Hi All,
I'm just curious what you have your max steam pressure set at on your machine. Going to have some time this weekend to play around with it just a bit.
Thanks,
Joe

Nice coincidence, I was doing the same yesterday evening. Originally, my pressure was set to stay between 0.9-1.05 bars. I lowered it some and quickly fell into a zone were the grouphead was idling very low 75C vs ~90C. I didn't get any water dance anymore I think the pstat was cycling between 0.85 - 1 bar at this time.

There doesn't seem there is a lot of play but maybe I was just doing my experiments right. I'm not sure if we should wait for the machine to completely cool down before trying another setting.

I currently have mine set at .098bar (pstat clicks on) to a max of 1.1bar (pstat clicks off). I get some dancing but it settles down after about a 6 to 7 second flush. I'm thinking it may be just a touch high based on the length of time I have to flush the group.

Ideas?

I like mine to sit at 0.7-0.9 bars, depending on if I'm trying to pull hotter or cooler shots... it seems to make it easier to adjust the "preferential" shot temperature in this way. That said, I have a PID and the deadband is almost nonexistant. If I had an 0.2 bar deadband as is typical with a Sirai, I think I'd shoot for making it top out around 0.9 bars. YMMV on all this, as usual.

I'm sure its on here somewhere but do you a tutorial for the PID on the Elektra? Any drawbacks?

There's no tutorial, and no realistic negatives to PIDing other than that it's a little too complicated for some. You may be able to figure a lot of it out from my restoration thread; this post describes some of what I did, and you'll find discussion of the parts you'll need in my thread.

IIRC I have a spare of the custom fitting you'd need to do it, and I can tell you the TC I used if you want to contact me via e-mail, and work out a deal with you on that, if you're interested. I definitely spent a couple hundred bucks on my PID setup because I bought a large enclosure and two of the best PIDs you can get, to my knowledge (Fuji PXR3s). I think that you could grab the Auber Instruments PID and enclosure for more like $50, and then the TC could be got for another $30-40, again IIRC. You'd also need the right SSR for the PID to switch, a DC input 120V SSR rated to 20+ amps (I'd recommend at least 25). I've got a spare or wo of those if you're interested. So, for around $100 and some figuring out on your own (as well as some good DIY), you could put it together for a little more than you'd pay to replace the Sirai.

So that's the negative--if you're not up for that, it's a big one. The other thing is that the plus side of PIDing a HX machine of this size is really... diminishing returns. Obviously that's not the case if your thermostat is going (like mine was), but for a healthy Sirai stat the main justification is probably more curiosity and fun than a realistic expectation of cup improvements. The boiler temp is stabler, obviously, but this doesn't translate very directly to increased temp stability at the group. I do find it makes it way easier to set the temperature in the boiler, and that this lets me adjust where the "flush center temperature" (i.e. the temperature that the group gravitates towards) is a lot easier.

Mine is operating between 1-1,2 bars. My boiler is insulated and the heater kicks in after 3min and 30sec and turns of after another 30 sec. That makes the average power consumption (after start up period of 30 min) of 30/(4*60)*2200W= 275 W. Is that the right way to calculate?

30 seconds to kick the boiler back up to pressure seems like a LONG time. After sitting stable, mine is on only around 8 seconds, after being off for around 3:00 (boiler insulated with melamine foam).

My deadband is the same as yours as well...around .2 bar (0.9 - 1.1).

Perhaps some other owners will post there "on" time as well.

My T1 is sitting on the floor of my bedroom, so I can't take any measurement for you guys at this time. However the new kitchen gets granite today.... so it won't be long before I get to run my T1 at full power.

Mark
[Edit]: My T1 is running at 2/3 full power since I removed one heating element from the connection to allow my system to run on a 15 Amp circuit (draws about 13 amps).

mhoy wrote:My T1 is running at 2/3 full power since I removed one heating element from the connection to allow my system to run on a 15 Amp circuit (draws about 13 amps).

For what it's worth, I've done this extensively with my A3 as well, and I can attest that even at relatively low boiler settings it works with quite ample recovery--provided the boiler is insulated (haven't tried it uninsulated). I didn't ever measure warmup time, but I'm certain it's much longer than at full power.