TRAVELS WITH TERRY

Homemade spot sprayer

Donald Cross, CGCS, at the Skokie Country Club in Glencoe, Ill., came up with this practical homemade sprayer idea for spot-spraying chemicals from a 30-gallon plastic wetting-agent drum attached to any turf vehicle. A 12-volt FloJet Automatic Marine/RV Diaphragm Pump ($90) is mounted to a ¢²-inch thick board, which is bolted to the top of the drum. The ¨ö-inch diameter intake hose is placed through the "bung" opening on the top of the drum with a weight on the end to keep the end of the hose near the bottom of the tank. A toggle switch, receptacle box, 20 feet of No. 12 wire, two battery alligator clips, two hose clamps, two brass barbs and electrical tape (all for $15) are used to complete the pump operation. The alligator clips and wire are hooked directly to the 12-volt battery terminals of the turf vehicle. One hundred feet of ¨ö-inch diameter high-pressure spray hose ($100) and either a TeeJet (plastic) spray gun or Green Garde (metal) spray gun ($150) round out the supplies. The pump is set at 20 psi to turn on automatically on demand and it turns off at 30 psi. There is no agitation system, so liquid chemicals are used that require little, if any, agitation while spraying. Assembly took about one hour. GCI