Commercial Sprayers?

Don’t forget your shoulder height and arm length as well as the length of the spray wand will reduce how far the spray has to go to reach the top of the trees. You’d probably be fine with the 10 gal model.

I have what sounds like exactly the same set up as the 16 gallon that you described (70 psi, 18 ’ reach) and it actually will reach to a little more than 20 feet if you put it to a stream instead of a wide spray (I only do this for the very tops of trees since it also uses more chemicals on “stream mode”. You didn’t say how tall your taller trees are, but I suspect that @AndySmith is right and you could probably get by with the 10 gal model. But just so you know, you can actually buy a 16 gallon, 70 psi at tractor supply for $75. Seemed pretty reasonable to me.

OK guys. I’m considering making a low offer on this thing? I know less than nothing about these things so I’d love to hear any comments, estimates of value, etc. This one is only a few miles from my house!

https://nashville.craigslist.org/grd/d/portland-agtec-sprayer-nursery-farm/6828316415.html

Kevin,

I’ve only heard of Agtec, never seen one in person. If it’s in good shape, the price seems fair.

Here’s a couple on Tractorhouse. One for $2900 and one for $2600.

https://www.tractorhouse.com/listings/farm-equipment/for-sale/list/category/1142/chemical-applicators-sprayers/manufacturer/agtec

A new one looks like it costs about $13.5K

http://www.marketfarm.com/cfms/agtec_model_3004.cfm

It looks like it has a row crop head, so you won’t be able to spray tall trees. But you may be able to adjust the hoods so that it sprays higher up.

Here is a youtube video of that model. The video won’t play on the fruit forum, but when the box pulls up telling you that, you can click to be redirected to youtube and watch the video there.

Some things to consider. Find out how many horsepower it will take to run it and make sure your tractor has enough. Also, I’m sure this is probably set up for a category II 3-point, so make sure your tractor is cat II.

Also make sure your tractor will lift it. The full tank itself will weigh 800 lbs. The pump and frame is going to weigh quite a bit. If your tractor can pick up a big round bale, it will probably pick this sprayer up.

Check to make certain they didn’t leave any water in the pump. Don’t talk to them on the phone about it first (because they may go out and empty the water out, if they left water in it). Go look at it and look for drain plugs on the pump, and take them out yourself and see if water comes out (take some tools, don’t be bashful). Even if they say they drained the water. Check it. This is your opportunity to check it over good, before you buy it. If water is in the system, good chance the pump is junk, along with fittings and other things. I wouldn’t buy it.

I went and looked at a sprayer once. The guy said it worked great on the phone, but when I had him try it, the pump was junk. Someone had left water in it. I left without that sprayer.

If they say they drained the pump, and you have verified it by removing a drain plug, or if they said they winterized it by running anti-freeze through it (and you’ve verified it) then there is a good chance they have taken care of it, which is a plus. You can verify anti-freeze by how it feels on your fingers. If you don’t know how anti-freeze feels on your fingers, dip your finger in the tank and touch the tip of your tongue. It should taste sweet. Then spit it out, because it’s poison (along with any other pesticides in there) and will destroy your kidneys.

I bought a 100 gal. Rears sprayer last fall to use for herbicides. The guy left water in it and cracked a stainless steel ball valve, and cracked the filter assembly. The pump was OK because of a unique pump design. I still ended up having to rebuild the pump because it was worn out from years of heavy use. Had to replace the PTO shaft, the internal shaft, put new bushings for shaft, new hoses, rebuilt regulator, fitted ss quick connects, valves and plumbing to be able to use it with my spray boom or the wand, new sight gauge, and some other alterations.

In short I spent about $1400 on parts for repair and alterations. I bought it for $225 (cheap) but it needed a complete overhaul. $1600 total in the unit, but Rears is one of the best sprayers made. I ordered all the repair parts from Rears. They have been a dream to work with. They stock every part for this sprayer, even though we think the sprayer was built in the 1980s. Excellent service, with a capital “E”.

Looks like Agtec sold a lot of these sprayers, so my guess is you can get parts for it. That’s a pretty big thing to consider.

Good luck.

That was an incredibly helpful response, Mark, and I am extremely grateful. I actually had seen the you tube video, and it looked great but the set up seemed a little different from the one for sale.

But what I really ended up thinking the more I read of your post is that I honestly just have no business trying to buy a used airblast sprayer. I really don’t. I’ve confessed this here before so its no secret, but I am just embarrassingly ignorant when it comes to mechanical knowledge and abilities. Thoughts of me having to rebuild like you did or even make minor repairs is just not realistic. I’m pretty ashamed of how little I know of such things. I grew up in suburbs, dad wasn’t mechanically inclined, I didn’t have friends that were and I was never exposed to any equipment, tools, mechanical devices, etc. THen it was off to college and grad school and working in an office ever since.

Anyway, don’t even know enough to know some of the things you told me to check on or to know about. Also, from what you said about size and weight, I’m willing to bet that my little tractor wouldn’t handle this thing anyway. My tractor is a tiny one…a “compact” new holland that honestly isn’t a lot bigger than a riding mower.

So. I can’t fathom me buying a new air sprayer for the $6k and up prices I’ve seen, and I don’t think I could keep a used one working. I have heard about a backpack air-bast type but also read they are not worth having. I supposse I better just get used to my pump-up backpack and my electric motor sprayer. They take longer and use more product and are a lot of work, but they are simple enough I CAN usually fix them.

Thanks again, very much!

I use a 55 gallon 3pt sprayer on tractor. Moved up from 30gal. Works well with 200 plus trees. Even have sprayed in the past with side by side and four wheeler attachment. The four wheeler could easily go up and down the rows. The tractor takes some juggling.

I know what you’re thinking @thecityman airial spraying!!!

Bob

I get what you are saying Kevin. I think you are right to be looking for something a little easier on you for spraying. As your trees grow, it will take more time.

Imo, you don’t necessarily have to settle for a backpack, or an electric motor sprayer, vs. a large airblast. You might consider something in between.

If you don’t feel comfortable working on a more mechanical sprayer, a new one (if it’s decent quality) would probably last you a life-time without having to do anything but some routine maintenance (i.e. occasionally change the oil in the pump, drain the pump for winter, etc.).

A new one may be more than you want to spend. Just throwing it out there. The Rears Pak tank sprayer I bought last fall, the guy used it to spray his small peach orchard (with a high pressure gun).

These high pressure guns make work considerably easier vs. the wimpy electrical pump tank sprayers (I know because I own two of those). Landscapers even use them to spray big trees.

Since I’ve torn one apart and put it back together, I’m really big on Rears sprayers. Everything is stainless steel and well designed. They’ve been in business for generations. As mentioned, the support has been excellent. At one point they were willing to let me talk to one of their mechanics, when I had a technical question on rebuilding the pump. These things are pricey, but I’m very impressed with the quality.

They also make a small airblast sprayer which would fit your tractor (category I) called a Pak blast. If interested, here’s a price sheet I found online. It’s from 2015, but it’s retail prices. Some dealers will negotiate.

http://rearsmfg.com/price_book/2015-2016%20pricelist%20mobile.pdf

Another option is to just keep looking for a used small 3 point sprayer with low mileage. Most of the time if it’s had low use, people will mention that in a Craigslist ad. I think a good quality sprayer with low use would probably be problem free for you (as long as they drained everything to winterize). I occasionally see units like that for sale on Craigslist here.

Stihl makes a gas powered backpack sprayer that’s interesting. If you have a Stihl dealer in your area this may be an option and would provide you with a place for service (I believe all dealers must offer repair service on Stihl products in order to qualify for a dealership). The SR-450 is the model that may work for you. However, I’d check to confirm two things are offered on it: 1) that it has a tank agitator; and 2) that it is capable of spraying suspended solids (such as Surround). They state it can be used to “dust” materials or to spray, but don’t address suspended solids in a liquid. I’m pretty sure they used to state it was able to spray suspended solids, but they seem to have deleted that language from their website and I’m not sure why. It’s not cheap, around $750.

Yeah, a gallon of Surround™ in 10 gallons of water is about as thick as I can apply with my consumer-quality Fimco electric sprayer. I wet the clay and stir it to a runny consistency before putting it in the tank. I apply it with a wand and was continually having to unplug the tip until I learned to run the slurry through an automotive paint filter bag while dumping it in. That and having to reprime the pump after the pickup screen plugged up. Oh, and disassembling the pump to replace the rubber and plastic valves that were blocked with clay. Rinsing with water doesn’t get all the clay out afterward, but using a sprayer detergent seems to.

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OK, I’ve spent a lot of time looking at airblas orchard sprayers, but at the end of the day they are usually in the $5,000 range and very rarely less than $4,000.

On Friday I just happened to be in Hopkinsville, KY for work, and I drove by a huge sprayer business that sells every kind and sprayer imaginable. I went in and talked to them and ended up with something I’m seriously thinking about but don’t really understand. Apparently is isn’t exactly an air-blast sprayer, though it looks like one to me. They call it a “mist sprayer” They have just started selling them and their own web site doesn’t even have them on it yet, but here are some links to it from other sites. I’d love to hear any thoughts you all have:

It is called a A1 (brand) Terminator (model) sprayer and I can buy it from them for $2,999. That seems to be a little cheaper than other places sell it for. It is PTO driven with a roller pump. It uses a squirrel cage fan Tank is 50-60 gallons. Take a look:

here are some specs:

https://www.sprayersupplies.com/3pt-hpr-60-r15a1-mist-sprayers-a5648563?gclid=CjwKCAjw1dzkBRBWEiwAROVDLE73pjNIYGwY5vhp4TvUaz_pCYKY26TgMNxg-8x6UWeykBdGfhNNnRoCwRcQAvD_BwE

This looks like it might be a good fit for me. Its about $1,000 to $2,000 less than the traditional air blast sprayers, its pretty small, and seems a lot better than any of the electric pump/boom sprayers. Thoughts?

@Olpea , @Steve333 or anyone with an opinion, I’d like to hear it.

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Wow Kevin, you must have a lot more trees than I imagined to be considering a sprayer of this size.

I don’t have any experience really with sprayers of this sort (a 4gal backpack unit handles most of my needs), but it looks impressive. One thing I noticed from their video, it seems they list trees/orchards at the end of their list, and seem to have various fogging and ground spraying uses before it. May just reflect their market, but perhaps not. Might be good to check with some folks that use these larger sprayers and see what is best suited to your needs. I can’t really help you there.

Thanks Steve. I just admire your mechanical expertise and thought you might have some insight into this kind of setup. But sounds like you haven’t had any experience with them so no problem.
I’m up to about 150 fruit trees now, and adding a few more each year. That is a tiny size when compared to commercial orchards and even some of our friends here, but its an awfully lot to hand spray with any kind of want- even if it has an electric pump.

BTW, for everyone’s information, I also talked to these people about the idea of just getting one of those tank sprayers on a pull-behind cart with a boom and then stand the ends of the boom upright. They didn’t think that would work very well at all and had some logical reasons why not. But of course they could have just been pushing the more expensive option (mist sprayer).

Kevin,

Really these type of sprayers all use a pretty simple principle. Air is the main carrier of the pesticide (with a little bit of water).

Coverage is more or less dependent on the power of the fan and droplet size. Typically the more concentrated the spray, the smaller the droplet size. Smaller the droplet size can mean better canopy penetration, but also more potential drift.

The sprayer above looks like it’s designed to use nozzles to produce small droplets because the fan probably doesn’t have a lot of power. Not anything inherently good or bad about that. Like anything, some advantages and some disadvantages.

I don’t have any idea of the power of the fan, so it’s really impossible how well it will penetrate the canopy. My guess is that if you keep your trees well pruned, it will penetrate good enough.

It’s impossible to evaluate the quality without looking at it, but I’ll offer a few comments.

It looks like it doesn’t have mechanical agitation. This is a definite disadvantage. It may have recycle agitation (which is better than nothing, but not that good). Recycle agitation is where a pump nozzle is installed in the tank and sprays inside the tank. Recycle agitation won’t keep dry flowables very suspended but it’s not necessarily a deal breaker. If it has no agitation, that’s still not a deal breaker but a pretty big disadvantage. You will have to stir the chemicals and dry flowables manually, recognizing they will settle out some.

The specs indicate the unit has an electric solenoid valve for an on/off. Unless they used an extremely high quality motorized soleniod valve it will likely plug up fairly quickly with water dispersable granules or dry flowables.

They will probably tell you the filter will protect the solenoid valve from plugging, but I’d be skeptical. It really depends on the type and quality of the solenoid valve. I don’t use solenoid valves on my sprayers. I use stainless steel ball valves which mount on an assembly which quick mounts on the tractor to control the on/off of the spray solution.

Beyond that I would look at the construction of the components. Do they use galvanized piping or stainless steel. Galvanized sucks. PVC or nylon piping won’t corrode, but it’s not that strong. What is the quality of the hoses? Are they cheapy Chinese off brands, or something decent?

They seem to brag that the gauge is liquid filled, but honestly this is a standard feature on any decent sprayer. A dry gauge is worthless on an ag sprayer.

There should be a ball valve to shut off the liquid at the tank (this is so you can clean the line strainer). If the valve is made of SS (including the ball) that’s good. If it’s a pvc valve that’s bad. A pvc valve will eventually get so stiff the pvc handle will break and the valve will need to be replaced. Same thing with the tank drain valve.

Look for anything that will corrode on the unit. Ag chemicals are pretty corrosive.

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Once again you have taken a great deal of your time and expertise to help evaluate a sprayer for me, and I’m extremely grateful. I sincerely hope that even if others here are not currently considering such sprayers, this thread will become a resource for future people who may be contemplating the purchase of some kind of air/fan sprayer and will also benefit from your remarks as I have.

I’m quite interested in this particular sprayer for the simple reason that it APPEARS to offer many of the advantages of other airblast sprayers I have looked at, but for considerably less money. I have decided- in large part based on your past posts on this thread- that I am either going to buy a new one or else stick with cheap electric motor sprayers. I have no business buying a used sprayer with my lack of mechanical skills. I understand that new ones can give trouble too, but certainly not as likely, not as often, and hopefully not as soon as a used one likely would.

I am going to reread your post (probably many times) and look into some of the issues you brought up and talk to the sales staff about some of them. I certainly have a lot to think about here.

BTW…they also had another type of orchard sprayer that seemed a bit odd to me. It was all mounted on a fork-life platform together, but it actually was powered by a stand alone gas engine. The engine looked about like a small lawn mowever engine, but had electric start. Even the salesman was making fun of the electric start and saying that didn’t make much sense to him. Anyway, that thing cost over $5,000, and this one was $3k so it seemed like a lot better deal. All of the other air blast sprayers had fans that looked like regular bladed fans, whereas this one had the “squirrel cage” fan. Like you said, its hard to know if that is enough wind. But the layout was pretty simple. The squirrel cage fan blew the air through a big plastic “funnel” and near the end of the funnel there were 4 nozzles equally spread out. THe pump would spray the chemicals out of the 4 nozzles, where it would then be pushed out and up by the wind generated by the cage fan. I guess you could see all of this but I wanted to be sure.

Again, I can’t address all your points until I research them and talk to the staff again, but you’ve been very generous with your time and I very much appreciate it! Thanks Mark.

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Sure thing Kevin. I’m sure you recognize the sprayer with the motor was more expensive because you are buying an additional power source, which of course you don’t need because you have your tractor to power yours.

Whether the fan has blades or is a squirrel cage really doesn’t matter. There are good sprayers out there which use either one. Same thing with the type of pump. It’s just the quality of the components they used, which of course can’t be determined without close examination.

For example, the fan blades on my airblast sprayer are thick aluminum. This is good because they haven’t cracked or broken in 50 years of use (the sprayer is 50 years old) and they won’t corrode. You wouldn’t think a fan would corrode because it doesn’t come in contact with the spray. But fans on ag sprayers actually do come in contact with spray because they pull the mist back in from the pesticide “fog”. My fan blades stay coated with pesticide. Also the bearings for the fan are decent Fafnir bearings, which are grease-able. I’m not a super big fan of sealed non-grease-able bearings, but they use them in lots of environments and applications with decent life, if the bearings are sized correctly and of good quality.

I didn’t mention the pump quality. Unless it’s complete junk, it should last. A roller pump doesn’t come in contact with spray solution (at least the metal parts don’t) so there shouldn’t be any big issues there, again so long the pump is put together with decent components.

I noticed they offer a stainless steel pump. I’m not sure how that would be an advantage over a cast iron pump, since the metal doesn’t come in contact with the chemical. Maybe I’m missing something. You might ask them about it.

If you end up being not happy with the sprayer you are looking at, you may still yet consider the Rears pak tank. It’s not an air blast, but nothing like a cheapy electric wand sprayer either. Remove that image from your mind. The wand is short, light weight, and easy to maneuver. The spray pattern is easily adjustable by moving the front forearm lever back and forth. The pressure is amazing. It can easily deliver 300 lbs. + although 125 lbs. is plenty for what I was using it for. The mechanical agitation is sweet. Just fill the tank, dump the chemicals in and turn on the pto, while heading through the field. By the time you reach the orchard the solution is completely mixed and stays mixed.

I like it enough that if something happened to it, I’d probably get another one just like it.

Here’s a pic.

Some smaller growers here use mist sprayers like the one you are looking at for smaller orchards. One guy pulls a model that contains a gas engine with his ATV through about an acre of apples

I’m not sure how the adjustment to control the direction of the spray works on the mist sprayers but it may merit a closer examination.

I looked at mist sprayers before I bought our Rears airblast sprayer. Another company in Kansas makes mist blowers too. https://swihart-sales.com/pto-mist-sprayers-and-blowers/

The least expensive air blast sprayers I know of are made by Jacto. These are popular units, but they have plastic tanks and I believe they are made in Brazil. My local research/demonstration farm sponsored by NC extension has a Jatco.

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Mark

Great looking tractor. How many HP is that?

I understand now how you are able to bush hog your peach tree prunings.

Thanks Rick.

It’s just a 65 horse. But for my needs it’s about perfect. It pulls the airblast and my little 4 bottom planter just fine. I only have a 7’ rotary mower which it pulls with no problem. The other day we were pulling out a few more peach trees and it did have a little trouble pulling out a big peach tree. I’d guess the trunk was close to 1’ in diameter. That would have gone easier had the tractor been a bit bigger. We had to rip the scaffolds off in pieces to get it out.

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This is up for sale locally. I’m not familiar with this type of 3 point sprayer. It looks rough. Should I gamble a few hundred on buying in unknown condition?

image

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If you like to tinker I bet you could get that running!

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