[Closed] Gaggia descaling

Gaggia do their own stuff in little sachets.

No idea if it's better than others.

Happydonkey.co.uk will sell you all the stuff you need, including puly caff and a blind basket for backflushing. All that backflushing sounds rubbish to me though.

But I just take the opportunity of taking off the shower plate and the shower block (just undo the 2 allen bolts and prise it off) and de-gunking it all manually, and running ordinary descaler through.

Last time I left it so long that bits of scale dislodged and got stuck in the works, but poking about with a cocktail stick sorted it.

I just bought a new rubber seal, shower screen and cleaning brush from happy donkey - well worth it.

I use the Gaggia stuff about once every six months. As we live in a hard water area we have a Breville kettle that has the Brita water softening system built in. I always fill the Gaggia using water that's been through the kettle filter to avoid scaling up the Gaggia.

eekk.. hard water area too. not descaled in 2 years :s

I heard once that there is a coating on the boiler that is damaged by most descalers - so go for the Gaggia one. No idea if the claim was true - I've always put filtered water in so never descaled mine.

soft Scottish water, no need to de scale here 🙂

Filtered water. Now that makes sense. I'll descale then look into getting some Gaggia descaler.

Muchos gracias.

puly caff works for me, mind you I live in T' north so soft water here

But do what bigjohn said as well - take off the plate and the stuff behind it. All the sticky oils in the coffee make a residue that is nothing to do with whether the water is hard or not and the descaler does not touch it. It's very simple but if I remember correctly there are good instructions on the Gaggia website