Plumbing Connection Help

Tips and Tricks you have discovered with your S1, VII, Mini-VII, Dream, or Dream T that lets you do any aspect of coffee making, steaming, maintenance, etc better.
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ddunn

Plumbing Connection Help

Post by ddunn »

My S-1 arrived this week, but I have not been able to connect to my water line. My water is very low in minerals, so initially I am going to connect directly to my house water. My problem is with the female connector on the end of the hose that came with the machine. It is 3/8", and I am trying to connect it to another 3/8" female connector on the end of the hose going to my water source. I purchased a short, 3/8" connector with male fittings on each side, but it will not screw in far enough to sit and seal the connection. Does this take a special type of connector. I am disappointed that Chris' Coffee did not give me a "heads up" about this.
barjohn

Post by barjohn »

Unfotunately, there are so darn many connectors used in homes that it is impossible to prefigure. In my case I had 1/2" male coming out of the water supply cutoff under the sink and of course needed to adapt to the 3/8" female. I just went to an ACE hadware store and they helped me find the right fittings. There are various 3/8" fittings such as pipe and compression. The fittings from the unit are compression, if memory serves me, and many undersink are pipe fittings. Also make sure you use teflon tape to seal connections as they will leak otherwise.

Take both fittings with you to the ACE hardware store and have them match them up.

Good luck and good espresso!
ddunn

Plumbing Connection Help

Post by ddunn »

Thanks for the info. Yes, I doped the threads with teflon.
merge03

Plumbing Solutions

Post by merge03 »

My machine was provided with a high quality PTFE hose covered with stainless braid. It had a nice right angle elbow at one end and a straight female connector at the other end. This hose is great if you plan to use the plastic John Guest fittings. Otherwise, put it aside.

If you plan to do some real plumbing the supplied hose will not work for several reasons. First is that it is an instrument fitting hose, with male flare fittings inside the female nuts (that's as good as i can do for a descritption). Needless to say, this type of fitting matches nothing in plumbing land. To make matters worse, the nuts on this hose have parallel threads, they are not tapered as pipe fittings are. The thread size/pitch is the same as 1/4" NPT (Nation Pipe Taper), but they are not tapered. So it will not mate to any size/type of compression fitting. Thus you can't thread anything deep enough to get a decent seal.

Making matters worse, the S1 is designed to be used in a setting were there is a hole beneath it to accomadate straight in plumbing.

But nirvana is easy. First note that the fitting on the botton of the S1 is slightly recessed, and requires about an inch of extension before an elbow can be used. I used a 1/4" NPT bass coupling off the botton of the machine, and attached a 1/4" NPT street elbow to that. I actually used a 1/4" NTP x 1/4" compression elbow. To which I attached a stainless braided 1/4" compression ice maker hose (12"). After that I used a 1/4" compression x 1/4" compression elbow, and then a 60" x 1/4" stainless braided ice maker hose. After that a 1/4" compression x 1/4" NPT fitting, and direct into my plumbing. Looks great, fits great, and no plastic hoses or plastic fittings.

The plumbing above is just my experimental setup, as I plan on replacing all of it with stainless steel JIC fittings and stainless braided PTFE hoses from McMaster-Carr. Just needed to make sure I had it all correct with brass and PVC/stainless before I dropped the coin on stainless fittings.

Be sure to NSF 61 (drinking water) approved materials. Brass, stainless, PTFE and PVC all meet these requirements, though PTFE and stainless are my personal preferences. There is nothing wrong with PVC as long as you aren't buring it and breathing the off gasses of combustion.

Hope this helps.
Todd

Re: Plumbing Connection Help

Post by Todd »

Merge03, thanks for the tip! I just received my S1 and I have to say it is a little disappointing that that Chris hasn't fixed or at least documented this process yet but as noted there I could not find an appropriate fitting at 3 different plumbing supplies would fit. Thankfully I didn't just take the advice of the clerk there and I picked up the hardware essentially that you noted and it worked out great. Only had to take one extra trip back to the store because I made a slight design change upon installation.
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