Another Cremina thread about leaks; this time at the the place at the safety valve on top of the sight glass.

The leak came about when I changed the seals on the sight glass; a rather complex task and, in my case, expensive too (in that I broke 2 sight glasses in the process). I had to change the seals because there was leak on the lower seal on the safety glass. (FYI, the first sight glass I broke was due to clumsiness. I grabbed the glass instead of the frame in handling the machine. The second was due to tightening the lower nut too much and cracking the glass).

Anyway, I eventually changed the sight glass seals without breaking anything (hallelujah!) and upon reassembly and firing up the machine I now got steam coming from the safety valve. Given the safety valve was not leaking before I changed the sight glass seals I know the problem doesn't lie with the little rubber gasket in the safety valve. But to be sure I changed this as well, retightened the seals around the top and bottom of the sight glass, and upon firing up the machine, the safety valve was still giving off steam and eventually causing condensation to drip down to the bottom of the machine. Not good. Since I have made a pressure gauge to fit the cremina I then check to see if the pressure was too high, but no, it is fine, well under 1 BAR. Therefore, too high a pressure in the machine isn't the reason for the safety valve leak.

So has anyone got any advice regarding what I have done wrong, or simply could be wrong. Maybe I have not been tightening the nuts on the sight glass sufficiently. The problem here is that I am quite wary of tightening them too far since, as I said above, I have already broken one sight glass through over tightening.

As it was, it turned on the copper washer that connected the safety valve to the machine. Mine looked OK, but Doug advised me to change it. Since I had a brand new one from a previous OEM gasket and seal set from Olympia Express I simply replaced old with new and bingo the leak was gone. If that didn't work I was going to get one of Doug's own custom made teflon washer, but in the end there was no need for that.

Now my Cremina is up and running again with a new sight glass, new sight glass seals (both of which should last an eternity, and thank god because that is a horrible job to replace those!) and now a new copper washer at the base of the safety valve.

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2011-03-01

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