Water Valves

[DYI]

EDIT: and yes i believe you can use high pressure water w/ sprinkler valves

Well I don't know about high pressure water, but you do realise that sprinkler valves are designed for use with water, right? Hence the name "sprinkler valve".

It's kind of funny seeing people get so excited about 50 feet... The design specs for our Go-Kart summer project call for at least 150km/h. You do realise that a lot of people's back yards are bigger than 50 feet, right?

[Acdcmonkey1991]

I actually just went and measured the pipe and it's 10 feet long. I might just have to start this project up again...

[igpay]

Well i'm gonna make this thing, but i have one last question. Would 10 bottles hooked up to 1 valve provide the same amount of power as if they were all hooked up separately?

[STHORNE]

most likely, with them all hooked up to one valve, your power will be less then if they had there own valve and were all actuated at the same time.

[igpay]

I've decided against modded sprinkler valves, so now i need to figure out what type of valve i can get that is:
A.) Easy to set off. I'm not thinking about smacking open a ball valve.
B.)Set-Offable from at least 5 feet away. (so I can set it off while sitting down)
And finally...C.)Cheap. I'm looking to buy two valves, one for the first five rockets, the other for the rest. At max I'm willing to spend $100.

[Lentamentalisk]

well you can buy about 5 1" sprinkler valves for $100, and just use their normal 18vdc solenoid triggering system. It isn't all that imperative that they open fast, as they have a longish "burn" time.

[igpay]

What type of pressures can the sprinkler valves handle though? oh and another thing i forgot to mention. me+electronics=large fire and/or complete waste of time and money.

[STHORNE]

me+electronics=large fire and/or complete waste of time and money.

It's basic electronic circuits, you wire all the electric solenoids to one momentary switch/push button and the needed battery power/supply...
if you need help, I would be more than happy to post a diagram for you

[igpay]

Thanks sthorne, but i was really mainly concerned w/ getting the 24 volt power supply. I saw some really scary voltage increasing circuit board diagrams a while ago that gave me the shudders. but actually, I would be very interested in getting those circuit diagrams. Thank you.

[DYI]

Plastic sprinkler valves aren't all that heavily built - some of the poorer ones are only rated for 125psig, although most are rated to 150 or so. What type of pressure chamber material are you using for this?

[igpay]

I'm using 10 2-liter bottles.

[DYI]

You are aware that those will fail at under 200 psi in all cases, right? I'm confused here, because you keep asking about your components being able to take high pressures, and then say that you're using drink bottles for the chambers...

[igpay]

sorry i didnt make this clear,
if you look at the previous page, sthorne made a design which focuses all the energy into one valve. i originally thouht that the total psi of that system would be the psi of all the water bottles combined, but now i believe that if i pump the whole structure up to 100 psi, it should be the equivalent of individually pumping all the bottles up to 100 psi, and then attaching them.
im not sure how much sense that makes but i hope you get my point.

[DYI]

I'm beginning to wonder just how complex this system is going to be...

I originally though that the entire thing was going to be connected together and pumped, and now you're talking about amplifying pressure in some way that I don't quite understand and pumping them seperately.

So how exactly is the pressure going to be increased?

Also, you may not know this, but in English, the word "I" should ALWAYS be capitalised. What is your first language anyway?

[igpay]

Also, you may not know this, but in English, the word "I" should ALWAYS be capitalised. What is your first language anyway?

My first language is English, but I'm a hasty typer. Sorry about that.
Your right, I'm just going to pump the thing up, but I don't seem to be explaining this right.
What I'm saying is that, if you were to pump up all 10 bottles individually to 100 psi (while they're still not hooked up to anything), and then hook them all up together-then to a valve, you would think (or at least I did), "oh, the combined pressure will be 1000 psi, because 10x100 is 1000!" but in truth, you would also be increasing the entire volume in which the pressure is stored, in this case, by about 10 times. So, all the pressure really comes out to 100 psi, which should be able to be supported by one modded sprinkler valve. (Except I'm thinking of using 2 sets of three bottles hooked up to 1 valve and one set of 4 bottles hooked up to a valve)

I hope that clears it up.