So I’ve got a swivel on my titan hose teel leaking and spraying fine mist into my enclosed trailer. My wife and I washed several houses today and had to work like this all day. Now we’re both feeling the effects of it in our lungs. My sweet wife is coughing like crazy and I feel like I can’t breath normally. . I thought I had spares for most all crital parts but, that’s one part I never thought of. I’m sure I’ll come across more I haven’t thought of.
I’ve got a new swivel on order and gonna rebuild the old one for a spare. And this reminds me that I need some respirator masks to keep on the trailer.
Get super swivels. Every couple months stick the torch to get long enough to heat the grease and top it off with the grease gun. They last a long long time. A cheap inverter and a fan mounted in the trailer will help with fumes and exhaust. Get cheap inverter because the bleach corrodes them in a few months anyway
The swivel on my reel went the other day, as well. I didn’t have a spare, but I did have extra quick connects. So what I did was remove the hose from the swivel and add a coupler and plug to bypass it.
I had to disconnect the hose each time I wanted to reel it in, but at least I didn’t have it spraying everywhere and making my unloader kick every 10 seconds. Just an example of how you might improvise with what you’ve got, next time something goes wrong.
Really sorry to hear about you and your wife. Take care of yourselves, and definitely get some quality masks. Eye protection is important, as well. My vision used to be blurry at the end of a long day. I’m wearing swim goggles until I can find something a little more conducive to working in all day.
Hop ya’ll are ok. Tru to add an exhaust fan to the roof of trailer if you have a generator. If nit, you could do as William suggested an inverter, but I’d mount it under the trailer of on outside of trailer in a separate box and then run wire’s, to save from going through so many.
I think i’m going to buy some mask anyway. While cleaning apartments last week I ingested bleach fumes while cleaning the stairwells without much wind. I had a bad cough for a few days.
I ordered one of those respirator masks that lots of guys use recently, and tried it for the first time the other day. First of all, it is super comfortable, and my cheap safety glasses didn’t fog up like they normally do with the little white rubberband masks. Anyway, i was up on the roof and spraying, and didn’t smell anything at all… couldn’t believe it was doing ‘that’ good of a job, so i cracked the mask a little and instantly smelled the bleach. It also has a quick release that lets the front of the mask drop down, without having to take the whole thing off, and it worked great. Very pleased with the mask, and will wear it on all roofs.
Not sure if i will use it on house washes… might just wear the paper masks… im not even sure if a mask is necessary on house washes/driveways, but it certainly cant hurt.
As far as safety glasses, ive just been using the cheap $2 ones from Harbor Freight (when i remember to put them on).
I was in Ace Hardware recently and tried on a pair that had a cushion on the frame that sort of sealed it to your face. They were really comfortable, but i passed on it at the time, because they were $15 or $20, and safety glasses get beat up pretty fast sometimes.
Anyway, went on Amazon trying to find something similar, and found these which have a cushion, are highly rated, and are only $5 a piece (2 pack for $10). They also come with a cleaning cloth and a head strap. Im ordering some to give them a shot.
just skip swivels altogether. they save no time, introduce another failure point, and can shut you down for the day when they go bad. they literally offer ZERO benefit and a ton of risk. use your reels for storage only, and just direct connect all your hoses to whatever output you are using. same goes for water supply hose, pressure hose, or chem hose.
if you want easy quick connect situations, banjo fittings are your friend when it comes to low pressure applications. @Infinity you should go this route- you are too smart to still be using swivels
Im assuming that when you use the reels for storage, you have to unreel the entire hose each time. Is that correct? Guess that’s not a huge deal, as most jobs you will be unreeling most of it anyway… but not all the time.
yeah, but you should be doing that anyway. you lose performance when your hose is wrapped around a reel. if you don’t like the idea of unrolling a couple hundred feet of water or chem hose, just break them into 100’ sections and add banjo cam locks. then just pull off however much you need and direct connect it to your machine, tank, whatever.
