Unless your 400 pound foreman is in it with you and you’re over the weight limit. Not to mention he pulls on the joystick like he’s playing space invaders on an old Atari.
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okay well weight limits do matter I suppose. Speaking of, I noticed my 16’ ladder is only rated for 225. I’m 245. So… she’ll ride, right?
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I thought about hauling up a 12v. I have some nice 20 gallon vertical tanks that would work perfect. I think I might go that route. Would be easier than trying to figure out force feeding. I’d just have to keep an eye on the weight limit. The one I built is only like 1.2 gpm but I have everything I need here to build something bigger. Instead of a dolly I could probably just mount the pump to some flat bar and bend it so it sits over the rail and hangs on the outside of the basket.
Even if it ends ups requiring more than one application I bet I could just down stream the second app so would keep me from having to go down and refill on SH.
I figure ladders and jlg’s are like pressure hoses. They might only be rated at 4000 psi but the actual burst strength is 4 times that. That means you can still stuff your face on Taco Tuesday…lol. By the way. How’s that diet going? I can’t talk. I’ve put on some weight this year. You still have me by 25 pounds though. 
I know yours is all muscle, though
I think a backpack sprayer would just take too long on this. I want to knock it out in less than a day due to lift rental so I need to be as efficient as possible. I really don’t see it taking that long though as long as all goes well.
I was going to tag you in this thread. You use to force feed your pressure washer. How strong of a mix were you getting? Was that on an 8 gpm? What size 12v? Any other details that could help?
Lol yeah let’s not talk about diets today. The 20 gallon tanks should be fine but like you said just keep an eye on the weight. I know a 15 gallon carboy comes in at around 160 pounds so it would be like having a second person in there already. The dolly is just so that you can easily move the stuff to and from the truck through grass and gravel and not have to carry anything or pull your truck up close. I’d stay away from having anything just draping over the side of the lift. OSHA or an insurance audit shows up and you’re done for.
Wasn’t there a guy on here like 2 weeks ago that was bragging about his super awesome 12v cart that worked sort of like a pump assisted xjet for a garden hose? He used it to wash houses
Anyway, something like that might actually work out really well for a situation like this.
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I know how you can avoid pressure loss from working at that height. Here’s what you do:
Go on the back side of the tower, and drill and tap a 1” hole into the tank…
Bring an umbrella 
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If I drilled a bunch of holes all the way around I wouldn’t even have to mess with rinsing.
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Dying!!!
Funny. You do know that there is a hydrant at the base of every water tower? Run a 2.5” hose to your inlet, you won’t have ANY supply issues.
More than likely the tank will be empty, not that that means the hydrant won’t have water. Around here, they pump water into tanks in the commercial districts during the day and to the tanks in residential areas at not. It’s just used to provide pressure to the system.
By up streaming your effectively turning your buffer tank into a batch mix tank that goes through your pump, but you’ll be able to shoot your mix as if it was just plain water, with a shooter tip you’d be able to get a roof mix up however long your 5.5 could shoot conventional water 35-50 feet? Only the soap gets pulled through your injector in the conventional downstream position. That’s why I said find the cheapest used pump you can find, you don’t want to be running sh through your pump you use everyday. On a job like this I would sleep easy sacrificing an old pump.
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Ha…such a simple idea to fill my buffer tank with mix and it didn’t even cross my mind. I think I’m liking that idea even better than hauling a 12v and mix tanks up there. Even if I run SH through the old pump it’s nothing that couldn’t be rebuilt, right? Not that I care just curious. It’s a 30 year old pump. 
It was on an old hot water washer.
I should probably buy an IBC tote and put it on the back of the truck for the mix. I can probably do 1/4-1/3 of the tank at a time so better off just waiting for the dwell and then rinsing before moving. I think that would be quicker than coming down, moving, and going back up. Those lifts boom doesn’t move too fast. There’s a flat rock path around the front half of the tower so should be able to clean quite a bit of it without coming down since I can move the lift while up in the air. The back half is grass and has a slight incline. It’s not too bad though. With the treeline I might have to come at it from the side, anyways.
How high is that ?
Never mind, 100’ .
That a (nope) tower.
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Brian it takes a lot more to kill these pumps with bleach than people think, you would have to leave it sitting there unrinsed for a few months to see issues. Pumps under high pressure rinse out exceptionally well, put a high pressure tip in and let it run with fresh water, you would do that by instinct anyway regardless of binning it or rebuilding it. You should be able to get quite a bit done shooting left to right with a shooter tip in a single position of the lift.
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Back when I did it it was with my initial set up. A 5 gallon a minute unit and I had a 12 V pump also 5 gallons per minute. I used the 3 to 5 GPM injector. To be honest I never actually did a bucket test with it but I know that it drained the 5 gallon bucket mix at least twice as fast I could literally watch it go down as I sprayed. I used it to clean a really dirty stucco movie theater and it actually worked. Probably would of went faster with a 3% softwash gun.
But what about the baseball field? Maybe get a ground guy? I was actually pleasantly surprised with how much I was able to cover with the battery backpack sprayer. 400 square feet in 15-20 minutes isn’t bad. You might have about 2000 square feet there? 1-1.25 hours or spraying solution?
I usually don’t post too often about jobs but I’m glad I posted this one. @dperez upstreams and probably with more caustic chems than SH. I’m not sure how long each pump lasts but has to last a good bit of time to make it worth it. I wonder if the companies who solely wash water towers upstream? I guess if you did them all the time you could probably invest in a electric pump that could hand the head feet. Then again, some towers are well over 150’ tall. Do you think they upstream too?
On a separate note I think I’m just going to rent the lift for a week. It’s only like $1200-$1500 more than a one day rental. I have a couple trees in the back that are leaning towards the house. They’re Hickory so they’re solid but I raised the level of the backyard a few years back so the dirt is a couple feet higher than it was on the trunks. There’s also a dead Oak tree in the ravine that I wouldn’t mind getting for firewood. It’s either drop it and pull pieces up at a time or use the lift and go ahead and cut em up into manageable pieces. It might take longer but beats climbing up and down the steep ravine with a chainsaw…lol. Plus, if bad weather happens to roll the day I start the tower I’m not stressing. I could even wait for a day that has no wind.
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It’s not directly below the water tower or anything so I’m not that worried about it. Hopefully if there’s any wind at all it’ll be from the west so it blows it towards the woods. I’ll definitely have a ground guy.
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