I'd be interested to know how often Ponte Vecchio owners need to renew their heating elements. The one originally fitted to my Lusso lasted 4 years, the next one 7 months, and the following one failed this Christmas (!) after 12 months. Luckily my illustrious career in the boy scouts came up trumps again and I fitted a spare in time to deal with the festive hangovers.

They all failed in the same way: the electrical resistance between the connectors and the element case reducing so much that the earth leakage protector on my main distribution board trips out the power.

Testing the new one with a multimeter, the resistance is infinite between connector and case (as I would expect), and 60 Ohms for the failed one.

The machine is generally switched on once a day, and left on for about 3 hours.

mousetail wrote:I'd be interested to know how often Ponte Vecchio owners need to renew their heating elements. The one originally fitted to my Lusso lasted 4 years, the next one 7 months, and the following one failed this Christmas (!) after 12 months. Luckily my illustrious career in the boy scouts came up trumps again and I fitted a spare in time to deal with the festive hangovers.

They all failed in the same way: the electrical resistance between the connectors and the element case reducing so much that the earth leakage protector on my main distribution board trips out the power.

Testing the new one with a multimeter, the resistance is infinite between connector and case (as I would expect), and 60 Ohms for the failed one.

The machine is generally switched on once a day, and left on for about 3 hours.

I would strongly suggest you purchase a surge suppressor rated 1040 joules or higher, single outlet type only. To have this many heating elements replaced in this time is very unusual. I would be interested to see how many heating elements fail after you implement a surge suppressor.

As a second thought, if the old elements had any meltdowns, then the unit was run out of water. One of the things that Ponte Vecchio did for our machines was to implement a better design to avoid heating element meltdowns.

1st-line wrote:I would strongly suggest you purchase a surge suppressor rated 1040 joules or higher, single outlet type only. To have this many heating elements replaced in this time is very unusual. I would be interested to see how many heating elements fail after you implement a surge suppressor.

As a second thought, if the old elements had any meltdowns, then the unit was run out of water. One of the things that Ponte Vecchio did for our machines was to implement a better design to avoid heating element meltdowns.

Thanks for the advice, Jim. How exactly were your machines modified by Ponte Vecchio?

The failed elements still work, in that they continue to produce heat if connected to the power supply. However, because of the breakdown of electrical resistance, the only way to get them to work in the machine would be to disconnect the earth which is obviously not an option. I never let the water get below about halfway down the sight glass, the p-stat is set to 1.2 Kg/cm², and the thermostat has never tripped out; so I don't think overheating is part of the problem. It's also a mystery that the factory one lasted 4 years.

What do people consider to be a normal working life for these things?

What is the quality of your water?
Regards
Timo

mousetail wrote:Thanks for the advice, Jim. How exactly were your machines modified by Ponte Vecchio?

The Lusso's boiler has a water level sensor and will kill power to the element in a low condition. You can see it in Dave's (cannonfodder) recent post in Lever Espresso Machines Smackdown. It is just above and to the left of the element.

cannonfodder wrote:The Lusso has a level probe and level box, a feature normally found on commercial machines. There is a level probe in the boiler and a rudimentary level control box. If the water level drops to low, the machine will illuminate a low water light and power off the heating element. It would be nice if other manufacturers included a level cutoff. If I had a dollar every time I read a post where someone let the boiler get low and blew a heating element I would have a cabinet full of coffee. That is not an issue with the Lusso. The heating element is mounted at the lowest point in the boiler. The owner's manual shows the element rated at 1000 watts, the sticker on the bottom of the frame lists 1200 watts.

WOW, I'd be very worried about resistance (anything OTHER than infinity) between the element itself and the element case! The surge suppressor could be a very good "fix" for this assuming the issue is instantaneous voltage spikes causing element deformation within the casing (and that's a very good possibility). These elements are, usually, some nickel-chrome resistance wire formed into a coil INSIDE the casing with, usually, some kind of insulating material between the coil and the casing (could be fiberglass or some other fairly hi-temp insulator. In the OLD days, it would have been asbestos. no longer true). Spikes in voltage (and you'd be surprised at the instantaneous peaks you'll see. VERY short times, measured in the microseconds or even smaller, but these spikes can hit thousands of volts or even higher) can cause some changes in the spacing between the heating coil and the casing. A first attempt would be a good 1200 joule (or larger) surge suppressor, BUT, understand, every time the surge suppressor 'traps' a spike it looses some of it's capacity, so expect to replace your surge suppressor every 5 years or so.

EDIT: I've been thinking some more on this and while I STILL agree with Jim @ 1st-Line about the surge suppressor (I have a "whole house" surge suppressor that I replace every 5 years AS WELL as individual suppressors on critical equipment that I replace on a regular basis), I'm obliged to discuss another POSSIBLE reason for this. I don't know the PV Lusso architecture in detail (just what I've read on the Lever Machine Smackdown, etc). I understand that the Lusso has a horizontal boiler and I suspect (but do not know) that the heating element in it is a typical "U" shaped element, oriented horizontally. Also do not know if the only heating elements available for this are PV OEM parts (i.e. there's no "third party" supplier available...) but, one characteristic of ANY fine wire (with fine wire defined as "less than" 18 American Standard Wire Gauge wire) is that as it goes thru heat/cool cycles it can have a tendency to "sag". An extreme example was a major appliance manufacturer used two "circles" of coiled Nickel-Chrome heating wire at the back (and behind) the drum in many (if not all) of their clothes dryers. These "circles" were spaced a few inches apart from each other and were held in place by ceramic "stand-offs". Over time the upper part of the outer element would sag to the point that it actually TOUCHED the inner element. When this happened you no longer had a "low" setting on your drying cycles as current would flow thru BOTH elements no matter WHICH was SUPPOSED to be energized! I know this because I used to HAVE one of these! I just got to the point of replacing the elements every 5 years (gave me a chance to do a REALLY GOOD cleaning cycle on the dryer internals!)...
Something LIKE this COULD be happening with your element.... Heat/Cool... Heat/Cool.... etc. after a bit of time the heating coil sags to touch the outer shell. NOT saying this IS the problem, but it's POSSIBLE... That's one reason I mentioned third party parts suppliers... they MAY not use as good a manufacturing process as the REAL OEM part... Just a thought!

ntwkgestapo wrote:Something LIKE this COULD be happening with your element.... Heat/Cool... Heat/Cool.... etc. after a bit of time the heating coil sags to touch the outer shell. NOT saying this IS the problem, but it's POSSIBLE... That's one reason I mentioned third party parts suppliers... they MAY not use as good a manufacturing process as the REAL OEM part... Just a thought!

Just a thought, but Steve's comment made me take another look at Jeff's photo of the element location at the bottom of the boiler. Could the outer shell of the element be coming in contact with the boiler? It appears to be mounted closer then I'm used to seeing.

Joe at Good Coffee Company in Seattle has been selling these for 30 years or more. Ask him - no website, but you can find the phone number online.

Also, Gene at Vanelis.com has been selling them for several years.

FWIW, by Export is 2+ years old, on and off at least 2-3 times a day every day, and no issues so far. I did run the boiler dry once, which flipped the cutoff, but I was able to reset it, and have not had a problem since.

PC

Peacecup, I know the PV lusso has been around (in one form or another) for years... and I don't doubt that the regular suppliers would provide OEM parts... BUT, if it's a fairly standard heating element (looks to be a screw in type mount from the pictures I've seen) SOMEONE could be selling NON-OEM parts! There's a LOT of places out there where you could get a 1KW, 120volt AC screw-in u-shaped element! I can find similar elements (with Metric OR SAE or NPT threads from 3 or 4 suppliers here in the Roanoke Valley in VA where I live. They'd "work" but no guarantees they'd be OEM [or UL Approved for the application, etc]).
Looking @ the pictures It looks like the boiler is a "stamped" (or explosion formed, etc) type of fabrication (just from looking! I've never seen one of these in "real life") so I'd be real surprised if it NORMALLY would allow the element to "touch" the boiler And if it DID, that ALONE wouldn't make it short out! Might over time as it would cause "hot spots" where it touched (which could cause the "sag" in the element itself)...

EDIT: Corrected the "NTP" (Network Time Protocol?) to NPT (National Pipe Thread)

The PV factory is usually responsive to email - it might be worth asking them.

Also, the machine in question is probably 220V, in case that makes any difference.