Diptubes not draining properly: what am I doing wrong?

got my keggles all set and testing with water and they only drain to the level of the ball valve, and gravity is not pushing the water down through the diptube and out until it's empty. Teflon taped all parts that screw together (everything is stainless) and have tried both the rubber washer/gasket and the all metal permanent compression fittings. Everything is pretty tight. What did I do wrong?

Thanks.

Steve

that's fluid dynamics... if you put a hose on the end of the ball valve and the bottom of the hose is below the bottom of the keggle you should be able to drain lower. The problem is you need to create a siphon effect to pull the rest of the liquid out.

ahhhh, thank you! Will try that later.

Maybe a stupid question, but are you using a tube to drain it? You need to create a siphon, which means you need the liquid to be exiting at a lower height that it's entering the tube.

If you are using a tube, then I'm guessing you have a bad seal somewhere.

You have to depend on the siphon effect to drain below the ball valve. The way to do that is to have a piece of tubing on the output with the end of the tubing lower than the bottom of the keggle. To make this even more reliable, keep the end of that tubing submerged under the surface of the liquid in the container you're draining into - this may not be necessary depending on several factors, but try it if just having the tubing hanging down from the valve doesn't work reliably.

Well, if you have all the fittings air tight, you are probably sucking air though the ball valve and it is couteracting the siphon. I ran into the same thing when I was doing some preliminary tests. You need to have some tubing connected to the ball valve via a hose barb fitting and keep the tube full of fluid after the level drops below your ball valve. This way gravity can still pull the rest of the liquid out through dip tube via siphon. If you end up needing to pull the hose out of the liquid for any reason, it's nice to have a siphon stopper on there to keep the tube full of liquid so that siphon will continue when you're ready. Here's a pic of the tube I fill my fermentors with.

I wasn't using any tubing connected to the ball valve (so the exit was higher than the dip tube entrance). Now I know. Thanks guys.