The Perfect Garden Hose – Love at First Sight?

Finding the perfect garden hose is seldom as simple as walking into a hardware store and grabbing the first hose you spot on the shelf. Many people don’t put much thought into buying a garden hose at all, which costs them in the long run. They may end up with a garden hose that kinks and twists and makes watering the garden far more difficult than it needs to be. They may end up with a hose that splits or breaks, or a cheap garden hose that breaks off from the garden hose fittings. That cheap garden hose they thought was such a bargain can end up costing them a lot more than they planned.

Even a cheap garden hose will cost you $12 to $15. A high-quality garden hose will cost you anywhere from $20 to $50, depending on the size and type of hose you choose. The cheap hose may get you through one summer season – if you’re lucky. A good ½ inch garden hose or ¾ inch garden hose, on the other hand, can easily last you five to ten years. Do the math and it’s easy to see why it makes more sense to buy a high-quality garden hose instead of dishing out $15 every summer for a hose that won’t last.

Beyond quality, though, there are a number of things to consider when you’re picking up a new hose for your garden. Here are the most important considerations to help you choose the perfect garden hose, even if it’s not one you fall in love with at first sight.

Use

How are you planning to use your garden hose? If you’re like most people, you want a basic hose that you can use to water the garden one day and wash your car the next. A standard water hose will suit your needs just fine. Will you leave it outside or store it inside? If you need a hose throughout the year in an area that dips into the freezing temperatures, you’ll want to buy a heated garden hose to make your life easier and prolong its life. If your hose won’t go much further than your patio, your best option may be a coil garden hose, which takes up little space and looks good on your patio. Finally, consider a drinking safe garden hose, especially if you’ll be using it around small children or plan to water vegetables with it. These hoses are made of materials that won’t leach into the water, making them safer and healthier to use.

Reach

Consider how far you want to be able to reach with your garden hose and choose a length that will just get there. The further the water has to travel through the hose, the lower your water pressure will be when it gets there. If you do most of your gardening within 25 feet of the water faucet but occasionally want to drag it out to the driveway, you’re better off getting two 25-foot hoses and coupling them when you need more reach.

Choosing the right garden hose for your needs can save you money and make your life easier. Before you head out to the hardware store, figure out how you’ll use the hose and how far you want it to reach and you’ll find your choice is much easier to make.

Is It Time to Replace Your Garden Hose?

April showers bring May flowers, but your garden hose can certainly make a difference. As the year rolls into gardening season throughout the country, it’s time to inspect your garden hose and decide whether it’s up to all the jobs you’ll use it for this spring and summer.

What to Look for When Inspecting Your Garden Hose

If you stored your garden hose properly for the winter – unless, of course, you had a heated garden hose that stayed out for the season – chances are that it’s in good shape for the year. A high quality garden hose will last for up to ten years if you take good care of it. A cheap garden hose, on the other hand, may not even get you through a full season.

Inspect the hose around the garden hose fittings for any fraying or wear. The hose is most likely to fray and wear around the connectors. If there’s even a little wear, your hose could sprout leaks at the spigot, which will waste water and make it harder to do the tasks you need to do.

Uncoil the hose and check its flexibility. A quality garden hose should uncoil smoothly and lay straight when you stretch it out. A cheaper vinyl garden hose without nylon braiding for reinforcement will very likely have settled into the coils and may not want to unroll. It may even have developed kinks that won’t release at all.

Check the length of the hose for cracks, splits or hard spots. Squeeze it gently along its entire length and be conscious of any areas where it feels different. Those areas may have hardened and become prone to cracking or splitting when you run water through it.

If everything seems fine, hook up your garden hose to the faucet and turn on the water to do a final test. If all of the tests go well, congratulations!

If, on the other hand, your garden hose fails any of these tests, it’s probably time to do some repair work on it or replace it with a new one.

Replace or Repair Your Garden Hose?

If the only place you find wear on your garden hose is close to the fittings, the repair job is a fairly easy one. You can purchase brass garden hose fittings from a supplier of garden hoses and gardening supplies. Cut the old garden hose fittings off with a sharp knife, making sure to remove the worn part of the vinyl. Follow the package directions to replace it with the new fitting.

If the damage to your hose is more extensive, you should replace the entire thing. Invest in a high quality garden hose so you won’t have to replace it again in a year or two. You’ll find many different types and sizes of garden hoses available, including ½ inch garden hose and 5/8 inch garden hose, the most popular sizes for general home use. Choose the right garden hose for your needs – and don’t forget a good garden hose reel to keep it safe and prevent damage to it when you’re doing yard work.

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?

A rose by any other name may still be a rose, but sometimes a garden hose is more than just a garden hose. Nearly every homeowner owns at least one garden hose. They’re used to water lawns and gardens, wash cars, hose down driveways and fill pools and water features. While your basic cheap garden hose may work just fine for a season’s worth of use, some homeowners opt for a specialty garden hose that is more durable, delivers more water faster or has a special feature that’s important to them. The best garden hose for your needs is obviously the one that actually meets those needs.

Heated Hose

In some areas of the country, a heated hose is a necessity if you need running water outdoors or in unheated buildings, such as barns and kennels, during the winter months. Heated hoses have an electric heater that warms the length of those to keep water flowing through them in temperatures as low as 0 F. If you routinely fill water troughs or need water to clean kennels or water an ice skating rink, a heated hose will make your life much easier.

Drinking Safe Garden Hose

The interior of a drinking safe garden hose is lined with material approved for food contact by the FDA. They’re commonly marketed as marine hoses, but more and more people are opting for a drinking safe garden hose to water vegetable gardens and for use around their families. When you choose a drinking safe hose, you can be comfortable about your kids grabbing a drink from the hose and be sure that the water you’re pouring on your vegetables isn’t laden with dangerous chemicals.

Coil Garden Hose

A coil garden hose offers convenience to those who only need to reach a limited area and have limited storage space for a garden hose. The tightly coiled spiral shape makes them easy to store and attractive if they’re left out. If coiling your garden hose for storage is a problem and you don’t need more reach than about 10 yards, a coil garden hose may be a good option for your watering needs. Coil garden hoses also eliminate the need for a separate garden hose reel because they essentially coil themselves.

Choosing the best garden hose for your needs may involve looking beyond the typical ½ inch garden hose or ¾ inch garden hose. Consider your options carefully and choose a garden hose that will deliver the benefits you need.

What Size Garden Hose is Right For Your Needs?

Most people don’t give much thought to selecting a new garden hose. They pick one up when their old one splits or when their current garden hose isn’t long enough to reach an area they want to water. Confronted in the hardware aisle with the dozens of styles, types and sizes of garden hoses, most people either buy the hose that’s on sale or opt for a mid-range garden hose in the length they think they need.

Unfortunately, since they didn’t stop to think about their needs before choosing a replacement water hose, they often end up with yet another hose that doesn’t quite meet their needs and has to be replaced in a year or two. Next time you have to replace or buy a garden hose, take a few minutes to consider your needs and learn how to choose the hose that best meets them.

Diameter

Diameter is an often over-looked factor in choosing the right hose for your needs. The diameter of the hose determines both the amount of water you can deliver per minute to your destination and the strength of the stream you can direct at it. While there are other factors in determining water pressure – distance traveled and incline, specifically – the diameter of your garden hose is the most important one.

The most commonly bought garden hoses are 5/8 inch in diameter, with ½ inch garden hose and ¾ inch garden hose coming in slightly behind it in popularity. While they may all sound close in size, the performance differences among the three hoses are surprisingly significant.

Just how significant?

The average home water pressure is about 40 pounds per square inch (psi). If you hook up a 25-foot long 5/8 inch water hose, it will put out about 44 gallons of water per minute. A ½ inch garden hose of the same length would only deliver 24 gallons of water per minute while a ¾ inch garden hose would deliver water at the rate of 72 gallons per minute.

In other words, ¾ inch garden hose delivers water three times as fast as a ½ inch garden hose. If your intent is to fill a swimming pool or garden pond with water, it will fill three times as fast with the wider diameter hose.

Length

Obviously, you want to choose a garden hose that will reach your intended destination, whether it’s your driveway for washing your car or your garden. However, it’s also important to remember that the length of your garden hose will affect the flow rate and water pressure. The longer your hose is, the lower your water flow rate will be. In order to make the best use of water, choose the shortest length of hose to get to your destination.

Next time you need to buy or replace a garden hose, take a few minutes to think about how you’re going to use it so you can be sure to choose the best size garden hose for your needs.

Garden Hose Facts and Information

The garden hose is such an everyday item that few homeowners stop to think about the job that it does until it fails them. Nor do most garden hose owners realize that many of those failures – leaky garden hose couplings, splits in the hose and poor water pressure among them – could be completely avoided by purchasing the right garden hose from the start. These simple garden hose facts can help you make the right choice the next time you have to replace this basic garden staple.

Garden Hose Capacity

The number of gallons a hose will carry and the pressure at which it will deliver that water are determined by three factors. One of them – available water pressure – has nothing to do with the hose. The others are an intrinsic part of the garden hose – the hose’s diameter and its length. While it’s simple logic that a garden hose with a larger diameter can carry more water, most people underestimate just how much difference that simple thing makes.

The diameter you read on the label refers to the inside diameter of the hose. The cheapest hoses are usually ½-inch diameter garden hose. They’ll deliver 9 gallons of water per minute. A 5/8 inch diameter garden hose will deliver water at 17 gallons per minute. The increase of 1/8 of an inch nearly doubles the carrying capacity of the hose. A ¾ inch garden hose delivers water at 23 gallons per minute.

It’s also simple logic that the longer the water has to travel through the hose, the more pressure it loses on the journey. Most people don’t realize, however, that water loses more pressure in a narrow hose than it does in a larger garden hose. According to hardware store experts, if your water pressure at the faucet is under 40 psi, or if the garden hose is extra long or is running uphill, you should use the largest size hose available to maximize the amount of water pressure you have for washing your car, sprinkling the lawn or watering the garden.

Garden Hose Care and Storage

A good garden hose can last for many years if you care for it properly. One of the most important things you can do to preserve your garden hose is to avoid kinks, either while you’re using the hose or while the hose is in storage. During the season, store your hose on a garden hose reel or hanger that allows you to coil the hose loosely and avoid sharp bends or kinks.

If your hose does get kinked while you’re using it, don’t yank on it to loosen the bend or you might permanently set the bend. Instead, work it free by hand.

In cold weather areas, drain the water from your garden hose at the end of the season and clean out the threads in the garden hose couplings and store it indoors in a loose coil. If you need a hose outdoors during the winter, consider a heated garden hose, which will not crack or freeze.

Choosing a high-quality garden hose might set you back a few more dollars, but it will pay off in the long run because you’ll get far more years of use from it.