Broken Check Valve?

[redcane]

G'day all,

I've been naturally carbing a keg (I've forced carbed previous kegs and wanted to see how it goes), and decided it was time to hook it up. I plugged it in to the gas and some beer flowed about 15cm back in the line. Since it seemed to have stopped there and I have a check valve I figured it would be ok to leave it like that, and I'll need to figure out how to clean that line at some point. Overnight however the beer has travelled up the line and through the check valve. It did stop short of the regulator by about 20cm (It's a tesuco that should have it's own check valve). I poured some beer out the tap and the beer travelled back out of the gas line. I presume it's travelled up the gas line until the gas in the line compressed to equalise with the keg pressure.

I've read somewhere that regulators can have a bit of bleed in the valve before it fully closes leading to pressure creeping up, but I would think that the point of a check valve is that there is no bleed. So I'm pretty sure I've got a faulty check valve? Are there any other explanations?

I didn't actually try blowing through the valve to test it - I presume it should be impossible to blow through it backward and easy forwards?

It'd be a real shame if it's busted as it was a Fathers day present, so it'll be a stuff around to get it returned. As es la vida!

 

[Spiesy]

is the "check valve" you're mentioning the same as a non-return valve?

And by "naturally carb" - have you added sugar to the keg, or carbed at serving pressure for 1-2 weeks time?

I would imagine the only way you could have done what you've done is if the pressure in your keg far exceeded the pressure coming out of your gas reg and/or you have filled the keg with too much beer (or put the disconnect on the wrong post).

 

[redcane]

Check valve is a non-return valve yes.

Added sugar to keg to naturally carb, quite probably with less than the recommended amount of headspace. Some of my kegs have a shorter gas post than others, so this one would possibly have been filled up to the bottom of the gas post.

Don't know what the pressure in the keg was, but didn't have any gas dialled on - I thought the whole point of the non-return valve was to prevent this being a problem. My plan was to serve the keg under it's own natural carbing pressure and then turn up the gas when it was low enough. I thought the non-return valve would allow this, but I guess in future I'll just hook up the beer line and serve beer first.