The Hudson pressure sprayer is a great tool for working with natural plaster and cob

A pressure sprayer is an undoubtedly useful tool in the natural building realm, especially when working with cob or plaster. Sometimes a hose is way overkill, or simply not possible to rig up. A portable sprayer fills the void, and can be especially good when you want a lot of control. When you need to wet your walls down to lay up plaster, for example, it’s useful to have something that you can work with a certain amount of finesse, only spraying what you need and not saturating everything else in the process.

Over the years, I’ve burned through any number of pump-style pressure sprayers. You know the ones — the tools with the plastic tank and plastic handle that you pump for a minute, and then try to eek enough water out of the plastic nozzle before you have to pump again… annoying, to say the least. And usually pretty cheaply made.

However, I’ve been using this Hudson trombone sprayer for a couple of years now, and can vouch for it. It’s come in quite handy during all of the plaster work we’ve been doing lately.

Is it the Best? Hudson Trombone Sprayer

A quick search for trombone sprayers will, sadly, not result in much. In fact, I can’t seem to find any other pressure sprayers in the same vein as the Hudson model. So really, I have nothing to compare it to, other than the pump tank style. When making that comparison, this is the surefire winner. Why?

The Hudson Trombone Sprayer (Model #61224) builds pressure by pumping the sprayer itself, just like a trombone. Hence the name. At no point must you pause and put the wand down to pump the tank. That means this is much quicker to work and more pleasant, too.

Other benefits? You can use any ol’ 5 gallon bucket (or other vessel of your choice) to store your water. This is nice because it makes the sprayer easier to pack away, and you’ve got the flexibility of choosing to carry around whatever size container you need. You’re also not screwed if your bucket takes some damage… just grab a new one.

The quality of the spray itself is also quite nice. It’s powerful (but not as powerful as some might claim… a 20 foot reach is not realistic), so it takes fewer pumps to cover the area you need to work. In the case of plastering, that means you can spend less time wetting and more time playing with mud. The nozzle adjustment is solid, too. It’s a bit fine, meaning the intensity of the spray changes quickly as you rotate the sprayer head, but you can get anything from a super fine mist to a very targeted stream. You can also change the direction of the spray at the nozzle end, which is actually quite useful if, for example, you need to reach around a corner, or into a tight space where you can’t aim the entire tool.

Very important to note, too, is that the construction is mostly metal. There’s not much plastic to speak of here, expect for the vinyl hose and plastic suction / filter cap. Gotta love that. Mine has held up to some decent abuse, but the extension rod has sadly suffered a bit. Thankfully, you can fairly easily disassemble the whole affair to clean it out well.

Downsides? A slightly longer hose would have been nice. The sprayer’s a bit spendy at $50, but worth it when you consider having to spend $20 every time you burn through a crappy plastic sprayer. Other than that… I’ve got to say, these things work pretty well. I can’t stand to think of using another pump one again, if that’s saying anything.

I definitely recommend this Hudson pressure sprayer if you’re doing any kind of plaster or cob work. I’m also open to hearing recommendations for similar tools — do you have any others you’d like to share about?