Problems with first Kegerator

[stealthfixr]

I just received a week ago my first kegerator, a KOSMOS 4-tap version from MoreBeer. Seems to work great, other than the left side gets rather warm when actively cooling. The kegerator came with a Duotight fitting setup where the gas line splits three times with T-fittings, each ending in a Duotight fitting screwed onto the ball-lock gas connector. Setup was easy enough, but this is all new to me (kegging, kegerator, etc). I've been brewing for many years, just never made the keg upgrade until now.

The first problem came early, as one of the T-fittings just was leaking CO2 constantly. I recut the line to be more square, but it leaked no matter what I did. Torque pressure on the fitting from turns on the line made it worse. I ended up cutting out that T-fitting, dropping down to 3-gas lines total. After that, all seemed well.

Last night I found the CO2 bottle completely empty, though I just bought it 2 weeks ago and have not dispensed a single full keg with it. There was also a mystery beer leak that seemed to stop on its own on the inside floor of the kegerator, no idea where it came from. I have a second CO2 bottle, and after re-pressurizing the kegerator, all seemed good and not leaking. Sprayed everything with StarSan looking for a leak and could not find one. No idea what's going on.

Having never used Duotight (or anything else) before, my confidence in these connections is low. I have considered adding a 4-way manifold where at least not all four gas lines have to be pressurized all at once--might be easier to troubleshoot a leak. Any suggestions on what to do?

 

[day_trippr]

Sorry you're having problems with the Duotight fittings. It certainly sounds like you found a defective connector.

While I don't use many Duotight fittings (five, total) they are all located on regulator outputs, and I have had no leak issues. fwiw, back in early November I converted all of the beer and gas tubing in my humble brew space to EVAbarrier (as it is clearly the state of the art tubing for our needs at this moment). But the vast majority of the ~four dozen push-to-connect fittings I used came from John Guest and DMfit because of better availability (everyone and their brothers were apparently buying all the Duotight fittings )

Anyway, I did manage to blow the back out of one 1/4" FFL - 5/16" OD fitting (to a ball lock QD) through overtightening, but that was the only fatality to date. I checked all of the fittings (save for the six in my t-tower box) last week due to a report of fatigue failure of a Duotight fitting and found no sign of cracking.

So I would check each fitting for any signs of stress cracking just to take that off the board. Then considering the problems you've experienced you might want to make sure there is a decent amount of straight "lead-in" of tubing into fittings (an inch is enough) so it's not forcing the sealing issue.


Otherwise....you can expect the side walls of that unit to get warm when the compressor is running as the condenser loop runs under the metal skin and uses it as a radiator. They advise a handful of inches spacing to the sides for that reason...

Cheers!