Pressure washer tip got plugged up with some kind of larvea.

[QRTRHRS]

Talk about wierd things! I have one of those Ryobi/Suburu engine pressure washers that I got from HD maybe ten years ago. The wand stores upright in the frame. When I use it, I always let the water flow through the pressure hose before I put the wand on to allow any air to clear.

I put the wand on, started the engine and zip, no spray but tremendous pressure on the delivery hose? Not wanting to get smacked in the head or something by using tools to disconnect the fittings, I losened a threaded fitting until the water sprayed and let the pressure drain off.

Once I could release the coupling, I removed the tip and could spray water through the wand. Using a needle, I poked a worm or something out of the tip. With the wand in the storage position, the fitting faces up at about 45 degrees. Apparently some bug crawled in there to lay eggs? I think I may just put a plastic cap on the fitting while it sits.

 

[Code54]

That is a weird one - maybe just put a piece of tape over the hole?

 

[Wagtail]

Yep. Welcome to my world, Mate. During the Spring/Summer & Autumn if I don't cap every conceivable 'hole', such as a garden hose or a fuel nozzle, for sure some insect will make a nest in there and deposit eggs.

Grasshoppers particularly like the ends of my unused garden hoses, which I have laid out in a network to my various paddocks IOT hook up to a portable water trough. They'll build a grass clipping nest in there and bung the whole thing up.

Mud wasps are my other bane when it comes to hole-filling. So, it's improvised 'caps' or tie-wrapped (zip-ties?) baggies on anything I think that they can get into.

Yours is a new one on me though... looks like a new cap for my back-pack sprayer wand this Spring.

 

[oosik]

I have some type wasp that likes to lay eggs in small holes. Its become a real problem for any "open" equipment the doesn't have a cover over the key hole. I've ended up leaving the key in my riding lawn mower. Actually its not so much the eggs as it is the sticky goop surrounding the eggs. The wasps also like small diameter hoses I have hanging in my carport.

 

[QRTRHRS]

Yep. Welcome to my world, Mate. During the Spring/Summer & Autumn if I don't cap every conceivable 'hole', such as a garden hose or a fuel nozzle, for sure some insect will make a nest in there and deposit eggs.

Grasshoppers particularly like the ends of my unused garden hoses, which I have laid out in a network to my various paddocks IOT hook up to a portable water trough. They'll build a grass clipping nest in there and bung the whole thing up.

Mud wasps are my other bane when it comes to hole-filling. So, it's improvised 'caps' or tie-wrapped (zip-ties?) baggies on anything I think that they can get into.

Yours is a new one on me though... looks like a new cap for my back-pack sprayer wand this Spring.

We have mud wasps here as well. We call them mud daubers. They will plug up any piece of small engine exhaust if not used much. Typically in my barn, they build a mud "tube" about 5/8" wide and maybe 4 inches long or so. I often find them when I hear them fanning their wings to cool the brood. I had to clean my air compressor fitting today when I went to pump up a tire, lol!

The pressure washer was scary though. I forget the pressure rating, it's 6.5 HP so it's somewhere around 2500 or 3000 psi or so. Had I not bled off that pressure, I could have a good headache.

 

[Wagtail]

We have mud wasps here as well. We call them mud daubers. They will plug up any piece of small engine exhaust if not used much. Typically in my barn, they build a mud "tube" about 5/8" wide and maybe 4 inches long or so. I often find them when I hear them fanning their wings to cool the brood. I had to clean my air compressor fitting today when I went to pump up a tire, lol!

The pressure washer was scary though. I forget the pressure rating, it's 6.5 HP so it's somewhere around 2500 or 3000 psi or so. Had I not bled off that pressure, I could have a good headache.

Those are the buggers... industrious too with 4-5 cells within those tubes. And you're right about the unique, high pitched, wing buzz they make whilst building the tube or filling a hole. The 'mud' they make is such a fine grade sand, once they're done, that it'll gum up anything if it got wet.

 

[smstonypoint]

Until reading about Randy's experience in the Antipodes, I didn't realize that mud daubers were that widespread.

Doing a little research (Mud dauber - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia), it turns out that there are a number of wasps that build mud nests. Also, their handiwork has been blamed for two fatal air crashes.

Steve