Phillips GC8220 steam generator

[Midge]

Mrs Midge's beloved steam generator iron seems to have thrown a wobbly. Anyone know much about these? It wasn't cheap (I think they are around £150) but its probably out of any warranty now - must be a couple of years old.

You switch it on and after a few mins it kinda gets carried away with its steam generation and you get excessive steam billowing out of it + boiling water. Bit scary and quite dangerous actually.

I've found the service manual for it here. Got it in bits and nothing obvious I can see.

Since I can't seem to find anywhere to get spares, I'm kinda resigned to having to swap it anyway but thought it was worth a post.

TIA, Midge.

[Midge]

Hmmmmmm interesting. Put it back together and its behaving itself again. The only thing I did whilst I was in there was tighten a spade connector up on the pump which felt a bit loose (but I thought would still be making contact OK).

So I suppose if the pump isn't pumping water in from the tank reliably, it might cause the tank and any contents to boil more violently than its designed to I suppose. Any other theories welcome!

It looks like I'll get the job of testing it next time its used :(

[Mentalguy2k8]

Could there be limescale blocking it somewhere?

[Midge]

Worth a thought, thanks, but the water around here is soft so we don't usually have these problems.

Looks like its an intermittent issue - its just misbehaved again this morning pumping boiling water and steam out the iron. Seems to be when it is allowed to cool fully as it has just done overnight. It also looks like if I drain the boiler, it then behaves the next time it is used (which would explain why it was OK after I'd had it in bits yesterday - I drained the boiler before I took it apart).