Tom’s Haros

The Haros Company of Hobart, Tasmania, have been around making boilers for decades, and the ‘Haros Hot Drink Dispenser’ was a pretty common sight in bars, pubs and restaurants before espresso machines gained popularity in Australia.

Tom, proprietor of the wonderful Farm Cafe in Abbotsford, bought it to increase capacity for hot water and milk texturing, taking the load of their main espresso machine. In vintage condition it didn’t quite keep up, so he brought it down to the workshop for a few tweaks.

Together we came up with an ambitious list of improvements:

• Upgrade power to 20 amp for quick recovery
• Auto-fill system
• Automatic delivery of pre-set amounts of hot water for teapots
• Lever-actuated steam taps with cool-touch wands

First thing to do was replace the tiny standard element with a 4 kilowatt monster that also had extra ports, allowing us to get water in and out, bypassing the manual taps. These ports were then plumbed in to the inlets, with solenoids to control the flow of water. An external box was designed for the electronics, which contains the auto-fill controller, main switch and timer for hot water outlet. The result is a great looking vintage boiler with modern controls and plenty of power to meet peak demands for hot water and steam.