Pest Control Equipment - I Thought I Had Seen it All

When it comes to pest control equipment, I thought I had seen it all but I was wrong.

I got a call from technician early this morning. We had installed a new 50 gallon pest control sprayer in his vehicle a month ago.   

He said the pump wasn’t working and nothing was coming out. He was getting no pressure. He said it was a new sprayer and it should work better than this. (Aside – it is always our fault or the sprayer’s fault. It is never the tech’s fault).  This shocked me because we have zero problems with this  pest sprayer.

He said he was at a client site and didn’t have time for this and didn’t want to come in and have us do a diagnosis.

I try to help him troubleshoot over the phone. I looked at all the usual suspects:

• -Check the filter
• -Ensure the filter gasket is properly positioned so that there’s no air leak
• -Check the input side plumbing of the pump to make sure there are no air leaks
• -Remove the gun from the hose and see if there’s more volume or pressure coming out without a gun
• -Remove the hose on the output side of the pump to see if anything is coming out.

The tech reported none of this did anything to change the lack of pressure from his  pest control power sprayer.

I advised him to bring the sprayer to our shop. He showed up about half an hour later.

One of our technicians started doing some troubleshooting and asking questions.

It didn’t take our tech more than a couple of minutes to realize that the tank was completely empty.

This idiot was trying to spray from an empty tank. He wasted more than a few minutes of my time and our shop’s time.

He wasted quite bit of his boss’ time because not only did he stop in the field to talk to me, but he drove in from the field to have us look at the  pest control sprayer and then drove back to the job site.

If you want to apply pesticides, a little common sense is required.

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