Hi!

I'm going to be descaling my gs/3 soon, and wondered if anybody here has done it before with citric acid. I've used Everpure in the past, but figured I'd try the citric acid because it's easier to obtain.

From what I've read and my experience in the past, this is what you would do for the GS/3

- Disconnect the plumb-in water line
- Drain the boilers (steam and coffee ones)
- Mix 1 tbsp of citric acid to 1 liter of HOT water. Stick the plumbed in water line that I unhooked into the mixture.
- Turn the machine on and let it suck the mix into the boilers
- Let it sit for an hour.
- Drain the boilers. Plumb it back in, and let it fill the boilers.
- Turn the plumb-in off. Drain the boilers. Re-plumb. Drain, re-plumb. Basically, fill and drain the boilers at least 3 times.

Is that correct? I know there's lots of threads on descaling, but I haven't been able to find one that's for the gs/3.

Thanks!

Before anything else, I would make sure it needed descaling. You never know what descaling will dislodge and where it will go. Sometimes solid pieces float away and settle into very inconvenient places.

Echoing Marshall here, my first question would be what's happening that makes you feel this is required. Unlike clean filter baskets and clean group-head gaskets and clean steam tips, the jury's out on descaling-without-clear-and-present-reason (and may never come back).

I descaled my La Pavoni last year because it looked like a very large flock of very small pigeons had lived in the boiler for a very long time. At least this presented a low clogging risk since the LP has no gicleurs or valves or pipes smaller than an interstate highway culvert, and flushing it afterwards six-X took less time than a South Park episode. Even so, I'm less than convinced that the coffee tasted better afterward, and in retrospect just happy that it wasn't degraded. But I wouldn't do that to my GS/3 unless descaling was the only answer to a really nasty question.

I seem to recall other threads that started bright and hopeful like this looking for de-scaling advice but then morphed into long-continuing sagas about "why does my [insert machine name here] coffee [taste like hot Tang / taste like lukewarm Tang / not emerge from said machine] anymore and how can I get it functioning again"? (Chaos, professional refurbs, UPS shipping charges/ overcharges/ damage claims, insurance, lawsuits and buying a CC1 ensue.)

I descaled my duetto recently - more out of curiosity than necessity. I use filtered water, so there's barely any scale build up.

I had to drain it about 5~6 times to get rid of the taint taste... it was a pain in the butt.

The steps were quite similar to yours, except I made sure the steam boiler was filled with water. The steam boiler is a little bit trickier (a wrote some instructions for it - http://coffeereview.tumblr.com/post/111 ... structions)

I have used citric acid with my old machine. Have you ever seen citric acid perform in a kettle? it works quite well - scale is instantly dissolved and nothing is dislodged. However, given that the duetto is a little bit more expensive than a kettle, I didnt feel like taking a risk. The same goes with your GS3... I would recommend you buy an espresso machine descaler just to be safe. Just make sure you buy enough for the steam boiler and brew boiler. The descaler will bit slightly more expensive, but hey... you paid much more for your machine and this is something you do about once a year.


Good luck!

Thanks all for the information. I try to descale it once a year when I was on city (lake michigan) water. I've recently moved and now we have a community well water. The water is nasty hard. I installed a water softener and this helps out tremendously, but I do not use filtered water (other than a pleated 'whole house' filter) on the gs3.

I've been using the gs3 on the well water for a little under a year. Fairly recently, it's been making more noise when boiling the water. Not a bad noise, just more noise. I notice that after descaling, the machine is silent again.

So that's why I'm here. I'm doing it for 'preventative maintenance', and so that the machine quiets down again. Too bad they don't make a little 'window' where you can look in the boilers and see how much scale is in them!

IMHO, the danger with descaling a GS/3 is that there are many check valves in the water path. If a piece of scale gets dislodged by the descaling and gets stuck in a check valve, you could be in for a very difficult and/or expensive repair (some of the check valves are very hard to get to.)

Then there's the gicleur in the group head, which is only 0.6mm. If a piece of scale gets stuck in there, you'll probably have to replace it, which is also a somewhat involved process.

The best solution is to remove enough hardness from the water to minimize or eliminate the need for descaling, but not so much that the coffee tastes bad (some mineral content is needed to ensure proper extraction.) Many cafes use cation softeners. They replace the calcium ions with salt ions. I used one for about a year and the coffee tasted fine. I now use an Everpure Claris system, which allows me to fine-tune the mineral content.

Lake Michigan water will definitely cause scale. Well water is likely to be worse. What you need to do is put good water in your GS3 so that you don't have to descale. I use RO mixed with a product from Cirqua to get good tasting water that won't scale.
Rob

wiz561 wrote:Thanks all for the information. I try to descale it once a year when I was on city (lake michigan) water. I've recently moved and now we have a community well water. The water is nasty hard. I installed a water softener and this helps out tremendously, but I do not use filtered water (other than a pleated 'whole house' filter) on the gs3.

I've been using the gs3 on the well water for a little under a year. Fairly recently, it's been making more noise when boiling the water. Not a bad noise, just more noise. I notice that after descaling, the machine is silent again.

So that's why I'm here. I'm doing it for 'preventative maintenance', and so that the machine quiets down again. Too bad they don't make a little 'window' where you can look in the boilers and see how much scale is in them!

Peppersass wrote:The best solution is to remove enough hardness from the water to minimize or eliminate the need for descaling, but not so much that the coffee tastes bad (some mineral content is needed to ensure proper extraction.) Many cafes use cation softeners. They replace the calcium ions with salt ions. I used one for about a year and the coffee tasted fine. I now use an Everpure Claris system, which allows me to fine-tune the mineral content.

The Claris is slick but if you don't want to be tied into buying pricey replacement filters you can accomplish the same thing with generic filter housings & a manual mixing valve or John Guest shut off valve. Just tee off the hard water line before the softener cartridge & back in before the carbon cartridge. Control the amount of hard water you want to add back in with the mixing valve or JG shut off. I've used this set up for 3+ years at two locations in my house keeping the water hardness in the 2-3 grain range. The softener cartridge lasts 6-8 months & replacing both costs about $20.

As far as descaling by running citric acid solution through your machine it's not something I would do for all the reasons Dick listed. When I shop for a new machine I make sure that the boilers were designed with easy maintenance in mind. Water drains & heating elements that can be quickly removed are mandatory as I "descale" by removing the element, cleaning it off outside the boiler & flushing the boiler clean. I bead blast the scale off of the element but once it's out you could just soak the scaled portion in hot C/A solution.

John B. had an interesting idea. Removing the heating elements from the boilers. I'd assume that the heating elements would have the scale growing on it, and not the tanks itself.

I just ended up buying some Dezscale and will probably end up using it, and flush it through the steam boiler drain valve and then the coffee boiler drain valve at the bottom, and hope it gets all the scale out. After that, I think I'll end up getting the filter + softener (big blue filters) from chris' coffee. I've outboarded my gs3, so I feel pretty confident working on it. Hopefully I won't run into any issues, but I know I should be using some more filters...