Hi,

I just recently bought the Elektra microcasa a leva, and something tells me I'm going to need your help a lot

At the beginning I was filling the boiler right to the end of the glass - I thought thats what they meant by 3/4 of the boiler - now I realize it's 3/4 of the glass...do you think this could do any damage?

Also, recently the water has been coming out yellowish, and there is a slight odor. I thought this may be stale coffee in the inside of the shower head - so I removed the group head and shower and cleaned. It seemed to help initially but now its returned. Could it be something to do with the lubricating grease, or is it just stale coffee again? I'm not using a blind filter to clean - I just run water through the shower head at the end of each use. Could this lead to accumulation of stale coffee even after a couple of days (non-intensive use)?

I guess thats it for a start....
Thanks a lot,
David.

Congrats on Elektra and welcome to HB.

david_menashe wrote:At the beginning I was filling the boiler right to the end of the glass - I thought thats what they meant by 3/4 of the boiler - now I realize it's 3/4 of the glass...do you think this could do any damage?

Nope. Don't worry.

david_menashe wrote:Also, recently the water has been coming out yellowish, and there is a slight odor.

If this is new machine and water was never clear you will need to flush couple of boilers through the machine to clean manufacturing "junk". If water was clear before but now it is not it is possible that you did not clean/blow out the steam wand after steaming milk and that some of the milk sneaked up into the boiler in which case you'd need to clean it. You should always blow steam out after steaming milk.

You can use hot water with some baking soda dissolved in it. Make sure you do this with cold machine that is unplugged. Pour the soda solution in the boiler and then turn on machine to heat it up. Turn it off and let is stay for couple of hours. The burned milk should dissolve in the soda solution. Empty machine of this solution and pour clean water into the boiler and empty it. Repeat 2-3 times to clean it up. That should do the trick.

david_menashe wrote:I'm not using a blind filter to clean - I just run water through the shower head at the end of each use. Could this lead to accumulation of stale coffee even after a couple of days (non-intensive use)?

You can't use a blind filter to clean since there's no 3-way pressure release valve. If you removed the screen and scrubbed the grouphead area clean, the tainted water must be from the boiler. Flushing the boiler at the end of the session should be sufficient between more thorough scrubbing once a week or so (remember to turn off the machine beforehand to avoid exposing the heating element to air).

tekomino wrote:Congrats on Elektra and welcome to HB.

Thanks!

You can use hot water with some baking soda dissolved in it. Make sure you do this with cold machine that is unplugged. Pour the soda solution in the boiler and then turn on machine to heat it up. Turn it off and let is stay for couple of hours. The burned milk should dissolve in the soda solution. Empty machine of this solution and pour clean water into the boiler and empty it. Repeat 2-3 times to clean it up. That should do the trick.

How much baking soda would you use? a couple of table spoons/litre?
When you say empty the machine, I assume you mean physically turn the machine over to empty it?
As far as I can see, you can only run water through the group if the boiler is pressurized?

HB wrote:You can't use a blind filter to clean since there's no 3-way pressure release valve.

I was thinking more along the lines of the "portafilter jig" I read about - filling the blocked portafilter and moving it around to clean the shower screen.

If you removed the screen and scrubbed the grouphead area clean, the tainted water must be from the boiler. Flushing the boiler at the end of the session should be sufficient between more thorough scrubbing once a week or so (remember to turn off the machine beforehand to avoid exposing the heating element to air).

Not sure what you mean by exposing the heating element? what type of scrubbing do you mean that would do this?

It means don't turn the machine on without the element being immersed in water. Or you get to buy a new element .

DrDregs wrote:It means don't turn the machine on without the element being immersed in water.

Or in laymens terms: Do not turn on without any water inside the boiler.

david_menashe wrote:I was thinking more along the lines of the "portafilter jig" I read about - filling the blocked portafilter and moving it around to clean the shower screen.

If you pull the lever down with the portafilter blocked (such as with a blind basket), you will just get stuck with a lot of built up pressure pushing against your portafilter. If you try to move it around, you will likely get the lever to snap back up (it's a strong spring) and a lot of water splashed everywhere. On my Ponte Vecchio (also a spring lever), flushing water through the group and wiping down the shower screen is plenty. If you're really worried you can remove the shower screen and soak it in espresso detergent, but you shouldn't get to that point with proper rinsing for quite some time.

To reiterate the points made above: do not attempt to empty the boiler with the machine turned on.

Good luck and enjoy!

KnowGood wrote:Or in laymens terms: Do not turn on without any water inside the boiler.

That I understand