Hope your S24 brings you as much joy as mine does to me. They're built like a tank, and the parts are readily gettable from the likes of CoffeeParts.
As for your pressure problem, can't say I can pin-point the problem directly; but it's sounding like maybe an anti-vac valve issue. Not too sure though, and don't take my word as law as I'm by no means a technician. But it certainly shouldn't be losing that much pressure that quickly. Mine maybe loses around 0.1b@60sec when I first start it up, but after it's heated up after around 20 mins of no action you can't even notice how slow it's going down.
Do you know much about the history of your machine? Was it commercial? How many shots did it usually pull per day? How long has it been out of action before you started her up? etc. All this helps to isolate any possible issue internally.
WHATEVER THE CASE, you definitely will want to descale her yourself, especially if there's no water softener in the water tank (this is usually attached to the inlet hose in the tank). These machines, along with EVERY brand of coffee machine, are renowned for scale build up if not properly looked after. You can pick up descaler almost anywhere, and it's fairly straightforward to flush through the system - but is pretty time consuming. Just make sure to remove the water softener when you do though, as it can stuff up the resin.
If you don't have a water softener, get one. If you have one, run it through a salt shower/bath (as per the manual). This will refresh the resin to minimise scale build up in the machine.
Now...depending on the colour the descaler comes out of your machine, and how confident you are, you may need to completely open her up and give the boiler, element, probe, and anything else that looks like barnacles, an overnight citrus/descaler bath. This is the only way to be 100% sure that all/as much as possible of the scale is gone.
If your not confident enough, don't worry
there's heaps of technicians out there who are. Peruse the sponsors here to find someone local. It might cost a few hundred $, but in the end you know the machine is literally as good as new, and will last for many more years to come.Hope this helps, and good luck bud.
-Aaron

Leave a comment: