Metal Garden Hose and a Reel that doesn't Suck
More of a "Gerry's Stuff" than a Chuck's stuff but I did add a bit.
Ya ya, been a while.
Garden hoses have pissed me off for years. They always suck. They are heavy, hard to coil, leaky and don’t last very long.
The hoses suck but also the reel you need to organize a length like 100 feet don’t last because the weight and the strain of reeling them eventually wins. Don’t get me started on the fact that the reels often have part of the water distribution going THROUGH them. Meaning, in order to deal with the rotation of the reel and the hose, they have to send the water from the spigot to the hose via an always shitty plastic union and rotation mechanism with a poor excuse for a washer and seal. Plastic hose interfaces and water pressure (oh and strain) ALWAYS results in leaks and drips…not a big deal outside but in a garage its just annoying. Try to get a wrench of some sort onto the plastic fastening….good times. You try to make it tight enough to not leak and you break the plastic.
The last gripe is that a long hose on a reel takes up a bunch of space and when you get to the end of reeling the f’er in, unless you have done it perfectly, all the damn hose doesn’t fit on the reel! If you leave the hose pressurized its even worse because they get chubbier with water in them. OH AND THE COLD OF SPRING AND FALL….they get all stiff and even harder to deal with….makin my blood pressure go up just thinking about it.
Infuriating. (the Millennials in my distribution will roll eyes. Dad problems. Wait till they have places that need water. They will then know the agony)
So! Visiting my friend Gerry and his family at his cottage, he has all these strange looking metal garden hoses all coiled nicely around his boat house and buildings. I say Gerry! WTF? He says “these are the best hoses ever!”. I pick up the end of one, its metal but light…..and thin and flexible like a noodle! They are so pliable he isn’t even using a reel to deal with them! They are pliable like a rope, you can take a few loops off, use the hose and put them back on the storage arm with zero effort. Oh, and they are about half the thickness of a rubber hose, so take up a fraction of the space when coiled.
Not only are they light, thin and pliable but they have all metal fittings and even a shut off valve at the nozzle end.
This is it on Amazon…..
Ok, but Gerry wasn’t using 100 feet with his “no reel” approach….but we had to have one of these hoses….but there was no way I was going to deal with 100 feet without a reel….and no way in hell I was going to put this marvel of hose advancement on another leaking $60 plastic piece of crap reel.
Earlier in the year, before the metal hose miracle, when I was trying to find a better way to deal with 100’ and 100 lbs of crap rubber hose and a broken, leaking plastic reel….I found this. In my plastic reel rage and weakness I decided it was worth $200 to be done with my grief. Its was so much better than plastic but the rubber hose, of course, BARELY fit unless perfectly rolled! With the 100 feet of miracle hose….it takes up like half the reel! All metal fittings and real seals and washers. Yes its expensive but so much less suck.
Many thanks for the tip Chuck!