Is a Coil Garden Hose Right For Your Garden?

When choosing a new garden hose, it’s important to consider the way you’ll use it, as well as where you’ll store it. If you walk down the aisles of a hardware store or home improvement store, you’ll find dozens of different sizes, colors and types of garden hose, each of them seemingly perfectly suited for a particular purpose. Among them, you’ll see coil garden hoses, often in fashionable colors that will look great on your patio. Is a coil garden hose right for you? Here’s a quick rundown of the pros and cons of choosing a coil garden hose to help you decide whether it’s the right choice for you or whether you’d be better off with a more traditional ½ inch garden hose or 5/8 inch garden hose.

Easy to Use

Coil garden hoses, also called self-coiling garden hose, are essentially very easy to use. You connect it to the spigot, and move to where you want to go. The garden hose tends not to kink as long as you don’t pull it too hard or too far beyond its length.

Easy to Store

A coil garden hose essentially stores itself. You don’t have to coil it back up to put it away or wind it onto a garden hose reel. The flexible material is like a spring; you can pull it to reach other parts of the garden. When you release it or move back toward the spigot, the coils retract and coil back into shape.

Attractive

While most garden hose types come in just a few colors – most of them in the green range so they can blend in with your lawn – the coil garden hose tends to come in bright fashion colors, including turquoise, deep blue, gold, purple and, of course, green. Pick out the color that goes best with your patio furniture or accents your house.

Cons of Coil Garden Hose

There are down sides to a coil garden hose, of course. They’re designed for smaller spaces, and won’t stretch to their full length comfortably, so be sure to get a longer hose than you think you need. Once you start moving beyond its coiled range, the garden hose will tend to pull back. It’s not the hose you want to use if your intent is to fill a wading pool unless you’re filling it very close to the spigot.

If you intend to use the coil garden hose mostly on and around your patio and won’t be trying to pull it around corners, it might be the right choice for you. If you need more flexibility, you can choose from many other specialty garden hose products, including drinking safe garden hose, heated hose and 1-inch water hose for large volume water delivery.

Garden Hose Tricks You May Not Know

The humble garden hose may be one of the most overlooked and underappreciated household tools every created. Nearly every home has one, and many have several. Good gardeners understand the importance of the garden hose they choose, but most people are content to buy a cheap hose and simply replace it when it springs a leak, splits or falls apart.

Because they buy cheap hoses, many people end up paying far more than they think they do to keep their lawns and gardens watered, wash their cars and fill their pools. The cheap garden hose you pick up at your local store is a loss leader. If you’re lucky, you may get two seasons out of it before you have to replace it. If you lay out the cash to buy the best garden hose you can afford and treat it well, it may last 10 to 15 years before you have to buy another one. And in those 10 to 15 years, you may find that you get a lot more use out of your garden hose than you ever expected.

Lay Out a Garden Path

Have you ever wanted to lay out a curving or winding garden path but weren’t sure how to do it? You’ve probably got the perfect tool for the task in your shed – your garden hose. Simply lay out the path using your garden hose. A high-quality rubber hose will curve naturally in the direction you want to go. Don’t try it with a cheap garden hose, though. The plastic, nylon-wrapped hoses that you can pick up in the bargain aisle for $12 tend to kink and try to coil on themselves. A decent ½ inch garden hose or ¾ inch garden hose will lay where you put it and provide an excellent guideline to lay out your path.

Two Shorter Hoses Are Better than One Long Garden Hose

Should you buy a 100-foot garden hose or two 50-foot garden hoses? Most experts will recommend the latter. You may end up paying a little more for two hoses than you do for one longer one, but you gain a lot in flexibility. The longer your garden hose is, the more water pressure you lose before the water reaches its destination. If you only ever intend to use your hose to reach 100 feet, this doesn’t make a lot of difference – 100 feet is 100 feet. But if you’ll be using your hose to extend over shorter distances, you’ll be pushing water through lots of extra tubing. If you buy two shorter hoses, you can hook them together when you need the longer length and just use the shorter length when you don’t.

You’ll also find that two shorter hoses are easier to store than one long garden hose. Uncouple the hoses, and the two will drain more quickly and easily than one long hose, and two shorter hoses are considerably easier to coil and put away.

Specialty Garden Hoses Make Your Life Easier

In addition, you’ll find many specialty garden hoses that are designed for specific tasks. Soaker hoses, for example, are perfect for watering soil rather than spattering water all over the foliage of your plants. If you use your garden hose to fill water troughs for your animals or to grab the occasional drink when you’re out in the yard, a drinking safe garden hose is good for your peace of mind.

When you buy the best garden hose for your needs, you’ll get more use out of it, and spend far less money over time. Why waste money when you can get a better product that lasts longer?