Relatively new regulator just vents when gas bottle opened

[Hwk-I-St8]

I bought this regulator in July and I've only run one pair of kegs through it and it worked great for those. Because of the derecho that hit in August, I've been too busy to brew so it sat idle for a couple months.

Yesterday I kegged a beer, connected to the regulator and the instant I open the valve on the CO2 tank, the regulator just vents out the gas. It seems like it's coming from behind the adjustment knob, but it's hard to tell for sure. I don't want to leave the valve open too long because it's venting gas so fast.

I tried dialing the valve up/down for pressure to see if that would help, but to no avail.

Thoughts?

 

[Vale71]

Sounds (literally) like a broken diaphragm. Have you tried spraying soapy water all over it to pinpoint the location of the leak?

 

[grampamark]

The unit you linked to has dual regulators. Presumably, only one of yours is leaking, correct?

Since the regulator is only a few months old it may still be under warranty. Contact the vendor to see what the warranty policy is. You could take the defective one out and use the other one while the leaky one is being repaired unless the warranty would require returning the entire unit.

A leak around the knob would indicate a damaged diaphragm which isn’t hard to replace.

 

[Hwk-I-St8]

Sounds (literally) like a broken diaphragm. Have you tried spraying soapy water all over it to pinpoint the location of the leak?

I have not. It's venting out fast and loud. Might be too much flow to work with soapy water.

 

[Hwk-I-St8]

The unit you linked to has dual regulators. Presumably, only one of yours is leaking, correct?

Since the regulator is only a few months old it may still be under warranty. Contact the vendor to see what the warranty policy is. You could take the defective one out and use the other one while the leaky one is being repaired unless the warranty would require returning the entire unit.

A leak around the knob would indicate a damaged diaphragm which isn’t hard to replace.

Yeah, I'm assuming only one is leaking. The gas flow is so fast and they're so close together that it's hard to tell which one though. The interesting thing is that, even though the keg kicked back in August, I just turned off the tank last a week and a half ago when I was brewing this batch, so it wasn't leaking then.

I was shocked to hear the loud whooshing when I opened the tank last night....it was like opening a tank with nothing connected.

 

[Vale71]

Definitely sounds like a broken diaphragm which would cause the reg to release the gas at full pressure (about 50 bar for CO2).