Ryobi Electrostatic 18v Sprayer Review

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Ryobi Electrostatic 18v Sprayer Review

Sep 25, 2020

review Ryobi Electrostatic 18 volt backpack sprayer

We here at Exit Biohazard and Crime Scene Cleanup focus on several key elements of our services such as emergency cleanup of a death, blood or crime scene situations. Besides the cleaning up horrific visuals and helping people in these situations, our main duty is to cleanup and disinfect the area to make it safe. Disinfection service is really one of our main priorities. Blood and Bodily fluids may contain serious diseases, viruses or bacteria so we need to decontaminate the area completely. We disinfect properties as if our lives depend on it because in many cases they do.

Now with the outbreak of the Covid 19 virus we have been disinfecting properties in the same way to kill the virus so that people can be safe. Many new companies have popped up to do the same. So lets talk about the equipment needed to do this.

Generally to disinfect a property you use a combination of things such as foggers, sprayers, and of course wiping things down with disinfectants. Let’s discuss foggers / sprayers. Sprayers generally shoot more liquid and have larger particles like a Hudson sprayer or a paint sprayer. These make everything wet and typically aren’t great for disinfecting interiors such as homes or businesses. A fogger has much smaller particles generally as small as the thickness of a human hair. For this review we will be discussing the new Ryobi 18volt Electrostatic One gallon Backpack Sprayer , although we would call it a fogger because of its small particle output.

Since the Coronavirus outbreak there has been a crazy run on everything from toilet paper to disinfectants. One of the things that was very hard to get was disinfection equipment such as foggers and sprayers. For disinfection (interiors) there are basically 2 types and we spoke about these in greater detail in previous blog pages. We will focus on electrostatic and standard, meaning a standard fogger just sprays disinfectant fog out and you basically have to put a cloud everywhere to make sure that you covered everything or the electrostatic mode which gives the particles an electric charge so that they are attracted to surfaces so that a smaller amount of disinfectant is used and the furniture and objects get coated all around.

The RYOBI 18V ELECTROSTATIC SPRAYER has both settings so you can turn the electrostatic option on or off. The unit is built well as all Ryobi products seem to be. We have many of them so we do like their tools. The unit comes with the backpack tank to hold a gallon of disinfectant and the main unit that you carry and point with the on / off trigger, electrostatic mode switch and 3 nozzle selector tip . The unit isn’t too heavy since the liquid disinfectant is separate in the backpack but if you had to do this all day you may consider heavier by the end of the day. (They do have another version where the tank is attached to the unit so that may be too heavy in comparison). It’s not just a wand like the Victory Electrostatic backpack sprayer which would be the biggest competitor for this tool. Their sprayer has all of the tool’s guts in the backpack and the handle / wand only has a switch and some of the electrostatic guts in it so its much lighter to handle, but its roughly 4 to 5 times the cost and the batteries are proprietary so for the cost the Ryobi is about to start a revolution in the disinfection fogger world.

As we mentioned, they have several versions coming out, this backpack version, another version which is basically the same except the tank is attached to the main unit, and the other sprayer they have coming out is a smaller version for handheld use for lessor applications. If we get them in our hands, we will review them as well so check out our Blog often. We will still just focus on this backpack version.

The backpack is comfortable and easy to put on and you can always just carry it since it has a nice handle as well. The hose between the main unit and the tank is too long in my opinion. When starting you need to prime the unit meaning you need to have the liquid flow from the tank to the unit. This seemed to take 5 minutes or so which was a bit long but this was the first we used it so we were impatient. We also put the main unit on the floor and the tank up on the table to help. We used a loop of Velcro to hold the trigger down to prime it so we didn’t need to hold it by hand.

Once the unit was primed, we played with it to test the nozzle sections. It has 3 settings, low, medium and high, they are listed as low 65 microns, medium, 80 microns and high at 160 microns. A human hair is roughly 80 microns. The particles are fine but ours was spitting larger droplets which I did not like. But we switched disinfectants to make sure it was as thin as water which was listed in the troubleshooting page and that seemed to do the trick. I will say that the selection between micron sizes, low, medium, large seems to be more of a distance gauge than a noticeable particle size selection. At the low range, the unit sprays about 2 plus feet, where as on the high range its more like 6 to 8 feet and the medium is more like 4 feet so its best to find what you like.

Electrostatic capability and what is it? The electrostatic mode when the switch is turned on charges the outgoing particles so that they are attracted to any surface. We tested this in several ways but it’s kind of hard to notice until we tested it this way. We had the electrostatic off and sprayed a sheet of cardboard in the from about 5 ft away with the large particles selected, then turned it on and did the same thing on another sheet. We found that the standard mode put a lot more liquid on the floor where as the electrostatic mode coated more of the cardboard further out with much less on the floor.

Next, we sprayed between a 2 ft diameter column and a garage bay door which were about 1.5 feet apart. In the standard mode, the spray simply went directly in between the column and door and neither had any spray on it. We did the same in the electrostatic mode and both the column and the bay door had been coated. It was a fine coating but a much better outcome. Granted when you are spraying things you wouldn’t go out of your way to avoid both objects the way we did but it did show that the electrostatic was working well.

Like any new tool, we need to use this in several different situations that we would come across to really find out how we like this long term. So, it’s now in our truck ready for the next job. So far, I’d say, I like it and would give it a 9 out of 10. I will revise this if needed once we take it on several jobs. But in comparison to the next closest tool , the Victory electrostatic sprayer, the Ryobi is much cheaper , it comes with 2 batteries , you can easily get them at Home Depot once they come out to the public and they take Ryobi batteries so if you have many other their tools as we do, its just another tool in the mix and you don’t need another battery type and charger.

Now as far as the best disinfectants to use with this, it will take some testing. As I mentioned, the first one we used had the unit spitting and sputtering, but once we changed to a finer more water thin disinfectant it works fine.

I hope this helps. I give it two thumbs up for now and will test it further to make sure its up to our high standards. Again, we deal with death and blood cleanup which can contain serious diseases so we take these tools and disinfection seriously. Test it for yourself, and once we get the other smaller version in house we will review that too.

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