What type of hose reel do you use? Are you pleased with it?

Some of you may have heard me complain before...I have all reels mounted and like that style, but snakes (long ones too can completely fit / hide in the side wall of the hose reel. The bar that the hose winds up on is supported on each end by a very shallow sidewall (like a hanging paper towel roller is but bigger) it is perhaps an inch and a half deep and maybe 10-12 inches around. A snake can enter the sidewall (the open side facing the hose) ...track along the inner curve of the shallow sidewall and make two loops around and be perfectly hidden. It has happened twice --that I know of -- in our garden.

This message was edited Nov 10, 2014 3:44 PM

We have made a hose hanger that was hung on a tree 5'+ and we loop hoses on there for the area (welding men at home, was taught in high school here) and we have a reel much closer to the ground by the house. I prefer the welded iron hanger but every area meets a different need and placement. I have no faith in reels and prefer coiling areas for my hoses when possible.

My friend Manual does all that stuff for me.

My hose reel uses water pressure to rewind the hose. I LOVE IT!!!

It's a large, plastic box (with hose wound inside) which is not all that attractive, but I love it anyhow and will definitely look for another one when it wears out. It effortlessly untangles and rewinds some 200ft of hose. It's about 10yrs or so old now, and has remained outdoors year round all that time, so it's pretty rugged. Effortless and trouble-free. Can't beat it.

Several years ago I got an all-metal hose reel on sale at Lowes at the end of the season (it was still expensive, I have a vague memory it might have been 70$), and my Bro-in-law bolted it on the wall. I liked it so much I got another at the next years sale, for the other side of the house. It is so much easier to just reel in the hose (no snakes here, but I can picture a snake with motion sickness inside the reel). I just brought my hoses in for the winter, and trying to coil them up is a royal pain.

a neighbor taught me a long time ago to "figure 8" the hose if you're going to leave it on the ground. it uncoils perfectly with never a problem.

I voted for Other, since I've tried everything but the hose reel. I may have to get one.
I find it's easier for me to leave the hoses lay when I'm done with the watering. I don't like it when they get folds or creases in the hose. My habit of leaving them stretched out drives DH nuts though, and likes to coil them up, on the ground.
I like Tracksinsands' suggestion of putting them in a figure 8. Maybe DH will compromise once he sees them tucked away.
WIB~
SW

Figure 8 works great when the hoses are nice and warm and pliable, but here in the chilly north they get all stiff and it becomes impossible. Stretched out does work, but then they are in the way for mowing and make brown lines in the lawn so I can see why Mr. SingingWolf might complain.The water pressure device sounds very interesting.
Here is the one I got at Lowes, photo today is without hose as I took it off a few days ago.

Your hose reel is very attractive, considerably more so than my water driven one. That said, I still would not be willing to part with mine. I find that I am much more inclined to decide to unroll the thing (and water plants) now that I know it will rewind itself. Fighting with the hose has always been one of my most hated chores. And I have 2 very long hoses connected together in there. Can't recall if it's 200ft total or two 200ft hoses, but it's enough to reach around a house that has 2000sq ft on the 1st floor plus 2car garage.

I didn't even think to get a pic. I will try to remember to get one tomorrow to show folks. Mine really just looks like a large plastic cube or box, pale yellow to cream in color, nothing special. I just tuck it in the shrubs to try to make it less visible. The ugly plastic box does keep the hose cool and out of the sun/weather so that it lasts longer.

Looking forward to seeing it - sounds great

The main reason here that I don't use a hose very much is that we get over 200 inches of rain per year. No need to be connected to the grid.
There are regular droughts, then a hose helps. When droughts happen it's time to fertilize, as it won't wash away.
In November we get several storms that throw over an inch per hour, and stay for several days. I'm getting ready!

https://www.google.com/images?q=Rain&rls=com.microsoft:en-US&oe=utf8&rlz=1I7TSHA_enUS348&gws_rd=ssl&hl=en&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ei=Wt1iVMSJCueDiwLB4oGgCg&ved=0CEgQsAQ

I voted 'other' because I have both the wall-mounted type (a couple of those) and a box reel-type similar to the one DreamOfSpring describes. Mine is also plastic but has held up really well sitting outside for several years in hot sun and freezing cold.

Funny I haven't seen any snakes coiled on the hose reels, but I had left a length of black hose lying along the back patio walkway one day. The next day a black snake was lying next to the black hose. I guess it was trying to 'mate' with the hose, lol! I, too, often lay some of the spare hose in a figure 8 if I'm going to use it again in the next day or two.

OutsidePlaying,

Interesting to hear from another who has also had good results with the water driven hose reel. Mine has also held up incredibly well. It's 10+ yrs old now, and has been outside in the punishing summer heat and the winter cold (what of that we have here) the entire time. Still works great. I believe you are supposed to drain the hose(s) and bring the reel in for winter, but I never do either. Winters here are usually quite mild, but last winter we had 3 ice storms, each of which lasted several days, and that hose reel was out there the entire time but still worked fine this summer. Very rugged product but definitely not so attractive like some of the pics shown above.

I am another figure 8 fan, I use a heavy hose that won't burst if left in the blazing sun and heat down here and it is very hard to get on a regular reel, figure 8 is easiest. I will look into the water powered reel however.

Metrodave, been thinking about you. Pictures on the news of your neighboring village have been scary. Pele is angry.

I looked up water driven. Good ratings from users. you re right - a box and so I can't really see its innards but on Amazon - there is a video on there and I got to see it retract. Looks great!

But it isn't ugly!

LOL, missingrose, you haven't seen mine yet!

Well, now this certainly is embarrassing. This is the problem with 'live TV'. Mine is SO dirty. Did I mention that it has been out there in the elements for over a decade now? We only get 52in annual rainfall, but that plus the east coast humidity which typically runs 80-100% is more than enough for all manner of moss and fungus to grow on everything. Ok, I probably should wash the thing, but, seriously, I have much more important things to do. But enough trying to explain away my mess...

Some 10+ yrs ago, I literally put the hose in the giant container and have done absolutely nothing since that time. In 10+ yrs I haven't ever removed the hose or drained the thing or taken it in out of the elements, not even once. When you look at the pics, you won't have any problem believing that either. (But I do think it is a bit ugly, especially when compared to other options like the one posted by mlmlakestevens above.) I usually keep it tucked between/behind 2 shrubs, but I pulled it out so you could see it better. Just fyi, this is in my backyard, behind a privacy fence.

Since mine is over 10yrs old, it is an older model, long since discontinued. The newer models are more streamlined. Turns out it is more of an off-white or taupe color, not cream or pale yellow as I said earlier.

It's called Robo-Winder. It was made by Hydro Industries (formerly at www.hydro-industries.com); however, that is now a hydroponics site. A page at that site states that Hydro Industries is no longer in business and that a company named Suncast Industries currently makes ReelSmart hose reels. (www.suncast.com)

I bought mine from Amazon.com. At the time I had Amazon Prime, and they shipped the HUGE box to me (2 day shipping) free. Hard to beat that price.

The 'hat' on top in the 1st pic is not part of the hose reel. The 3rd pic shows the side view where you can see the lever you pull up to engage the water driven motor to rewind the hose. The last pic shows the door open to reveal the area where the hose is wound. The 4th pic is a really bad closeup (with door open) of the hose inside. The end of the hose is held between those horizontal bars. When the hose is being rewound, it slides back and forth between those horizontal bars; this action enables it to wind the hose evenly across the reel. It has been remarkably trouble-free for over a decade now, always winding the hose smoothly. All I ever do is turn the water on/off and pull up on the lever. It does the rest - well, except that I do have to pull the hose out on my own, but that's pretty easy.

One last thing I forgot to add. The bottom is open, so when you look at the closeup inside (Pic 4), that is the ground below. Snakes are pretty bad here, so on the very rare occasion that I open that door (I think I may have opened it 2-3 times total), I always fear I will find a snake in there with the hose. That has never happened though. However, one spring I did find a nest of some kind in there. Basically, it was jammed full of sticks and such. I think it was a rat's nest, a problem I developed back when I used to keep a feeder full of BOSS for the birds. (I now have 2 semi-feral cats outside, so no more birds or rats.) Anyhow, I pulled the sticks and other nest material out, and the reel worked fine.

1. I still don't think it is ugly
2. I JUST ( less than three minutes ago) told my husband that Charleston was on Forbes list for 2014 as one of 25 best places to retire and then I read this post of yours about the snakes. I have enough...I can't do more. ( he likes Charleston ) i am not wanting to move but I was curious about that list of cities and the 'whys'

I think that was the site I went to that had the video. i may buy myself a hose reel for Christmas Ho Ho Hose!

I use the hose so little that it is often hard to locate in the tall grass and brush.

Hi Ardesia, I don't believe Pele is angry, here in the land of hurricanes, rain, earthquakes, and lava. The flow has been going in it's present direction since June 27.
It was moving in my direction last January, for just over a month. I am about 4 miles mauka from the present action.
So far the new flow has destroyed a farm building and a residence. The flow has not moved downhill for about 2 weeks, but it is spreading outward.
In human time the volcano will displace some of society. In geologic time the volcano will bury everything in the area in about 10,000 ft. of lava and ash.

We can enjoy the lack of need for irrigation till then!

Aloha, Dave

Good to know you are a safe distance. For a gardener, your abundant rainfall and outstanding drainage is precious.

I have several:
- Two wall mounted metal decorative reels
- One plastic self-winding reel
- Two coiled hoses that I store in long plastic planters

missingrosie,

I probably shouldn't have said 'lots' of snakes. I see the same 1 snake once a year, almost always on Memorial Day weekend. That probably doesn't really qualify as 'lots'. Truth be told, I unintentionally did a lot to attract snakes to my yard.

If you are really considering Charleston, here is the inside scoop:

1) The pace here tends to be very relaxed and laid back. No hustle, no bustle.

2) People. The people here tend to be very friendly and helpful. Friends. Strangers. All the same to us. People here smile and say, "Hello" to everyone. A recent transplant from Cleveland could not get over how friendly the grocery store cashier was to him and his wife. We usually get the Friendliest City award every year. Can't recall now if that poll is by AAA or some other major travel related organization, but the winner is chosen by the actual people who visit various US cities.

3) Climate. Almost identical to that of the northern 1/2 of Florida. Summers are hot and humid. Fall is pretty much the same as spring but w/o so many flowers. Winter is my favorite time to do yard/garden maintenance. Winters here are usually mild. We typically get down to the upper 20's 5-10 nights total, not usually consecutive. The temp usually goes back up into the 60s or higher the very next day. Most winter days are in the 60s and up, often even in the 70s and low 80s. I have a number of light jackets and blazers but no real winter coat, just an unlined wool wrap for when it's really cold. I wear tank tops, shells, and tank dresses year round, layered with a light blazer in winter.

You can grow vegetables here year round. There are always flowers blooming in my yard. I often pick my last large bouquet of roses for Christmas Day. Camellias bloom Oct - Mar. Flowering quince bloom nonstop all winter. Hellebores start blooming in Dec or Jan. Spring bulbs like daffodils start blooming in Jan/Feb, and that starts the whole parade of spring blooms. Spring starts very early here. I usually tell people that winter here is the last 2 weeks of Jan - although last winter was colder than normal for us. Most years I have the AC running on New Years Day, and one year my company had a pool party for Christmas.

You can grow many borderline tropical plants here. I have a large split-leaf philodendron, usually considered a houseplant anywhere but Florida, in a giant pot on my driveway. It has been outside year round for 14yrs now. On the other hand, there are some old favorites which will not grow or bloom here like peonies, lilac, and oriental poppies.

If you like snow, you won't be happy here. We get a light dusting about once per decade, and it is pretty much always gone by the next morning. July and August can be pretty rough here, but the rest of the year is quite nice, like non-stop spring but with a chilly night here and there. We get an average of 52in of rain annually, about an inch per week, which is perfect for most plants. Luckily, most of that comes in the form of late afternoon showers on otherwise sunny days.

Hope this helps. Dmail me if you have questions. I'm happy to give you the real and honest scoop. The good and the bad. I've seen lots of people, all ages, move here over the years, and I can't think of any who left again. Oh, and I am a native.

LOL, not a true Lowcountry native here but I've been around over 50 years and I concur with all Dreams says but she forgot to mention the citrus and bananas. You have no idea how great a home grown tangerine or grapefruit tastes.

We had guests yesterday from Boulder. CO, they thought it was like a lovely fall day. I was freezing! Hope this Polar vortex heads for the hills soon, it is chilly here today. 39 this morning and that is, as mentioned above, very rare. While shorts and tee shirts are in abundance, warm winter clothes aren't. Brrrr

ardesia,

I do so hope 'they' are wrong, but the experts are predicting not only that this winter will be another cold one for us much like last year but also that this is going to be our new normal and that these periodic arctic blasts will continue. Both the severe drought out west and the arctic blasts which have been bringing severe cold down our way are believed to be part of the changes caused by global warming (regardless of its cause).

The warming has begun to alter ocean currents around the arctic, disrupting currents which previously kept that weather mostly contained, now allowing arctic winds to dip down into the US into places they rarely went before. I sure hope they are wrong, since for me the mild winters are part of what make it worth enduring our harsh summers, but the prediction is for this kind of thing to continue and even get worse.

Certainly hope they are just making scary predictions but at my age I can assure you that the weather has indeed changed over the years. We get less rain than Charleston does down here; sometimes we go weeks without a drop. You used to be able to set your watch by the afternoon showers. Now we have to really use those hoses and we might have to empty them in the winter some day so they don't freeze. :-(

It's already feeling like last winter all over again, here. This week anyway.

I also have the tan winds itself up reel-box. Two homes ago it was very handy, when it was completely hidden on the side of the house and there were plantings nearby that could be watered by the outflow hose on the box. I did find that it used a LOT of water, though, to do the winding, so lately it has not been in use. I didn't think the bricks were going to grow even if I watered them.

:~)

Uh oh. Are you saying that the self winding uses water that is not stored for next time but is discharged? Our old situation would have supported that, but now we are on a well...a deep one at 420 feet but the water is produced at only 2 gallons / minute. We are just getting out of a drought.

The water powered reels do use water (not automatically recycled) to power the motor and rewind the hose. I don't find that mine uses all that much water for this purpose; however, water is still relatively plentiful here, no droughts or rationing, so that may influence my perception vs someone on the west coast. I do have to pay for water (city water), but I didn't notice any change at all on my water bill in summer when I was watering my garden almost daily and rewinding the hose each time. (I tried the sqft garden technique and found that with plants packed that tightly - 1 tomato, okra, etc plant per sq ft - even our ample rainfall was not enough to keep them well watered, esp with the very high temps, so I ended up watering almost daily.)

It would, however, be relatively easy to recycle the water that is used to power the reel. Mine came with about a 4-5ft section of hose which attaches to the runoff valve to allow you to route that water away from the reel and away from the area where you are standing (so it doesn't just run out on your feet). Note that I'm specifically talking about the water that is 'wasted' to power the device. You could easily just route that hose into a bucket to catch that water for use in the garden, etc. Or you could attach a longer hose to route the 'wasted' water wherever you want or need it to go, perhaps sending that water out to the garden, for instance.

The way mine works, there is a lever I pull/push to determine whether the water is routed through the device to the hose (the regular hose that is wound inside the device, the one you use to water the garden, etc) or whether it is instead routed to the pump which powers the motor. When the lever is up, all of the water goes to the hose just like with any other hose setup. When you are through with the hose and want the device to retract and rewind it, you push the lever down and let go of the hose.

This causes the water to stop coming out of the hose and sends it to where it is used to turn the motor and rewind the hose. This water turns the motor and then runs out of a spout on the bottom/side of the device. As stated above, you can attach a hose to that spout to send this 'waste' water wherever you want it to go. At least, that is how mine works, and mine even came with a short section of hose for this purpose. When the hose is fully wound, you pull the lever back up to stop the motor and then turn the faucet off.

Again, I used my hose almost daily in summer to keep my (very small) veggie garden watered, and I didn't see any change at all in my water bill. I always rewound the hose after each use, because - and this is yet another advantage of this type hose reel - I found that being inside that plastic box actually protects my hose from the extreme heat. If I leave my hose lying on the ground for even a few hours in the intense summer heat here, I will return to find the hose VERY hot and pliable (almost ready to melt). If I try to use the hose after it has been lying around on the ground, the water that comes out is HOT, hot enough to damage plants, and I have to run the hose for quite some time (wasting water) to get cooler water from the hose. But the hose can stay in that 'box' all day long with the sun bearing down on it, and both the hose and the water are always cool. Consequently, I always make sure to rewind the hose after every use.

Hope this helps.

13turtles, have you tried attaching a hose to the runoff spout on yours (if that's an option on the model you have) so that you can route that water somewhere useful?

If you go back and look at the pics I posted above, the 3rd or middle pic shows the side with the lever that you pull/push as described in the post above. The hose on the ground going to the device in that pic is the supply hose, the one coming from the faucet; however, if you look closely at the bottom of that oval shaped thing on that side of the device, the thing with the lever on top, you can just see part of the drain spout coming out of the bottom of that oval thing. It's towards the right or front of the oval thing, a little spout protruding from the bottom. That is where the waste water comes out when it is rewinding the hose. That spout is designed to allow you to attach a hose to it to catch that water or route it where you please.

Well now I feel silly! Yes, I got the 5 ft section too; surely I could come up with a way to use the powering water. Just wish I had a full grey-water system. Or I guess I could wash my clothes on a rock while that water ran.

I still think mlm's is the only attractive hose reel I've ever seen. Where's my mechanical engineering training when I need it?

13Turtles,

You could attach another, longer hose and direct the water to some of your flower beds or a veg garden. You might even be able to attach a longer hose with one of those devices on the other end for watering the lawn. Or catch it in a 5gallon bucket and pour it on a bed that needs it, use it to water potted plants or to dilute plant food or bug spray. Pour it in the bird bath. I'm sure can find a use for it - although washing your clothes on a rock does sound enticing.

Yes, mls's reel is certainly one of the most attractive I've seen. The ones that attach directly to the house that way often tend to be among the more attractive. I've seen striking designs for mounted types like that in high end home catalogs. I have also seen some lovely cache pots designed to conceal a hose wound inside them (and to make the winding and unwinding relatively easy).