Howdy, first post to this site. I have a 3-4 year old La Pavoni Europiccola. Like others have done I let the water get to low and it badly over-heated. Result is that the water level cover melted at the bottom and the green light no longer comes on. However, I think the element is ok as the water still heats up (I took the tank knob off and get a good boil). I went ahead and made a few shots by just guessing and all is OK from that front. So before I take this thing apart what should I be looking for? Is this related to the pressure sensor? Without the green light coming on is the unit safe to use? Any hints appreciated.

Thanks, Peter

I was a bit confused about what melted. It sounded like the bottom part of the plastic sight glass cover?

I would remove the base and look inside. Be sure there are no melted wires, etc. Also you need to check to be sure that there is not a short between the heating element and the rest of the machine. You could get a severe electrical shock!

Do you have a pressure gauge? If so you should find that the pressure only rises to perhaps 0.8 bar and then the pressurestat should turn off. The safety valve is supposed to protect should the pressurestat fail.

It is a good habit to fill manual fill espresso machines routinely after each use and to check to be sure that the water level is up to the top of the site glass before (ever) connecting to power. I have to confess to be overly careful about this, but in this case caution is a good thing!

I do not remember which machines have a thermal fuse and which have a thermal reset switch. This should have burned out or turned off the current and you should have had to replace the fuse or reset the thermal switch to start it again after this. Unfortunately the switch only turns off or fuse only burns out after damage has been done!

Yes, it was the bottom part of sight glass that melted. And stupid me when I went to take the bottom off I discovered a red button. I pushed that in and now the green light comes on and works as before! I am still going to take the bottom off and inspect the wires. If the sight glass melted I'm assuming some wires might also have partially melted. At least my elements didn't fry.

Since the purpose of the red button is primarily to turn off the heating element and it did not do this (just turned the green light off) I would thoroughly check out the wiring for wires contacting each other through melted insulation.
You can start by trying to run the machine on a gfci outlet, if not already done. The likelihood of getting a bad shock from the unit is high....

hankbates wrote:Since the purpose of the red button is primarily to turn off the heating element and it did not do this (just turned the green light off) I would thoroughly check out the wiring for wires contacting each other through melted insulation.

I'm pretty sure the OP was talking about the safety thermoswitch reset button, and not the red power switch on the side of the machine.

And I totally agree with hankbates here - if the machine was actually heating while the green light was off, something seems amiss. If the only problem were the tripped thermal safety switch, the green light would stay unlit and the machine would certainly not heat up when switched on.

And the advice about running it on a GFCI is really, really important. If you don't have a GFCI outlet at your machine you should either get one installed, or pick up a GFCI adapter from the hardware store (here is one example - http://www.lowes.com/pd/Tower-Manufactu ... er/3817231 )