Pressure loss on 125’ ultraboom

1

This is actually a question that was posed to me by a lift rental salesman . He has a customer that is looking to use a 125’ lift clean some sort of silo. They are looking to run pressure washer from ground connected to high pressure lines in the lift boom up to basket. What kind of pressure loss would you experience at that height. I believe they are running a 4 at 4,000 machine.

Found this from @Infinity referencing head loss on a 90 ft lift used for a water tower wondering if it would be close to this.

Not sure if they need chems or just water.

2

Head pressure is 0.433 PSI/foot. So roughly speaking you lose 1 PSI every couple of feet. 125 ft would cost about 55psi in addition to whatever you lose in backpressure/friction losses (which isn’t a whole lot at 4gpm).

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3

Thank you I appreciate it. I passed this along to lift sales rep sounds like they would be ok doing whatever they are doing at that height.

4

In short, it’ll be fine. Used to wash drilling rigs and sometimes we’d go up in a saddle to wash the crow’s nest. Never measured one but I figure most rigs were over 100’ tall and we never had any real issues with pressure loss.

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5

Most lifts have 1/4 internal lines instead of 3/8’s. If so, expect significant pressure loss and you want be able to ds

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6

Oh, good point. I’ve never connected to those lines. Always just lashed our hoses to the basket and gone up.

7

That is also what we have always done as well. I don’t know the scope of the work but it is hard to imagine that they wouldn’t be able to do the same.