If your Cuadra is making a quite loud popping sound to release steam or your gauge is going over 1.5 bar pressure, the most likely problem is that your pressurstat has limescale and is sticking to send continuous power to the heating element.
- The first step is to descale the inside portion of the pressurstat. In other words, the inside section is exposed to water. Power down the machine and allow it to fully cool. Unplug the electrical cord from the electrical outlet. Follow the other instructions to remove the body panels. Remove the pressurstat.
- Use a cotton swab dipped in strong citric acid or strong descaling solution and try to insert the swab to have the citric acid or descaling solution to remove the scale. Re-assemble.
- Descale machine using HX with tank descaling instructions. Please email us for these if you can not find them.
- Then replace the pressurstat. You do not want to replace the pressurstat first because you first want to remove all the limescale from the insides. Otherwise, you will just contaminate the new pressurstat.
Less likely causes of this problem are:
- Black carbon builds up on the pressurstat contacts (very unlikely unless the machine was powered on 24×7 or pressurstat is more than 1 year old, or
- there is a short circuit on the heating element and the unit is heating to ground. This is very unlikely as this usually results in a lukewarm machine. You can check for this by plugging the machine into a GFI outlet to test with the understanding that a GFI outlet may give you a false reading of a short circuit inside the machine.
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