What You Need to Know About Pest & Landscape Power Sprayer Hoses

How important is choosing the right spray hose? It is actually critical to your safety, productivity and preventing damage to your equipment - which can get very expensive.

What is the difference between suction hoses and pressure hoses? Suction hoses work on the input side of the pump meaning it is between the tank and the pump. The suction hose does not collapse. Suction hoses are lighter duty and do not get too much wear, but they do break down in the sun and over time, so it is important to inspect your suction hoses regularly.

A pressure hose is on the output side and takes all of the pressure. These also do not burst as long as you have the correct psi hose. Pressure hoses get a lot of stress from all of the pressure output, so it is important to inspect your suction hoses regularly.

Spray hose selection is important because the spray hose is probably the most important hose on your power sprayer because it gets the most use and abuse. You need to look at the hose inside diameter and make sure you match your hose to your pump as well as the desired output.

When choosing the length of your hose you want to be able to reach the furthest point on your stops. If you can’t reach your hose to the furthest point you need to go, you need a longer hose. And remember that hose is cheap and it wears out so you need to cut some away each year. It’s better to have too much hose than not enough.

My top tips for spray hoses are simple. I explain these more in-depth in the video below:

• Run your hose through a rag when rewinding it.
• Inspect the hose regularly.
• Cut off worn hose BEFORE it leaks
• Occasionally unroll the entire hose and re-roll
• Reverse the hose periodically

Check out my other videos for more information on pest and landscape spray equipment. And visit Qspray.com for all of your pest control & landscape power sprayers, components, parts & kits.

Video Transcript

Hello this is Andrew Greess from Quality Equipment and Spray, Qspray.com – your spray equipment expert. And today we're going to talk about the hose on your pest and landscape power sprayer.

We're going to do a quick hose primer for you. Selecting the right hose for your power sprayer is critical. It's critical to your safety it's critical to preventing equipment damage which means saving money and downtime.

And certainly, it's important to productivity to making sure you get the most productivity out of your sprayer and get the most work done as quickly as possible.

So today's discussion we're going to talk about the difference between suction hose and pressure hose.

We're going to talk about spray hose selection and I'm going to share some hose productivity tips to save you some money and prevent some downtime.

Suction hose versus pressure hose - what's the difference?

First of all, suction hose is on the input side of the pump. It's the piece of hose between the tank and the pump whereas pressure hoses all the hoses on the output side or pressure side of the pump.

So the most critical factor when talking about pressure hose versus suction hoses - for suction hose, it can't collapse. You don't want the suction nose to collapse when the pump is sucking because then no water will get through, the pump will starve and there a pretty good chance of doing some pretty serious damage to that to that pump.

Pressure hose on the other hand. Burst pressure is important. You want to make sure it can handle the output pressure of that pump. So for example, if the pump's a 300 psi pump, you need a hose that's at least 300 psi so it won't burst when you start that pump.

Size for suction hose - the most critical factor is you don't want to starve the pump. You want to make sure that pump has plenty of water and you want to use hose that's at least as large as the input side of the pump.

So if your pump has a one inch input fitting, you want to use at least one inch hose for your suction hose. You can use bigger but you don't want to use smaller. And on pressure hose the most important thing is really productivity. Making sure you're getting the most output out of that pump in that sprayer.

When we're talking about wear, suction hose really doesn't get much wear. We see it where it will wear only through age or through sun damage but it's really not getting the kind of work on it that a pressure hose gets.

Particularly spray hose and spray hose and pressure hoses you want to watch a lot more closely because they're under a lot more stress generally than suction. Here's an example I want to show you.

What these different hoses look like so this is a diaphragm pump and you can see it. The green arrow is pointing to the suction hose and you can see it's a clear hose with a wire running through it and that wire prevents that hose from collapsing. Like we said, the most important thing on suction hose is it can't collapse because you'll starve the pump.

On the other hand, the blue arrows are now pointing to the output hoses or pressure hose and the hoses here are the bypass to the tank. The output to the hose reel or to the boom and to the jet agitation. And you can see here we just use regular tester ag spray pressure hose or those output or pressure hoses there.

Okay let's talk about spray hose selection. Your spray hose is probably the most important piece of hose on your power sprayer. And it's the hose that's going to get the most work and the most abuse.

So first when you're talking about spray hose selection, you want to look at inside diameter. Most of the pest and landscape applications are three-eighths or one-half inch inside diameter hose. There are some applications that use larger hose such as five-eighths three-quarter or one-inch. These would be your larger applications such as termite pretreats or weed pre-emergent jobs large jobs where you want lots of volume really quickly.

Larger id hose obviously gives you more volume but it's heavier and it costs more and the heavier is the real factor there if you're using it all day it can it can that weight it can really add up and really wear you out at the end of the day.

Smaller id hose has greater pressure and volume loss. So there's more there's more push back more resistance more pressure and volume loss with that smaller hose so you want to match your hose to your pump and you want to match it to your desired output, in gallons per minute, in psi to make sure you don't have a mismatch.

For example, if you have a very low pressure pump, putting a 400 foot piece of hose on there just isn't going to make any sense. You're not going to get the output you need and your productivity is going to suffer.

When it comes to hose length, what do we look at? Well hoses come in 200, 300 and 400 foot rolls so you generally want to pick a hose of that length. As we mentioned you want to want to match it to the pump. You want to be able to reach the furthest point on your largest stop so if you can't reach every point on your stop with your hose, your hose is too short.

Next thing you think about is hoses wear out and hoses are cheap. So it's better to have too much hose than not enough because you're going to be cutting hose away every year where it wears out. You want to make sure you have plenty of hose.

Spray hose tips - you don't want to wait for your hose to get in the kind of condition you see in these photos here. We recommend when you're rewinding the hose back onto the reel you run the hose through a rag. This will do two things.

1 it'll remove debris such as stones, pebbles, grit, sand, thorns - things that can damage your hose and

2 it'll help you roll the hose nice and evenly back onto the reel which a looks nicer

b you want to make sure that the hose isn't all bunched up on one side of the reel because then you can force the reel out of true and really cause some damage.

You want to inspect your hose regularly for wear, damage and leaks and if you're if you're running it through a rag and putting it back on the reel and watching it you'll be doing that every time you rewind it. You want to cut off worn out hose before it leaks. Do not wait for it to leak. Do not try to get an extra day or week out of it.

The downtime will kill you. Just cut it off bite the bullet. Get rid of that bad hose. Prevent that leak. Periodically we recommend you unroll your hose all the way. What happens is as hose ages sometimes it gets kind of mushy and soft and if you've rewound it on there tight sometimes some of these low pressure pumps have problems pushing through that hose, so we recommend you unroll the hose all the way.

Start up the pump and then evenly roll that hose back onto the reel. This could prevent some problems. And lastly and this is the money shot right here - periodically reverse your hose. It's the output side of the hose that's going to get all the wear and so if you once every year, twice a year just reverse the hose so that the input is the output side is now on the input and vice versa you get a lot more wear and a lot more time on that hose than you would if you just kept using it the same way.

Hope these tips help. If you think this had value, then please think of qspray.com when you need power sprayers components parts kits or spray hose.

Thanks for watching, Have a great day!