Sprayer 3pt Sprayer - what's best, boom or boomless?

[PGibber]

I have a local company that builds a good quality sprayer. The one I'm looking at is 55-gal, standard 3pt package. I'm on 13 acres, land is relatively flat will use sprayer for controlling weeds in hay/grazing pasture. Early on I figured I would go with a boom set-up, which was a 17' breakaway boom with 11 fan tips. However, the company also mentioned they could do a boomless setup with 3 tip XP nozzles.

I've looked over a few old TBN postings but wanted to get some current advice from someone who has used both boom and boomless sprayers and which works better or pros/cons of each.

Thanks

 

[Erik_in_Hoyt]

my old landlord does an awful lot with a 30 gallon boomless on his 120 acres and doing jobs for neighbors. Seems to me fewer parts to damage is a good thing.

 

[Robert_in_NY]

The downside with boomless sprayers is drifting can be a major problem. Granted, most people do not care about that but spraying weed killers into the air near borders or other plants you don't want to kill can be a major issue. And when the spray is pushed into the air it is capable of traveling quite a way with a decent breeze. Ideally you would want a boomed sprayer with shields but just a normal boom sprayer would do a good job.

 

[Erik_in_Hoyt]

good point!

 

[Hill Farmer]

I have been looking into the same thing. I think I will go with the boomless nozzle on a 150 gal tank 3 pt. setup. However our farm is in the hills, it is rough, and has quite a few trees on the rougher areas of pasture. I was afraid it would beat the booms up to bad. We also don't have neighboring crops to worry about. Manufacturer I talked to said his nozzle would spray 30 feet wide and never get higher than your shirt pocket. Wind would still need to be reasonable though.

 

[hanson1999]

the worst problem with boomless is coverage. if you have tall plants, they often block the chemical from getting to the small weeds on the other side of them. this is worse the farther out from the tip you go. had this problem in our corn patch this year, currently building a 20' boom with nozzles on 20" spacings to fix that problem. it was almost a waste of chemical as our corn got around a foot high, the chemical would not hit the weeds right "behind" the corn.

 

[flINTLOCK]

How much weight can you safely carry fairly high up on 3-pt? That might be a concern for tank size especially if hilly terrain. I like my boomless 55 gal unit.

 

[heehaw]

i took my boom off several years ago an went with a single nozzle that is adjustable to spray right, left or both: so far it works great.
heehaw

 

[JRP]

Boom gives better or more uniform coverage with less drift.
The tips can be changed to adjust spray quantity.
Because you get better coverage you spray less often and use less chemical, which saves money.
Less drift = less damage to you non-target species, less in your lungs, and less chance of a lawsuit from your neighbor.

Boomless is good if you have neglected property which is overgrown, which can snag and damage a boom.

For liability reasons alone I won't use a boom.

 

[mjncad]

I've read where some guys swear by weed wipers, which may work well on your flat acreage.

Wind is a constant issue where I live, so I have a ~12' boom on my 55-gallon 3-pt sprayer.

As much as I have modified my sprayer, I should have just built one from scratch. I have no qualms with the quality, just the features I found it was lacking from experience.