I've had the Breville Oracle since 2016 and am probably on my 4th one now - machine likes to die every 2 years on the dot it seems. Breville has been exceptionally good in supporting it and from a manufacturer standing behind their product perspective - I have no complaints. Of course having to be w/o a machine for a month while shipping it back and forth is not idea. For whatever it's worth, we have at least another 5 Breville products and all of those have been rock solid.

This is a long way of saying that my most recent Oracle was replaced a year ago with a Touch model and appears to have been a brand new unit (not refurb). Based on the counter - we've pulled 1,900 shots and 10 espresso drinks. Doesn't seem like a ton. I was changing the water filter decided to do the descaling since it's been a year (big mistake). I thought I followed everything exactly as the screen prompted - but in the end the machine would not get up to temp.

Lots of internet searches and the only thing I found that didn't involve major disassembly or sending it back, was the 45 degree tilt solution. I couldn't find exactly how people did it but it it worked for me so I wanted to share in case someone else needed it and it could help them.

Problem: after descaling the Oracle will not go up to temp - generally gets stuck in the mid 100 degrees.
Solution:
- Unplug the machine and pull out the water tank, the drip tray and the bean hopper. You may want to remove beans from the grinder.
- Take cardboard and put it on the floor and against your wall and grab a couple of towels in case something leaks.
- Take the machine off the counter (you could do this on the counter but for me it was easier on the floor). Carefully tilt the machine forward and rest it at a 45 degree angle against the wall. The top of the front of the machine will be sitting against the wall. the bottom of the front is already at what appears to be a 45 degree angle so it stays in place very well. Just in case you may want to put a box under the front and back so if the machine slips it doesn't slam on the floor.
- Leave the machine unplugged overnight.
- In the morning tilt the machine back a little - maybe to about 30 degrees. Prop it with something so it stays in place. I used a 5.5" tall box.
- Take your water tank and tilt it forward at the same angle as your machine. You may need to take water out or add water so that the water sensor engages. Be careful not to get everything wet. Carefully put your water tank back in place.
- Plug the machine back in and turn it on.
- With any luck the pump will engage and suck enough water to cover heater element. Leave the machine in this position until fully up to temp.
- Assuming everything works, turn it off, pull the water tank out, put it back on your counter.

I was worried about decalcification solution being left in the boilers so I decided to run the descaling cycle again. I was able to do this successfully with fresh water so I don't know if the issue is with the solution I use or if I missed a step. Either way I successfully ran the decalcification process with fresh water only after the 45 degree solution. I was exceptionally careful in following all steps exactly on time and as described. Only difference is I used fresh water and kept the water tank filled to max the entire time.

Suggestion 1: Don't ever descale this machine.
Suggestion 2: If you don't use the steam much (like us), make it a point to steam a cup of water every couple of weeks to make sure you are cycling the water out of the steam boiler as well as to purge any air that may have accumulated.

I hope this helps someone.

BES980XL BES990 BES990BUS1

I had not seen that "45 deg." fix before. Glad to hear it worked for you.

As far as the steam boiler goes, if you don't use the steam much, the best thing to do with the BDB/Oracle is to do nothing. Just leave it alone, that way you never introduce fresh water to the boiler so there cannot be any new minerals to precipitate out and cause scale. Unlike an HX machine,which uses the boiler water for the hot water dispenser, these machines do not use the steam boiler water for anything but steam and preheating your brew water before it enters the brew boiler.

BTW, you should use non scaling water and NEVER run the descale program on these machines. You are lucky you didn't blow the thermal fuse on the staeam boiler with the descale program.

Thanks for the feedback. I use filtered water and then the filter on the machine. Probably not perfect but overall likely ok. I think the machine will fail before the descaling is really needed in my set up so overall I agree - don't descale these...