I am a pretend engineer, so take this with a grain of salt, but my guess is that because its very hard to perfectly airtight seal a pipe of that length, the siphon would be very hard to maintain.
this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2025
14 points (100.0% liked)
No Stupid Questions
3515 readers
139 users here now
There is no such thing as a Stupid Question!
Don't be embarrassed of your curiosity; everyone has questions that they may feel uncomfortable asking certain people, so this place gives you a nice area not to be judged about asking it. Everyone here is willing to help.
- ex. How do I change oil
- ex. How to tie shoes
- ex. Can you cry underwater?
Reminder that the rules for lemmy.ca still apply!
Thanks for reading all of this, even if you didn't read all of this, and your eye started somewhere else, have a watermelon slice 🍉.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
grain of salt
Dead Sea
I didnt notsee wat u did there
My guess is pumping losses. Essentially there's friction moving water through a pipe, and the distance would be so long as to make said friction higher than the available suction. It would probably just start cavitating and destroy the pipe.
yea, your pipe friction is refered to as 'major losses', and on a system that long would be >> than head. Would definitly need to pump!
Also, the maximum pressure you could have enough siphon is the difference in air pressure between the two ends. If you want more pressure, you have to pump.
A siphon is powered by air pressure on the surface of the source and can only lift water as far as the available pressure pushes it. That’s about 10 meters for atmospheric pressure, no matter how much vacuum you pull on the other side. If the route requires lifting more than that along the way, the siphon would not work at all.