Cut Out Design Flaws and Down Time with Better Spray Equipment Design

Let's talk about how you can potentially design your problems away.

American graphic designer, Milton Glaser, once said “There are three responses to a piece of design – Yes, no and WOW!” We sure have seen our share of WOW designs. Most of the time our WOW’s are followed by “why would you do that?” In our industry we need to be able to reach our equipment for maintenance. It’s not even a question. 

We are pumping harsh chemicals 8, 10, 12 hours a day. We are not always gentle with them. We're really using this equipment hard. We got to think about maintenance before we need to do the maintenance. When you are building out your rig it’s important to think about the times when you’ll have to change the oil on your motor, replace the filter, replace O-rings, etc. We know eventually there will be maintenance to be done on our equipment.

You can’t fix bad design, so if you purchase a backpack has the hose coming out and bending at a 90- degree turn there isn’t a whole lot anyone can do to fix it. If your engine and tank are so close to together you can’t pull start easily, it’s a bad design. The best piece of advice we can give to anyone is before you bolt things down and weld things together, test ease of use, and accessibility for repairs. 

Keep watching for the next installment of this seminar that deals with the importance of good Design in your pest control spray equipment:

Andrew Greess: That was talking about the components. Now we want to talk about design because it's really important that a sprayer be designed well.

When I say, "designed well," what do I mean? It's got to be designed so that you can use it easily every day. It has to help you do your job. It's got to be designed for productivity. It doesn't matter how good a sprayer or what sprayer you purchase, it's going to need maintenance, so it's got to be designed for maintenance.

If you've got a sprayer that is so hard to do maintenance on, you're never going to do maintenance and it's just going to fall apart. It's going to turn into a boat anchor in no time. It's got to be designed for maintenance and it's got to be designed for repairs because we're pumping harsh chemicals through these sprayers.

It's 120 degrees outside. It's probably 140, 150 on the truck. We are pumping harsh chemicals 8, 10, 12 hours a day. We are not always gentle with them. We're really using this equipment hard. We got to think about maintenance before we need to do the maintenance. We got to think about the repairs before it's time to do the repairs and you go, "Oh, oh. How do I do that?"

Here's some examples. This is a backpack. A customer got this backpack for free because they bought some chemical. Can you see the bend there? You see the kink in the hose? From the first day they used this backpack sprayer they were having problems and they asked us to fix it. We can't fix that. It's a bad design.

At the price of free, you pay too much because you've been stopping and you can't do your job. You want to make sure this stuff is well‑designed.

If you missed any of the videos in this series, catch up on them here:

Experience Pays: Top 10 Avoidable Spray Equipment Problems And Ways To Avoid Them

Choosing the Right Spray Equipment Engines, Backpacks, Pumps and Trailers

Spray Fittings and Tanks - The Right Small Spray Equipment Components Matter Too

Oh The Hose Reel Problems We’ve Seen!

For more information on Andrew Greess, visit  https://www.qspray.com/