Hey all. I'm a bit out of my depth here and thought I may be able to get some help. Long ago this forum helped me decide on buying a Lelit PL41QE. It's been a terrific little machine this entire time, and my confession is I haven't kept up with maintenance like I should. So I'm guessing this may be due to calcification or something.

About a month ago when I'd hit the switch to pull a shot, there would be a quiet hum and pause before the pressure actually kicked in and water started coming out. I knew I should have looked into this then and risked wearing out the machine's parts by continuing to use it, but I'm not pleasant without coffee and am under a lot of pressure from non-home-espresso responsibilities, so I just kept pulling shots every day. Some days it would be better than others, and I wouldn't have to wait as long, and others it was worse. The length of time I'd let the machine warm up didn't seem to make a difference. Unsurprisingly, the pauses before water pressure became longer and longer, and this morning the machine had finally had enough and the "humming without pressure" phase lasts indefinitely.

Any ideas what I may need to do to resolve it? And... apart from regular decalcification, what other things should I be doing to keep my machine running?

Update: a friend of mine who's a barista and one of the most knowledgable people I know when it comes to coffee and machines tells me he thinks this is limescale. I use tap water in my machine (I know I shouldn't.) Part of the reason Austin, TX tap water tastes pretty good is because it comes through limestone which acts as a filter, but the water takes some mineralogy with it. When the water is in the boiler, the evaporation leaves limescale. He told me to try to get some water through the boiler and taste it, and sure enough, it's a little more tart than it is directly from the tap.

I'm at a point now where there's barely any water trickling through the brew group or the wand. So how should I proceed? Is it worth disconnecting the boiler and trying to descale it manually, like in a bath of some kind? Or should I just get a replacement boiler?

The absolute first thing you need to do is to remove and clean your showerscreen then backflush using a good quality espresso machine detergent. You see all that dark purple crap in the pipe that comes up from the middle of the boiler? That's old coffee tars blocking up the whole system. Descaling has no effect on them.

You can worry about scale AFTER you get rid of all the old tar. The solenoid valve the dirty pipe leads to has a couple of tiny orifices that are easily blocked by any sort of debris. See http://www.coffeeco.com.au/articles/cleaning.html if you're uncertain.

Alan

Thank you Alan! I thought that gunky looking hose may be part of the problem. I'm working right now to get the screen off to clean, but the screw is stripped. I'll report back once I'm able to get it apart and give it a good cleaning. Got some Ascaso Coffee Wash that I'll try out, too.

Not sure what your PL41QE has for a bolt to hold the screen in place but my PL41TEM uses a T20 Torx bolt, not a Phillips or allen key. That is maybe what is leading you to think it is stripped. And the view of that bolt is not great, especially if it is dirty. I hope this helps.

ragdoll serenade wrote:Not sure what your PL41QE has for a bolt to hold the screen in place but my PL41TEM uses a T20 Torx bolt, not a Phillips or allen key. That is maybe what is leading you to think it is stripped.

Thank you!! I think you're right that this is Torx, but my T15 is slightly too big while my T10 is slightly too small. Perhaps it wasn't stripped, but by mistaking it as a hex key I screwed it up. I wonder how hard replacement screws are to find online.

Edit for posterity: Found it. Turns out it was an Allen screw.

To save some trouble:

Turn machine upside down after removing water tank, loose beans etc. Use a small flat head screwdriver at an angle to "chisel" the showerscreen anticlockwise, starting at about 4 o'clock. It will make a small dent in the outer rim of the screen, this has no effect on brewing. Once the screen starts to turn you'll be able to undo the screw, you might need to clean the hex hole out with a needle to get deeper purchase.

Alan

This stripped screw has turned out to be the worst I've ever dealt with. I tried a hammer and screwdriver to chisel, WD-40, a torch, supergluing something into the screw head, and finally a screw extractor. None of these things worked. Once I finally got the screen to turn, it was pretty mangled, and still turned independently of the screw. The last thing I tried was folding the screen so I could grip it with pliers and pull away from the screw while twisting, but this didn't work either. My plan now is to just buy a new lower boiler body and trash this one, unless anyone has some kind of trick I haven't heard of. I need a new screw and shower screen anyway, and if a $55 part can save me a few hours of Sisyphean torment then I'll gladly pay it.

The silver lining here is seeing all the crud beneath the shower screen and now understanding how important regular backflushing is.

Do you have a dremel? You could cut a slot in the screw and try to get good purchase with a standard screwdriver. I don' think your screen is salvageable If you can cut it and remove it from around the bolt, you may then be able to grab the bolt with a vice grips. It would be hard to gain access but drilling the head off the screw and trying to extract the post with said vice grips might work.

Given that you're thinking of getting a new bottom anyway ... why not take the boiler apart now before ordering, and soak the whole bottom clean, and see where that takes you? I have a machine with the same boiler that I bought used that looked worse than yours - that's what I did.

Good luck!