Plumbing the Alex Izzo Duetto II

i got the water filtration kit from www.chriscoffee.com which comes with almost everything i need:

     water filter
     water filter housing and mounting bracket
     water filter wrench
     two shut-off valves to put before and after the filter
     john guest tubing
     max adaptor
     

i also bought three more things that didn’t come with the filter kit:

     a water hardness test strip
     a john guest tube cutter
     a BSPP-to-john guest adaptor

i had already tested the hardness of my water in the past but I wanted to double check, that’s why I got the test strip.  if the water is too hard, there’s also a softener system that can be bought at chris coffee, but I ended up not needing it.

the jg tube cutter is important to make clean cuts on the john guest tubbing. 

the BSPP-to-JG adaptor was the trickiest part.  my coffee machine is an izzo alex duetto II, which comes ready to be plumbed very easily by just flipping a switch behind the drip tray.  it also comes with a braided line that can be connected to the bottom of the machine.  the trick is that that the end of this line had a 3/8” BSPP fitting which is not common in the US.  so after getting advice from the folks at chris coffee, they also sent me an adaptor on the mail to go from JG to BSPP.

note that one doesn’t need to buy this all from chris coffee.  as a matter of fact, when I started looking into this I found most of the parts I needed at home depot, although I did get stuck at the BSPP fitting since I couldn’t find it there.  so then I emailed chris coffee and researched more online and decided to go with the john guest tubing which is amazing because it’s so easy to install and can be cut to whatever lengths you need.  if you don’t want to use JG tubing, I believe this adaptor will go from standard us treading to BSPP (but I am not sure).

this is how the BSPP-to-JG adaptor looks like (already connected to the BSPP end):

the installation was pretty straight-forward, once I figured out all the parts:

first you need to find which is the cold water line, and shut off the valve.  then install the max adaptor in between the line to the faucet and the valve.  at the JG end of the “T”, install some tubbing and then a shut-off valve, then from there to the water filter housing:

remember to purge at least 2 gallons of water through the filter before using it, otherwise the carbon residue can damage the machine.

then from the out of the water filter, install another shut-off valve and more tubbing to the espresso machine:

then connect the JG tubing to the braided line coming from the espresso machine using the BSPP-to-JG adaptor.  remember tu use teflon in all these connections.

I had to make a hole through my cabinet, such that my tubing could go behind my dish washer and up through my counter.  this killed me but I had to drill a hole in the counter, but the alternative was to drill a hole in the wall and do a lot more work and routing of the pipes through the wall which my father convinced me wasn’t worth it:

so that’s all.

to change the filter in the future, first shut off the valve before the filter, then turn on the machine to have the pump pull some water from it, so it drains the water in the filter housing and tubing.  then shut off the valve after the filter.  use the wrench to open the housing and replace the filter, and remember to purge it before using it.