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Steel Green Manufacturing’s Kodi Quinlisk discusses mixing product and agitation in a Steel Green machine in the video below.
Transcript:
Hey guys. Kodi Quinlisk here with Steel Green Manufacturing. Today, I want to put together a video here to kind of talk about recirculating your products in your tanks, agitation. Kind of mixing in your tanks.
So, what we have here is SG52. This unit has the dual 30-gallon tanks on it. So, to kind of start this process, we’ll make sure that we have product in the tanks. Then we’ll go ahead and get you flipped around. Alright, so typically when we do this, we only want to mix one tank at a time. So, here we’ll make sure both of these valves are on. That’s your left side tank section and your left side return. And then over here, we will go ahead and shut this tank off. So, that way this tank is not going to be part of this.
Next thing we’re going to do is make sure that our boom levers here are all down. That’s going to be off. We’re going to make sure our pressure regulator is backed all the way off to the left. With these units, that is very important you get the maximum amount of flow at zero pressure on these. This is a throttle valve. So, the more that you turn this down, the more you’re going to restrict it. That’s how we build pressure. So, with that all the way out, we got our left tank on here. Typically, you’ll do this with the engine running, that way it doesn’t drain the battery. But for this video, I’m just going to do it with the engine off so you can hear me. So, if you look inside the tank there, you’ll see the black fitting on the right-hand side. That is our return line. You got the suction port down in the bottom. But with all your valves set like that you kick your pump on and you’re going to see if we’re turning.
So, this is how you’re going to mix one tank. I recommend doing the tanks separately. Go ahead and mix up your product in this tank, and when it’s done, then you can add product to the other side and mix it separately. And you’re gonna get the best results that way. And you’re also going to ensure that the product that you put this tank stays with the water that you put in this tank to your ratio, it’s gonna make sure everything’s correct.
So, another thing guys asked me sometimes you know what type of products that they can run, and how everything’s going to mix. And there’s so many different products out there, everything mixes just a little bit differently. So, if you do have a product that doesn’t mix very well, you can take a bucket here. And you can go ahead and put your product inside this bucket. And you can put some water in here and you can mix it that way. So, you’ll mix it up into a solution. And then from there, if you already have some water in your tanks, go ahead and fill them about half full, then you can pour that in.
The other advantage to this is if you are off just a little bit on your, you know, if you accidentally dump too much in there or if it doesn’t mix, right. And it’s still really thick, and you don’t think it’s going to work right. You can catch it in there before you dump it into your machine.
So, say everything works out good. You can go and dump that in the machine, then you could top it off with water. As you’re adding water, that’s going to continue to help mix it. You can go ahead and kick the pump on at that point. Your pump can be agitated for you as well. So…there we are. So, the other thing with this, you know, keep in mind that this is a 5.3 gallon per minute pump on a standard machine. So, that is what your agitation is based off of, your pump capacity.
So, 5.3 gallons per minute, 30-gallon tank, can be about six minutes, just to circulate this product one time. So, that is why it’s kind of important. If it’s something that’s going to be hard to mix, a lot of times it’s quicker to go ahead and mix it into a solution than pour it in. It’s going to help it mix better. In the event that, you know, say you get done at the end of the day, and you have product leftover in your machine. And you know it’s a product that you can’t leave in there because it’s going to settle overnight.
You can eat off one of these little guys here, drain hose. So, you can get it with this fitting on it. And then what we’ll do, you can loosen this up. And be careful make sure you have gloves on. I just have water in this now but you will lose a little bit here. But you can take this…if you make sure your returns are off, that’ll help with this. But go ahead and take this guy off, hold it up. And then you can kind of tuck it in there. And then now we got this hose here we can put on there.
So, now if you got product that set in there, you know so you get done at the end of the day or maybe you get rained out and you don’t get to use it all. If you know it’s gonna settle and separate and cause you issues the next day, you can put this hose on there, and kick your pump back on. It’s gonna pump it right into the bucket for you.
All right, so another scenario where it’s going to be beneficial to have both your tank valves open like that. Having both of those open and having your pressure regulator backed all the way out. Beginning of the season. So, sometimes these machines will sit over the winter, when you go to fire them up in the spring, what can happen is you can get air in that system. Or if you’re ever cleaning out your chemical strainer right here. If you ever get air in there can cause your pressure to kind of bounce around and not be very steady. So, one thing you can do is open that up. Back your pressure regulator all the way off again to get the maximum flow and just agitate that tank. When you’re agitating that tank, it’s going to work out any air that might be in that system. So, so, yeah, that’s pretty much it for today. Thank you guys for watching.
