Pasqua, Sask. – Until the spring of 2004, Rob Rigetti had used a three-ton truck to haul water to his sprayer. For the past two years, he’s been using a 48-foot, two-axle dry goods van pulled behind a highway tractor.
Rigetti had been talking to neighbours who used a similar trailer to haul their water.
“That’s where I got the idea. We were looking at buying an old fuel tanker, but they’re quite expensive. The vans are a lot cheaper than a water tanker,” said Rigetti, who farms near Pasqua.
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“I went with a trailer instead so I could keep all the chemical inside. If it rains, it doesn’t get wet. It doesn’t get dusty or dirty when you’re going down the road. If you want to leave the truck and trailer somewhere, you can lock it up and not worry about someone stealing your chemical.”
Rigetti’s trailer includes four 1,250-Imperial gallon water tanks, a Chem Handler chemical mixer and a three-inch gas pump, both with three-inch plumbing to match his sprayer and a deep-cycle battery to run the chemical transfer pump.
“I have two (tanks) pushed up at the front, then about three metres (of space) in the middle, then two more towards the back,” said Rigetti.
“That balances the weight, so there’s more over the back axle and more up on the truck. Those trailers aren’t built like a fuel tanker trailer. They’re not really heavy, so you don’t want to overload them with a bunch of weight in the middle.”
Rigetti uses a three-inch, 14-metre-long hose to fill the sprayer. He slid the tanks over to one side, about 15 centimetres off centre, so he can walk by the tanks to get up to the front of the trailer when he pulls the fill hose in.
He said he ran two-inch hose from the tanks to a group of valves, so he could can shut each tank off individually. Then he went to three-inch hose from there, using a T connector.
“I plumbed two-inch into either side of the T. The three-inch stuff is really expensive. I figured if I had two two-inch together, that would (supply) the three-inch. Then I went with three-inch from the valve to the Chem Handler, the pump and out to the sprayer.”
Rigetti said valves are required for each tank because they don’t fill evenly so operators need to be able to fill each tank separately.
Generally, he leaves all four valves open when he’s filling his sprayer.
Rigetti plumbed the Chem Handler with a three-way valve, so he can recirculate dry chemical back through the pump and Handler without it going into the sprayer.
“I put a little water in the Handler, fill it half full, then dump the granular chemical in, circulate it through and let it run. When it goes into the sprayer, it’s in full suspension then.”
The van has a translucent fibreglass roof that lets light through and enables Rigetti to easily see. For working at night, he mounted two 12-volt tractor lights in the back of the trailer that run off a deep-cycle battery.
He said about four metres of space at the back of the truck behind the last tank provides space for the Chem Handler and chemical storage. The lights are above the Chem Handler.
There’s two on one side that lights that area up – you can see well in there,” he said.
“I ran a welder cable wire from the alternator in the truck. I can connect that up to the trailer to charge the battery while it’s hooked onto the truck. I unhook it like unhooking an air line when I unhook the truck. It’s just like another battery on the truck.”
The battery also powers the pump that transfers chemical from the bulk tanks to the Chem Handler.
“With the battery and the chem pump, I was using it this fall and I didn’t have the truck hooked on. I pumped about 700 litres of glyphosate through it without having to charge the battery. It goes for quite a long time.”
The three-inch pump in the trailer only moves water from the on-board tanks to the Chem Handler and out to the sprayer. A separate pump in his yard is used to fill the tanks with water. Rigetti said it takes 20 minutes to fill the four tanks.
“It’s pumping out of a cistern in the ground. Some guys have the fertilizer bins with a water kit on them and that would be a lot faster. We’re sucking the water up rather than those forcing the water down. So it takes ours a little longer to pump in.”
In the field, filling the sprayer takes seven or eight minutes.
“By the time you get your chemical put in and rinse your jugs, it’s three-quarters full. You watch it fill up, shut it off and you go. You’re not sitting around for a long time,” said Rigetti.
His sprayer, which holds 1,000 US gallons, can be filled six times from the tanks on the trailer.
If he’s using something like Bravo, Rigetti can use up the water on the trailer two or three times if he gets a big day, when he doesn’t shut down in the afternoon because of wind.
He said he would have bought a 40 foot trailer, instead of 48 foot, if he could have found one, but his still works well.
“If I had money to blow, which I don’t, I might take that area in the centre, put a side door in the trailer and a set of ramps that folded down, so I could run a four-wheeler up there. You could take the water trailer out to the field, take your four-wheeler home and get the sprayer, if you were by yourself. But I usually have somebody else with me.
“You could also put all your empties up in the centre, and it would be easier to get them out.”
