Most La Pavoni home levers have the pressure relief valve but no anti-vac so at startup you need to release some steam to get up to the correct temperature and after turning it off the lever is sometimes "sucked" upwards by the under-pressure in the boiler.
La Pavoni puts more modern valves on their new models. These have two-in-one: it's a pressure relief valve that opens when a maximum pressure is reached, to avoid breakage, it releases some steam during warm up and it allows air to get sucked back into the boiler when cooling down.
A fine reason to go visit Peter van der Weerd in his www.kafko.nl workshop, and enjoy his company, chatting about things related to coffee machinery, life, family, pleasure... and coffee.
Peter van der Weerd upgraded my old La Pavoni Pro with this new valve and in the process he did a check up of the machine, replacing a rubber seal in the boiler cap and also replacing the heating element which had suffered some overheating in the past and turned out to have less than "infinite" electric resistance which might cause a shock someday.
Taking off the old pressure relief valve
Steam wand & old pressure relief valve off
Taking a look at the bolt inside the boiler
Taking off the pressure gauge
Preparing to take off the heating element
Looking from the open bottom up to the bolt of the oldvalve
Taking off the old valve
getting the new valve ready
Inside of the new valve, check the anti-vac
close up of anti vac
Holding the bolt to fasten the new valve
Sliding on the new valve combination
Fastening
New element in, connecting the copper tube to the OPV
(also see Daily Coffee News feature ) Tije designed and made the following structure for a tiny and cheap fluid bed roaster, to which Jan van der Weel added the Arduino parts, electronics and programming: Sketch by Tije de Jong Jan sourced a very cheap blower (€ 11) to start with, Tije developed and constructed the mechanics, Jan built together and programmed the TC4 / SSR electronics. On his blog, Jan will specify exactly how the TC4 part is combined and programmed and I will copy these details into this blog entry, just as Jan will use this video in his blog. We did a few test roasts to make sure it works at all and it does. Towards the end, the first roast tended to get a flat BT line and airflow was slightly decreased. 200g seems max load of green beans. Second roast a little more power was given to the heater. Next we will try the Background Roast driven by the PID software of Artisan. A week later, with updated software that works better to change the...
Peter van der Weerd fom KAFKO gave my Rocket Giotto a cleanup and upgrade. It was a great chance to see the intricacies of the E61 brew group inside out and to see some of the details and little tricks one should remember when doing it oneself. Peter encourages people learning about these basic service procedures and when he sends out a set of all necessary parts, he includes a diagram and some instructions. Plus his phone number, because he is available for advice in case someone is surrounded by parts and doesn't know what to do next... What we (well actually he) did: E61 Cleanup, changing seals, removing scale Vibration pump replacement (newer one less noisy), new metal connection Anti-vac upgrade, startup release of water/steam out the front panel now Boiler insulation removed (better looking, better cup heating) Below, lots of pictures telling the story and some brief comments. There's other web pages with extensive info on the E61, like this excellent page (th...
100% to 0% The Rocket Giotto espresso machine at my girl friend's place uses water from a Brita filter . This filter has a timer that counts down from "100%" to zero over a number of weeks but that time span is totally unrelated to the actual use of the filter so it's useless as a reminder to change the filter cartridge for a fresh one. Unpredictable I reset the timer a few times before replacing the filter but then I mostly forget how often I have reset it and I take out a new cartridge when I start to feel worried about the water hardness, which is subjective and unpredictable. Brita themselves suggest replacing it every two months or after every 40 gallons of water taken from the pitcher although local water hardness may vary greatly and thus influence the life span of a filter cartridge. So that's not a great help either. It would be nice if Brita supplied a test kit to see when the water quality delivered by the filter is deteriorating. Predicting ...
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