Trapani Senior Member Joined: 28 May 2012 Posts: 1 Location: washington dc Expertise: I like coffee
Posted Mon May 28, 2012, 6:55pm Subject: La Pavoni maintenance help
Can anyone suggest advice on overhauling/cleaning a La Pavoni Carina Grande? I just took it out of long term storage, and it was dirty and had water in it (in other words it spent years in that condition). Can I just run steam through it, or do I need to do a major overhaul? Thanks for any tips...
cmcconomy Senior Member Joined: 3 Jun 2012 Posts: 14 Location: Toronto Expertise: I love coffee
Posted Sun Jun 3, 2012, 7:26am Subject: Re: La Pavoni maintenance help
you'll definitely want to descale the boiler. The cheapest way to do that is to hit up a bulk store and buy some Citric Acid crystals, then mix maybe a tablespoon into some water and feed that into your boiler. get the boiler hot then cut the power and let it sit for 20 minutes or more, then empty it and run lots of clean water through the boiler.
Once you think its completely clean, pull a "shot" of water and taste it to see if it tastes clean.
Posted Fri Jun 29, 2012, 11:01am Subject: Re: La Pavoni maintenance help
in my breville elec hot water kettle i get scaling off with a mix of white vinegar and water. don't know if that would be in our coffee makers, any opinions on this?
agshep Senior Member Joined: 10 Jul 2012 Posts: 10 Location: Woombye Expertise: Just starting
Posted Mon Aug 20, 2012, 1:31am Subject: Re: La Pavoni maintenance help
The wife having issued an ultimatum to stop using the Mepra stove-top machine, it was certainly time to get on with the job. My tips:
take photos of the parts as they come off so you can remind yourself of what it might look like as it's reassembled.
Find someone with small hands to reach up into the boiler.
Have something to make washers from if they don't come in the kit.
Use the descaler before you start.
We took the beast to pieces and tried valiantly to clean the base of the boiler. Unfortunately, the seal had become so fossilised that it would have been good to have had a Dremel tool or similar.
The sight-glass was the trickiest part to remove and came out with gripping the Lower outer block and using a Kincrome ratchet set on the ring-nut inside. For the upper block, I used the ratchet to fix the inner nut in place and twisted off the block from the outside.
The seals on the outside of the boiler didn't come with the kit so leather washers were cut from 0.7mm kid leather.
It all went back together beautiffully though I wouldn't trust the guide on the diameter of the group to judge whether you have a pre/post millenium.
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