Hose reels, save time!

Here is a tip regarding your hose reel that will hopefully save you a lot of effort in the long run.  I now have several hose reels (3) in use around our home, reeling up hundreds of feet of low cost garden hose I have accumulated over the years.  Low cost hose lasts a long time and is easy to repair so why not?

One of the problems I run into with all this hose is reeling the hose up.  If you have 150 feet of hose on one reel, the force required to drag all that hose through the grass can be excessive.  It is a lot of work for you and you take the chance of damaging your hose reel as well.

The tips for your hose reeling chore

When you have finished your watering chore and you are ready to clean up, as you walk back toward your hose reel grab the end of your hose and carry it with you!

In fact as you continue to walk, after about 30 feet, grab onto the hose again and pick up a loop.

Continue this process while walking back to your hose reel.  Dragging these loops of hose in your hand is really quite easy.  

When you are about 10 feet from your reel just drop all the loops you collected and dragged back.  You want to drag the hose segments so the loops when dropped form a straight line to your hose reel.  In this case I was a little sloppy and my car was in the way!

If you drop the loops so they are perpendicular to your reel, the hose will not reel in as easily, you want them in a line pointing toward the reel.

Why is this a hose reel tip?

Now try to wind up your hose onto your reel.  You will find the job is much easier!  Now you are only dragging 20 or 30 feet of hose through the grass, even though you might have 150 feet of hose to reel in.  It makes the chore much easier, and it gave you something to do while walking back from your watering chore to your hose reel.  Is this exciting?

That is the tip for your reel full of hose!

Here are some good tips as well:

www.coxhosereels.com Hose-Reel-Tips.html

Now go have that beer!

Hope this helped,
Bob

Wait there is more!

Hose reel winter storage

I thought I would include yet another hose reel tip on this page, winter storage.  I really do not have the space to store all three of my hose reels indoors during the winter.  In fact I leave them in place with the hose still on.  I have learned some lessons about doing this.

1. You should always disconnect the input hose from the source and make sure the hose is entirely below the center of the hose reel rotation access, preferably on the ground.  The female end of the inlet hose must be below the hose reel so there will be no standing water.

2.  It is a good idea to drain the hose by pulling it out fully on a grade and let gravity do the work.  You probably could also remove most the water by blowing through the hose with an air compressor, if you have one!  I usually do not drain my hose, which makes step three and the tip mandatory.  Please note: I have seen the hose freeze and partially crush the center of the hose reel itself.

3.  Looking at the picture, there is always some form of right angle tube to which you attached the hose to be reeled.  For winter storage you must make sure this right angle fitting is positioned at the top of the rotation of the reel.  This fitting must be drained, and if it sits at the bottom of the rotation, it will always fill with water, freeze, and break!

So a simple storage tip

I have found I cannot see this fitting when I have more than 50 feet of hose on the reel.  Many times I have 150 feet of hose reeled.  So the tip is, filing a notch in the side of the reel in the same position as the right angle fitting.  Then when you are preparing your reel for winter, just locate the notch at the top and you know your fitting is safe.

If you have made the mistake I did

I learned the hard way about this fitting; freezing fractured it.  But replacement parts are remarkably easy to purchase for many hose reels, and, at a reasonable price.  Here is a link to the parts page:

www.suncast.com replacement replacementdisplay.aspx?prodId=96 

And the price is only $2.91 so it is a economical repair.

Again, Hope this helped, Bob.

Date created: 04 Aug 2005

Date revised: 12/10/2016

BHTGGLTooShort.