Spray Equipment Tips - Power Sprayer Design Matters

Power Spray Rigs - Design Matters

Many business owners shopping for commercial pest control sprayers do not consider issues such as design for use or maintenance until it is too late.

This short video shows two examples of really bad power sprayer design that drastically impacts productivity and profitability.  

Be sure to consider daily use and regular maintenance before selecting your pest control spray rig or your landscape sprayer.

Andrew Greess: Hi, this Andrew Greess of Quality Equipment & Spray, Qspray.com. This is the next in a series of short videos to help you with your spray equipment, to get more life out of your spray equipment, and better productivity. We hope these quick tips help.

This is a spray rig built by another company that was brought in for service a while back. I was looking at it to get an idea of what kind of service was needed, and it didn't look right. I took a closer look and I realized that the hose reel is so close and so tight to the gas tank, it looked very difficult to put the gas in the gas tank.

You can see, it's hard to see, but the lid of the gas tank's right there. I asked the tech, "How do you put gas in it?" He chuckled and he said, "Every day when I need to put gas in it, I have to unroll all 300 feet of hose so that I can actually get gas into the engine."

This is an important lesson. That is, you really got to think about what a sprayer's going to be like to use it once it's in your vehicle. What is the daily productivity impact? What's it going to be like to use this sprayer every day?

A lot of people don't think about this till they have a problem, and this is a perfect example. No one thought about putting gas in this sprayer till it was already purchased and installed in the truck and in the field. Now that tech has to fight with that and waste that time every day.

Here's another example. This was a sprayer brought in for service. Took another look at it and realized that the swivel is in here so tight against the frame of the sprayer that it's impossible to change out this swivel. Anyone who has a power sprayer knows that the O-rings and the swivel wear out about once a year. You have to change them out.

They're under a lot of stress from the rotating of the reel, and the chemicals, and the hard use, and the temperatures. The O-rings need to be changed once a year, so it should be an easy thing to do. In this case, the only way to change the O-rings and the swivel is to unbolt the skid from the truck and then unbolt the reel from the frame. Then we could change the O-rings.

What should have been a five-minute job became a two-person, at least an hour, job. Again, this is the sort of thing, this kind of design issue is something that a lot of people don't notice until it's too late. We want you to think about what it's like to use and maintain a sprayer before you purchase it.

When you need spray equipment for your pest or landscape business, we hope you will please consider Qspray.com. Thanks very much for watching.