 My name is Lisha Harstead and I'm the Stetsman County Extension Agent for Ag and Natural Resources. Today I want to talk to you about how to calibrate a hand sprayer. It's really important to calibrate your hand sprayer before making any pesticide application because it's really hard to know how much product to add your hand sprayer if you don't know what the gallons per acre output of that hand sprayer is. So that's what we're going to do today is figure out what is the gallons per acre output of this hand sprayer when I'm the one that's spraying and according to my walking speed. So one thing that's very important when you're doing any calibration or mixing and loading with pesticides is to make sure that you have your proper PPE, which the minimum proper PPE or personal protective gear for any pesticide is gloves, long sleeves, long pants, shoes and socks. Alright, so if you look behind me, you will see a square of cones that I put out and that square is set out as an 18 and a half by 18 and a half area. And the reason why we did that is that's because it's one-twenty-eighth of an acre and we can use that as a conversion. So other things that you'll need to do this is you'll need some kind of a timer and then also some kind of measuring device that can measure in ounces because once we collect the amount of water that it takes to cover this area, we'll be able to break it down to ounces per or the ounces that are collected is the gallons per acre output. Alright, so next thing you want to do is get some pressure in your hand sprayer to make sure that you have a good seal and everything like that. You also want to test your nozzle. Make sure that you have a good spray pattern for what you're trying to control. If there's any dirt or any clogging in there, you may need to replace your nozzle or clean it out. So now what I'm going to do is I'm going to walk the area and I'm going to time how long it takes me to do that. We'll do that three times so we can get an average of how long it takes me to cover that area. Alright, so that time it took me 25 seconds to get across the designated area. So write that down and we'll do it two other times. It's important when you're spraying that you have a good even pattern and that you're walking the speed that you would be if you were actually spraying. So we'll do it a second time. Alright, now that time it took me 24 seconds. Okay, get some more pressure in the sprayer. We'll do it one last time so we can get an average of time. So that time it also took us 24 seconds. Okay, so now I'm going to set the timer for 24 seconds. That's basically our average for how long it takes us to get across the area. And I'm going to spray into a measuring device for 24 seconds to see how many gallons per acre our output is. So you want to make sure that your measuring cup or whatever you're using will measure in ounces because the ounces collected here will directly convert to your gallons per acre. Alright, so we will put a little bit more pressure in the sprayer and we will spray out for 24 seconds to see how much water we collect. And it looks like we have 12 ounces that was collected. So that means our hand sprayer output is 12 gallons per acre. So now when you're trying to get your conversion for how much product adds your sprayer, you can divide the product recommended label rate. So typically that will be an ounces per acre. So say you're spraying something that wants 4 ounces per acre. You can divide that by your gallons per acre output, which here is 12. And then that would give you your product, how much product you need to add to your hand sprayer. So if you have any other questions, you can always contact NDSU Extension or your local extension office. Thank you.