Plumbing In Your Machine

Not everyday, but quite often we get folks looking to buy a machine to plumb in to their house system, or who already have a machine and just aren’t sure what plumbing-in should look like.
This post is specifically for that - what you need, what’s handy to have, what parts are involved, etc. I’ll start at the house water supply and work towards the machine.

Pressure

The first component we’re going to come across moving from the house water line to the espresso machine is going to be a pressure regulator. City water tends to be close to 5 bars of pressure, but most espresso machines can only take 2-3 bars. To accomplish this, we’ll install a pressure regulator, such as this one from BWT. If the hose coming from your house is a braided metal hose such as this one with a ⅜” F BSP (British Standard Pipe) connection, you won’t need any adaptor. If your hose is straight tubing, you may need an adaptor fitting between your hose and the ⅜” F BSP threading of the Pressure Reducer.

Filter Head

The next step is the filter head. Both the Quick Change filter head and Flex Quick Change head from BWT have ⅜” M BSP, which is compatible as a plug and play option with the above pressure gauge. This is what your filter will connect to, and in my humble opinion, it is 100% non negotiable that you have a water filter if your waterline is at all high minerality. In Calgary where we’re located, the water is very hard, and not using a filter can severely impact an espresso machine in the course of a year or two due to internal scale build up in the lines, in the boiler, and on the element. BWT has a great chart detailing the differences in what to expect from their filters based off what the water in your city/county is like. 

Flow Meter

Following your filter head, a Flow Meter is a *Nice But Not Required* addition. Essentially, it tells you when you need to change your filter by comparing the filter capacity vs how much water has been run through it. As filters are pretty expensive, and knowing how much water you’ve run through your machine is hard to calculate, I feel that this is really worth having.

Hose to Machine

The last step is to connect the filter set up to the machine inlet. Most machines meant to be plumbed in come with the hosing required to connect it, the main thought here is just to ensure if you need an adaptor between the hosing and the flowmeter or filter head.


Key takeaways -

Ensure you have a pressure reducer! City pressure is too high for machines.
Using a filter is Very Important, they will significantly improve the overall longevity of your machine
Espresso machines are generally all in BSP (British Standard Pipe), which is Not the same as NPT (National Pipe Thread)

Check out this video from Whole Latte Love, as it does a wonderful job showing step by step the process of plumbing in.