Our Europiccola (non-milennium, but built and purchased in 2000), is suddenly releasing a lot of steam as soon as the water gets up to temperature, and evidently pressure. The light indicating the pressure, which usually goes on while heating up, then off when it's up to pressure, never goes off. But we are still pulling good shots, so there is no loss of pressure. We had all the gaskets replaced around 8 months ago. Anyone have any ideas? Thanks.

Btw, I searched and read posts that seemed appropriate, but nothing seemed to completely fit the bill.

I presume your machine has a pressurestat.

Do you use water that is seriously contaminated? "Hard" water will fill the boiler with calcium carbonate (or calcium sulphate) deposits that can clog the tube leading to the pressurestat. It can also lead to burned out heating elements and many other problems. Your pressurestat could also have simply failed. Look inside to see if there be massive deposits. Should you have massive deposits the first step is to descale. When the pressurestat tube is clogged it is best to use 50-50 vinegar mixture for this. (Not citric acid.) Calcium sulphate deposits, should you have them, present far worse problems, but that problem is less common. Once the main boiler is descaled you can test to see whether the problem resolved. Otherwise you need fill the boiler with fresh vinegar-water mixture and raise and lower the pressure by heating it with the lid on several times. This seems to resolve the problem in most cases. (The reason NOT to use citric acid is that in narrow passageways solid calcium citrate can simply replace calcium carbonate instead of remove it! For boilers without this problem citric acid has the advantage of low vapour pressure.)

After a descale, be sure to flush the boiler thoroughly several times.

There could be pressure relief valve problems, but that does not seem very likely. You can remove the 16mm cap that holds the spring and valve in place. Ones as late as yours appear to be have a plastic mushroom valve, it is very easy to reassemble those. (The older models have a metal ball that can corrode and is more difficult to reassemble. Should yours have a metal ball valve, I suggest replacing it with the modern plastic one. There are two types of plastic ones, one has a vacuum relief valve in it, yours probably does not. The two plastic types are NOT interchangeable. The metal balls and the original older plastic type are interchangeable, however.)

Thank you for the info. We're sure we have a pressurestat (on the bottom of the machine). Also there's no problem with buildup; the machine's been cleaned within the past year and taken care of in that regard. But (sorry) we forgot to add one very important bit of information that may change your response: our problem of excess steam being released began when we did one big no-no: We ran out of water for the first time in more than a decade's use. Big oops. We caught it quickly enough that we still can make great espressos with plenty of pressure, but the steam problem started, and we fear may be getting worse. Is there one particular part of the pavoni that gets harmed first when running out of water...and would create the steam problem? Thanks again for your time here.

Just guessing you may need to replace your pressurestat. If you can attach a pressure gauge you can tell us how much pressure you're getting.

This is why a two switch Pre-Millenium is more reliable... look mama no p-stats...

I envy people with a pre-mill "pro" since they get to ditch the stats by using the gauge for reference whilst toggling the minimo-massimo to temp surf the boiler...

Instead, i use less skill and just tune my p-stat... purge false pressure and watch the gauge hit 0.9 bars and then do some flushes to heat the grouphead till my temp strips get to 83 celsius...

If you nail the perfect combination of group temp + boiler temp mix... you will get the perfect temps...

Yep... just make sure you get a consistent boiler temperature of your choice and then heat and cool the group till you get it into the right group temp..

Tuned my pstat to 0.9 bars and then always flush / cool to 83 celsius on group to pull shot..

Why?

So pavoni uses steam temp water and cools it using the groups thermal mass..

The group temperature will tell you how saturated it is...

So controlling the group thermal mass saturation by controlling group temps and maintaining the boiler at the same temp all the time exactly before pulling a shot will give you perfect temps...

baristaal wrote: Is there one particular part of the pavoni that gets harmed first when running out of water...and would create the steam problem?

The parts that go when you run it out of water are 1) the protective thermoswitch, which in your machine is probably resettable, and 2) the heating element. But neither of these would cause an overpressure steam problem. In both cases they would not allow the machine to heat up.

I'm with Robert and Gary. The fact that you've descaled doesn't preclude the possibility that scale has resettled down in that pipe or even inside the pStat and clogged the pStat, preventing it from opening. The other possibility is that the pStat is bad and the diaphragm or switch mechanism is not working. You can address the first possibility by removing the pStat from the pipe, and cleaning the pipe with a wire or pipe cleaner, then using that 50/50 hot vinegar directly on the interior of the pStat with the fitting side up. It that doesn't fix it just buy a new one. They are cheap enough and don't last forever, so you could consider just firing off an order right away, and if the cleaning fixes it you'd have a spare.

Oh, and do check that safety valve (as Robert suggested) first. If that's it, is an easy peazy fix. If it's a steel BB, you should plan on replacing it with the plastic mushroom, and for now if it's not pitted you may be able to just clean it, and the orifice it sits on.

Thanks everyone! I am now assuming perhaps the steam problem has nothing to do with running out of water, and I got lucky there. Will get going on these suggestions.

TheJavaCup77 wrote:This is why a two switch Pre-Millenium is more reliable... look mama no p-stats...

I envy people with a pre-mill "pro" since they get to ditch the stats by using the gauge for reference whilst toggling the minimo-massimo to temp surf the boiler...

I find that minimo (position II) gives me always a consistent and better result that the same pre-millenium PRO with P-stat (espresso). no wonder you do not needed the p gauge on tyhe original Europiccolas.

Yea, I second that Pstat is just totally excessive, though I suppose it would be ok. I find that at position 1 I can hold my gauge very steady right at 11psi, or 10 and 12 respectively depending on when I switch it over, but it will generally gravitate back down to 11 and hand out there for a long time.

On position 2 is caps out at 14-15 Psi for a really long time, but is so loud with so much steam blasting out (hence it sounds like your heating element is just staying on as one would without a pstat) I never use it there, so almost always pull my shots around the .7-.8 bar range. Should play with that more I guess. However, boiler temp is quite stable and controllable in that 10-15 psi range.