Misting Parts

There’s a common misconception that a pressure washer can be used as a misting pump to run a misting system. It seems to make sense, since even a bottom-of-the-line pressure washer puts out plenty of pressure.

But you can’t use a pressure washer to do a misting job. The pressure washer is designed to spray at its rated flow rate for a limited time. There are no provisions for a pressure washer to bypass any of its water. Pressure washers use an unloader valve, which redirects the water to the inlet side of the pump. The water can be continuously cycled through the pump this way, but it will eventually heat up to dangerous levels, causing pump failure.

Misting pumps run usually at about 1750 rpm’s, that’s usually half the speed of a pressure washer. The misting pump uses a bypass regulator to keep roughly the same pressure on the mistline at all times. To do that, the pump needs to be sized appropriately to the misting system. You only need about 700 psi to get great mist, any more than that, the droplet size doesn’t change, you just push more water.

The key to long life of any mist pump is running it below its rated capacity by 10% to 20%. Having too large a pump requires too much water to be bypassed and then the pump gets hot and fails.

So, figure out your needs. You don’t need 1300 psi – you’ll break something. Be realistic and get a quality mister pump. Make sure it has a good water supply and it will last a long time. Fifty percent of pump failures are from lack of water or too much in bypass.

Here’s a video showing one of our three-stage mist rings in action. On this one, the outer ring has six misting nozzles, the middle ring has three, and the inner ring has four nozzles. We put valves on each stage, so you can run all three stages at once, or just one or two stages. Watch the video to see the difference it makes in the volume of mist.

The multi-stage misting ring can use more or less water by varying the stages, You can also use smaller or larger nozzles. The pressure can be varied also. The pump was set at 700 psi and using a .012 nozzle.

In this video, we’re doing a test on a mist ring with four nozzle clusters. It puts out 20 nozzles‘ worth of mist. And as you can see, it is a whole lot of water!

This can accomplish what standard mist rings can’t do because on small diameter misting rings, you can’t put so many nozzles that close together.