Home-Built Crop Mister Powered By Old Furnace Fan

Home-Built Crop Mister Powered By Old Furnace Fan SPRAYING Miscellaneous 24-4-7 Robert Davis, Savannah, N.Y., used an old furnace fan to make a pto-driven crop mister that he uses to apply foliar fertilizer to soybeans. It can also be used to treat fruit trees, vegetable crops, or even to "mist" livestock on hot days. The rig is equipped with a 300-gal. tank mounted just ahead of the furnace fan blower, which can be rotated up to 200 degrees in either direction using a hydraulic cylinder. "I built it almost entirely from used components so my total cost was only about $350. Commercial mist blowers sell for anywhere from $3,500 to $8,000," says Davis. He built a steel frame to support the blower and equipped it with a bearing-supported driveshaft. The tractor pto shaft is used to belt-drive the shaft via a gearbox and three 14-in. pulleys that hook up to the blower's smaller 4-in. pulley. A pair of spray nozzles mount on the output side of the blower. To rotate the blower back and forth, he mounted a sprocket on the front side of the blower housing and mounted a hydraulic cylinder on one side of the steel frame. He mounted a smaller sprocket on a piece of angle iron that's hooked up to one end of the hydraulic cylinder. Extending or retracting the cylinder rotates the blower back and forth. "It'll blow spray out 30 to 100 ft. depending on how much wind there is," says Davis. "It provides uniform coverage if the air is still. However, even a slight breeze will result in non uniform coverage. It works best in confined areas such as around Christmas trees, buildings, and small orchards." Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Robert Davis, 2030 Bixby-Wood Road, Savannah, N.Y. 13146 (ph 315 365-2266).

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