Tips To Protect Your New Espresso Machine!

Water treatment is essential for great espresso, but even more importantly for reducing issues with your machine.  Water corrosion is the number one cause of damage done to espresso machines and is not covered under warranty – warranty is limited to manufacturers defects. 

Fortunately, if you soften your water, you will minimize the likelihood of water corrosion damage to your machine and your need to descale.  *In general, we do not recommend descaling a machine – instead we recommend taking the preventative step to soften the water.

Please read our water softening instructions:

• Tank / reservoir models w/ an intake hose
• Tank / reservoir models w/out an intake hose
• Plumbed in models

 A surge is an electrical interference that can negatively affect the electrical components and electronics on your espresso machine and coffee grinder that are being manufactured with more and more electronics, displays, weigh scales, etc.We strongly urge customers to use power protection in terms of higher quality surge suppressors.

Without protection, sensitive electronic components in an espresso machine can be prematurely damaged or destroyed. These components include, but not limited to, heating elements, thermostat controls, pressurstats, and brain units. Damage caused by electrical surges are typically not covered under any manufacturer’s warranty – warranty is usually limited to manufacturers defects.

The illustration below shows the brownouts and surges that can damage an espresso machine. Surges can come from outside power lines and inside from other appliances or items plugged into the same circuit.

Therefore, it is important to protect your espresso machine investment with a surge suppressor. Please purchase a surge suppressor with a minimum joule rating of 1080 joules or higher.  These can be found at home improvement or hardware stores.  We also strongly recommend that the surge suppressor be a single outlet type where only the espresso machine will connect to it. Surge suppressor strips and cheaply priced surge suppressors usually do not do the job as effective as higher priced ones.usually do not work well. If you have a timer on the outlet, you should plug in the timer first, then the surge suppressor, and then the espresso machine. We have found in several instances that timers can cause a surge.  We suggest the Tripp Lite brand, 15 amp or 20 amp.

For more information please read our Power Protection article.