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kilotesla t1_irkbrj8 wrote

Note that for a piston to sit securely in a cylinder without tipping, it has to be sufficiently long compared to the diameter of the cylinder. If you start making huge diameter pistons, you'll need them to be long, too. The volume of the piston would become huge, and it would be heavy and expensive. And hard to fit where you need it.

That might mean that you'd want many moderate size pistons instead of one giant one to lift a house. You could pipe them all the the same pump, and you wouldn't need any extra pressure because of the many pistons connected, assuming they are plumbed in parallel. You'd just need many pump strokes to move them a significant distance.

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PerspectivePure2169 t1_irq0csc wrote

This is how Chicago was raised. It was screws instead of hydraulics, but the principal is exactly the same - not one big jack, but many small ones.

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