Plumbing in – removing some of the mystery.

Plumbing in – removing some of the mystery.


I recently plumbed in my espresso machine and I had never really been around a plumbed in machine before except in coffee shops and there I never noticed the plumbing one way or the other, so it was a bit of a mystery coming in for me.  


Here are some of the things I found out.  The line coming in at least on my machine is a 3/8 of an inch outer diameter tube.  It can come up snaking around if necessary because it is under pressure.  The lines coming out are much bigger – I do not know the exact size ,but not too far under an inch and they need to go steadily down hill because they are not under pressure.  On my machine there are two lines coming out – one for the drip tray and one for backflushing etc.  They are slightly different sizes but could be joined together with a Y joint allowing only one tube to drop down after a bit.   


I do not have the only possible set up by any stretch of the imagination, but here is what the water sees as it comes through the machine.  First there is a cut off under the kitchen sink where it branches from the supply for the sink, then it passes through a pipe until it pops out of the wall next to the machine, again with a shut off valve.  I then installed a Floodstop, which has a detector attached to it that will shut off the water if there is ever a leak.  Mine is plumbed in, but out just goes into a large bottle and if something went wrong it would flood the house, so some way of cutting off the supply is essential.  Our laundry is not in the basement and so I have the same kind of set up there.  I think they work although thankfully I do not know for sure (you can test it when you set it up, and it worked then, but the real question is if it will work a year or two if something goes wrong when you are asleep or out of town and hopefully I will never know that answer).  They are not cheap, but paying $100 now to save thousands later seems like a good trade off to me.  

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From there, it enters the pressure reducer which I blogged about the other day. 

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It exits the pressure regulator and from there it runs into a filter. 
Most people need a softner and a filter, but our water is very soft,
arguably too soft, so a filter is enough for me.  I ordered the filter
from Chris coffee and it surprised me how huge it is, but it looks hard
core and does not need a special brand of filter which makes replacing
it much cheaper than most filters.

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From the filter it goes to the machine and then out to the coffee or the very classy attached bottle.  (-:

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The set up is not elegant and will some day be hidden in my cabinet, but it does work well.