NorthStar Tow-Behind Trailer Boom Broadcast and Spot Sprayer - 31-Gallon Capacity, 2.2 GPM, 12 Volt DC

Package came very well packed and all parts were there even though the box had one flap open from torn tape. No printed copy of the owners manual in the box, so I went to the online site and downloaded it. I have been a customer of this company since they were Northern Hydraulics, so well over 40 years. Never had any issues or complaints. This unit is quite well made. The tank features inserts wherever bolts are needed and seem very solid. All parts went together quite well. I took about an hour at my leisurely pace, enjoying a coffee while I worked. I also ordered a cigarette lighter power cord separately as my tractor has one and is easy to use to power this device. I have had the 16 gallon version for many years. It is a tank unit mounted to a home made hitch mount for a special garden tractor. I needed a larger capacity and a tow behind to use with any ATV, lawn tractor or ZTR. My older unit still works like new and I expect long life from this one as well. One thing I noticed is that the older unit has a raised threaded ring to screw the cap on over. This unit has a threaded hole which seems ever so slightly harder to align the cover with. I do think that over time and use, this might "break in" a little and certainly not a deal breaker. 5 thumbs up!!!!!

Overall, it's what you can expect for this price from a budget tool brand. It goes together well, tech support is great. The chassis, axle, wheels and tires, and the overall tank build seem very sturdy. Even the sprayer arms seem decent; they do fold back if you accidentally crash them into something.The rest of the parts are a little less sturdy, but are all wear parts. Hoses of this kind will need replacement after a few years, fittings are plastic will fail as well.The pump and is obviously the most sophisticated part of the product. The electric motor half of the pump is low budget, but it's only an electric motor, they are not very complicated. The pumphead half is low budget as well, all plastic. The internal rubber diaphrams are wear parts as well, and will need to be replaced after a few seasons, and won't last one season if left with any water inside overwinter. I will definitely cycle some antifreeze into the system over winter.The regulator is all plastic as well. My regulator came from the factory with the pressure gauge way overtightened and so overloaded with white teflon tape that the fitting was flared out and leaked out of the box. To solve that leak, back it out carefully, clean away all the old tape from the gauge and the inside of the regulator body, add new teflon to the gauge, and hand tighten it. Only three wraps of tape. Don't gob it on there like they did at the factory.I also had leaks out of the box at the sprayer nozzles. For this you want to grab a couple of 1/2 inch black o-rings from the hardware store and use them behind the nozzles. I also had a leak at the drain cap, which is poorly formed and weak, this too benefit from some wraps of teflon tape.The red knob is a pressure adjustment, that works by opening the suction up to some air.If your pump turns on but does not start, first check for a vacuum leak on the intake side of the pump by making sure the hose tensioners are snuggly screwed and that the hoses are not broken anywhere. The hose tensioners are cheap as well, and easy to overtighten, which damages the tensioner. If there is no vacuum leak, the pump needs to be primed. Do that by removing the hose from the intake straw and then sticking the intake hose right inside of your garden hose to blast some water up there into the pump.Gets great coverage and has made my lawn and garden applications a stress free and fast process. 31 gallons is plenty of juice for my lot, which is about 30,000 square feet of lawn. Had to fill a backpack sprayer four to six times for good coverage. Very easy now to spray my grape vines and fruit trees as well.Edit: checking in after one year, this spreader has held up very well. The hand sprayer cracked over the winter, obviously there was still some fluid somewhere in the handle that I failed to drain. I replaced it with a metal hand sprayer. Otherwise, I have zero complaints.

We have a 1.5-acre property on a hill, which I mow with a Cub Cadet 42" electric lawn tractor. We had been using a 4-gallon backpack sprayer the last couple of years, which was a multi-day effort for each of the treatments (weed preventative, grub treatment, and mole repellent (castor oil mixture). Decided to bite the bullet this year and get a tow-behind sprayer.The Cub Cadet tractor itself is electric (60V), but doesn't expose a 12V terminal at all. So, I bought a small (small enough to fit in the little "phone holder" tray in the tractor) 10Ah model car battery with sufficient continuous amp delivery of 10A (the manual for this says the pump takes 8A of 12VDC current; I should note however that the fuse on the power line is a 15A fuse, so I might have to rethink this battery).# AssemblyFirst thing i found when assembling was that there were no assembly/usage instructions included. Luckily, assembly instructions are available here on Amazon (look for the "User Manual" link on the Amazon page), so I was able to reference that.Once I had the instructions, I found they were pretty easy to follow. I did find that there were only 2 #10 washers included instead of the necessary 4. I got a few from my spare parts bucket to use instead. All other parts were present, albeit loose in a large ziplock bag so there was definitely a lot of sorting required. Note that for the screws attaching the pump to the tank one of them is *very slightly longer* (the one that the tether for the lid attaches to is 1/8" longer than the other three), so pay attention there. The base on which the tank is secured included tightening two "wings" on the main support too early; they are somewhat adjustable and need to be adjusted to line up with the holes on the tank prior to actually torquing them down, so I had to loosen them a few steps later to adjust it all correctly.Everything arrived in good condition *except for* the strainer cap for the pump draw tube. That was somewhat crushed by being in a large baggie with a bunch of heavy hardware, just banging around inside the tank while in transit. That said, it appeared to have a good "seal" around most of the the rubber and hence seems like it will continue to be effective at doing its job (keeping anything that happens to fall into the tank, or undissolved solids, from being pulled up through the motor and into the sprayer nozzles).I later found (see issues below) that the drain cap was apparently supposed to include a rubber washer inside so it would make a good seal without needing to use teflon tape. Mine did not (it is just the plastic cap, which tightens onto the nub and if you over-tighten "clicks" as the threads go out the "back" of the threads on the tank).# QualityA lot of leaks apparent on first use.- The drainage cap could not be tightened well enough to stop leaking. I applied teflon tape (not included) on the threads there and that fixed the leak. I'm going to look into getting a gasket for the cap instead of trying to seal along the threads, as I would need to re-tape fairly frequently after unscrewing the cap and putting it back on (works fine for a few times, but it definitely is wearing out). Looking at the "exploded view" at the end of the manual, it shows a "rubber washer" going inside the drain cap, which was not present in my kit nor mentioned in the assembly instructions. This might be just another quality control issue where I ended up with a cap missing its rubber washer. So, finding an appropriate gasket will return this to its "as designed" state.- The sprayer assembly (comes put together) leaks around the nozzles (specifically, where there is a cap that tightens down to secure the nozzle in place). It is a slow leak, and only when actually spraying, so not a huge deal. Will probably disassemble and apply teflon tape here as well.- A few were my fault for not tightening the hose clamps sufficiently (but I stand by the approach there: avoid over-tightening and deal with leaks on the initial run).Nothing major, just some annoyances that have me ad libbing instead of things working out of the box.The biggest gripe is actually with the tank lid. It is hard to get it aligned to the threads properly, I think because the two halves of the tank aren't *perfectly* aligned, and the lid spans that slightly-off seam.That said, note that this is not a "pressure tank". The spraying pressure comes from the motor pumping the solution through to the sprayers, not from the motor building up pressure in a tank and letting that air pressure push the solution through the sprayers. This is a pretty big difference to most hand or backpack sprayers where you (or a motor) pump up the tank then spray until the pressure starts to waver and pump up again etc. So, really, the issue with the tank lid isn't super significant; it keeps leaves/whatever from falling into the tank just fine.# DesignOne gripe with this tank is that it doesn't drain well. That is, the bottom is mostly just flat. The strainer cap is domed, and the draw tube is pointed, so the last ~inch of liquid in the bottom of the tank simply will never be drawn out. Also, it won't drain well unless you detach the trailer with the drain cap off and tilt the whole thing up. Finally, if you are spraying anything that is not perfectly level, the pump will start sputtering with a lot more liquid still in the tank because it is sloshed away from the draw tube. In other tanks I've seen a molded drain trough, where the draw tube and strainer and drain cap itself would all pull from, leaving very little unusable solution in the tank when the pump can't draw any more up and being much less susceptible to hillsides making it stop early.Another gripe is the measurement of how much is in the tank. They are on one end of the tank only, and don't really line up well with reality even on a perfectly level surface. That said, in reality most people won't be filling this on a perfectly level surface, so a better design would include gauge markings on all four "corners" of the tank so the actual contents can be better estimated.I would strongly suggest "calibrating" it wherever you will most often be filling it (put 2 gallons of water in, mark all four corners at the water level; put another 2 gallons in, mark all four corners at the water level; etc).A silly omission: the tank doesn't "stand up" for quick storage. Some other tanks have molded "feet" so when storing you can tip it "back" on those feet and it will securely stand "up" while in storage. This one doesn't. This makes it harder to store. However, it isn't the worst thing to deal with: just make a "nest" for it to sit in holding it upright. It is just annoying that no one thought of storing this when it was designed. There are "storage" instructions in the manual, but they involve loosening and removing multiple bolts, the wheels and axle, a couple of pins for the boom arms, and then hanging on the wall; this will be fine for end-of-season storage, but isn't useful for "I need to use this again tomorrow / next weekend" quick storage.A common issue is that there is just one "speed" of spray here (there is a pressure regulator on the pump that you can adjust, but you won't be adjusting that while out spraying, just at most once when you start). To get an even flow you'll need to keep your tractor running at a constant speed and also calibrate that speed so that it sprays a known amount of liquid out while working at that velocity. That is, if something says "x ounces of concentrate treats x,000 square feet" you'll need to figure out how many square feet get how much liquid sprayed when you are running at your "normal" tractor speed. This is a fairly common issue with garden and lawn sprayers, so not unique to this tank by any stretch, but something you'll need to think about especially if you are used to a granule spreader (broadcast or drop spreader) where volume sprayed is pretty much tied to how fast you are pushing it. In any case, the manual does provide good tables to make calibration as easy as possible, but it is really up to you to keep that steady and correct speed for the expected spray rate (this is harder for me as the Cub Cadet doesn't have a speedometer, so I have to go by "feel" and use the "cruise control" to keep speed constant).# OverallOkay, there were a lot of little annoyances up there. But overall, this tank does what it is supposed to, and seems sturdy enough to last for a while. It *definitely* saves a lot of time compared to a backyard sprayer, to the point that I'm kicking myself for not getting this a few years ago. I would definitely recommend a tank *like* this to anyone with enough property that you are using a lawn tractor or zero-turn to mow it. I'm happy with this particular tank, but not enough to hands-down recommend it over other similar tanks.