Sprayer setup

[WVBill]

I bought a FIMCO 15 gallon spot sprayer to use for spraying my fence line and other spot spraying. I load it in the bucket of my FEL and I've run a flat two connector under the hood to the battery so it's easy to connect the electrics.

I found that the 15 foot hose that the sprayer came with didn't give me enough "walking around" range so I bought an extra 20 feet. This gave me plenty of range but managing all that hose while moving from place-to-place was a big problem.

I solved that by getting an inexpensive auto-retract air/water hose reel and mounting it on my FEL arm with U-bolts and wingnuts. There's a short hose from the tank/pump to a quick-disconnect at the hose reel to make it easy to mount/dismount the whole rig. (See attached picture).

I have a piece of 2 1/2" PVC attached to the FEL upright with hose-clamps. I use this as a "holster" for the spray wand.

For the fence lines, I just drive along and spray from the seat. For spot spraying other areas, the 30' of hose gives me room to hit several areas without moving the tractor.

I first tried using the air/water hose that came with the reel but for some reason I couldn't get enough flow/pressure. I just cut it off and replaced it with ag sprayer hose and it works fine.

 

[mathey]

Hey! thats almost exactly what i did...when the 15 gallon ATV sprayer was actually mounted on my little ATV, the weight with the water lifted the front end off the ground...so this was my setup for spraying my Christmas trees...

 

[WVBill]

I've been thinking of making some kind of a boom set-up for general spraying of the grass areas. Your set-up looks like a good approach. Did you make it yourself?

What did you use for the spray nozzles? How far apart are they and what kind of a swath do you get? Do you have on/off control of the "boom" from the seat?

 

[mathey]

I think that the difference between your Fimco unit and this one is the boom. It came exactly as pictured (the ATV model from TSC). I can post some better photos of the bracketry if you'd like or you can see them at TSC (if there's one near you). You could duplicate this very easily with a bit of metal

The nozzles are about 48" apart, they are fan tips, and i have them point outwards to hit the sides of the trees. The pump is designed to wire directly to the battery, with an on off switch on the pump, but i just added another switch up near the steering wheel to turn the pump on and off. Seemed to work pretty well in "field trials" on Saturday.

 

[WVBill]

I think I can figure out some bracketry, I was most interested in the spray tips. The booms I've seen at TSC and Northern Tool have been much wider and cost around $70. I've been thinking that if I could just get spray tips I could fashion the rest out of hoses & PVC and some angle iron.

 

[mathey]

I'll take some more detailed photos of the setup and the spray tip configuration tonight...

 

[mathey]

ok, i'm not sure if these photos will make it clearer or not.

This photo is a closeup of the end of each spray tip showing the spray nozzle, the nut that secures the screen and tip to the elbow, and the filter screen.

 

[mathey]

this photo shows a blurry close up of the fan shaped cut in the spray nozzle tip...i need to find out if there are other shapes available.

 

[mathey]

this is a poor photo of the spray arm...hose comes off pump into a barbed tee fitting, each side goes to a 90 elbow, the elbow mounts thru a hole in the lower spray arm and is held captive with the nylon screw.

 

[WVBill]

Thanks!
I'll go to TSC and check out those spray tips then see if I can match the threads on the nozzle retainer to something I can use to build my own boom.