No, not unless you have amazingly strong facial muscles. You could probably suck it open in the correct direction (your tongue is way stronger than your lips and cheeks), but if you can't blow through it in either direction it is probably good.

JRising wrote:No, not unless you have amazingly strong facial muscles. You could probably suck it open in the correct direction (your tongue is way stronger than your lips and cheeks), but if you can't blow through it in either direction it is probably good.

Thanks, that reassuring!

Another quick one: I just want to confirm that there is no harm in letting the valves bath in a descaling solution?

EDIT: The question above is probably one of the dumbest one in the whole history of Home-Barista I guess. The normal descaling process using the water reservoir necessarily makes descaling solution flow in these valves.

EDIT: I just got access to the brew circuit check valve and I can blow through it both ways, so I guess that makes it the culprit. I'll see if descaling helps or else I'll order a new (or perhaps two new) check valves prior to rebuilding the machine.

Good job tracking down the problem.

I say dismantle it, inspect it, clean it, soak it in descaler and see how it behaves. But, yeah. You may have to replace it, they're not terribly expensive. (I'm not at work so I can't even quote a price, but widely available and affordable).

I dismantled the faulty one after a descaling then detergent bath since it still allowed air to go through both ways. It looked totally fine inside, did not see anything hinting at a foreign body or broken part. I put it back together and now it seems to work, i.e. I cannot blow through it at all.

I am now in the process of putting back the whole thing together (brew boiler and all associated plumbing).

At some point in the history of my machine, I broke off the stems of the safety thermostats of the brew boiler trying to unscrew them (I wanted to scrub the top of the boiler after a leak). Long story short, the solution used by the techs at IDrinkCoffee was to use thermostats with no stems (or they clipped them off, not sure, they have a small knob in the center). They used thermal paste and fixed the thermostat in place using something pink smeared on the outside. This has gone soft and during brew boiler manipulation, they fell off.

So I need to find thermal paste and some sort of high-temp adhesive so that they stay in place. Would some sort of high-temp loctite work? Should I use something else?