Basic balance question.

[Ryanme17]

First off, accept my apologies if I'm posting in the wrong forum. In all my searching I've seen multiple sources on balancing draft systems with different answers. The Beverage Association Draught Quality Manual and most other sources say that to have a system in balance, applied pressure should equal resistance and this will optimize flow rate.

However, I've seen other sources saying that applied pressure should be as much as 5 PSI higher than pounds of resistance and others saying 1 PSI. I searched around this site and could only find references to formulas that seem to assume pressure should equal resistance.

So:

1. Does having pressure = resistance get about 128 oz/minute flow rate?
2. Are there times when you would want more pressure than resistance or more resistance than pressure to optimize flow rate?
3. Lastly, is "pounds of resistance" an arbitrary figure that was decided upon so that we could say "to have proper flow, pressure must equal resistance"? I mean, if there really was no pressure pushing the beer out the faucet it would not flow, right?

[KillianBoy]

Ryanme17,
You're only in the wrong place if your a home dispenser, if you're a commercial business someone more learned can help your with that, if home dispenser, can you post exactly what you want to do (length of run, ID of line, etc)?, what the first part of your post sounds like is what is called "push", some members use it, others don't, in a home system, it might be a little different for commercial long runs, again someone who knows more about commercial runs can help you.
KB