How to fix a Dirt Devil Easy Steam Express II DDSTM1500 (2023)

Introduction

A long winded video on how I repaired my Dirt Devil Easy Steam Express II.

Tried to descale it with CLR, but no joy. ended up pulling it apart and removing the mineral build up on the heater.

Content

Hi everyone in this video we're going to be fixing the Dirt Devil ez steam, Express 2.

This particular model seems to be working.

Ok with the exception, it's not producing any steam out of the bottom.

This model version is the DD STM 1500.

So when I plug this in it all turns on the light comes on green when it's filled up with water and I can do the switch and I can hear the pump, but it's not as loud as what it would normally pump.

It's kind of a softer subtle, sound in the pump and only a little bit of steam comes out at the start.

Then then, there's no more steam really coming out of the bottom.

So so far, I've filled this up with half water, half CLR and let it soak overnight I'll turn that on the next day and the same thing, a little bit of steam came out when it first turned on and a bit of gunk came out of the bottom.

So maybe the CLR did something to the the internal components in this, but still it's not producing the amount of steam that it should be, and it's not enough steaming to be able to clean my carpets or do any of the tiles in the house.

Now.

I have pulled apart.

This base plate here undoing these Phillip head screws, removing the top layer of the plastic, which then enabled me to get to the nozzle which is inside here, which is basically a rubber nozzle, which is connected to a hose, which then runs up inside the unit to the pump and the heating elements, and then, through the tank, and everything like that.

So by undoing the bottom here, I was able to just check this nozzle to make sure it was clean and not gunked-up.

So I know that it is not the nozzle and when I had it turned on to try and see if it's working or not, I could feel that the unit was warming up and I knew that the heating elements were working.

Fine, it was just the pump, it wasn't sounding like it should be sounding it was still going to click, tick, tick, tick, but it's very quiet and not producing any steam.

So the next step for this is to pull it apart and see.

What's going on inside I, don't work for this company I'm, not a professional electrician, or anything like that.

So if you do follow this tutorial to fix your steam cleaning products at home, I'm not liable or anything, it's your own fault.

If you break it alright, so let's get to pulling this apart.

So what you'll need is Phillips head screwdriver to be able to undo all of these screws, but before you do that make sure the unit is unplugged from the wall? It's cooled down if it was hot at all, so you don't want to risk getting any water on you and burning you and also make sure that the reservoir tank is empty.

You do that by unscrewing the cap and tipping it down upside down to make sure all of the water is out of the unit.

So we just go ahead and unscrew all of these screws to get them all out to remove this back cover now, I've removed all of these eight screws.

So two four six eight from this unit here now I can try and pry apart the two sides and get it undone.

This is the tank.

This is the heating element in here, because, if I touch that it's very hot- and this is the pump now- these are all of the tubes that are in this insulated, wrap and you've got wires, and things like that in the other side.

Now, for my one, I think that the heating element is fine, because that is very hot and the pump is making a sound, but it's just not producing much steam so goes into that one underneath there goes underneath the heater element and comes out here into the pump and then from the pump comes out through here into the heating element.

Now I want to make sure that the pump is working.

So I'm gonna disconnect this hose here and put that two aside put some water in this and see if the water can come out of this hose into a container.

You know be careful if you're doing this to not get any water on any of the electric components or anything in there so make sure this tube is well clear.

I'm, just gonna put a little bit of water in here and I've.

Just put it down here on the ground and plugged it in yeah.

Once again, don't touch anything electronic.

You could kill yourself.

So what I'm gonna do is turn this on beforehand.

So I don't have to go near that and then I can just turn this on.

Okay, you can hear that hum you just put the microphone next to it, doesn't sound very loud and there's no steam coming out at all.

So, let's move on to space.

True with disconnecting this pipe receive water comes out of it.

So I think the reason this exploded off of the heater element down here was because the water was getting pumped into this, but it couldn't go anywhere because I've just disconnected this hose, which goes down to the actual head of this.

They mop and I've looked in here and as you can see, it is completely Chaka's with crud.

So let's try and clean that out.

So what I've done is I've used this screwdriver attachment on my Leatherman, it's a small little flathead and I've just put it in here and I've spun it around a lot of times and cleared out as much of that crud from what I could see in that hole there.

So it was absolutely filled up.

It was just like sand really, and you can see all this dirt here that has come out of there by scraping it and giving it a bit of a bang.

You know this is all being dried out.

I think it's pretty good, but I've disconnected these two hoses this one when it blew off the machine as just basically just split here and the rubber hoses on that.

So what I'm gonna do is test.

If this pump works, I think it does.

I wouldn't have built up that much pressure if it doesn't work and then, if that works, cut that end and reattach it to here and then see if water can come out of this nozzle when I've reattached it to this yeah that doesn't work, then this is going in the bin.

Now, as an extra layer of protection, I've got another surge protector and I'm not going anywhere near this and touching the electronics or anything like that when it's exposed.

So this will just stay on the on position and I'm gonna clean up all of the water on the floor here and step back when I switch it on okay.

So it's switched on it's not on the wall, that's turned off and that pipe from the pump is coming out into here, so fingers crossed that was I've, gotta yank, the plumber.

Okay! Well, that's a good sign! That means the water pump is working looking like dirt coming out of it.

So that's coming out now! That's good! That's what you'd expect the pump to be doing so.

The pump works it was just brought up in that other part of it.

This switch that off yeah that goop all right.

So let's reattach it to there see if we can get some water coming out of that nozzle.

Take that off.

You have to take this off and I'll have a look at the pipe in there to see if that's blocked as well.

That doesn't look like it's clogged up, so that's good news, so that just means it out of you is clogged up, but you know that's really opened up now, it's a little more crowded in that.

But hopefully, if this all works and comes out of that, then we can get all that gunk for coming up, but using some CLR.

So this pipe is a little bit longer than what it needed to be.

So that's good I can cut off the end of that to make it straight, and then we put it on there and put the metal clip around it.

So I'll just use the pair of scissors and cut that straight on the end of that pipe now, I'm just going to use some scissors to cut off these extra bits here and now, I'm going to put this ring back over this and then plug it back onto the heater I push the pipe on.

First got it on there.

Snug use the pliers to clamp that down and slide it back over.

So it's on there I can feel the edge of the heater pipe thing and I can't pull this out.

So that looks like it's good now.

I want to see if this works so just pop this on the pizza box, so forget water and steam everywhere.

It's not going to be too much of a problem and I've just lined up that hose outlet there to spray into there now I'm, assuming if all goes well, the pump will pump the water into the heater element and then I'll get a lot of steam just coming out of that hole.

If that's the case, then I'll be good to turn this off and plug in that other pipe and see if the pipe is clogged at all, to get it down to the actual head of the mop down there.

Well I can see steam coming out of somewhere.

Hopefully it's in the right spot.

Yes, steam is coming out of that hole.

That's good! Let's turn that off, because we don't want to get too much theme.

Building up on those electrical components will any steam, I should say all right.

So that's good news once that's cooled down a bit! I can then plug this pipe in.

There's, actually look at another internal metal tube in that as well.

It looks maybe a little bit clogged up, so I just try and scrape some of that debris away before, inserting it over the top of that.

So just get that a quick scrape.

Nothing really came off of that.

What I think it is is a spiral spring inside that to stop it from collapsing if it gets too hot, so I'm gonna, just re insert this over the top, so that spiral spring thing doesn't start until a little bit inside that so I, don't think it's supposed to be it too much of an effect as it goes over that so the the plastic rubbery tube goes over the top and then that spiral stuff in there is where the steam will go through from the hole right so fumbled my way and got it on there, but I think with the pliers pushing the pipe on I broke, some of that insulation, beading stuff, quite B you'd call that braid sorry not bleeding, but then I've got this clamp over the top and it seems to be hooked up so now.

I want to run that again with the steam coming out at the bottom here to make sure that this pipe is not clogged up as well.

So back on the testing platform now just popped up here, so the steam nozzle it's just under there, so we should be able to see the steam coming out.

Hopefully, if all goes well and I haven't electrocuted myself, okay, she's back on the pump he's Thames see this thing too.

It's now kill me! Please don't kill me, please that killing Kathy, maybe this thing's going in the pizza box, but alright Steve is coming out as well as all of this gunk so I'm just gonna.

Let all I've got a red light now.

What does that mean? I think maybe the waters below there we go back on because I had the CLR and water in the pump and everything is having it sitting in there overnight.

So it's probably still got some residue in there and it's just getting all of that gunk out.

So what I'm gonna do is put some more CLR into the tank, so 50% CLR, 50% water and try and get some more of this gunk to come out of it.

Obviously this is all working now and I want to reduce the chance of me dying through electrical hazards.

So I'm gonna put the cover back on before I filled this up and let it sit to try and flush and steam out all of the gunk just popping that together make sure that the switches wind up and not hanging out weird and that's just clamped together, it's its own friction seems to be good and time to put in the screws.

Now I've noticed all of the screws of the exact same size, so it doesn't matter where you put them it all screwed back together time for it to steam clean itself.

So this isn't urine is 50% CLR and 50% water.

So this is what I put in there before and I filled up the reservoir completely full.

But when that didn't work, I tipped it all out and I saved a little bit.

So it's it's not full all of all the way, but you probably do it all over all of the way.

If you wanted I'm just going to prop this up on this table together to UM steam out now with CLR, try not to get it on to the grout in your tiles, because it can degrade the ground and eat it away, so just doing it on the actual tile itself and then I'll be able to clean them up with some paper towel afterwards, but just to show you that's the crud that came out of it after a couple of you know, 20 seconds or so being on, so can only imagine what else is gonna come out of this thing, maybe some gold, who knows perhaps I, switched it back on.

Oh, it's got a red light.

What's that mean never yeah bit of a shake she'll be right, okay, time for it to steam up again, Wow.

Look at that Wow! That's incredible hasn't been like that, since it was noon.

Well, look at all of that wow! It's coming out like a jet flying exhaust wow! That's incredible! Okay! Just put that over the top of this, so you can see the steam that's coming out of this thing.

Yes, this is amazing.

Has not produced that steam in years.

I've had this for I, don't know 10 years, maybe now and I was gonna, throw it out, but this has 100% worked.

Look at that it is flushing it through the system.

It is getting all of the good stuff into the system and punching all of the bad stuff out.

So that's incredible I'll be able to steam-clean anything with this.

Now that is a hundred percent fixed, my dirt devil.

Now the it I reckon you could probably do this yourself, but just be careful if you're not too sure what you're doing, though, I know that this works for my scenario, so I'll just explain it again in case you skipped it at the start.

What was wrong with mine was steam was coming out, but only very miniscule e and then eventually just stopped I ran it through Rasila didn't fix it, but I can hear the pump in they're going to tick, tick, tick, tick, tick and when I'm holding it here, it was getting hot, so I knew everything was working.

There was just something stuck in the system: whether it was the pump not optimally pumping water through or a blockage in the nozzle, so I fixed the nozzle by cleaning it out from the heater element that goes out to here and it's running like a dream.

It is punching out all of that CLR and water.

My house stinks like a laboratory and I'm about to die of fumes.

I'm, no doubt, but this is working.

This is 100% working and I haven't, killed myself yeah now to prove some new life into my Steam Mop, so I'm gonna prove some new life into my lungs and open up my windows and let this theme all of that stuff out and then clean everything up.

So as usual, please comment if this has helped you out hit that like button and subscribe as well.

You don't have to watch my other videos, but on YouTube, if you're subscribed onto a channel that Boots's that channels viewability to other people that want to try and do the same thing like you have just done the on fixture and steam mop.

Alright, thank you very much for watching and I'll see you guys next time, laters.