Scale build up on Linea
The shop I work at right now has an older three group Linea (2001 or 2002). Last night I took off the group head screen for cleaning and noticed a lot of scale build up on them. I usually keep everything pretty clean, but I've been ill and haven't been at work that often. I was wondering the causes of this build up. We have a water softener and decent water to begin with, but I'm going to recharge the water softener this week to make sure everything is working properly. How often does everyone recharge their water softeners? Is this a sign that the machine needs to be descaled or just poor cleaning habits on part of my baristas?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Bryan Wray on
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Sounds like "yes" is the answer, lol.
Recharge your softener once a month.
Descale every 6 months (that's my opinion).
Backflush every 24 hours with detergent.
Backflush with water as often as you are able, not more than 50 pulls per group. At 50 espressos I think it's best to stop using that group until you can backflush.
Decent water is one thing, but honestly... a water softener isn't enough. You need to be filtering the water before it gets to your machine. Unless you have someone (a third party) come out and test your water and they say it's fine, I really would look into a filtration unit.
You shouldn't be able to see scale on your groups at all. It's time for a descale for sure and probably, if you're breaking your machine down that far, you should go ahead and replace the screens, gaskets and baskets at that point too if it's been over 6-9 months.
-bry
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Permalink Reply by ryan mcdougall on
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If you have scale at the groups, you may have scale in the fill valve, group valves, heat exchangers, flowmeters, jets, etc... As well as in the boiler. You need a water hardness test, You're testing for general hardness. They're available at your local fish store. If one softener isn't working hard enough try two, and a filter. I really like the espressomate systems. To deal with the scale, I wouldn't recommend running descaler through the pump, though sometimes that's the only option. You really wanna run water through the pump after running descaler through it so that the acid doesn't sit inside the pump. then let the descaler sit in the boiler/group circuit for a few hours while hot. OR, You can have a tech come do it all for you, but you don't seem frightened by working on your machine.
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Permalink Reply by Ryan Matthew Bugg on
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Cool, thanks for the help guys. We'll test the water and revamp out filtering regiment. As far as descaling, running it through the pump is probably my only option, as we're a high volume cafe and can't take the machine from the line. You said to run a lot of water through the pump, but what are the other steps involved in doing this? Most internet resources equate descaling with breaking down the entire machine.
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It's damn near the same to breaking down the machine, honestly. You're going to need probably 6+ hours for a full on descale, boiler flush and temperature recovery and stabilization. It's not like backflushing at the end of the night... you're going to need to bribe someone to stay after close (pizza and beer are always fabulous options, lol).
-bry
Ryan Matthew Bugg said:Cool, thanks for the help guys. We'll test the water and revamp out filtering regiment. As far as descaling, running it through the pump is probably my only option, as we're a high volume cafe and can't take the machine from the line. You said to run a lot of water through the pump, but what are the other steps involved in doing this? Most internet resources equate descaling with breaking down the entire machine.
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I'm in a tricky position with this one. We're open 6am to midnight seven days a week. We unfortunately do the majority of our business between eight and midnight, so it would be very hard to do this after we close and have it ready for the morning. I think my best option may be to hunt down another (cheap) machine on Craigslist or somewhere to use as a backup in order to pull the Linea from the line and have it done right. Our machine has seen a lot of use and has had presumably hard water running through it since it's installation. I inquired with the owner to see if it's ever been descaled and it hasn't, so it's probably going to be quite the job.
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Yeah, it sounds like it will be. University shop, eh? Lol. Sounds like one at least.
It's going to be a hard sell on an additional machine (unless your shop is rolling in dough). Don't get me wrong, I think that's ideal as well, but probably won't get the owner to sign that check.
Some other ideas:
1) Inform people well ahead of time that you will be opening at (ex.) 8am on the day after you descale for "routine equipment maintenance." If people inquire, you can give them more details.
2) If you have a pour over program, this could actually be an interesting opportunity to focus on it. Inform your customer base and post lots of fliers and notices that you will be doing manually brewed coffee ONLY on whatever morning in order to show how important your focus on "just regular coffee" is. You can set up a system with comparative tastings so people can really focus on the differences of one coffee to another instead of the fact that your espresso machine isn't up.
Couple ideas that popped into my mind
-bry
Ryan Matthew Bugg said:I'm in a tricky position with this one. We're open 6am to midnight seven days a week. We unfortunately do the majority of our business between eight and midnight, so it would be very hard to do this after we close and have it ready for the morning. I think my best option may be to hunt down another (cheap) machine on Craigslist or somewhere to use as a backup in order to pull the Linea from the line and have it done right. Our machine has seen a lot of use and has had presumably hard water running through it since it's installation. I inquired with the owner to see if it's ever been descaled and it hasn't, so it's probably going to be quite the job.
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We're pretty close to a University and we're in downtown Reno, NV, so nothing really comes alive until nightfall. We'll probably need to just open later, as the owner probably won't allow a day of just pour over (although I think it would be a great chance to educate our customers on third wave coffee rather than just make sugary drinks for college kids all day, haha). Do you know of any good resources pertaining to descaling La Marzocco machines? We're not going to be able to afford to pay a tech to come in at midnight and stay all night descaling our machine, so I'm going to have to do this myself.
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I'll point Mike over to this thread, he just descaled our 3g Linea like 3 months ago. I watched :p
-bry
Ryan Matthew Bugg said:We're pretty close to a University and we're in downtown Reno, NV, so nothing really comes alive until nightfall. We'll probably need to just open later, as the owner probably won't allow a day of just pour over (although I think it would be a great chance to educate our customers on third wave coffee rather than just make sugary drinks for college kids all day, haha). Do you know of any good resources pertaining to descaling La Marzocco machines? We're not going to be able to afford to pay a tech to come in at midnight and stay all night descaling our machine, so I'm going to have to do this myself.
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That's a hard call. Here's an idea. Get a really nice used home unit that you can use for most of your day. Then if you guys ever do any festivals, or outdoor events the home unit can go on tour. A brewtus or cimbali m21 junior or something similar. It can also be a backup in the case of a catastrophic breakdown. It will pay for itself before too long. For descaling "on the fly", you're also going to need a ph test kit to know when you're back to normal ph. You're going to have to have around 2 gallons of descaling acid in a bucket and suck it up with the water inlet hose. Before you do this you're going to have to drain both boilers. I haven't opened my marzocco in about 5 months and have worked on hundreds of machines so I can't remember off the top of my head if there is an easier way to drain the front boiler than pulling out the thermostat and siphoning the water out. If there is please chime in. a lot of times on machines the tap at the bottom of the boiler for draining is not actually at the bottom so you end up either siphoning the water out before and after a descale, or tipping it over to get the residual acid out. I really should be posting this in a step by step fashion. Maybe I'll do the "mostly" manual descaling instructions, not hard(about 1 hour+descaling). *this only works on machines with checkvalves.
1, turn off machine, open steam wands till you reach 0 bars. make sure vacuum valve opens(rubber gasket should be replaced at this point. It can turn to plastic over time and crack and leak or cause other major issues. Available from parker seals, or espressoparts.com)
2, open drain valve for steam boiler.
3 drain water from front boiler(remove thermostat carefully and siphon water out)
4 place thermostat back in front boiler and close the drain valve for the back boiler
5, make mixture of descaling acid in very high concentrate with very hot water. Mix with ice cold water to bring temp to room temp(helps the health of the pump)
6, place water inlet hose in the container that your acid is in.
7, turn machine to fill untill it sucks all of the acid into your hydrolic system. Then turn off.
8 reconnect your water inlet hose to your water softener
9, turn machine to fill and allow machine to fill the rest of the way(you should pull the fill probe up to nearly the top of the boiler)
10, turn machine to heat. Open steam valve so that the water gets hot but does not pressurize. when water starts sputting out push the fill probe back in. keep steam wands open and catch the water coming out with cup or bucket. It will be hot. (do not let the acid get on the exterior of your machine, if it does rinse it well)
11, Run water through the groups.
12, when machine gets hot enough to start shooting steam out of the steam tip close steam valves and turn machine off. Just about every hour you're going to need to heat the machine again for a minute till it shoots steam out of the valve. do this about 6 times and you should be good to go.
12. Repeat steps 2-4 and 9-12 except your goal now is to replace all of the acidic water with fresh water untill your ph returns to normal. Normal varies in different locations, and must be tested as well. at this point your flushing the walls of the boiler to remove excess acid and you don't really have to get the water hot to do this though it probably helps.
A note, normal ph must really be tested with fresh water and not the water coming out of the hot water tap before you start this process. Your ph coming out of your water tap could be as high as 8.4 but after sitting for 24 hours can swing as low as 6.6. It all depends on the water company, the water lines, incoming pressure etc. The new water will not have the luxury of being ph stabilized as it had been the first time. So in other words, your goal is for the water coming out of the groups and hot water tap to be the same ph as the water going into the machine from the softener. In theory the softened water is going to be more ph stable than the water coming out of your tap, but you just want to be safe and save hours by not flushing and flushing over and over because your ph isn't the same as it was to begin with. ugh. too much tech talk! I think that answers it. time to get back to work.
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last 12 is supposed to be 13. work work work
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Permalink Reply by Mike McGinness on
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There are two basic methods of descaling; one preventative through the machine for mild scale and the other tear down, soak and rebuild. Preventative descaling works great when done on a regular basis. Your machine sounds like it needs the later. The problem with doing a through the machine descale when there's severe scaling is frequently larger dislodged scale can plug things up and then you have to do a tear down descale anyway and easily down for a couple days.
As already mentioned test your water. It won't help your current situation but can help in the future. If running decent water annual through the machine descale works fine in my experience. LM recommends 4 grains (68ppm) or less water hardness. (See tech manual, can download from La Marzocco USA.) Unfortunately the LM manual does not give details on descaling, only saying to do it.
Much has already been written on how to descale, Google is your friend.
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Permalink Reply by Victoria Wilcox on
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Provided the water isn't too much of an issue, I have found that the easiest way to prevent this from occuring is to do the following:
Each day (as part of your machine clean), flush the heads with water to remove loose grind, then dissolve half a teaspoon or so of your chemical cleaner in the blind filter, then lock it in to the head. Flush for 10 seconds, then leave for about 10 - 20 minutes. After it has soaked, then proceed with your regular cleaning and back-flushing.
I did this for 8 months with a new machine that was doing about 800 shots per day, and when the techs came out to service it for the third time, they couldn't believe how clean it was - the cleanest machine they'd seen after that period of time with heavy use.
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