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Coles County, Illinois | I suggest everyone mount a clean water flush tank of 80 gallons or more on your sprayer. Plumb it so you can draw out of it and pull from it to every portion of your system.
Add sprayballs to the top of your tanks so that you can rinse the walls of your tank with fresh water at fairly high pressure (60 psi). Try to position your suction point to pull as much out of your tank as possible. I got mine down to a gallon plus what's in the hoses. (Diaphragm pump)
If just shutting down for the day, I spray out the tank, then flush the system with 30 gallons. I spray that out. Then flush the tank thru sprayballs another 30 gallons. Spray that out and then the final 20 gallons thru the sprayballs and spray that out. Then drain 1 gallon in field. Believe it or not this only takes 10 minutes.
If I'm finished with a crop and have leftover chemical I may have to use the flush water to dilute what's left and spray it out over previous sprayed crop. Fortunately I'm rarely more than an acre long. In that case I might have to refill the flush tank and then do the shutting down for the day procedure.
This year the custom applicator the Local Antique Tractor Club uses refused to spray their wheat that had Field Pennycrest Explode on it. They said everytime they tried to spray post herbicides on wheat that they killed the wheat. I had just finished spraying generic Prowl, Spartan and Pursuit and they said "We don't care if you kill it. If you do we'll plant Soybeans." The spray did not damage the wheat at all. It was an ALS inhibitor they supplied but I don't remember exactly what. | |
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Sprayer clean out
