Monday, August 12, 2013

How to Buy the Right Garden Hose

You have a right to expect that the garden hose you buy will serve you for many years, but most gardeners find that they have to replace their hoses far more often than they’d like. How do you choose a durable garden hose that won’t kink, won’t leak and won’t let your down? Check out these tips from Family Handyman on how to check out a garden hose before you buy it.
Try to Put a Kink in the Hose
The last few years have been big ones in the gardening hose industry. You could have gone years without hearing about hoses unless you were specifically looking for one. The past few years, the airwaves and your inbox have been crowded with advertisements for flexible garden hoses, coil garden hose, shrinking garden hoses and even more specialty hoses for your home and garden. How do you decide which one is a good gardening hose for you?
First, ignore the advertisements and hype. When Consumer Reports did an investigation on those amazing shrinking hoses, they found that they simply didn’t perform as advertised – and their Facebook page was inundated with messages from people who had been disappointed by hoses that leaked, exploded and otherwise made things even worse. Instead of believing the marketing hype, do a few tests of your own on the garden hose you’re thinking of buying.
First, try to bend the hose at a 90-degree angle. The thicker the walls of the garden hose are, the more difficult it will be to bend at an angle. A cheap vinyl hose will easily form an angle – and will almost certainly kink in use. A better quality garden hose, including many well-made polyurethane hoses, will resist bending. With the highest quality hoses, the best you’ll be able to do is make a U shape where you’re bending it.
Second, try to kink the hose deliberately. Uncoil a couple of feet of the garden hose and try to coil it back in the other direction. If it develops kinks before it’s been used, you can just imagine how it will kink after it’s been baking in the sun for a few weeks.
Finally, check out the garden hose fittings and choose one that has solid, heavy, cast-brass fittings. The fittings on your hose determine how securely it will connect to the faucet. Flimsy stamped fittings or plastic fittings can bend, break and crack, resulting in either a useless garden hose that can’t be attached to the faucet at all, or one that sprays water at the connection.
A high-quality garden hose can be your best friend when you’ve got watering and washing tasks to do outside. Don’t depend on a hose that will only let you down.

Sunday, August 4, 2013

Can You Use a Garden Hose Indoors?

Your garden hose is a trusted companion, helping you with your gardening and outdoor work around the house. You can hook up your garden hose to your outdoor faucet and cart it around to anywhere you need it using wheeled garden reels. Your hose can help you get water to the furthest reaches of your yard and driveway without having to haul it around in a bucket – why can’t you have the same convenience indoors? With a few accessories and some forethought, you can have the same convenience your garden hose offers you outdoors for your indoor gardening adventures.
Coil Garden Hose
The coil garden hose was created specifically to help with watering needs in tight spaces like patio gardens, but in most cases, manufacturers assume that you’ll be hooking up your coil garden hose to an outdoor water spigot and bringing it around to the patio. Apartment dwellers may not have that luxury. Even those that have patios large enough for a container garden may not have easy access to an outdoor water hookup. The coil garden hose may be easy to store, but in most cases, it needs a little help to be an efficient indoor garden hose. Exactly what other accessories you need will depend on a few important factors.
Water Source
You’ll have either two or three sources of water for your watering needs: your kitchen faucet, your bathroom faucet and your washing machine hookup. The easiest choice for connecting a garden hose indoors is your washer hookup because chances are that it’s already threaded to accept a garden hose. If you don’t have a washer hookup in your apartment, you’ll probably need a faucet hose adapter. They’re easily available at most hardware stores or online.
Distance
The distance you need to travel will determine the length of garden hose you need. In most cases, a 25 foot garden hose will suffice, but in larger apartments – or if you have to bring the hose from the back of the house to the front – you may need a 50-foot garden hose. In either case, a 1/2 inch garden hose is likely to be your best choice. It will deliver enough water pressure to get the job done and offers less risk of flooding your kitchen and living room.
If you’re going to be connecting a garden hose to an indoor faucet and carrying the hose through the house, you’ll want to be sure you’re using a high quality, drinking safe garden hose with solid brass garden hose fittings. A sturdy brass fitting is far less likely to warp out of shape, and will make a secure, water-tight connection to your faucet so it doesn’t leak all over your floor.
Likewise, if you’re going to use a kitchen or bathroom faucet, be sure to choose a high-quality, well-made hose-to-faucet adapter that won’t leak and spray water all over your kitchen.
There’s no reason to haul buckets of water through your house to water a patio garden just because you don’t have an outdoor faucet. With proper attention to details, you can easily adapt an indoor faucet for use with a good quality garden hose.