How many Secondary regulators?

[Divinity Draft]

What is the most secondary secondary regulators you can feed together? Is 13 too many? If not, then what would be the ideal pressure at the primary(highpressure rated) regulator? Thanks
-Daniel Hardin
Divinity Draft Service

[Larry Tapper]

The Primary reg should only feed about 6 Secondary regs. The primary should be 20-30 lbs. For thrirtten sec I would run 2 primarys or 2 gas supplies.

[Beer Dr]

I have already run two different 24 product and a 41 product systems off of a single high pressure CO2 and N2 regulator with a blender(these systems are not all together)! Running great, if your running straight CO2 use a High Pressure reg. for the Primary. Shouldn't be a problem.

[Larry Tapper]

On straight co2 I have seen reg freeze up on high volume this is why you do not want to many on one primary.

[Scott Zuhse]

In high volume situations, due to the volume of gas required, the temperature of the gas flowing through the system will be very low. This will develop condensation on the tubing and regulators and then freeze this moisture on the outside of these components. This does not necessarily result in dispensing issues unless there is contamination in the components themselves.

Always be certain that the one way pressure valves are present in the couplers, cylinders are located outside of the keg cooler, 3/8" braided tubing is utilized, primary regulator setting is as high as possible and your bank of secondaries are looped versus the pressure dead ended at the last regulator.

With bulk CO2 set ups, it would be difficult to limit the amount of secondaries. Therefore, if you do have flow issues using 100% CO2, adhering to the above recommendations will increase performance. Possibly using two or more "Ts" just past the primary source and then feeding groups of secondaries may assist the flow of gas.

As always, the use of gas blenders with appropriate system balancing will also overcome these flow issues as well as compensate for conditions that 100% CO2 has difficulties with. This technology is becoming increasingly popular due to it's ability to reduce dispensing issues while maintaining product integrity.