Things You Need to Know About Your Garden Hose

The right garden hose can make your chores around the garden, yard and garage much easier. The wrong one can put roadblocks in your way in subtle ways you don’t always recognize. If you’re trying to water your garden, wash your car, fill your swimming pool or water your animals with a garden hose that isn’t right for the job, you could be wasting time and dealing with unnecessary frustration every time you try to do an outdoor task. Here’s what you should know about your garden hose to make your outdoor tasks much easier.

Choose the Right Hose for the Job

There are garden hoses and there are garden hoses. A standard garden hose will do for most of your outdoor tasks, as long as it’s the right length. In most cases, you’ll want to avoid buying a hose that’s a lot longer than it needs to be to reach the places you’ll use it most. If, for example, you can reach the farthest corner of your vegetable garden with a 25-foot garden hose there’s no need for a 50-foot garden hose If anything, it will make your daily tasks more difficult because it will be more prone to kinking and tangling. You’ll have more length to drain and rewind on a garden hose reel. And the water will reach the business end of your hose at a greatly reduced water pressure.

But what if you also want to be able to reach the driveway, which is 40 feet away from the outdoor faucet? Most experts suggest that you invest in two 25-foot hoses rather than a 50-foot garden hose When you need the extra length, you can just hook the two hoses together.

Specialty Hoses

In addition to standard garden hoses, you’ll also find many kinds of specialty hoses available from home improvement stores and garden stores. Among the most popular:

Coil Garden Hose

Coil hoses are designed for use and storage in small spaces. Unlike traditional garden hoses, which must be manually coiled or rolled onto a garden hose reel, coil garden hoses are shaped into a permanent coil that resembles nothing so much as a metal spring. They’ll extend to reach all the corners of your patio, then coil back on themselves without any effort on your part.

Drinking Safe Garden Hose

Standard garden hoses are treated with chemicals that can leach into standing water, making them dangerous for drinking. In fact, independent tests have found very high levels of lead in water that had been standing in garden hoses for as little as a few hours. For safety’s sake, choose a hose that is labeled “drinking safe,” especially if you use the garden hose to fill wading pools for children or pets’ water dishes.

Choosing the right garden hose can make your yard and garden tasks much easier. The few extra minutes it takes to find the right hose will pay off in much longer life and a lot less hassle over time.