Hydrovac Nation Product Insider!
This is a very cool product I’m really excited to tell you about
It’s a 25 gallon per minute and 4000 psi wash gun with a variable spray second handle. The first time I came across this product was when I attended the 2018 Wwett Show in Indianapolis.
I had the Indianapolis company send me a trial demo wash gun. As soon as I received it, I hooked it up to my truck and was super excited to try it out! After using it for a while, I discovered every truck should have one of these. This gun can be used for so many applications. For example, cleaning out the debris tanks on our hydrovacs, especially those tanks that do not lift and are equipped with sloped floors. This gun cleans those tanks out better in half the time.
Tanks that do not lift need high pressure and water volume. This gun does both without jeopardizing too much water usage. In some of my time trials, I’ve cleaned the tank out as fast as 1 minute and 40 seconds with almost straight sand in the debris body. It was extremely impressive.
Until this gun was invented, members of our industry have used digging wands to clean out the truck or makeshift products that we build in our shops from variable fittings. It is very unsafe to use dig wands or wash wands to clean the debris body because they are long and not very productive, creating a great deal of time to clean them out. The end result is having to do extra cleaning and wasting clients’ money.
These makeshift products that we build from random parts are not at all safe and some were never tested, so water explosion rate is high and they’re usually built on very short swivels causing accidents to happen without a solid grip. By not using a two-hand grip on dig wands and makeshift products leaves us vulnerable for even more potential accidents to occur.
With this particular gun, it forces us to use two hands on the gun, and two feet on the ground at all times making it much safer for daily use. With the trigger at one end, giving us a great safety feature, and then letting go of the trigger causes the gun to completely stop if we trip or fall. The other handle moves forward or towards you which changes the spray pattern. You can adjust the spray pattern to a sharp jet stream and then to a wide fan spray.
As mentioned, this is great for washing out hydrovacs because you can use a jet stream to clean out the truck. When the job is complete, step back a few feet and set to fan spray and wash the back of your truck without peeling the paint off the body. I also like that the gun was 4000 PSI and 25 gallons a minute which means it would never be faulty from various pump settings. In other words, you can have the water pump running as fast or hard as it would go and you could never tap this gun out, making it safe when in the hands of an operator. Most, but not all hydrovac manufacturers equip water pumps in hydrovacs more than 4000 PSI or 20 gallons per minute.
I also found this gun to be useful in many other applications, like cleaning off sidewalks and buildings after an excavation was completed. It not only works really well, but looks very professional and safe too, with so much more control of the water and the job task for the operator.
In my research, I found that these guns range from $250 Canadian to $1000 Canadian. If you’re interested in this product and need additional information on where to get it or its applications, please feel free to email me anytime at [email protected]
I highly recommend this product to anyone in our industry. I found it to be very useful and safe to use.
Tanks and dig safe!
-Terry Rawn