Home Made Pressurised Sprayer - Idea Help Wtd

[DaleFarmer]

i wonder can you make a pressurised weed sprayer with a propane/ methane gas bottle, use existing inlet/outlet devices to fill it and empty it, and attach a coupling junction / and a spray bar with hose to it / or a spray lance with one or two spray nozzles. The intention is to spray weed killer from it - at no great expense.

To pressurise it you simply ADD a touch of compressed air from an airline at the lowest possible pressure, or in the alternative from an electric air-brush with a 1/4 horse HP Air Compressor. I thought 3-5 lbs of air pressure would do the job. These gas bottles are made to withstand great explosive forces. To pull it about I 'd tie it to a sack barrow. The alternative is an battery driven 12 v pump, but charging batteries over and over again seems such a nuisance. Any advice or better ideas welcome. Kanpsack sprayers work on this principle.

 

[zzvyb6]

Welcome to TBN.

I took my regular hand pump plastic weed sprayer and installed a standard Shraeder valve (tire valve stem) and pump it up until the built in tank pressure relief valve blows off. The secret is to leave some air volume in the tank so the air has some room to compress within (say 2/3rds liquid). This works wonderful for me.

For more serious weed or insect control (as in tree spraying), I have a Stihl electric pressure washer. I put the pto generator on the back of the tractor, a 110 gallon horse trough in the front bucket with a garden hose off of it for a supply line. Gravity feed. I can shoot a decent stream 30 or more feet as necessary.

No muss, no fuss.

 

[DaleFarmer]

Bob, from Leeds, England.

Thank You ZZVYBG for the kind welcome and good advice. May I also thank the USA Government, the USA Military, the USA Navy Seals, and the citizens of the USA for the killing of another huge weed this weekend on the terrorist stage. A man who showed no mercy to fellow world citizens, innocent uninvolved passersby, and those sat in office blocks, hotel lobbies or popular coffee shops or bars.

To resume: I like your idea of the pump and car valve and will try it. Over the weekend I got to thinking that an ordinary 12v car battery inflator might do the job, I checked on Ebay and you can buy these for between $10.00 and $25.00. You could have two or three ex-propane gas tanks full of air or fertiliser [some of these tanks stand 4 - 5 foot high] and / or maybe somehing like an car sprayers pressure pot ready to connect to an air tank - the pressure pot could contain mixed fertiliser ready for use in weed-spraying on small parcels of land such as 1/2 to one acre plots. I've looked hard at the professional made kits, the biggest item of which appears to me to be the very professional looking white-tanks, are people buying the tanks I wonder and overlooking the the other items which don;t appear to be anything special, or hard to obtain. Over here in the UK things are double USA sales prices and a simple 12v DC pump sells in the UK for between $90.00 and $175.00. and a $1250+ price tag for a Quad bike sprayer seems to me far too high a price to pay. Naturally, others will have different views, maybe better views than mine, so any given advice will be welcome. Thank you once more. Bob.

 

[RalphVa]

The other guys had some good ideas.

Don't think pressurizing with propane or natural gas is a good idea. Some of that gas will dissolve and then release as you spray. Could end up with a combustible gas from the sprayers that would be ignited by your exhaust gas from the tractor or any stray electric spark.

You can get Co2 from a welding supply place. Use of Co2 gas would be much safer as would some of the other ideas mentioned.

Ralph

 

[DaleFarmer]

Sorry you missed the intention: The unused / unwanted butane / propane gas bottle is empty. You fill it with water+ plus your chosen weed killer to 80% full, [meaning you fill the discarded / unwanted gas bottle with weed killer to 80% full]

To pressurise the former gas-bottle you pump air 20 LB into it from a ordinary air line [air taken from a air compressor] In theory you now have a pressurised liquid air-assisted sprayer which only needs a spray lance and nozzle to get it into action. As anyone ever tried this, it should work, but does it?

 

[JimRB]

Do these tanks rust internally? Spray nozzles clog from crud. My 50 gallon sprayer has a screen at the bottom of the tank and the nozzles have screens. My tank has slime growing in it now that I need to rinse out before I spray weeds. So for me the first thing I have to do is deslime the tank. I just put new hoses on the spray so no need to deslime the hoses or nozzles but I do need to check the nozzle screens. At least with opaque tanks with a big cap you can look inside to see what pre-spraying maintenance you need to do.

That said years ago I had galvanized gallon hand pump sprayer but it still had a big lid to look inside first.

 

[PILOON]

I have done it and it works just fine.
A good rinsing is called after usage for as crystals will eventually clog things up.
Also most chemical sprays are corrosive by nature so a rinse is important.

A better vessel for this application would be coke/pepsi pressure tanks as used in soda fountains as they have large openings for inspection and as well they are mostly stainless due to food regulations.