Advice on descaling Quickmill Vetrano?

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Fr. John
Posts: 198
Joined: 18 years ago

#1: Post by Fr. John »

Lately the pre-infusion valve on my Vetrano rotary has been leaking, i.e. dripping when not in use. Not a big deal but the waste pan fills up quick over a day.

Anyway, i ordered a new one, as well as drain valve and level valve, for replacement (these things are quite expensive by the way, you'd think the rubber portion would be replaceable). I decided to start with the pre-infusion valve, so taking out the mushroom I was rather shocked to see it had considerable scale, looked like barnacles! And yes, I do run a softener, though I probably don't change it as often as I should (even though our water was within spec).

This of course has me wondering if I should tear everything down and especially descale the boiler? O know Chris Coffee doesn't recommend it, but I can't imagine the coil and boiler not being pretty scaled judging by the mushroom.

Should I do it? I won't be using the machine for the better part of a month, so now would be a good time. Is a citric acid flush going to do the trick or could I do a better job by pulling out everything and doing it by hand?

While I'm at it, is there anything else that typically fails after almost 7 years (I can't believe it's been that long!).
Fr. John

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JmanEspresso
Posts: 1462
Joined: 15 years ago

#2: Post by JmanEspresso »

Should you descale?

A resounding yes.

Why does Chris not suggest descaling? As a loyal, pretty much fanboy status customer, I have truly no idea. I ASSUME, its because if you do it incorrectly you can cause more problems that aren't as easy to fix, and though he does cater to plenty of enthusiasts who are more then capable of working on their machine themselves, he also caters to people who really shouldn't be opening their machines, so to cover his bases, he preaches prevention with soft water.

That said, descaling is part of owning an espresso machine, and it should be done. There is a couple of older threads on the topic, specifically with regard to doing a rotary HX(I believe Mike, of Compass coffee documented his descale of the Bricoletta in the thread Im remembering), so a quick search would do you wonders in that regard.


The key things to do, are to disconnect the heating element and autofill probe, so that you can overfill the boiler with descale solution, and drain the water without exposing the heating element to dry air(bad). You'll need to read the threads on how to do this effectively. True, it is possible to just fill up the boiler to the level the machine will allow, and drain using the hot water wand in spurts to not expose the heating element.. and if this was a 6month recurring descale, I'd agree. But if its been 7 years, you're going to want to do a more thorough descale on the boiler. But assuming good working order otherwise, I dont think its needed to break down the machine.