I Have a Europiccola which is about 6 months old, (my first one lasted 12 years!) it has just started a problem where when you turn it on the pressure gets to half a bar and then (a lot of) steam starts coming out of the safety valve, and the pressure stays at half a bar. its been doing it for a couple of weeks now and is pretty unusable. Has anyone has this problem before?

Is most common in the old ones that had a steel ball that would get corroded. Yours is, I'm guessing, a new one which has a little anti-vacuum valve built into that safety valve which has gotten stuck open.

Take it apart, clean everything, and reassemble and it should work. If you have silicone gasket lube (like Dow 111) you can work a light coat of that on the post and rubber membrane of the AV valve, but wipe it all clean so that there's nothing left but a barely there coating.

Often when an AV valve sticks you can give the top of the valve a light rap with a wooden object and it will seal. I had one that would stick open for no reason once in a blue moon, and I'd just give it a rap.

homeburrero wrote:Often when an AV valve sticks you can give the top of the valve a light rap with a wooden object and it will seal. I had one that would stick open for no reason once in a blue moon, and I'd just give it a rap.

Before even taking it apart to clean you might give it a rap. This is something Christopher Cara also suggested when my Millennium Europiccola vents steam continuously.