Spring cleaning for the sprayer

May 6, 2020 - Issue 8

Chemical residue can last over the winter and cause crop damage, so you want to give the sprayer a complete pre-season cleaning. Here are the steps:

  1. Fill the sprayer tank full of water and run the water through the system. Make sure the only place water comes out is through the nozzles.
  2. While at it, run through a cleaning cycle using a multi-function sprayer cleaner that will raise pH and provide a detergent function. Let the cleaning solution sit in the system for a day or so.
  3. While the solution sits in the system, check and remove all screens and filters, clearing them of debris. Clean them by hand using a scrub brush and detergent.
  4. Remove boom ends and flush them.
  5. With everything back together, run rinsing water through the sprayer and check nozzle flow rates. Check that they’re within 5% of new and of each other by timing and measuring their output. Replace any nozzles that are faulty. If a lot of them are faulty, you may opt to replace the whole lot with new low-drift nozzles.

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