Technical things

…even mechanical things are best avoided by me I have decided after a recent experience with a back pack sprayer.

We have two Solo back pack sprayers , one for bugs and beasties and one primarily for Round up. I am mainly in charge of the  Glyphosate(Round Up) one and leave higgedly piggedly lines of dead and dying grass all over the property. They both hold 15 litres when full so I can inflict a fair bit of mayhem with one pack- my record was 5 in a day, lots of wiggly lines that day.

Anyway the sprayer was starting to misbehave with the long hose part starting to fall out at regular intervals therby dousing both me and whatever I was near with spray. I decided that given T’s health I would take care of it myself. With still a little bit of  spray liquid in the  the pack I dismantled the handle connection- aha, a split in the connector plus a broken seal. I drove off to our local agricultural supplies depot and had to nag to get served- very macho these places, explained what i wanted and left with a new handle.  Once home i ripped the packet apart and took the existing handle off, and tried to fit the new one. i gor spray all over my hands as various pressurised parts released themsleves and the damn thing did not fit, well it fitted but the business part that sends the water down to the nozzle still kept falling out, obviously the wrong size handle connector for the hose part.

I confessed to T who did his bun of course, there is supposed to be a crack in the clamp part what there is not supposed to be a crack in was the washer- that was all I needed!

 Today we are BOTH taking the sprayer now with its original handle in bits and the new handle now back in its bag, back to the agricultural depot where all will be sweetness and light as man talks to man. Think I will stay in the car with a blanket over my head!

T is Ok, gone onto diclofenac now as well as paracetomol and if he gets 7 months out  of the diclofenac before having to go onto anything more serious we would be thrilled. The accompanying drug they wanted him to take with the diclofenac, losec  had more effect than a vindaloo so he will avoid that.

 P.S.

T took the offending sprayer back to the agency, I had business elsewhere and could not attend(!). Back home we tried to get it going, I took it aprt too fast for the engineer to see, could get water coming out of the tube part but no way would it come out of the spray attachment. We left it for another day!

A farmer friend arrived and was chain ganged into helping to fix the offending item. An hour later  he and T had it going. I am now banned from touching with intent to fix, anything vaguley technical.