Regulator Pressure rising? dumfounded here?

OK well I just put my first two kegs into my Kegerator. I taped everything and of course it was a little pit of foam right away.. well I set the pressure to 10-11 psi.. It was pouring fine. well the next day I go to the keg and just check to see what the pressure was at and its at 20psi. I was like wow.. Ok so I blead the tanks and re-set the pressure to 10 psi and of course the first two beers are all foam.. I attribute this to the fact that the bottom of the fridge is at 32 degree's and the top is at almost 40.(I'm getting a fan for the inside). anyway I go to bed and get up this morning and what the hell the regulator reads 20 psi again.. I blead the lines and re-set it again but I have a feeling that when I get home its going to read the 20 psi again.. Does anyone have any help... Is it a bad regulator.(its brand new)... I know I can fix the foam because of the major temp difference in the lines and the tower and such.. but the pressure has me puzzled....

I'm having this same issue. Although luckily not to the same extremes. Mine rose from 12psi to 15 overnight. I just assumed it was not stabilized before I attached the kegs, so the initial readout never fully equalized. But I was force/burst carbing my keg so that makes more sense.

mosquitocontrol said:

I'm having this same issue. Although luckily not to the same extremes. Mine rose from 12psi to 15 overnight. I just assumed it was not stabilized before I attached the kegs, so the initial readout never fully equalized. But I was force/burst carbing my keg so that makes more sense.

Click to expand...

Force burst carbing? huh... I dont understand... I am going to try again when I get home I think one problem I might be having is that I am trying to set the pressue while the valves to the kegs are open... I am going to try and turn off the valves and set the psi to 10psi and then open the valves to pressurize the kegs.. maybe that will give me more of a true reading on what I'm getting as far as pressure.. I also need to take the tubing and make sure that it is wrapped up with the coupler cuz I have it running down and then back up.. so I think that might be causing foam also...hmmm.. this is not as easy as I thought...

hah. Stumbled upon the other thread. Those guys have it right over there. Now that I read it I remember seeing the same explanation before. My co2 cooled in the fridge too causing the problems.

Yeah I'm just hoping that its not my regulator cuz i bought it from beveragefactory.com... and I dont feel like sending it all the way back to california to get one swapped out.. especially since I am having a superbowl party this weekend with like 30+ people coming over.. I need the beer to be pouring steady all night long... I think after that first beer its going to be fine because people are going to be consistantly going to the kegs...

some regulator drift of a few psi is common especially on cheaper regs. as far as your 30 psi difference, id say something is wrong. i doubt it has anything to do with temperature fluctuations in you kegs. do you have a check valve on your regulator? if you do, pressure greater than what your reg is set to cannot go back into you reg and increase the pressure.

There are two things potentially at work here. The first is that you may not have check valves in your distribution manifold or in the valves on the regulator output. If you do some kind of elevated pressure burst carbing, you may have generated more pressure in the keg than what you're setting the regulator to. If you have 15psi worth of carbonation in the keg and set the reg to 10psi, it will settle closer to 15psi on the gauge over time.

The other thing is that if you're putting the reg into the fridge for the first time, as it cools off, the spring that pushes on the diaphragm shrinks and lets more pressure through. In other words, you have to adjust the pressure after the regulator is good and cold.

I'll have to try that I am just going to look at everything when I get home and make sure that I reset everything... I payed more for the double gauge regulator... I dont know... will find out more later.. thanks for all the input I will let u know what happens.. hopefully I can get it fixed...

well nothing worked... I completely bled the system and re charged the system to 5psi... hoping that it would rise to about 10-13psi... well It rose to about 10psi by last night at 12 midnight and then when I woke up this morning it was at 18psi.... I seriously dont know what the hell is going on... I'm guessing its the diaphram being cold since its in my fridgewith the co2 tank... but come on! I cant get this damn thing to levelout.. I turned the pressue down again this morning before I left and bled the system and it energized up to 4-5psi again. But I know when I get home its going to be around 10-15psi.. and It will prob go back up to around 18-20psi... my next question is if this keeps happening untill i get the problem fixed is it going to hurt my kegs?... I am keeping the bottome half of the fridge at aroun32-36degree's obviously the top of the fridge is around 38-40degree's.. I'm waiting on my fan motor to be able to stabilize the temps...but I just want to know with the kegs being charged with 15-20 psi at times will it cause the beer to go flat or anything... I dont want to wast two kegs trying to get this thing running right...

Please help!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Disconnect the QDs from the kegs and set the regulator to 10psi (essentially you're only pressurizing your lines). Leave it alone for a while and see if it holds. If it does, the problem is that your beer is overcarbed and not a regulator problem.

Ok so lets say that my beer is overcarbed... how do I bring the carbenation down?
So that I can set it and leave it?

why so cold? not that that should make a difference.

release all pressure from keg (leave reg disconnected)

come back in a few hours do it again.

you'd probably want to warm them up since it'll happen faster.

after that I'd pop them in fridge set it to 30 for 36 hours, then release and set to 10-12 (that's how I'd get it carbed by this sunday)

Thanks man... I will have to try this i'm gonna make sure the kegs are not overcarbed before I have a new regulator sent....

well I tested it out... good news is the regulator is holding pressue when not attatched to the kegs... so that means that one or both of the kegs are over carbonated... so this morning I hooked the Magic Hat #9 up to the CO2 and when I get home if its went up in pressue I will know its that keg.. If not I prob am just going to take both kegs out of the fridge and set them in the basement and hook up my hand pump tap and just let it sit there and decarbonate. I'll just do it to both.. cuz I notice when I hooked up both kegs this morning especially the shock top that tiny bubbles where coming up fromt he coupler tawards the tap.. I keep thinking about the flashlight test... Oh well I'lll get it... should get these things ready by sunday...thanks for all the help guys... great community here...

Wow. It’s been 13 or so years since this thread was active so hoping I can still get some support here in this community. I am also brand new to kegerators and hoping to get my first great pour here.

I am having the same issue. However, my psi is still going up even when it’s not even hooked up to a keg. I even changed out the regulator and still having same issues.

Being that I did a test and unhooked the co2 from the keg and that I switched the regulator (tested 2 so far) but psi still creeps up to 50+ psi over a span of about an hour, what can be the issue?

Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much!

So you have no kegs attached, is the valve to the CO2 tank open or closed when are you doing these tests? Also post a pic of your regulator.

it's possible your kegs were already carbonated to a higher volume than what you regs are set at.

I find it's always better to carb low, put the kegs in the kegerator, let them stabilize, check the keg pressure, attach the regs and slowly adjust the settings until you reach your target.

it's a lot easier to bring the pressures up than to bring them down.