It may not be the best, but my Berkey has been successfully keeping my LMLM working with no notable scale build-up.

I did have issues recently with too much bi-carb in my water causing a feed-issue through the flo-jet. A good cleaning/purging has it humming nicely.

I'm surprised that a previous posters machine needed a tech de-scale after a year. I wouldn't call my LMLM sensitive but who knows what's in someone's water these days. A la the Berkey.

Hey Rick,

I faced all the same questions, tested the same things, looked for the same answers and came to the conclusion that the machine works best when left stock. That includes the drip tray mod.

- Changing the gicleur to 0.6mm (you can buy mine if you want) is to reduce the chance of channeling. If channeling is a problem for you, you need to fix your puck prep first. The smaller restrictor is also one of the first points of failure/clogging, although where you live I don't foresee much problems. You could try it, but it might be difficult to notice any difference and it's not that easy to replace (not that hard either, but more to lose than to gain)

- Lowering the steam pressure is a similar story. Better learn how to use it rather than accepting a lower pressure. You can learn with dish soap as a hack. Without it tooks me a month or so, 0-2 cappuccino's a day, now it's one of the machines best features. Lowering the pressure might also make the steam less dry losing another advantage

- The drip tray mod (only) looks fantastic, but its really oddly placed. I assume you won't be saving your water since we can just use tap water. In that case there's still lots of flushes/cleaning involved and you don't want all that on your Lunar. Taking it out and cleaning will get boring quickly. Standing water might also creep up from the bottom

- Pre-brew settings are a gimmick. Turned it off, looked back once only to come to the conclusion it works better without. You might want the Grafikus mod instead, but in my experience the machine offers enough to play with without the mod (save that for later)

- I did some test on the energy consumption. Briefly summarizing the machine takes about 120 Wh idle, and 400-450 wH heating up. In terms of energy consumption it's worth it to turn your machine off when not in use for 3-4 hours. I'm not convinced leaving the machine on puts significantly less strain which it can't handle. Leaving it on also adds to your electricity bill and puts additional strain on other parts (dried out seals, heating element, pressostat). I guess in terms of wear and tear those even eachother out. I'd say turn it off when you don't use it for between 21h-07h

Ypuh wrote:Hey Rick,

I faced all the same questions, tested the same things, looked for the same answers and came to the conclusion that the machine works best when left stock. That includes the drip tray mod.

Hiya, good to see you here as well!

Ypuh wrote: - Changing the gicleur to 0.6mm (you can buy mine if you want) is to reduce the chance of channeling. If channeling is a problem for you, you need to fix your puck prep first. The smaller restrictor is also one of the first points of failure/clogging, although where you live I don't foresee much problems. You could try it, but it might be difficult to notice any difference and it's not that easy to replace (not that hard either, but more to lose than to gain)

Yeah the more I read about it, the more I feel reluctant to switch it. Honestly, I don't really know yet if channeling is an issue, because I don't have a naked portafilter. Shots are coming out fine right now, even if they are channeling. I'm not doing WDT either, just some light tapping on the portafilter before tamping with the LM tamper.
This is kind of a psychologic thing right now as well. On the one hand, I just want to grind, tamp, pull and enjoy a good cup of espresso. If the mobile coffee cart in the park can pull that off, I should be able to as well.
On the other hand there's a part of me that wants to get the best cup possible, so I have a WDT tool ready waiting to be assembled and a Normcore tamper that should ensure even, leveled pressure all the time. And a desire to order a naked PF.

Ypuh wrote: - Lowering the steam pressure is a similar story. Better learn how to use it rather than accepting a lower pressure. You can learn with dish soap as a hack. Without it tooks me a month or so, 0-2 cappuccino's a day, now it's one of the machines best features. Lowering the pressure might also make the steam less dry losing another advantage

Great tip, I'll try practicing with the dishwashing soap I've actually done that on the R58 as well.

Ypuh wrote: - The drip tray mod (only) looks fantastic, but its really oddly placed. I assume you won't be saving your water since we can just use tap water. In that case there's still lots of flushes/cleaning involved and you don't want all that on your Lunar. Taking it out and cleaning will get boring quickly. Standing water might also creep up from the bottom

I've been using it today and actually quite like it. Its main purpose is to give just a little bit more room under the PF. When flushing I take it out and put it back, which is just as easy as on the regular tray. It's not the Pantechnicon version with a rubber edge but 100% stainless steel so I think it looks better, too.

Ypuh wrote:
- Pre-brew settings are a gimmick. Turned it off, looked back once only to come to the conclusion it works better without. You might want the Grafikus mod instead, but in my experience the machine offers enough to play with without the mod (save that for later)

Indeed, something for later perhaps, or maybe they'll update the app to do some line-pressure pre-wetting/infusion. I am planning to plumb it in soon.

Ypuh wrote: - I did some test on the energy consumption. Briefly summarizing the machine takes about 120 Wh idle, and 400-450 wH heating up. In terms of energy consumption it's worth it to turn your machine off when not in use for 3-4 hours. I'm not convinced leaving the machine on puts significantly less strain which it can't handle. Leaving it on also adds to your electricity bill and puts additional strain on other parts (dried out seals, heating element, pressostat). I guess in terms of wear and tear those even eachother out. I'd say turn it off when you don't use it for between 21h-07h

Excellent, those were numbers I was looking for. In that case I should probably turn it off between 15:00 and 19:00 as well.. too bad the app doesn't support this (yet) (the Rocket programming did allow this).

nguye569 wrote:My tech just got back to me, and said most of my problems were related to limescale build up on fill valve and expansion valve. They did some clean up and replaced some orings.

Now my question is if LMs are supposed to be this finicky with water or was there some general maintenance I didn't do? My machine is less than 1 year old.

Using LMs test kit, my numbers were pretty good post softener/carbon filter. The only issue is potentially chloride, but I was on the low end of range.

General ranges from LM test of my water after treatment:
Total hardness: 40 to 80ppm
Total Iron: 0-0.5 ppm
Free and total chlorine: 0-0.05 ppm
pH: 7 to 7.5
Alkalinity: 80 to 120 ppm
Chloride: 31 to 37 ppm

Those numbers are very solidly into the scale range, that doesn't look softener to me. Also the chloride is high. I would absolutely expect scale in both boilers with those numbers

Ypuh wrote:Our tap water has like 7.8 DH so I just use a Brita jug and Oscar90 pouches in the reservoir. Never measured the output water quality, but never had any serious scale issues either (a little scale built up after 3 years on a E61 mushroom).

My Linea Mini is still very new though, so little experience. I do tend to flush often and drink a few cups of tea, so +/- 2 litres move through each day keeping the water fresh.

Hi, I was interested in your comment about using the LMLM for tea. As an avid tea drinker myself I was hoping to use the LMLM for this, but other threads have indicated that using the hot water tap, which presumably comes from the steam boiler, would result in rather not very good tasting tea, given how long the water has been in the steam boiler and is not cycled through as much? Can I ask, is this the water you use for tea, or are you taking it direct from the group-head?

Regards

I'm drinking a few cups of tea from the LMLM every day. Since we can use our tap water in the Netherlands, there's no reason not to spill any, so I do frequent flushes etc. This results in having to refill pretty much the whole reservoir each day (about 1.5L) meaning there is never old water in my boiler. I think it's only a good thing to have lots of water flowing through the machine, preventing scale build up or stale water.

The tea is visibly slightly lighter than when I would grab my water cooker, meaning there are likely less minerals where your tea can bind to. The taste is also slightly different, but not much better or worse. I guess if you like a strong tea (which I kind of do) you would be better off using untreated water, but to be fair I don't really care and the ability to pull a cup of hot water any time outweighs the taste. The tea's not bad or anything.

Many thanks. There has been concern about using the hot water dispenser for tea, as obviously it comes from the steam boiler rather than the brew boiler, but in your case, with so much through-put, the concerns don't eventuate.

For those that have serviced their LM, how hard is it to remove all the painted panels? I was considering taking a part and taking to get painted and I was wondering how hard it is to remove everything? I know the front would require removing the knobs and slider, similar to switching out to the wood options.

Thanks,
James

All panels are fairly easy except for the front (where the gauges are). It requires removal of the brew boiler (heat exchange unit).

It's not hard... just a little time consuming. I tore mine down and had it powder coated a few months after I bought it. The worst part was seeing it in pieces awaiting for the parts to come back from the powder coaters.

If you want to powder coat the frame, that's a much bigger deal and basically requires taking everything out of the machine.