McGuiver Revisited

It's inevitable that at least one thing at any given time in this aging coffee shop will be out of order, mildly broken or on it's way to broken. There were no catastrophic accidents while I was on vacation and for that I'm grateful. Shortly after returning, however, my brewer decided to start it's journey on the slow road to being a piece of shit. Or so I thought. Verdict is still out....but so far so good.

The hot water spigot off the brewer hasn't worked in months. Initially it was the calcium in the town water that had built up in the line and was blocking the flow. We've been taking all the hot water in the meantime from the espresso machine. A few months ago my coffee machine guru guy came by and spent an hour or two disassembling the brewer and scraping out the funk. He suggested buying a new water filter else the heating coil on the espresso machine was bound to burn out. Which it did.

In the several months since he'd been here, I've purchased the new filter but hadn't installed it. The spigot had stopped working again, I figured it was calcified again and I was waiting for a chance to take it apart and chisel it out myself. We finally got to it a couple of weeks ago. We installed the new filter under the sink but couldn't figure out where the calcification lived inside the brewer. We did figure out that the spigot was broke just because it was broke.... not having anything to do with the calcified lines. The day after we put the brewer all back together it began leaking, slowly and steadily, all day and all night, all over the counter. There weren't enough rags being delivered bi-weekly to maintain the leaks.

So, last night we took it apart again. And..... we found and beat the hell out of the calcification. The process, all in all, took four and a half hours. About an hour into dissecting this machine I began to wonder how in the hell Bill would know how to reassemble it. Bill's just gotten an iPhone so Bill thought ahead and took a pic of the top peice to use as a guide.
But then he kept going and going. There were little pieces of plastic hoses and about a gallon of water on the floor. He kept telling me to not bother mopping it up till he was done because there was so much more that would spill out and it took all of my will to ignore the obsessive compulsive drive to clean as I go.

Little Bri stopped by as we were getting started and provided some good company for the adventure. We all took a little "safety break" up in the attic space and came down to dive further in to the project. Our fascination grew. It all got galactic.



We figured out how to open the tank that held the water and it was like something from a sci-fi movie in there. I've heard stories for a year or two now about homeowners in the village of Johnson who keep having to replace their hot water heaters and about business owners who have similar problems with their water lines. This experience validated all of those stories. I had to use a foot long metal instrument and hack away at the walls of the water tank until it began falling off in thick sheets of funky green, chalky shit.

This is the tank after I cleaned it.

I had to shop vac the funk that came off the walls. This is what it looked like.

I took a picture of the filter as evidence for everyone who has ever or will ever drink the coffee here.... so that you can rest assured that I'm taking every possible measure to ensure you don't drink this stuff.
Thank you, Bill, for your good, analytical mind and your willingness to come and fix yet another broken thing at the Lovin Cup.
Maybe someday the ship will just run.... without any glitches. But probably not. That's the character of the place, I suppose?