CO2 line sizing?

[brain medicine]

all of our FVs/brites are 5bbl. ten tanks total. would 1/4" braided hose be too small for our gas/co2 lines?

is there a rule of thumb or guidelines for sizing the tubing?

[TGTimm]

How much CO2 do you need to move, and how fast? Resistance to flow (restriction) decreases by the square of the tubing diameter--so a 1/2" line has 1/4 the restriction of a 1/4" line.

I set up our lines with a primary regulator at the tank to bring the line pressure down to 100-125 psi. This allows me to use 1/2" PEX for our mains. At each point-of-use, I have a secondary regulator that reduces the pressure to whatever we need, then a 1/4" line to the vessel. For vary high CO2 consumers, like the bottling line or keg washer, I use an old 30 gallon air compressor tank as a "surge tank". THe tank is plumbed directly to the main at high pressure, then feeds the machine via a high-flow 3/4"-1" secondary regulator. Our main lines are up to 200' in length, and this system serves very well.

[brain medicine]

How much CO2 do you need to move, and how fast?

there's no bottling or kegging machines. we may manually keg at some point, but nothing mechanized. mostly just purging tanks, carbing beer, etc. maybe pushing beer between tanks sometimes. we're doing flojet pumps for our draft lines so no huge draw there. so... i cant really think of anything where we would need a ton of co2 and need it FAST. mostly its just purging and carbing our 5bbl vessels.

id love to set up high pressure 1/2 trunk lines and then branch off at 3/8 or 1/4, but if little old 1/4 or 3/8" tubing is enough for our little system/cellar, then theres no real reason to go bigger.

or at least it seems i can always go back and add a 1/2" supply trunk to the setup without too much trouble if we need it. just have to buy some bigger tubing, nipple, reducer and a 2nd regulator.

[mmussen]

I would not go less than 1/2" line for CO2 - At least for the main off your tank. I've frozen up my 1/2 line often enough with 7 bbl tanks.

[brain medicine]

I would not go less than 1/2" line for CO2 - At least for the main off your tank. I've frozen up my 1/2 line often enough with 7 bbl tanks.

and is that when you're doing bottling/kegging? or even when doing basic carbing/purging of vessels?

[TGTimm]

We had frequent problems with icing the lines using 1/4" ID tubing directly from a 50lb can while purging tanks. Lots of wasted time thawing them out.

PEX tubing is cheap and very easy to work with. Just keep the pressure below ~150 psi and it's great.

BTW--excellent call on the beer pumps--since I converted our system to pumps, we've had the best pours I've experienced anywhere--and much less CO2 waste with no chance of over-carbing a beer.

[brain medicine]

at 100+ feet from the cooler to the bar we didnt really have any good options other than the flojets. and since this is getting installed in mexico, i need it to be as trouble-free as possible, no frantic calls on friday night about cerveza spumosa. was not a hard choice.

so if i was to go with the pex lines, my concern is that its not as flexible as braided pvc/vinyl. is there a big difference? guess i'll have to get my hands on some and check it out.

and what sort of fasteners did you use on the pex lines with the higher pressures- hose clamps, crimp clamps, push in?

at the end of the day, if the flexibility isnt an issue, i wouldnt mind saving some dough on pex lines.

.

[TGTimm]

We use the PEX for our mainlines, where the flexibility isn't an issue. I also used it for our 12 series keg stations, so I could be sure the kegs never got starved for CO2 when we're drawing hard ans fast on several taps. In the beer cooler, the 1/2" PEX feeds four secondary regs, one for every three series keg stations (2 kegs each). Our old set-up used miserably undersized lines and a single regulator to feed 8 keg stations, and we had problems with foaming that went away completely with the new set-up. Both set-ups used Flo-jet beer pumps, with the CO2 mainly maintaining carbonation and a little push to the pumps.

In the brewery, we run the 1/2"PEX to each secondary regulator station, then 1/4" PE tubing with QDs to the fermenters. Typically, 1 regulator station provides CO2 for 2 fermenters, but our drops are long enough that each regulator station can reach 4 ferms.

[brain medicine]

well hell, that's perfect. i've got almost 80ft left of 1/4 braided hose i can use for the drops and the spare lines. trolling around the interwebs i saw 1/4 stainless quick disconnects from a pressure washer supply are under $10, 1/4 ball valve is $7 at duda, so i guess i just need to get my hands on the 1/2 pex and some reducing tees and should be good to go.

[TGTimm]

I forgot to answer at least one of your questions--I use barb fittings (the ones meant for PEX) and Oetiker clamps. You can find both at Amazon. Buy a proper tool for applying the clamps--also at the A or a local plumbing supplier. A pair of flush-cutters can be used, but the real thing has a lot of power, and it set to the proper clamp for the Oetikers--you can't over-clamp them, which will lead to failure. I think the tool I'm using is a Sharkbite brand. The Sharkbite 9pretty much a big, aggressive John Guest fitting) fittings are also nice if you need to be able to easily modify a set-up, but spendy if you don't need them.

Be careful with the QDs. You want them to have a shut-off at the female end (the end that will be on your drop) at the very least, and one on the male end too is best. I use Foster brand QD fittings, which claim to be stainless steel, but the little balls that lock the QD are mild steel and must be replaced.

Try to get some good check valves--one at the use end of the drop, one at the regulator. Beer in a line means replacing the line--irritating after a few--but beer in a regulator means replacing/rebuilding a reg--a waste of time and money.

Some kind of push-fit fittings on each end of the flexible drop line is desirable, as you will be replacing this line occasionally. Norgren makes a very good quality line of push-fits, including some that have check-valves built in--what we use. We also use Norgren R74G series regulators for our secondaries, as they work well and are easily rebuilt, and r'build kits are available. We source the Norgren parts from Kaman Industrial.