How to clean your sprayer

We’re in the thick of spring and your sprayer is busy tending to your home and gardens. A great tip when it comes to outdoor maintenance is to do little and often – and this is the same when it comes to maintaining your equipment. To keep your Solo sprayer working at optimum capacity for many busy springs to come, make sure you clean your sprayer after every use.

Regular cleaning is critical for sprayer longevity. It's easy to overlook, and many people do. If your backpack sprayer isn’t holding pressure, or something similar, you may find regular cleaning and maintenance will help prevent these issues. Taking time at the end of the day to flush your backpack sprayer will prevent you from wasting an entire day due to your sprayer not working properly.

What happens if you don’t clean your sprayer regularly?

In short, nothing good. Leaving chemicals such as pesticides in your sprayer for a long period of time can make the seals swell, crack, and break down. Have you got poor pressure and leaks? This will be why.

If you’re using both herbicides and fertilisers in your backpack sprayer, you’ll need to clean out the tank properly between chemical usages. Not doing this can cause serious harm to that lawn you’ve worked so hard to cultivate!

A little bit of time now will save a lot of time later. Making cleaning your sprayer a part of your spraying routine will save on downtime and will prevent spraying residual chemicals where they shouldn’t be applied. Cleaning is cheap and quick – just grab your dishwashing liquid and a hose and you’re ready to flush the system.

Easiest and best way to clean your sprayer

We recommend the “triple rinse” method as the best way to clean your sprayer effectively. It’s just as it sounds – rinse your sprayer three times:

1. Fill the tank with water, shake it, and dump it get rid of any leftover product.
2. Fill the tank with dishwashing liquid and water, shake it up again and then spray the soapy solution to flush the whole pump system.
3. Fill the tank with clean water, shake the tank, and spray clean water to flush the pump system again.

Do I need special products to clean my sprayer?

Nah, you really don’t. You could buy a tank sprayer cleaner, but a mix of 6-8 drops of dishwashing liquid with water is all you need to properly clean your sprayer.

When we see sprayers that have been in action for 10, 20, 30+ years, they all have one thing in common – their owners have taken the time to clean them and keep them properly maintained. Don’t take our word for it though, here’s what Rob from the Wairarapa has to say:

“I’ve owned a solo sprayer since 1989 and still have it. It has never needed fixing or any repairs as it gets cleaned out after every use and hung up to dry out. Only last year I bought a new wand and hood for it.”

Be like Rob.