Yes, Dan is absolutely right in his review, and Mike is as well. One simple thought to bear in mind is that if your Silvia is not heating up, it is cooling down. If you steam when the main light is off (cooling down), you are burning the candle at both ends, so to speak. Once you commit the routine to become a habit, you will find that you steam efficiently with plenty of power.

miKe mcKoffee wrote:Best steam performance on a single boiler dual use machine with thermostat heater control and their inherent wide dead band (like Silvia) is achieved by starting steaming just before the heating element turns off so the element stays on the entire time steaming.

This is made all the more easier with a PID controller to show the temperature. My Auber PID doesn't actually use the PID control function when heating for steam, but will instead switch the heater off at 140°F. I purge the wand at 130°F and then start steaming at 136°F, and it'll inch up to 138-139 before it starts coming down in temperature, but the heating element stays on the whole time which is the goal. If I start too late, say 138°F, it'll turn the heater off soon after I start steaming, and even though it's only off for a couple seconds, it'll drop down to ~125°F very quickly as I steam.

Those are Celsius temps, not Fahrenheit, right?