Should you keep your commercial machine on 24/7

One-a-day

A bit of a sideline to this topic I guess, I've never had a washing machine blow a hose and we've left our cold water on to the machine for the last 7 or more years. So if your coffee machine costs more than the average washing machine you'd think it should have as good if not better industrial strenght hoses and pressure fittings.

FreshCoffee2

I take your point. The inlet water lines supplied with commercial esp machines seem to be quite different to those supplied with washing machines and dish washers. The actual water line inside of the external stainless steel "braiding" is a kind of "soft" black rubber that does seem to degrade over time particularly if exposed to heat. This is quite different to the kind of harder "plasticised" hoses fitted to washers. It is not the pressure fittings or end fittings themselves that fail. Most often the failure is somewhere along the actual hosing OR, at the point where the end fittings are crimped or vulcanised or just plain joined to the hosing. So to answer the unspoken question directly.....just because you (or we) might leave your (our) washing machines and dishwashers pressurised forever with little chance of a failure, doesnt mean we can dismiss the probability of a water hose failure to an espresso machine ( it'll never happen to me syndrome). They dont use the same types of hoses and in my type of business I have seen the failures happen often enough. Regardz, FC.

sketchy

I agree with one a day. Don't buy the cheap hoses, and check with the suplier how long the life span of the hose is. i change my hoses on a yearly bases. LE

FreshCoffee2

G'day Sketchy, I see where you're coming from as well but in most cases it is not the act of someone buying "cheap" hosing....the hoses are as supplied standard with the espresso machine. No one can tell you how long they will last. Some last 20 years, others last many years less! Some last a few days. If you are in the habit of turning off every day at the close of business, you dont need to change hoses annually unless they fail and if they do, it happens while you're there so no damage is done. You might replace a perfectly good hose with a faulty new one and have a failure within the next year OR, it might never happen! I have no problem turning off when I leave, and back on in the morning, so dont really understand the amount of resistance this line of management elicits whenever I advise people to do this. For peace of mind you could look at replacing the standard supplied hose with hydraulic pressure rated hosing but then you would still be relying on the joins between the hose and the end fittings. Regardz, FC.

flatwhite

Sorry FC, no doubt you have mentioned that many times before. The reason I asked is because I work for a commercial dishwasher manufacturer and very rarely do we hear of issues with supply hoses and back in my coffee machine [amongst other things] repair days they were pretty much the same breed of hose. Add to that I'm pretty sure all coffee machines run of the cold water supply, whereas dishwashers are hot water fed and I would expect hot water more likely to cause failures. Opinion is no substitute for experience however and obviously you have had some issues...my final suggestion would be local water pressure, which in some areas can peak over 1000kpa at night due to the low demand.

sketchy

Hopefully everyones machine has a pressure reducing valve. LE 🙂

melbournecoffeeguy

For my five cents worth we always leave the coffee handles in the machines (except overnight) to ensure temperature stability. The alternative is that a cold handle goes into a warm group head, and the pf rapidly expands to meet the heat of the group head, causing an imperfect seal, and poor extraction.

I personally recommend to always leave handles in the heads when the machine is on this stops the seals from wearing out prematurly. Another reason to leave machines on is incase the anit vaccum valves fail and suck milk into the boiler...... 😢 AND NEVER SOAK STEAM PIPES CLEAN THEM AFTER EVERY USE! 😡

One-a-day

I can see it now the Pirtek espresso machine hose service crew, 😉

espressopronto

Go on, leave it on... i dares ya! But seriously, it does take an awful long time to heat up in the morning if you turn it off (discovered this accidently one time when cleaners turned it off at night! aahhh!)

over_extracted

😃 That happend to me too once . Had a lonnnnnng line of people wanting coffee,talk about work preassure ;D.

« Previous Page