Hello all! I was wondering if someone could help me assess my next step on a descale I am doing on my quick mill anita? I recently bought a used, 2007 vintage anita under the impression that it had been descaled regularly, but a quick check and clean of the E61 mushroom indicated significant scale - while the water here in Ottawa is very soft, the machine was purchased from montreal, which has much harder water. The water in the boiler tested at a hardness + alkalinity of over 140mg/l and while the water was fairly clear it had an unpleasant taste to it, further suggesting a significant amount of scale.

I initially wanted to descale the boiler through the vacuum breaker valve opening, but repeated attempts to get it off were unsuccessful; instead, I followed the simplified HX descale instructions, raising the boiler level gauge side of the machine rather than disabling the auto-fill. Given that I expected there to be a lot of scale, I decided to use Dezcal on the assumption that it would be a little stronger than straight citric acid. My protocol was 28g/liter of Dezcal, left it in the boiler for 1 hour with the boiler on, and then flushed the boiler.

After flushing the boiler with 2 reservoirs full of clean water, the greenish tinge in the water is gone, but the water coming out of the boiler through the hot water wand continues to be very cloudy, with a small amount of fine browinish residue that settles at the bottom of the container I'm using to catch the water from the wand. I have been through 5-6 reservoirs (of over 2 liters each) and I am still getting the residue. Note that it seems that the amount of residue is greater when I overfill the boiler prior to flushing than if I just fill to the autofill level. The water no longer has the bad taste it did prior to the descale, but I wouldn't feel comfortable using it until most of the residue is gone.

I'm trying to figure out what to do next. Should I

1. Continue flushing out the boiler until the water runs clear? This could take a while.

2. Descale again, on the assumption that there is a lot of scale remaining above the autofill line?

3. Start panicking about the residue?! The machine seems to work fine - pump works, autofill is working, brew pressure and boiler pressure gauges read the same as before, suggesting I haven't wrecked the machine, but an infinite amount of brown residue can't be a good thing, right?!!

Thanks for any help you can provide!

Dave.

You can remove tough fittings with an ADJUSTABLE electric impact wrench - try to get what's called a 6 point deep socket, properly sized. The fittings are a cross between metric and US sizes. I typically use a 3/8" drive air wrench but that is not a common household item.

Removing the steam and HW tubes will allow you to properly add descaling solution on the boiler side and for air to escape. You DO NOT need to take the boiler to full heat - hot water/solution is fine.

Fill the boiler side using a baby funnel and syphon the boiler side with hardware store tubing.

In the absence of an impact wrench you can try carefully whacking the handle of a regular wrench with a rubber mallet. But the impact wrench really does a fast and easy job.

If it is well and truly stuck, the threads can be damaged if you force it.

Would something like this driver do? At some points, I need to take off the vacuum breaker valve on my E61 to either descale or replace it.

http://www.amazon.com/Bosch-PS41-2A-12- ... 003LST02W/

Probably; it has variable speed on the trigger, but i'd be wary of being impatient and goosing the power too much if you didn't get immediate results at lower power. With impact, sometimes it takes longer at low power but will eventually shake loose.

Also, never use an impact wrench to assemble the espresso machine.