I do spraying stuff, I write a blog post while on hold with Kaiser HMO, it may been another nice day!

I wasted a lot of time yesterday. I should be supervising a baler rebuild, but then I want to get involved in a hands on manner and there I am all day.

Instead I worked on a sprayer. I think that is what farmers do when they don't want to do real work. They say, "well, I have to get the sprayer going..." This is a good plan because it is an unpleasant enough job that no one will question your work ethic, it is an invaluable piece of equipment, and there is always something to repair on a sprayer.

My Gator came with a crappy electric sprayer. I hated that sprayer at work and I wanted it to disappear. I only accepted it for parts as I hate throw anything away. When I had to use it before, I used it exactly like the person who built it told me to use it. He built it, it was his plan, and he knew how he wanted it used. So I had no reason to change.

There was no real problem with his design. He built it with what he had. The main issue he had was the electric pump and there was no agitation for the spray tank. The other problem was/is that for some reason when you get down to two gallons in the tank, the pump loses its prime and won't reprime. 

I didn't really take good care of the sprayer as I had never intended to use the sprayer again. It sat in the greenhouse until it started to rust from the humidity and was so much in the way that I was going to throw it in the trash. The mechanic told me to take it home. I was accumulating parts to build a sprayer like I rebuilt for the college so I thought I could use something off of it. I wanted to build a sprayer for a UTV while I am a cripple but, I am limited in what I am supposed to be doing. Welding and lifting stuff is highly frowned on by the higher powers. Also, it causes pain.)  

At some point over the couple years it has been setting in the way I decided to try using it to spray molasses into the feed mill. That completely plugged it up. 

So I had some problems.

I also discovered that the pressure regulator wasn't hooked to a return line and so it actually worked the opposite of how you would expect. This was not a difficult fix but required digging through buckets of pipe fittings and numerous trips to the shop at a hobble.

The one modification I made was to change the boom plumbing so that I could shut off the main boom and just use the side boom for spraying ditches. My friend who built the boom made it out of PVC pipe and used this cool irrigation fitting to make a side swing boom. However there were two problems. Since it is a wet boom, I had to improve support for the PVC pipe and I needed to shut off the main boom and run the side boom. I didn't want to use electric valves or add bulky plumbing.

The support issue was solved with a bit of scrap metal. The boom problem took more thought. Fortunately my friend had plumbed a drain on the side boom. I added a quick connector to the drain and put a quick connector plug on the main boom, and I was in business. I just have to switch hoses to use both booms.

The electrical issues are ongoing. The pump does not prime unless I pressurize the tank. I don't want to spend $175 on a new pump. I installed a voltage gauge in the Gator which lets me know if I am out of power. I also installed my MicroTrak, FlowTrak II and a Sensor-1 GPS speedometer. Because I like stuff like that. It makes me feel all scientifical and stuff. I think also I have the parts to also put my FarmerGPS computer in the Gator for guidance.

The FlowTrak gave me a lot of problems. I was using it on the new sprayer at work and was going to donate it to the university when I left. However, I just decided to keep it. For some reason I had to completely recalibrate it even though I had the same flowmeter and the same brand of GPS speedometer. 

Calibration was frustrating. I think low voltage was a problem as the speed calibration would not save to memory. Finally, I just started spraying ditches as I needed to do something before dark. 

I had a clever plan. I found a long straight road. I set the FlowTrak linear measuring setting to zero. I started spraying. I then used the app FieldsAreaMeasure to also track my distance. I then could compare the distances. When I selected Run/Hold, Calc and turned the switch to change wheel size it also updates your distance. So I just adjusted the wheel size until I got the same distance as FieldAreaMeasure.

Suddenly everything worked. Even the gallons were close. Isn't science wonderful!

My secondary scheme is to use the FlowTrak to turn the pump on and off. I actually read the manual and I think there is an extra wire which I can connect to a relay which I can use to switch main power to the electric pump. Then I can wire the pump directly to a battery and use the run/hold function of the FlowTrak to turn the pump on and off. 

The best thing about this idea is that I will end up with a convoluted maze of wiring and I will never remember which wire goes where. This confusion for some strange reason gives me comfort in life.

Go figure...

(this blog was created while on hold with my HMO. I still don't have an appointment with my HMO because when I finally got a live person on the line, I was disconnected...)