Dear all,

Desperately looking for advice regarding a La Pavoni Europiccola. My boyfriend and I are very new to espresso machines, and he bought one around 3 months ago. Last week he allowed the machine to dry-boil. It had no water in to start with (he tipped it out a few hours before to avoid using stale water), and then switched it on forgetting it was empty.

I believe this model is fairly old, but I don't know how old. I was bought from e-bay. I have read that some models have a reset button, but this one doesn't seem to have one. I opened the base up, and there is something that resembles a red button directly below the boiler, but when pushed, it does not go down.

Is there any other way that we can reset this machine? (in layman terms, please!)

Thanks alot,
Claire

uhm if you see it and you push it and the machine still doesn't heat up
the possibility is a burned out heating element
look inside the boiler from the knob hole with a flash light
What do you see?

Hi, thank you for your reply. Well, the red "button"...it looks like a button, but it doesn't push in. It stays in the same position.

And I looked inside the boiler with a torch, I just saw some limescale, and the heating element appears to be coated in a pale blueish colour? To tell the truth, I've only looked inside it once when we de-scaled it after it was first bought, and from that one viewing, I cannot see any noticeable changes, or anything that appears melted or warped by heat.

Have another look inside at the element and see if it's split around the coils. If it is you need a new element.
Is this it?


Picture courtesy of Francesco Ceccarelli.

If the little red button does not push in I can almost assure you that your heating element is cooked. To check it you will need a multi meter/ohm meter. Unplug the power wires off the spades on the heating element, then put the meter test probes on it. If you get infinite ohm's you have an open circuit (blown heater) if you get resistance then the element is most likely good but given what happened I would just jump right to purchasing a new heater element.