The good news: I recently acquired a 1974 Cremina, one of the 'overbuilt' ones that OE detailed on their website a few years back. I got it for a very reasonable price - not 'bragging rights' level but very fair. It's in excellent overall condition and looks to have seen very little use at all. The asbestos is completely intact and shows no signs whatsoever of being compromised by water, etc. Paint is in great shape, bottom of element plate and wiring looks practically new, and is still pliable. It's very clean inside the case, almost as if it was stored in a box or something.

The bad news: it trips GFCI outlets. The seller tested it successfully (boiler to temp, steaming, etc) on a non-GFCI outlet. I have yet to do so. The red reset button doesn't do anything and the small white button on the resettable fuse doesn't appear to be popped up. I've spent the past couple of days reading as much as possible on the board about Cremina electrical issues, and still have a fundamental question: is there a 'most likely' culprit here where I should start? Is it a terrible idea to try it out on a non-GFCI outlet, knowing it trips GFCI outlets? I'll be working my way through the OE troubleshooting guide this weekend but was curious as to folks' experience with something similar.

A device that trips GFCI will perhaps work fine in a non-GFCI outlet, but it can also cause you serious harm and would be the last thing I tried. A GFCI device is looking for Ground Faults. When the electricity flowing out of your Cremina is less than the amount flowing in, the GFCI detects this, and shuts off the outlet. It does this because it is concerned that the electricity must have gone somewhere and if it didn't flow through the circuit back to the outlet, it must be flowing through some short, through the Cremina's chassis/case, and into you!

If you do a quick eyeball of the Cremina wiring, and everything looks clean, tight, well insulated, then try your cremina in a different GFCI outlet, to see if you original outlet is faulty. If it keeps tripping, and you still believe your wiring is perfect, consider trying a different brand to see if perhaps that particular brand of GFCI outlet was too sensitive to minor current fluctuations.

When looking at the wiring, double check where the power cord goes into the device - if it has a protective bushing you are probably ok there, but sometimes those cords fatigue against the metal and it causes insulation breaks.

I would be very leery of simply dismissing it and going with a regular outlet until you've checked some of these things, as you run the risk of having a short in your device that could prove problematic for longevity. Be safe and best of luck.

Yeah, I definitely see it as something that must be fixed, regardless of it it 'works' in a non-GFCI outlet. I tried it in several different GFCIs around the house, including one of the portable types that plugs into non-GFCI outlets, and it trips all of them. So there is definitely an issue. I'm not going to use an electrical appliance that has water coming out of various apertures knowing that it also has some sort of electrical short. I'm just thinking that I can at least determine that the element is still functional by plugging it into a non-GFCI outlet, but it sounds like perhaps even testing it that way might not be safe.

It has the original plug, which is one of the crazy bolt-together jobs like this:

I kinda want to replace that anyway as it just seems sketchy to me.

Nothing crazy about that plug, looks fine to me, provided your device is meant to run on 110v. 220v plug in US looks different, has one of the power prongs turned 90 degrees.

There's definitely nothing in the '74 models that inherently trips GFCI outlets. I'm running mine on one.

It looks like I replaced that plug on my '74 Cremina. The original plug probably a perfectly good piece of hardware. But it is a potential failure point, if only because it's not really an original factory connection. Yes, it was probably made at the factory, but as a retrofit. (All of the '74 models I've seen were marked 220V on the badge, then modified to read 120V.) So I'd remake the connections in this plug as a starting point-or replace the plug.

The fault to ground could be happening anywhere in the electrical system. The best tool for finding ground faults is an insulation tester, aka a Megger tester (after a vendor), which is a specialty tool that applies a voltage to the conductors as a means of measuring electrical resistance. It's probably not a tool that you have sitting around (I don't) or want to buy for troubleshooting this one espresso machine.

You might be able to use a standard electrical multi-meter in the "continuity mode" to good effect. But that's a little bit tricky. The neutral conductor-typically a white wire-is a current-carrying conductor that has a connection to ground by design OUTSIDE THE MACHINE. (Ground wires, of course, are green.) So the meter will make the continuity tone whenever you touch between the neutral circuit and ground (the chassis.)

You shouldn't be getting a continuity tone between the "hot" or neutral conductors and ground. In theory, you could make and unmake these current-carrying conductor connections until the meter stop making the continuity tone. That could help you isolate the ground fault. For some reason, I am suspicious of the heating element.

If the multi-meter meter does not signal continuity between the current-carrying conductors and ground, that just means that it's a high-resistance ground-fault, meaning the circuits are electrically isolated until voltage is applied. In this case, you'd want to follow the current-carrying conductor circuits and make sure each connection is mechanically sound. This is the kind of thing you might be able to fix simply may making and unmaking connections, then firing the machine up again.

You can check the heating element terminals with a multimeter on its highest setting for a high resistance short to ground, but that's not conclusive because it may need heat and high voltage for that to fault.

You might disconnect and insulate the live wire to the element, then button it back up and plug it in then check if it still trips the GFCI. If it doesn't, then it's likely the element, and if it still trips you know you have a short elsewhere.

If it's in the element, you may be able to bake the short out. See the OE Cremina (So You Got a Cremina) videos (#8, #10, #11 deal with baking an element.)

Eastsideloco wrote:The neutral conductor-typically a white wire-is a current-carrying conductor that has a connection to ground by design. (Ground wires, of course, are green.) So the meter will make the continuity tone whenever you touch between the neutral circuit and ground (the chassis.)

If the machine were plugged in, that would be true. But if not plugged in (and it certainly should not be if you are in there with a multimeter!) there should be no continuity between neutral and ground on a properly wired machine. (the connection between neutral and ground is way back at the service panel.)

Yes, thank you. That is correct. So there shouldn't be any continuity except between the green conductor and the exposed metal parts, all of which should be bonded together.

After posting and making a coffee I thought of something more to add - If it fails to trip the GFCI with the element live wire disconnected, then before concluding that it's a shorted element you want to make sure it's not a short in the neutral side of that heater circuit. I think this would show up on a multimeter - put the meter on it's highest ohmmeter scale and see that you have infinite resistance between the plug's ground pin and either of the other pins (with the switch on, and machine of course unplugged.)

The short could be a cracked element or it could be at the terminals where the element comes through the boiler. Hopefully the latter where an element seal kit would fix you up.

http://www.orphanespresso.com/Heating-E ... _2823.html

Also check this link out:

http://www.orphanespresso.com/Olympia-a ... 620-1.html

Do folks think it's a terrible idea to see if it heats up on a non-GFCI outlet? Again, I absolutely need to resolve whatever the issue is, but at least then I would know if the element is blown or not.