Are Kegs, CO2 tanks, safe around small children?

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ShaLaH

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Hey Everybody,

So I just received my first keg kit, a 3 Gallon corny, 5 lb C02 tank, regulator, hoses, etc. My wife walks in and starts reading the "Warning" label that comes with the CO2 tank and starts freaking out and tells me I can't keep the keg equipment in the house because it's not safe around the kids or in the house.

I live in a 800 sq ft apartment with 2 kids (8 months & 3.5 years) and she's worried that the tank will explode or leak and asphyxiate us all.

Is it safe to have in an apartment this small with 2 young kids? If I were to keep it stored in a locked closet would that be safe?

If it is safe, help me persuade SWMBO that it is perfectly safe and can stay in the house. Please, help me keep my keg.

Cheers (from a bottle for now)
 
CO2 tanks and homebrew kegging setups are perfectly safe. The biggest risk is kids discovering delicious beer flowing from the taps. CO2 canisters are not going to explode. Think of the thousands upon thousands of fast food restaurants that store multiple CO2 tanks to dispense soda. Ever heard of a McDonalds blowing up because of a CO2 tank?

Her fears are unfounded. :mug:
 
Thanks BierMuncher!

You should've seen my face as I was opening the box and then when SWMBO put the foot down. Oh, the pain, the pain...

Keep the encouraging words coming ya'll.
 
The danger of the CO2 tank comes from the high pressure of the contents, not the actual contents. If your kids decide to pick up the tank (you should have it secured anyways) and smash it repeatedly with a large hammer, it may rupture and cause problems. If a large space rock smashes into your house, the tank may rupture and cause problems. If your kids drink all your homebrew, they may rupture and have problems.

But under normal conditions, or even the fairly abnormal conditions that most homebrewers seem to use products in, the setup is perfectly safe.

Or, you could invest in a kevlar lined kegerator...
 
Keep in mind that the CO2 tank and the kegs have safety release valve on them, too, which is meant to *safely* release pressure if it gets too high or something goes wrong.

Still, be reasonable with it. Don't leave the stuff out and accessible to the young ones!
 
Yeah there's no way a child is going to somehow break your co2 tank unless they took a hammer to the valve on top or something. Even knocking it over would just mean your regulator would be shot and it could vent all your gas quickly. If that happened in a small air-tight room like a closet sized room, you could have breathing problems. If that's not your room size, and you secure your tank, you're fine.

The worst a child could do would be to change the pressure, but safety is built into the tank and the regulator, you can't just keep cranking and have an explosion, it'll just start venting gas slowly.

Or yes the worst thing a child could REALLY do would be to pull on a tap and walk away, you'd lose all your beer AND your gas! Easy fix though: tap locks. They are keyed locks that hold the tap shut, and also keep fruit flies out of the tap. Nice...invest in those and secure your tank somehow, no issue whatsoever.

Just don't heat your house to over 400F degrees, cause then your tank might rupture...that's a serious risk. ;)
 
A full tank MIGHT be at risk of rupturing IF the environment where it's sitting gets above 120F for a significant amount of time. Chances are, you won't let the apartment get that hot, or you won't be there (none of you) if/when it does.

If she's so concerned about the thing falling onto one of the kids, secure it to a wall. That's pretty easy to do, OR put things between the tank and where the kids could get to it. The 3.5 year old should be able to understand to not touch the tank. The 8 month old, not so much. :eek:

BTW, I had my CO2 tanks in my 1 bedroom apartment where it got to over 100F a few times during the summer(s). Not a single issue. I also put them so that they were NOT where people would walk, so couldn't bump into any of them and knock them over.
 
As far as temperatures - I recently moved cross country, put all my junk in a Penske, and drove. I stopped off in Phoenix for 2 days. A thermometer I had in there that records high/low recorded a high of 122*. My CO2 tank was fine. No leaks, no explosions, nada.
 
I imagine 5 lbs of CO2 released into the air of an 800 sq foot apartment would not be noticable to anyone except your house plants.
 
Any pressurized tank should be properly secured so that it cannot fall over if it is stored upright and so it can't roll around if it's on its side. Tanks falling over CAN lead to explosive results (not combustion in the case of CO2, but sudden, catastrophic gas release launching heavy things at high speed). Similarly, make sure that your tanks are properly maintained and regularly inspected so they don't fail on their own.

The other thing to watch out for is a leak in an enclosed or semi-enclosed space. This could lead to suffocation. Obviously this would be a worry if a kid climbed into a keezer, but I'd also worry that a closet could hold gas well enough to be dangerous.

Those are really the only risks I can think of. It's not dangerous to have them in the house, it's really just the fairly obvious direct risks. I don't have a setup of my own, but I think it's basic common sense to keep kids from playing around or with them. This doesn't have to be at a paranoid level, but I would take some precautions, just as I would with other appliances, tools, and equipment.
 
Growing my father had all sorts of heavy equipment in the house (well the garage, but the garage was right underneath our bedrooms) including but not limited to a 250 gallon compressor, mig welder, and an Oxy-Acetylene torch. he never hid them (kind of hard to) he never lied about them, but from an early age, he taught us that without proper handling they can and will be very dangerous.
 
I imagine 5 lbs of CO2 released into the air of an 800 sq foot apartment would not be noticable to anyone except your house plants.

Correct. At atmospheric pressure, CO2 has a density of about 2 kg/m^3. A 5 lb (2.3 kg) tank contains just over a cubic meter of gas. An 800 sq foot apartment (assuming 8 foot ceilings) has about 180 cubic meters of airspace, so it's less than a 1% increase, even if it's totally contained.

In a closet, however, things would be different.
 
I'll echo what these guys are saying. Keep the kids away from the tank and you'll be fine. If it's empty now then it's safe, but once you get it filled keep it in a locked closet or kegerator.

I've worked in a few different labs, and I do a good bit of lab safety. Compressed gases can be quite dangerous, most companies require you to have gas safety training before you can touch a gas cylinder. Even inert gases (CO2, nitrogen, argon) that aren't poisonous/flammable are still under extreme pressure and can be deadly.

Much like propane, CO2 cylinders are filled with liquid CO2 that boils off to maintain the pressure in the tank. The vapor pressure is quite a bit higher than for propane though, depending on the ambient temperature the cylinder will see 500-800 psi.

Just treat the tank/regulator with respect and you'll be fine. Once it's full, be careful, don't drop it and don't leave it in a hot car. On a full tank, the safety disc can burst even at 100-110 degrees, people have had it happen in hot cars and garages. When it bursts the tank will vent ALL the CO2 out, this can be loud and unpleasant if you're standing nearby but it's not necessarily dangerous. Once the regulator is on the tank treat it with even more respect, since now the high pressure side is extended a bit.

I think most of the time when a safety disc bursts, it's because the tank was overfilled. So make sure your CO2 supplier knows what they're doing and only puts 5 lbs in a 5 lb cylinder. You can always check it with a scale.
 
If my O2 bottle is any judge, a 5# CO2 tank contains about 20 cubic feet of gas (when released). That's a LOT of CO2 into an 800 square foot apartment. Also, the noise made by the release valve triggering will be loud (probably wake up the neighbors too).

For the temperature, there's a sticker on one of my tanks that says to not store at above 120F. Since I'm assuming it's also talking about long term storage, a few days a couple of degrees above (in a good tank) shouldn't be an issue. I was just pointing out how the chances of someones home being above 120F for any real length of time (in NY especially) isn't all that great.

Reasonable safety precautions/education should be done as soon as the children are old enough to understand. Until then, a few minutes making sure an accident won't happen [IMO] is time well spent.

Growing up we had all kinds of tools in the garage/family room (when it was converted from the garage). Never had any issues with using them. I was hit with hot metal once, when my father was using the cutting torch, and it spat. As they say 'sheet happens'... :D
 
Take the same approach with your kegging equipment as you would with other items that you keep from children and you'll be fine. I'm assuming you have cleaners, breakable dishes, forks, knives etc. in the house. Put the tank and hoses where they're secure and can't be hung on to / used for climbing or walking.

If the kids can't reach it, you'll be much happier.

On the bright side a 5lb CO2 tank isn't a scuba tank. The force of it tipping probably won't fire the valve and tank off in opposite directions like something out of jaws or the A-Team.
 
In terms of making your wife feel better, make sure it is secured and kept away from kids as other have said, but she should understand that those tanks are over-engineered by a factor of 10X. Show her the expiration date on your cylinder, tell her they have to do hydrostatic testing on it every five years. Show her the safety valve release. Then remind her that everything, including hair dryers, have over-written warning tags written by lawyers that make them sound dangerous as hell. Then pour her a delicious beer. That should go a long way.
 
Just make sure that your tank is stored so that the kids can't knock it over. They can bust the regulator!
The only real risk from CO2 is if the tank were to somehow get the valve knocked off in a small space ( like a car ) the gas would suffocate you, provided you didn't have the common sense to pull over and air the car out, or at least open the windows.
 
I've got the cages on my regulators. Or at least on the second body (for my dual body regulator). Went with the solid metal ones, not the wire style. I've already has a tank get tipped over (thanks mom) and land with the protector hitting the floor. At least it didn't chip the floor tile. :D
 
brewguyver said:
Take the same approach with your kegging equipment as you would with other items that you keep from children and you'll be fine. I'm assuming you have cleaners, breakable dishes, forks, knives etc. in the house. Put the tank and hoses where they're secure and can't be hung on to / used for climbing or walking.

If the kids can't reach it, you'll be much happier.

On the bright side a 5lb CO2 tank isn't a scuba tank. The force of it tipping probably won't fire the valve and tank off in opposite directions like something out of jaws or the A-Team.

And even with scuba tanks (3000 psi) you would have to be pretty determined to bust off the valve. I'm guessing that CO2 valves are made of brass like scuba tank valves and they tend to bend instead of break.
 
If my O2 bottle is any judge, a 5# CO2 tank contains about 20 cubic feet of gas (when released). That's a LOT of CO2 into an 800 square foot apartment.

For CO2, I believe it's about 40 cubic feet at 1 atm, but whatever the correct answer, it's about what you say. An 8 foot by 800 square foot apartment has 6400 cubic feet (or a bit less) of air. Assuming efficient mixing and all the doors being open, that'd be an increase in concentration of about 0.6%. That's an order of magnitude higher than typical concentration, but according to this site, it's only slightly above the OSHA safety limit (0.5%) and well below the short-term exposure limit (1.5%). Based on the information there, you probably won't notice anything (or suffer any harm) unless you're exposed for a long time at that level.

This estimate would have to be off by an order of magnitude or so before there's serious short term danger. So there is certainly a risk, but I think it's relatively small (though higher than my earlier guess). Do make sure that your storage area has good ventilation at all times, for sure!


And even with scuba tanks (3000 psi) you would have to be pretty determined to bust off the valve. I'm guessing that CO2 valves are made of brass like scuba tank valves and they tend to bend instead of break.

For the price of a strap to keep it upright, I'd rather not test that. :rockin:
 
Of course use a strap. I used to instruct scuba and students would drop a tank from time to time with no ill outcomes. It was fun to tell students that they had a tank of compressed air on their backs containing enough kinetic energy to lift a locomotive off its tracks. Man, their eyes got so big...then we went and looked at the wonders of the ocean. And my wife says I'm not a romantic...pfft
 
For CO2, I believe it's about 40 cubic feet at 1 atm, but whatever the correct answer, it's about what you say. An 8 foot by 800 square foot apartment has 6400 cubic feet (or a bit less) of air. Assuming efficient mixing and all the doors being open, that'd be an increase in concentration of about 0.6%. That's an order of magnitude higher than typical concentration, but according to this site, it's only slightly above the OSHA safety limit (0.5%) and well below the short-term exposure limit (1.5%). Based on the information there, you probably won't notice anything (or suffer any harm) unless you're exposed for a long time at that level.

This estimate would have to be off by an order of magnitude or so before there's serious short term danger. So there is certainly a risk, but I think it's relatively small (though higher than my earlier guess). Do make sure that your storage area has good ventilation at all times, for sure!

Just keep in mind, the concentration will be much higher in the room the CO2 tank is in. Unless the apartment is loft style, with no walls that is. So while you might get none in some areas/rooms, you could have several times more where the tank actually is.

Just saying, better to secure it than not. Also better to not let your place get over about 120F come summer time. I'm sure neither will be an issue. You could point out that if it's hot enough for the safety to trigger, none of you will actually be home at that time. :D


For the price of a strap to keep it upright, I'd rather not test that. :rockin:

Exactery! :D
 
Oh, yes. I completely agree. Like any piece of equipment, always treat a pressurized gas tank with due respect and take precautions to avoid accidents. I hope no one interprets my post as suggesting otherwise.
 
I did HVAC for 15 years, we used co2 all the time. I'd pick up five 20lb tanks, throw them in the back of the truck on the hottest of days. To bust the valve off the tank something heavy would have to hit it.
 
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