Filled my CO2 4/27 and it ran out today

Is that normal?

It is a five lb tank, I force carbed, but have about half left of a pale ale (12 psi) and carbed a Dubbel at 16psi with fridge at 45 degrees. I also finished off another keg which was already carbed and maybe half way through.

It seems that if I kept the gas on non stop for the past month that if there was a leak (which I checked for with soapy water) it would have been gone a lot faster than a month. But, at the same time I feel like I should be getting a little more life out of my CO2. So, is this normal for a 5lb CO2 tank, or, do I have the world's slowest leak? I have had a leak before and I lost my CO2 in two to three days so now I always check after reconnecting anything.

Thanks,

I usually go through a 5lb. tank after about 6-8 kegs depending on carbonation rates.. You definately have a leak if you've only done two kegs.

Sounds like a leak as well. You might want to recheck your system a little at a time. Take it apart and build up the parts that you need, and check them as you go.

One thing I've been wondering about, since I just started kegging, is: what it the normal PSI of a fresh tank of CO2? The one I got was just under 600, and from the range of the regulator (and the "Time to order gas" section, starting at 400), I would have thought it would be much higher.

In other words, maybe you didn't start with a full tank(?)

I've heard people on here state that the regulator doesn't measure how much is in the tank but the pressure which makes sense. As my tank always reads a certain amount up until it is out which it then reads 0.

I have only gone to 1 place to fill the CO2 mainly because only 1 place is convenient. I'd hope that I would not get numerous tanks not filled to capacity, or at least close to it.

Some leaks are very difficult to find.

I've noticed slow leaks from the corny lids, leaks if the ball lock fittings aren't fully screwed down, and leaks if you have the MFL nuts that screw onto the gas and liquid quick disconnects.

Check your ball-lock posts and make sure that all have the right o-rings underneath. Use a liberal amount of keg lube on your large O rings and make sure every connection is more than hand tight.

Thanks for all the suggestion.
But I have a follow up question, how do I find a leak if there are no bubbles when I put soapy water everywhere? I even put them on keg posts, the lid, etc.

TheH2 said:

Thanks for all the suggestion.
But I have a follow up question, how do I find a leak if there are no bubbles when I put soapy water everywhere? I even put them on keg posts, the lid, etc.

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It is going to be a pain. Hopefully you have it in a quiet place. Turn off any other appliances, fans, etc... and listen. You might hear the leak. Tighten all connections. Pressurize all of your kegs after you do so and then turn off the gas at the tank. Wait a few days and pull the quick releases and see if one keg in particular has no gas, or only a small amount.

Trial and error.

If it makes you feel any better, I came home last night to 4-5 gallons of diluted star san in the bottom of my kegerator (luckily I have a keezer, so the damage was contained). I apparently had an leak on my out-post, and the CO2 pushed out nearly all of the starsan I had been storing in that keg out the post, and down into the keezer. What a pain in the @$$.

Thanks, misery loves company.

It may not be your keg leaking. Check everything. CO2 tank, hoses, ball/pin locks, keg seals, etc. Also, DNW stated, the regulators are not designed to read how much is in the tank. They measure pressure from the tank....which will be around 600 until it's empty.

Another tip to conserve CO2... when your keg starts getting light, like it's going to kick any pint now, cut the CO2 feed. There is enough residual pressure in the keg to dispense that last pint or two or ten, and you won't lose a ton of CO2 from the bottle when some unknowing soul starts yelling across the room that "no more beer is coming out" as they sit there with the faucet wide open.

I've had the same problem for a while now with no luck in finding the leak. I even took my CO2 tank, regulator, gas line, beer line, and two hooked up kegs and threw it all in a filled bathtub (taking care to submerge certain parts of the regulator). Nothing. There were no bubbles whatsoever. But my CO2 will empty in about a month, even if it is hardly used.

Good luck.

Another thought... I had an intermittent leak when I first set up my kegerator. Turned out to be the stupid hose clamps on my barbed connections. They would constrict and relax with the temperature cycles. Some of them even snapped apart.

I removed all the clamps from my system (they are completely unnecessary if you use the right size hose with the right size barbs) and no more leaks.

Hey boredatwork, I'm with you. I've had this issue since I first bought the kegerator a last November. I was keeping the CO2 and just turning it on for a minute each day but that got old and I thought I had fixed the problem.

So, want to race? First one to fix the problem owes the other homebrew. That seems the only fair way to do it since the person who can't fix the problem could surely use a couple extra homebrews to drink away the sorrows.

I'm going to try and figure it out this weekend, I guess I won't know if I'm successful until a month or so from now.

I'll definitely check the clamps now too. Basically I think I'll just spray everything down.

If anyone has some rules of thumb for narrowing it down like turn on CO2, bring to appropriate pressure, turn off CO2 and the pressure should not drop for X minutes? I've read something like that on here but no specific time period they should hold pressure.

A lot of these items are ok to put under water. Fill up a tub, put your system on some pressure, and dunk your pieces and parts until you find out what's going on. I have a friend that says that even regulators can go underwater, although I've been to scared to go that far myself. If you don't find anything, take a break (for a day or two), and try it again.

I did the bathtub thing and it didn't reveal any leaks. Of course, don't let that stop anyone from trying it.

Here my latest update. I got sick of filling my CO2 every month so I had left it disconnected for a while. The tank, regulator and hosing where sitting in a closet. I just refilled my tank again yesterday and went to put everything back together.

The funny thing is that the last two times I spent a major effort on finding leaks I tightened up the clamps on my hosing connections. After putting the assembly together again (this time at room temperature) there was still room to tighten.

So I am really beginning to suspect micro-micro leaks out of the hose connections. I think the fact that I can always tighten the clamps, even though they were tightened on the previous check, has something to do with temperatures cycles - in and out of the fridge?

I don't know. I'm getting to the point where I am just going to convince myself that its not a bad thing to refill the CO2 tank regularly.

Yup, sounds familiar alright. Get rid of the hose clamps.

What do other people use. I wouldn't want to not have any kind of clamp on there.

After more though, if the the worm clamps are really the problem, how come I don't have any trouble with beer leaking out of the beer line?

I've never had problem with leaks because of clamps. Maybe because they weren't tight enough...but that's it.

boredatwork said:

After more though, if the the worm clamps are really the problem, how come I don't have any trouble with beer leaking out of the beer line?

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Because liquid is more dense than gas. Also, when liquid leaks (even just a trickle) you see it right away and correct the problem; minor gas leaks are a real PITA to find.

Oetiker clamps would be a step up from worm clamps.

I used small cable ties for a while because I was afraid of the tubing flying off the barb while I slept, and filling my basement with precious CO2 before I could stop it. Then one day as a test, I bumped the regulator up to 60 psi without any clamps on the hoses. Even wiggling them by hand, they held fast and didn't leak. I think at my average serving pressure of 14 psi, they'll be fine w/o clamps.

Suthrncomfrt1884 said:

I've never had problem with leaks because of clamps. Maybe because they weren't tight enough...but that's it.

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Clamps are supposed to be a security measure. If your setup leaks without clamps, or with the clamps being too loose, you probably have either the wrong size tubing or the wrong size barbs.

The more I think about it the more I am skeptical of the clamps being the cause of the problem.

The only problem specific to worm clamps is that they do not always apply pressure around the whole diameter of the tubing. The area under the part that you screw can have a gap in it so it is not compressing the tubing. I suppose I could see how that would cause a leak.

But it would take a lot of disturbance to make a leak, especially on a gas line, because those tubes are super thick and fit on extremely tight to the ball lock barb.

I think I found the leak, not sure why it didn't show up before. It was between the tank and the regulator. The pressure held for at least 19 hours after turning off the CO2, 12 in the afternoon to 7 in the morning. When I got back from work it was reading 0 (30 hours) but I'm assuming it has a release valve at some point? Seems odd to hold for 19 hours and then be at 0 10 hours later. I'm guessing that if it was a leak it would have slowly gone down to 0?

This thread is back from the dead...

But on the subject of leaks, I went thru a CO2 tank in about 3 weeks, without much use. So I just went thru my setup and realized that my manifolds are leaking, some slow, others not. So these leaks can appear anywhere. The best was to find them is to put them under water, no just spraying water on them. I thought I had found my leaks by spraying star san on them, but you can have really tiny leaks that won't make noticeable bubbles unless you put them under water.