Hi I''m Matt from eSpares in this video I'll show you how to replace a stuck safety valve on a steam cleaner.
Many steam cleaners have safety valves just like this one
to prevent you from opening the steam cleaner when pressurized to prevent scalding.
If yours has failed you may find it very difficult to remove without watching this video.
Safety first: Always ensure your unplug an appliance before carrying out any work.
When faulty the safety cap will turn freely and not engage with the valve so will not unscrew.
If we have a look at a new safety valve assembly you can see that the cap is engaged with the body
meaning it's locked into place and can be unscrewed.
It works by pressure building up in the machine entering this hole pushing a piston inside
which makes the cap spin freely and ensuring that it can't be unlocked.
Over time limescale can build up inside the hole meaning the piston cannot re-engage
making it impossible to unscrew.
To remove the safety cap what I'm going to do is grab a flat headed screwdriver and work it in to the holes
that you can see on the new one there on my old safety cap.
I'm going to give them a little bit of leverage just so I hear a click,
and that should safely remove the safety cap.
Now the screwdrivers in place I'm going to work my way around the safety cap
just ensuring that the flat headed screwdriver goes under the lip of the cap there
and not the base there
Now I can feel that the screwdriver is nicely in place in one of those slots I'm just
going to give it a little twist to help ease the cap off.
Now I've used the screwdriver all the way around the safety cap but it does seem to be on particularly stiffly.
So what I'm going to do is move on to the second parts of the plan
which is using a small hammer to give a glancing blow to the safety cap releasing it
and hopefully be able to lift it off.
Now do remember that the safety cap has to be replaced anyway so it doesn't matter
if it gets slightly damaged.
There we have safety cap removed.
With the cap removed here we can see the spring that pushes the clutch down and the clutch itself.
You can see if I put the clutch back it's not engaging so what I'm going to do
is take a thin Allen key or a small screwdriver to push the piston back down
so that re-engages, replace the clutch which now spins with the valve.
put the cap back on and take the whole assembly out.
With most of the assembly out I can get the cap out of the way and the clutch and spring
and remove the rest by hand.
Take out the ring that we broke earlier with the screwdriver.
Then I can pop in my new safety cap assembly.
With the assembly in place you can see that the safety cap is locked and can easily be removed for refilling.
So there we have it one stuck safety valve assembly removed and replaced
on this Karcher steam cleaner.
Remember spares and accessories for steam cleaners and every other appliance around your home
can be found on the eSpares website.
Thanks for watching.