Death of a coffee maker

The coffee maker Connie bought a little whlie ago died last week quite suddenly in a puddle of its own water. We purchased a new one to replace it, so I took the dead one out to the workshop to see if the leak was something that could be easily repaired.

It took a little bit of poking, but I managed to figure out how to get the bottom cover off. Unlatch a few tabs, undo a couple of screws, and off it came.

The innards of the coffee maker are pretty simple, and as soon as I got the cover off, it was clear that the coffee maker was dead with a capital D.

There’s not much to it. Water flows from the resevoir through a hose and then into a U-shaped metal tube that’s part of the heating element, gets heated up and goes out the other side. The metal bar holds everything up against the plate the coffee pot sits on. Just to the right of the bar underneath the white tubing is something that I’m guessing is a thermostat or thermometer type device.

The source of the leak turned out to be in the metal tube the water flows through to get hot.

Big old crack in the tube, either because of a flaw in the metal, or simple corrosion weakening the metal and then bursting from thermal expansion. Here it is up close.

With that, the old coffee maker became a source for parts. Scavenged a switch, the thermostat, the wires and the heating plate (might make a good coaster for the workbench). The body of the coffee maker and the heating element went into recycling.