Customer Reviews

Gilmour W4 Spray Doc Wheel Pump 4-Gallon Sprayer

5 star:		(65)
4 star:		(28)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(19)

 

 

Updated 7/4/2011 - Current one has lost it's fortitude and I get about a second of spraying without walking around. I hate to order a new one but not too many alternatives. I have one that pulls behind the yard tractor but that's too big and doesn't have a wand. I could get one of the back pack pump ones but I'm not keen on carrying three gallons of Round-Up on my back. Amazon sells an electric wheel sprayer with good reviews but it costs $270. Guess I'll buy another repair kit.

Updated 9/21/10 - I revamped one of the old sprayers with the Glimour R12C Telescoping Sprayer Wand and the Replacement Valve R58C ($20 for both). It sprays fine but I was only getting about 4 seconds of spray from a fully charged sprayer. Then I discovered that it pressurized better if I pushed it in front of me (the wheels rolled better). So I had my brothers redo the wheels so that they roll better in general, thus keeping the sprayer pressurized. Still not as good as a brand new pump but it works for me.

Updated 8/10 - After 5 years the only problem I'm having is that the sprayer leaks and doesn't totally quit spraying until the pressure is gone. Because I keep it full of Roundup, this can be a problem but it looks like I can replace all the parts for less than $25. In fact, I think I'll replace the parts on the first one I bought in 2003 and have two working sprayers. To make your parts last longer, unscrew the top slightly and hang the sprayer end up (just a tie wire) so that the wand doesn't curve.)

Updated 2007 - Unlike other cheaper sprayers I have bought, this one is still as good as new after two years of hard use. I keep it filled with Roundup with the squirter end hanging squirt side up when not in use. I have only emptied and cleaned the container once each winter.

It rolls and pressurizes easily on grass or rock but slides over concrete, particularly with light loads. The wheels worked better after I cleaned the wheel base.

First Review in 2005 - Before I got this sprayer, I had to tote around 1 gallon sprayers, refilling several times, to maintain my 8 acre property. Now I just fill this baby up once and pull it easily behind me.

I estimate that I get about 30 seconds of spraying (the most I can get at a time) for 30 seconds of walking. As long as I keep walking briskly, I never run out of pressure. But If I am having to stop and spray a lot, I may have to make two rounds. It also seems to work better with full loads, possibly because the wheels get more traction so you get more pressure.

The new one holds pressure better than the old one: stronger and longer spray. I couldn't find a spot where I had to spray long enough for it to run out of pressure. But the old one still works well enough for me to use for spot spraying.

I was so happy to find this sprayer, originally. I have MG (myasthenia gravis), an illness that causes profound weakness with any repetitive motion. So pumping a sprayer to spray my 100+ rose bushes made me too weak to carry the sprayer. I thought this was just the perfect solution, even at $.. that I gladly paid. It worked fairly well at first, although the hose could have been longer and it tended to tip over frequently if you didn't keep one hand on the handle. When it tipped over the spray solution would run out the overfill hole, so I was constantly having to stop spraying to pick it up. At first it pressurized well with 50-60 ft and would spray 5-7 rose bushes before needing another 50 ft walk to repressurize it. It had an easily adjusted and quite fine mist nozzle, an almost wide enough opening for mixing the chemicals, and was very easy to disassemble and thoroughly clean. Since the wheels carried the weight, it was quite effortless to use (except for the tipping problem). Being only about 10-12" wide, it will follow you into almost any place wide enough to walk into, and is easy to give a little extra "sloshing" to keep the mixture well mixed as you go along. It uses all the mixture with very little waste and you can easily open the handle/lid without losing pressure because it uses a small cylinder in the bottom of the tank that contains the pressurized area. All in all, I was quite happy the first 3 or 4 times I used it, and would have rated it 4 stars.

But then I noticed it seemed to take more and more distance to get it fully pressurized and I was having to pressurize it more frequently. In spite of being extra careful to clean it thoroughly after each use, it got worse. After about 12 uses in 6 months, it required 150-200ft of pushing/pulling to get enough pressure to only spray one medium size rosebush, far more effort than even my healthy husband was willing to exert. His advise: "Toss it" I'm so disappointed. Guess I have to spend more money. This time I'll try the Black & Decker model.

This sprayer is awesome! I have a 200+ foot long rock swale on my property that leads to a retaining basin for water run-off from the mountain. We need to keep it free from weeds etc so that it will channel the water properly and the only way to do that is to spray it with Roundup a couple of times a year. Needless to say, it is a daunting task. Now that we have this sprayer, it is still time consuming, but it is EASY!! No more carrying anything! No more cramped hands from squeezing the trigger sprayer! WOW! You just roll this thing along and it builds its own pressure inside the tank, you hold the trigger and it sprays till you let go. It was worth every penny! If you need to spray large areas get this item! Even if you are just spot spraying weeds or spraying fertilizer or whatever, it makes life easier since it holds so much and you are rolling it instead of carrying it. I would recommend this item to anyone who needs to spray anything!

The first time I ordered, it was on lengthy backorder and I failed to respond to e-mail and got canceled (i.e. my fault). Once I reordered, it arrived timely.

Due to arthritis, carpel tunnel, fibromyalgia, this is a wonderful purchase. It worked very well and is better than I expected. I have a large yard, rural area with MANY weeds, vines, etc to hold back: I was able to get much more done in a much shorter time than I had ever been able to accomplish with the old manual pump and carry kind and with less stress on my old aches.

I hesitated to order due to what I feared was excessive cost vs reliability. It was worth every cent.

Here in Texas, we have just about every kind of pest or annoying plant immaginable...fire ants, johnson/crab grass, huge grass hoppers, scorpions, nasty spiders, tough-to-kill weeds, etc.

Needless to say, I have to spray a variety of garden products on my yard, both to keep it looking presentable and to keep it safe for bare feet. I've used a common two-gallon pump sprayer and a 4-gallon backpack sprayer for years to apply weed killers and insecticides, but carrying a 16-30lb container around a 10,000sqft. yard gets old pretty quick.

This Gilmour 4-gallon sprayer is awesome! No carrying, no pumping, and no backache. You just push it about 25-30 ft, and it's pressurized. From there, movement around the yard keeps the pressure up. The sprayer also has a nice long hose, so you can reach pretty far back into planted areas, without having to push the sprayer through mulch and soft-earth.

Compared with my old sprayers, this thing has a nice wide mouth, so it's tough to spill chemicals down the side. It's also transparent enough to actually see the fill-points and measurement marks, so overfilling is much less of a problem than with opaque sprayers.

I haven't experienced any problems with leaking or spillage from the filled container, as reported by other reviewers...perhaps the model has been modified since they were written?

This product is also a big time saver, even over similarly-sized backpack sprayers...the push-to-pump (actually, I pull it along behind me) action just leaves you much more nimble, and able to move around smoother. I find that I over-spray much less, use less chemical, and finish about 15 minutes faster (less refilling, less waste, smoother motion and action, etc).

This is definately one of the best garden products I've ever purchased. A truly wonderful and smartly-designed lawn and garden sprayer!

What appears to be a great item for the home plant enthusiast really isnt very useful as delivered. The product's #1 fault is the hose supplied. The box it comes in, as well as the online description say its 96 inches. It isnt, its 68 inches. I even called Gilmour and they said they dont supply the 96inch hoses anymore, its tough luck. But note where the hose comes out, its at the front of the unit, which means for 99% of the watering you are going to do the hose must wrap around the unit to the back (where you are standing when watering). 68 inches of hose renders this unit useless. If they added another 5 ft of hose...this would be a great item. It pumps nicely. I do wish the throat were a bit bigger, but its far bigger than most, which is a real plus. If you buy this unit assume you will be taking it apart and buying more hose to make it a functional unit. Given Gilmours attitude about customer satisfaction, and the fact the advertising is blatantly false, this gets the lowest rank possible, 1 star.

I bought this sprayer because I'm getting old and decrepit. I wanted wheels to eliminate lugging around a heavy sprayer to keep weeds clear for the required 30-feet all the way around my house. This Gilmour sprayer has wheels--and having the wheels drive a pump sounded like a nifty bonus. What they don't tell you: there's no clutch or similar device to disconnect the pump when the maximum pressure is reached. Fill the tank of your new sprayer and start walking toward your target area. With each step, the sprayer becomes a bit more difficult to pull. After about 50 feet, the factory-set pressure limit is reached, as evidenced by the "wheep, wheep, wheep" sound of excess air being bled off. At that point the sprayer is pretty hard to drag along, especially if you're headed uphill as I was. The annoying thing: you've just bought a device with wheels, but it is so hard to wheel that you're tempted to pick it up and carry it. Conclusion: It's fine if you will be starting to spray right near your filling point--if you have to wheel it any great distance, you will join me in wishing there was some way to get it to "free wheel" when you don't need the pumping function.

Other comments: It's assembled in the U.S.A., of domestic and imported parts--high marks for that. And, the thing is generally well made. Except: the plastic spray wand is kinda chintzy for a sprayer in this cost range--it seems to drip the spray solution onto my hand. The valve and the activating lever seem awfully flimsy. And, a minor annoyance: there's no latch to lock the spray in the "on" position. This would be handy because you're advised to depressurize the unit for storage and the only way to do that is to drain off spray solution to relieve the pressure. (In a clever bit of design, only an inner unit is pressurized, so the main reservoir may be opened at any time and you can discharge the spray back into the reservoir to vent the pressure.)

The spraying is about what I expected--a little less pressure than I'd like to have--to reach far down the hill. And, it seems the thing doesn't put out quite the volume that my old hand-held pump did--when you open up the nozzle for maximum distance, the stream is a bit wimpy. As a result, it takes longer to apply a gallon of spray than I am used to.

Some good news: The instruction manual has the obligatory three languages, but each is only 2 pages--and it isn't written as though you are an idiot bent on self-destruction.

All in all, I can muster only 3 stars. Wheels are not that much help when they will barely turn. (A fully-charged sprayer will slide its wheels on a gravel surface.)

I really like this item, especially the fact that you don't have to hand pump it or carry it around. It holds 4 gallons which is another plus, you're not having to refill it all the time as with a smaller sprayer. I did have a problem with it not pressurizing once but it turned out to be because I missed cleaning out the plug thing. The only thing I would like to see added to this sprayer is some sort of stirring or mixing mechanism to keep your sprays from settling.
I don't regret buying this one in the least, and it qualified for free shipping also, which didn't hurt any :)

I just purchased this from Amazon being the anly place that I could find a sprayer on wheels since I have about 1/1/2 acres of grass and weeds that needs to be sprayed. I must say that I am very pleased with my purchase. It only takes about twenty feet worth of rolling to get it going enough for spraying weeds and the more you walk around the better it becomes. When you are done all you have to do is put the hose into a hole in the handle and keep the switch that lets spray flow out on and it will drain back into the container of the fluid. Since the fluid and the pressure contianer are separate which is good because then you can add stuff wihtout worrying about your pressure. When you are done you have to remember to clean out the filter or it won't work otherwise. And the only other thing I would add would be a stirring mechanism to keep the solution from settling.

I loved using this sprayer. I have used it 3-4 times since I purchased it and it worked wonderfully. I really didn't need 4 gallons and have only had a max of 3 in it at one time. Amazon had a great price and I could have gotten the 2 gallon elsewhere but, I would have paid more for it including shipping and tax. So, the 4 Gallon from Amazon was by far the best deal.

Pros: 4 Gallon Tank, Pressurize by rollling - NO PUMPING, Hose Length OK, Good Spray Distance and control, Good Pressure.

Cons: Would like a bit more length on the hose and maybe a littler longer wand. If you have alot of spraying your hand gets a bit tired but, hey, with NO Pumping it is great!

I gave 4 stars only because it would get 5 if the hose and wand were longer for the price. Overall, it is a great sprayer and will let you get it all done much quicker than if you had a 1 or 2 Gallon Pumping Sprayer. Good Deal at Amazon.