12 Volt Power Sprayer Design Errors To Avoid

12 Volt Power Sprayers are a very popular sprayer, but before you buy one, it is important to know what design problems you need to avoid before making your purchase.

The first and probably most important thing to ensure is that your sprayer is built from quality components. Ensure the hoses are for chemical use, if they are not designed for this type of use, they will split and cause lots of problems.

Cheap plastic fittings are another component to look for. Plastic components do have a place in some spray equipment, just not where they are supporting weight or have torque on them. Additionally, plastic parts will break down in the heat and direct sunlight. And in Arizona, we have a lot of sun and heat. A chemical spill is not worth a few extra dollars in proper equipment parts.

If one of these cheap plastic fittings in at the bottom of the tank at the output or suction line of the tank and the fitting breaks, not only you have downtime, but you're going to spill the entire contents of the tank. It actually happened, the tank fitting cracked, and they spilled 50 gallons of chemical. They lost a ton of time with cleaning up the mess as well as quite a bit of expense. Not to mention that the tank had to be replaced because of the cheap tank fitting.

The proper power sprayer fitting would be brass. That way if something falls against it or you hit a bump, it's not going to crack. It also has a shutoff valve so if there is a leak somewhere, you can shut it off.

I also cannot stress enough how important it is for you to make sure that your sprayer is designed for easy maintenance.

When it comes to hose reel swivels, you do not want too much weight hanging off of it or you will wear out the O-rings faster. Another problem is not having any slack in the hose preventing the swivel from swiveling.

Another important piece of advice is to follow the instructions given by manufacturers, such as pump manufacturers mounting instructions. There are often several different options for optimal use given in the instructions.

It is important to think about operation and maintenance before you buy your sprayer. It also is a good idea to get input from users and from those who will be doing the maintenance. It is also a good idea to ask what parts are going to be need maintenance as well as where to get the parts.

These are just a few of the things to think about before you make your 12‑volt power sprayer or another sprayer purchase so that you have minimal downtime, chemical spills, unnecessary repair expenses.

If you need a 12‑volt power sprayer or other sprayer for your pest or landscape business, please call us at qspray.com.

Andrew Greess : Hi, this is Andrew Greess at Quality Equipment and Spray, Qspray.com. Today we're going to talk about 12‑volt power sprayers and some of the design problems you really need to avoid before you purchase a 12‑volt power sprayer.

We've got some good photos of some sprayers that we've seen, that can demonstrate some of these problems that you really want to avoid, so that you don't have downtime, chemical spills, unnecessary repair expense, that sort of thing. Let's jump through these.

First is you want to make sure that the sprayer is built using quality components. You can see here, the arrow on the left is pointing to this hose that's split. This is not chemical hose. This is, I don't know, some kind of cheap black rubber hose and it's not designed for this application. You can see its split right there. A good hose should not split like that.

Then the other arrow pointing up, you can see they have used just cheap plastic fittings. We just don't like using plastic fittings in any situation where they're supporting weight or have torque on them. These are just examples of cheap parts that you should look out for and avoid. It's not worth saving a couple dollars here if you're going to have a chemical spill.

Here's other examples of cheap plastic parts and we got three arrows here pointing to these cheap plastic elbows. The two on the right are certainly going to get sun and probably going to crack from the sun. The one on the left, on the left side of the filter, is probably going to crack because of the torque of opening and closing that filter.

It's just not worth saving a couple of bucks here. Use good quality fittings. If you're going to use plastic fittings use good quality banjo fittings that are much higher quality than these. These are just cheap plastic or nylon; you can get poly fittings that are much higher quality. In this case, if one of these fittings’ breaks, you have some downtime.

Here's a worse situation here at the bottom of the tank, the output or suction line of the tank. If this fitting breaks, not only you have downtime, but you're going to spill the entire contents of the tank. How do I know?

Here's an actual example. Customer brought in sprayer. They had a backpack that wasn't secured. Fell against this fitting. Not only did the elbow break, but the tank fitting cracked, they spilled 50 gallons. It was a horror show, ton of time clean up and quite a bit of expense. This tank had to be replaced because there's this cheap tank fitting here. It wasn't possible to fix this.

It's important to look at these fittings and small parts before you buy not just the bigger, more expensive parts, like the pumps in hose reel. Here's the right way to do it. We use all brass fittings. If something falls against it, or you hit a bump, it's not going to crack is also a shutoff valve. If you do have a leak down the line, you can shut it off. That's the right way to do it.

OK, here's an example. You can see the arrow's pointing to some of the electrical. There's some connections, some fuses and a solenoid and they're exposed here. You can see in this picture if the driver were to hit the brakes, that Birchmeier backpack could slam into any of that electrical stuff and cause downtime.

Make sure that things like your electrical work is shielded or protected or not exposed in this manner, so you don't have the downtime situation. Here's one that we thought was quite interesting. In this case, whoever built the sprayer, put these fittings on so tight, you can't take them off.

I think what happened was they probably plumbed the pumps, and then put the pumps in place and bolted them down. If you wanted to change one of these fittings or one of these hoses, you'd have to unbolt the pump, remove it and then change the fittings. This is crazy. You need to make sure that your sprayer is designed for easy maintenance.

In this case would have been easy. All they had to do was raise one of the pumps up a couple inches or turn them both on their sides. There's a bunch of solutions here. They just happen to pick the worst one.

Here's a hose reel swivel that has way too much weight hanging off. When you have this much weight hanging off the swivel, you're going to do much quicker damage to the O‑rings or the gaskets that are inside this swivel. You're going to have a leak much sooner than you need to. You're going to be replacing those O‑rings a lot quicker than you need to. You can see they have all this weight. There's even a shut off valve there probably for agitation.

Most of this plumbing should be put somewhere else or secured to something on the rig so all that weight it's not hanging on the swivel.

Here's another bad hose reel swivel design. You can see the output of the pump goes directly to the swivel. That hose is taught, and hose reel manufacturers want there to be slack in the line to the swivel.

It's called a swivel because they want it to swivel. In this case, there's no slack so that swivel can't swivel. What you're going to do is you're going to wear out the O‑rings in that swivel and eventually you're going to wear out the brass in the swivel because it can't swivel with the hose reel as you unwind it.

The other thing that's a concern is the other end of that hose is connected to the pump on a cheap plastic fitting so that all that stress that's on that line is going to be put on that output fitting to the pump. Eventually it's going to crack and break. If you're at the end of 300 feet of hose and that fitting breaks, you're not going to know what happened.

By the time you get back here, your pump doesn't know this fitting broke. It's just going to keep pumping. You could have a huge puddle of chemical in your truck, because that swivel broke. So, this is just really, really bad idea.

Here's another bad idea. Sure Flows are great pumps and Sure Flow tells you you can mount the pumps in almost any orientation except this one. They do not want the actual motor below the pump, because if and when the pump leaks, it's just going to be dripping on that motor. That constant dripping of chemical on the motor will eventually short out that motor.

This is a really bad idea. Someone here clearly didn't know what they were doing. These are just some things to look for. A couple of suggestions. Make sure you're thinking about operation and maintenance before you buy your sprayer. You want to get input from users, from the people who are going to do the maintenance.

You want a picture what the equipment's going to look like in a vehicle. You want to ask what parts are going to be need maintenance. Where do we get the parts? Who will do the maintenance or how do we do that? Just look to make sure that you're buying a quality sprayer with quality components.

If you do need a 12‑volt power sprayer or another sprayer for your pest or landscape business, please call us at qspray.com. Thanks so much for watching. Have a great day.