Hello, could anyone tell me if this thing marked on picture is OPV? If it is, how do I adjust it? It is Ascaso Dream 2016 with thermoblock. Thank you very much.

I am going to guess "No", although I'm not 100% sure. I certainly don't think I see an OPV in there.

The blue thing is a pump, there's a white teflon hose connecting it to the "Thermocoil" (boiler). There's fittings on both ends of the teflon hose and fittings on both ends of the elbow that is connected to the "thermocoil"

It seems there might be something in there acting as an OPV since the return hose has that black Tee in it. I see one tube of the return hose is for the bubbler valve on the pump, but don't see where the other tube goes. Maybe there's an OPV there.

Here are some other angles

That looks like a coupling or check valve, not an over-pressure valve. If you take an OPV apart, it will look something like this:


From La Marzocco GS3 Leaking

The "valve assembly" above is threaded to allow the "hose connection" part above to change the compression of the spring, thereby increasing/decreasing the closure pressure of the "OPV body" part above (not sure I agree with this labeling, but whatever). A check valve, on the other hand, typically has something like a ball bearing that stops water from flowing in one direction and allows it in another.

Okay, so yeah...
The drain hoses there are just to your three-way solenoid and to your pump's priming valve. You don't seem to have an OPV in that version of the Dream.

And do you think it would be possible to install one?

Anything's possible. You may be able to fit a little OPV in where that circled elbow is, and add another Tee fitting to your silicon drain line for it.

By "little OPV" I am referring to things like https://www.espresso.co.nz/parts/over-p ... c097-9bar/

That might fit in there without having to move other components out of the way (you don't want it touching that circuit board).
If not at the circled elbow, maybe one of the elbows on the 3-way? I don't know. It's an awfully tiny little machine, maybe 3D print a rim to hold the top of the machine 2 inches higher than stock and make use of that newly created space. Anything's possible if you're crazy enough.

It appears that the machine must have a spring-loaded brew valve right at the head, so there's no coffee flowing back to the gimmick-three-way, so any of the elbows, even the one standing way up high over the thermoblock would suffice.

I will probably just sell it and buy different machine with opv already in it, I think I would messed it up as I never done anything like this. My options are Lelit PL41TEM, Rancilio Silvia and Gaggia New Classic Pro. Could you recommend me one?

Of those 3, the Lelit. Or whichever has service representation somewhere near you.

Why not the regular Silvia? Why the new Silvia Pro?
I suggest reading these forums, reading about the machines you would consider and think about what's in them. For example, if having an OPV is the important factor in the decision making, would you want a Lelit with an OPV like the one suggested for the Ascaso Dream retrofit? Would you want one like the Gaggia's? Would you want one like the Silvia's?

Do you want a machine you can work on, repair and make last a while or do you want something that you can throw away and replace after a few years when something goes wrong?

Have you considered used machines? That way you can sell them for about as much as you paid for them if they're not what you want.

JRising wrote:Of those 3, the Lelit. Or whichever has service representation somewhere near you.

Why not the regular Silvia? Why the new Silvia Pro?

I meant regular Silvia. I actually found out a trick that kinda solved my issue. HB mod mentioned somewhere on this forum, that you can decrease pressure by opening steam wand. So I tried it and it works well, it's not perfect solution but It's good enough. Now I just have to find out how to install PID into that machine and I'm good for a while.