Tubing lengths

[redrocker652002]

I know this has been beat to death, and I could do a search, but I figure why not just post in case anyone else is in the same boat I am. I am getting parts together to get my new to me kegerator up and running. My latest question is in regards to beer lines and lengths. I have read on Morebeers site that if using the 4mm ID Evabarrier tubing it is recommended that there be a 5 to 6 foot run of tubing. That is about what I have now with the old kegerator I am using and while it does foam a bit, I cannot say whether that is pressure in the keg being off, no cooling fan in the tower or line is too short. So, my question to you all is this: My pressure is usually in the 10 to 12psi in the keg, my FG on most of my beers is between 1.012 to 1.008 or so, I will have a cooling tube running up thru the tower (a small hose taped to the fan as the hose did not come with the unit). The tower I am using sits about 1 foot tall and the kegs fit nicely with about 2 to 3 inches of space at least. With all this being said, and according to the info on the description on Morebeer, I should be ok. But, what say all of you?

Also, I am hoping to use the Duotight 1/4push i" to 4mm fitting at the shank since I don't want to buy all new ones when there are perfectly good. My shanks are 1/4 inch I believe and are barbed, so I am hoping I can use the push in fittings and just push them over the barb. I will find out I guess when I order everything and start putting it together. Here is a link to what I am talking about:

https://www.morebeer.com/products/duotight-pushin-fitting-65-mm-14-8-516-reducer.html

 

[day_trippr]

fwiw, to reach from all four corners of my 14cf keezer up to the faucet shanks in my center-mounted t-tower, I went with 6.5 foot lengths of the 4mm ID line for the runs that are for my 2.4~2.5 volume beers (which is most of them) charged at 11 psi, and a 9 foot run for my 3 volume wheat beers charged at 15 psi. All work great for 10 second pours...

Cheers!

 

[redrocker652002]

fwiw, to reach from all four corners of my 14cf keezer up to the faucet shanks in my center-mounted t-tower, I went with 6.5 foot lengths of the 4mm ID line for the runs that are for my 2.4~2.5 volume beers (which is most of them) charged at 11 psi, and a 9 foot run for my 3 volume wheat beers charged at 15 psi. All work great for 10 second pours...

Cheers!

Awesome. Thank you. Now, I am hoping the push fittings will work on the tailpiece of the perlick faucets and then I am all set. Gas manifold is already equipped with 5 valves and each has a Duotight fitting on them already. So, if the push fittings work, I will outfit my new kegerator with all Evabarrier and Duotight lines and ball locks. I am getting pretty pumped to get this thing in use. Bit of an outlay to start with.

 

[Broken Crow]

I know one of our fellow regular posters has a duotight fitting jammed on a barb but I can't find it right now. Personally I feel a bit more secure with swaged lines so just for you I went and grabbed a barbed tower shank and a piece of 4mmID/8mmOD EVABarrier and this only took a moment;

Dunno what size oetiker it'd want, but I just wanted to show you a secure option. As to the lines, since this is an ordinary kegerator with the usual lack of overhead space I'm gonna make my usual suggestion that you consider avoiding the PITA of hanging coils of lines above your kegs and go with 3' of the 3mm ID EVABarrier. When I did mine (https://www.homebrewtalk.com/thread...mm-monotight-connector-duotight-shank.730515/) the fittings I wanted were not yet available but I prefer to use genuine CM Becker disconnects and there is no MFL adapter for those...there is this shopping list I put in another thread though: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/thread...ower-to-clean-the-lines.737435/#post-10490190
In any event, swagin is dead-simple and the work of moments: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/eva-barrier-line-conversion.733937/page-2#post-10406957 wether just for your shank, or for swivel nuts.

 

[Deadalus]

You could cut that swagged tubing close if you needed to spin the shank for install. Then attach the adapter (coupling). I don't know if the shank needs to be spun though while tightening, probably not. I had one of those stock kegerator towers but gave it away and never put it together. I used a bushing in my iron pipe tower that the shank tightens up on first since it is held in place behind the bushing inside. Then the bushing screws in. I didn't need an internal elbow but had to account for spinning the ptc beer thread adapter on the shank while the line was attached.

 

[redrocker652002]

I know one of our fellow regular posters has a duotight fitting jammed on a barb but I can't find it right now. Personally I feel a bit more secure with swaged lines so just for you I went and grabbed a barbed tower shank and a piece of 4mmID/8mmOD EVABarrier and this only took a moment;
View attachment 884400
Dunno what size oetiker it'd want, but I just wanted to show you a secure option. As to the lines, since this is an ordinary kegerator with the usual lack of overhead space I'm gonna make my usual suggestion that you consider avoiding the PITA of hanging coils of lines above your kegs and go with 3' of the 3mm ID EVABarrier. When I did mine (https://www.homebrewtalk.com/thread...mm-monotight-connector-duotight-shank.730515/) the fittings I wanted were not yet available but I prefer to use genuine CM Becker disconnects and there is no MFL adapter for those...there is this shopping list I put in another thread though: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/thread...ower-to-clean-the-lines.737435/#post-10490190
In any event, swagin is dead-simple and the work of moments: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/eva-barrier-line-conversion.733937/page-2#post-10406957 wether just for your shank, or for swivel nuts.

Thank you so much for this. If I can do it this way it will make things a ton easier as there is not a lot of room inside the tower for the fittings I was thinking of using.

 

[day_trippr]

btw, I should have noted that many folks find a 5.5 foot length of the 4mm ID line to be sufficient.

Cheers!

 

[dmbrew48]

In the FWIW & not trying to complicate the issue - used this ref material & calc data after going through a re-plumbing of our large club jockey box.
https://www.kegworks.com/blog/determine-right-pressure-for-your-draft-beer-system/
Cheers

 

[day_trippr]

I recommend ignoring any article or purported "calculator" that starts off with a bogus line resistance table that implies 5 feet of 3/16" ID beer line is sufficient for good pours.

Instead, use the only line length calculator worth using...

Cheers!

 

[redrocker652002]

I recommend ignoring any article or purported "calculator" that starts off with a bogus line resistance table that implies 5 feet of 3/16" ID beer line is sufficient for good pours.

Instead, use the only line length calculator worth using...

Cheers!

According to that 5 feet should be good. I might go 5.5 feet just to be on the safe side. Easier to cut than add.

 

[day_trippr]

With 3/16" ID line at 11 psi, the benchmark:

With 4mm ID line at 11 psi:

With 3mm ID line at 11 psi:

Cheers!

 

[Deadalus]

With 3/16" ID line at 11 psi, the benchmark:

View attachment 884522

With 4mm ID line at 11 psi:

View attachment 884523

With 3mm ID line at 11 psi:

View attachment 884524

Cheers!

The last note on the 3mm is suggesting not to use it for this set of parameters.

 

[day_trippr]

I agree

 

[Broken Crow]

I just spent the last couple hours searching this site for a post from a couple years ago to no avail;
In 2023, when I was fed up with the 4 hanging coils of 4mm EVABarrier getting in the way with every keg change in my 4-keg/tap domestic kegerator, I was researching the 3mm EVABarrier.... There was a post which was answered with math (and I'm pretty sure it was doug) but I can't find it... Forgive me if I use the wrong words, but my angular gyrus is largley disconnected so my brain sees numbers as words rather than quantities and the grammer of quantities (math) is lost to me so here's the point to the best of my recollection: The math of the calculator breaks down at that small a diameter and for the 3mm, you need to multiply the result by somewhere between 1.5 - 3...sorry I can't remember it but maybe someone with a working brain can come in and clear this up as there has been a recent uptick in interest on this site for 3mm EVABarrier.
Anyhoo.. I used the information from that thread combined with the only line length calculator worth using with and came up with 36"... I went with 37" just to be safe But here's 3mm EVABarrier on a 1/4" barb that's going on near 2 years of flawless service:

 

[Deadalus]

I figured the 3mm might be working just fine for you in practice or you would have fixed it. I did a quick search last night regarding the roughness value and the 0.000016 was plausible but for EVA there were suggested values both smaller and greater. The equation may not have been fit (estimated) from data covering thoe specific values used in 3mm, or the underlying mathematical relationship may be functionally different, like a straight line vs a flat exponential curve. At least the answer was close to one and not negative two i. Have you ever read about people who see numbers as colors?

 

[wdavis2003]

Go with 6 ft and you'll be happy

 

[Broken Crow]

Have you ever read about people who see numbers as colors?

Funny you should mention that... prior to injury, I saw quantities as abstracts in the context of whatever I was calculating but never 'numbers'...those are just representational characters. I remember at 4 years old looking forward to school because I wanted to learn 'everything'...kindergarten was a real disappointment that only gave us nursery rhymes with the alphabet and counting but never told us what letters or numbers actually are or why or how we use them. Grade one was a major improvement firstly because in the first week, I was taught that we use arabic numerals and a base 10 number system..but there are other systems. It was only years later that I learned in my own study that the zero was the hindu symbol for an empty silo, but it was the other systems, ie: Not decimal that grabbed my attention..forunately they also introduced us to the library and it's big dictionary and card catalogue and taught how to use it...I was off and paid little attention to the actual cirriculum in school after that. In the second half of grade two, there was a guy with a permanent garage-sale open every weekend on my way home and I always stopped by on Fridays and I picked up an 'adult book' about micro-processors.. I had already learned basic electronics and logic vis-a-vis my own studies, so now I set about with bits of 2'x4's, plywwood, nails, different colours of string, a drill, colour-coded golf tees and whatnot and made my own abacus's and binary strips and a 16x16 grid and became fluent in binary and hex teaching myself to do math like a computer. It radically changed my very perception of numbers which enabled my study of physics to radically change the very way I see the world. To this day, I do not see solid objects, but momentary arrangements of relative energetic velocities. Until my catastophic injury, a printed math question was synonymous with its solution...I didn't see the 'numbers' at all, I simply translated the dialect and percieved the quantity...that became contentious among the entire grade-school faculty in my second or third week of grade three under a dogmatic teacher who marked all my math answers as (even thought they were all correct) wrong because I didn't 'show my work'...I finally got fed up and drew out 3 pages worth of hexadecimal grids to 'show my work' (which was near instantaneous in my head) for just the first question on the page...I tried explaining it to her but she truly was just too stupid to comprehend so she sent me to the principal for being defiant.. I explained it to the principal and she did undertand the theory, but suspected I was using a calculator..since it was lunch time by then, she took me to the staff room and had me explain it to all the teachers. The grade seven teacher got it right away and was impressed (He waited 4 years for me to be in his class to teach it to him and in exchange, he taught to etch printed circuit boards and some guitar chords ).. Half of the teachers simply couldn't comprhend it, but a few of the brighter ones did and it was decided that I be moved to the split garde3/4 class.
Sorry for the long side bar, but I've been extra miserable lately of the loss of my angular gyrus, vocabulary, complex memory-span, memory itself, and all the functions that make life worth living and I know it's beyond my control and I'm not supposed to be, but am deeply embarassed I don't know what is probably the simple math that throws a curve at the lower end of the pressure/resistance/diameter/length calculation.

 

[Broken Crow]

Go with 6 ft and you'll be happy

Personally, I think 3' of 3mm would lead to more happiness in the long run.