can gain full access to the power board and in particular the water pump connection.

Step 3

The water pump connector on our machine is the red colored one, with a red and white wire extending from it – as we show in the photo below. This may be different with your machine, but the connectors should still be in the same place. However to double check we are taking out the correct plug, follow the two wires from the water pump all the way to the power board.

Now that you have the correct connector, you can pull this out from the power board. We just use our fingers, but a pair of long nose pliers can be handy. You want to be gentle with this process as you don’t want to damage the underlying connection with the power board itself. This would involve a separate repair.

With the connector removed from the power board you now have to feed the wires through the maze of other wires so that the water pump’s wires are unrestricted and away from the brewer. Most of the wires are bundled with plastic tie clips, so you may have to cut them.

Step 4

With the water pump connector now free from the power board we have to feed the red and white wire pairing through the brewer to bring them out at the base of the unit. As you can see from the photo these wires run over the top of the power board and then down the right side, next to the boiler unit. We found when doing this we actually had a few other wires caught up with the water pump power wires and so if you find this too just cut one of the water pump wires so it can be few through. This is ok as the water pump you are replacing it will come with new connections. We didn’t do this in our case as we are just going to keep our existing pump on the machine.

Once you have removed the wires from their brackets next to the boiler unit turn the machine upside down (we always lay a cloth down so as not to scratch or other damage the top of the brewer). And in the second photo below you can see the wires feeding through to the water pump – which what we now have to remove.

Step 5

If you have purchased a water pump with the fitting assembly as shown in the photo above under Parts, then we now only need to remove the tube connections and the motor itself from its mounting.

We found it easier to start with the two mounting screws, as shown below. You should be able to access these two philips head screws from the right side of the brewer through a small gap in the side of the plastic support. Don’t worry if the screws fall out once lose as they will just fall down to the base of the boiler unit – so an easy extraction with some pliers or tipping the unit upside down briefly to reclaim them.

Step 6

The water pump is now detached from the frame of the brewer, with the next step being the disconnection of the three tubes that feed into the motor unit. To start with we found this more straight forward if you first disconnect the extraction pump that is used to bring the water from the water reservoir. By getting this free from the brewer’s frame you can more easily get to the other two tubes that connect to the top of the water pump assembly (so with the brewer upside down this makes them a little awkward to access).

But with the other pump removed you can now see the other tubes more easily and they can be detached from the water pump.

Step 7

Taking your new water pump (ok, we used our old one as it was still in good working order) you need to reverse the steps we have just worked through. So first we need to get the tubes reconnected. We started with the two smaller ones as they are easier to get at with the water intake tubing out of the way.

Once they are on board we reattached the water intake tube – but first we secured this pump back onto the brewer’s frame.

Do make sure all of the tubes are properly secured back onto the water pump assembly. In particular the two plastic ties and the metal clip are firmly in place and the tubes are pressed well up into their respective connections. You don’t want a leak springing up once you have the brewer all back together.

Step 8

The next step is quite fiddly with the two screws needing to be put back in place that hold the water pump in place against the side of the brewer. We found putting the right screw in first and getting some purchase on this and then using pliers to hold in place and secure the left screw worked the best.

Step 9

The water pump is now firmly attached and so we have to run the red and white wiring pair back the way it came, through up the side of the boiler unit, over the top of the power board and reconnected to the board itself. Take your time with this ensuring the wires are in the correct place and not being pinched.

The connector in place the black power board covering can go back in place, again ensure all wires are clear of the pinch points as we indicate in the photos below. There are two with this covering, one at the top (first photo) and then the wires coming through on the bottom right (second photo).

Step 10

Before going ahead and putting all of the brewer’s coverings back on etc, we recommend you test out your handy work to see if this has fixed the problem we are trying to over come. To ensure this is done safely we need take a couple more steps:

At this point you can be brave and go back and place all of the outer casing etc back on and test your handy work. However what we recommend is lets do the testing now just to make sure this did solve the problem. But a few things we have to do first.

First, we should double check on the water pump connections that were made earlier. And ensure the pump is still connected to its electrical wires. We actually had the red one detach when we were working on this guide and had to reconnect it to the pump.

The second critical step is to make sure the brewer is earthed correctly and this is done by re-attaching the earthing wires we detached during the outer casing removal process (as part of step 1). Make sure these connections are secure, are not touching each other or any other component and are dry.

Step 11

With these couple of safety steps completed you can switch the brewer back on and test to see if you have resolved the problem. If it hasn’t and you aren’t sure what the next component to look as it, drop us a note under Contact Us and we can advise you to what the next step is.