18V Battery Powered Backpack Sprayer 3.2 Gallon - Adjustable Pressure 0-80 PSI Electric Sprayer with Wand & 5 Nozzles - Includes 2.0Ah Battery & Charger - Ideal for Lawn Care, Gardening, Pest Control and Agricultural Spraying

For small-garden spot spraying of herbicides I typically use a 1-gallon low-flow-rate Li-ion powered hand wand sprayer. However, when the area grows to the entire lawn or larger trees and bushes, one needs to move up to a higher flowrate, larger capacity, high-pressure electrically-powered backpack sprayer. The SideKing unit attracted me by its reasonable price and use of a Makita-style Li-ion rechargeable battery, which matches that in some of my other power tools. I also have a larger cart-mounted, battery-powered spray rig with 100 feet of house, which I use on our ranch for spraying fruit trees in our family orchard.In testing this SideKing unit, I was pleased with the range of the pressures and its ease of pressure control and the nice spray wand, which didn't experience any leaks...a common problem with other higher-pressure sprayers. The SideKing tank has a nice carrying handle for smaller jobs where you don't want to wear it on your back, a compartment for storing parts, and a nice large fill port with convenient screen filter for preventing contaminants from getting into the spray-tank solution. The unit comes with a collection of different spray nozzles that provide a useful range of spray patterns, but for my applications I purchased (from Amazon) a Bmiroamdfe high pressure misting nozzle that provides an adjustable pattern all the way from a single 20-foot stream to a nice 20 degree solid cone for pre-emergent application. This Bmiroamdfe head fits perfectly on the SideKing wand's M14-1.5mm nozzle thread and also comes with two M14-1.5mm angled couplers to angle the sprayhead downward for ground-level spraying; also included are two useful female M18-1.5mm to male M14-1.5mm thread adapters to allow use on wands with a M18-1.5mm nozzle interface.Although the overall engineering of the SideKing unit was excellent, I found two minor things a bit annoying: The first was that the short connecting hose between the tank and the spray wand has no rotational flexibility, which is needed to allow the handle to easily conform to the way one holds the wand. My larger orchard unit has quick-disconnect couplings where the hose attaches to the tank and to the spray wand which provide this adjustability, and it's a huge improvement. To remedy this situation I purchased M18-1.5mm quick-disconnect fittings to fit the thread used by SideKing sprayer for its hose fittings. However, this took some custom machining, as the purchased quick-disconnect fittings from Amazon came with a cone seal that had to be modified to a gasket seal (see photo). The added quick-disconnects greatly improved the comfort of the wand unit and provide the ability to quickly remove the wand and hose from the spray tank.The second minor annoyance was the lack of space to grab onto the Makita-style battery when trying to remove it from the unit for charging. I love the fact that the battery is removable so I can take it inside during winter months or whenever I'm charging it, a feature not available in my larger orchard unit with built-in lead-acid battery. However, in my received unit the Makita-style battery slides in very tightly and there is insufficient room in the SideKing's access hole to grab onto the battery to pull it out. This style battery lacks a ledge or physical feature to grab onto. Perhaps what is needed is some sort of extraction tool with a hook to reach in behind the battery to pull it out (see my photo sketch).In testing out the unit, one of my first tasks was to measure the volumetric flowrate of the sprayer to judge how much spray area of turf to cover in a given period of spraying time. Although Save A Drop (on Amazon) makes a convenient flow meter for attachment to a garden hose, I've not found any that attach to the common M18-1.5mm (straight thread) that is used for the SideKing spray-wand-to-handle interface. Another common spray-wand thread is the M14-1.5mm, which is used by SideKing for its spray-nozzle attachment threads. To resolve this issue I purchased a set of brass Male (from Joywayus on Amazon) and Female (from Hooshing on Amazon) 1/4-18 NPT (American tapered pipe thread) to Garden Hose thread (GHT) brass adapters and remachined the adapters to interface with a M14-1.5mm interface thread. By using the M14-1.5 thread and some thread adapters, my flowmeter can then be used with wands with either the M14-1.5mm threads or the M18-1.5mm threads.The common M14-1.5mm spray-wand thread generally has an outside diameter of around 0.535", about the same as the maximum diameter of the American 1/4-18 NPT tapered thread. Since the 18 tpi American and 1.5mm metric thread pitches are essentially the same in these short-thread-length applications, the 1/4-18 NPT (tapered thread) fittings have basically the correct thread pitch, they just need to have the taper removed by remachining the thread to the desired 0.535" diameter of the M14-1.5mm straight-thread fittings. To attach these to the SideKing wand and valve-handle, I used a pair of M14-1.5mm to M18-1.5mm male-to-female and female-to-mail adapters which I had in my inventory of sprayer parts.One other important point is that straight-thread fittings are not self-sealing like tapered threads and must rely on a pressure gasket for sealing. For higher pressure systems (>40 psi) these gaskets must be prevented from being extruded out of the sealing joint by the high pressure. This is done by constraining the outer diameter of the gasket by placing it in a groove or cavity with a fixed outer diameter (typically around 0.670" for the M14-1.5mm nozzle fitting).Shown in the attached photos are the completed flowmeter adapters with their new straight threads and gasket-groove for the male M14-1.5mm fittings. The SideKing sprayer with this integrated Save A Drop flow meter worked very well to measure the total spray quantity dispensed and to measure the flowrate of the various nozzles. To its credit, the SideKing unit's spray-wand and spray-nozzle fittings all implement the needed gasket constraining grooves and have been leak free as a result. My complements.In summary, the SideKing backpack sprayer works very well, so well I bought a second unit for the ranch to complement my larger cart-mounted unit. With my custom adapters, they're now my go-to sprayers for a number of medium-sized spray jobs. Definitely recommended.