# Descale gaggia classic



## kappa22 (Feb 11, 2016)

I own a gaggia classic which I pull two shots per day from using Volvic water. I'm looking for some advice on how often I should descale this machine considering the above?


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## StuartS (Jan 2, 2015)

Mine gets used twice a day and I descale every 3-4 months or so. not much scale comes out. I've used it with tap water, Tesco Ashbeck and most recently Waitrose Essentials.


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## kappa22 (Feb 11, 2016)

Fair enough. Thanks for your help.


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## hotmetal (Oct 31, 2013)

I'm not the water expert round here but there have been a number of pretty detailed threads on water for espresso recently. It has been said that (AFAIK) the levels of hardness in Volvic are below a 'threshold' whereby scale will be almost non-existent. Various people with dual boiler machines have run them on volvic for maybe a couple of years now, and they show no signs of scale build-up. This (as well as factors relating to mineral composition and its effect on the taste and extraction of espresso) is why you might have seen threads of people coming out of Morissons/Sainsbury with trolley-loads of it. I'm running my R58 on Volvic for this reason (dual boiler machines are a much bigger deal to descale than single boiler machines) - so I hope the advice is right! If you have descaled your Classic and have used Volvic ever since then I would maybe not bother for a couple of years.


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