Won’t Brew and Dumping Water Back Into Reservoir

From:

Tif

Date:

April 28, 2013

Question:

My keurig will blink ready to brew, you choose the cup and it makes weird noises and the water gets dumped back into the reservoir? What do I do??

Response:

With this email you can see that the brewer is having trouble with its regulation of the internal water pressure and there is strain on one or both of the pumps. So when it displays READY TO BREW the machine is telling us that the temperature in the water heater has reached 192 degrees Fahrenheit, so we know that everything should be ok at least with the heating unit.

When the brew button is pressed a message is sent to the water pump to activate. Water will be drawn from the water reservoir and water is pumped into the base of the water boiler unit. The weird noises mentioned by Tif are most likely coming from the water pump, which is under stress and at some point will most likely fail.

The flowing of water back into the reservoir tells us that there is a problem with water pressure. What should flow back into the water reservoir is only air pressure movement coming from the water boiler. As water enters from the bottom of the unit, the displayed air gets released back into the reservoir. There is no issue here with back air pressure build-up as the displacement should be equal between water and air, and in any case the water reservoir is not air tight and so there is pressure leakage from it.

What we suspect the problem is centers around the air pump operation. The pump itself might be ok, but what it should do is force air into the top of the water heater unit, which in turn forces water out and through the top tubing into the K-Cup and then into your coffee cup. One of the check valves in place that prevents water flowing back to the water reservoir is either not receiving the signal it should to close or has failed.

This type of problem can only be solved by getting inside the brewer and seeing which component is causing the problem and / or needs to be replaced. In this case we would be looking at the water pump, air pump and check valves to see where the problem lies.