My Hose Experience

Months ago, I planted flowers in the front of the house. Typical spring-time activity, right?

I needed to water those flowers, but I've always gotten dirty, dragging a hose though the mulch in order to water so I bought this cute little hose pot and a red hose (to match the house). I planned on hooking the regular hose, which ran thru the mulch, up to this - my hose would remain pristine on the porch in its little pot.

So I planned to go drag the hose reel out of the garage, hook it up to the side of the house, run the hose along the foundation & hook it up to the pristine red hose.

In the winter or perhaps very soon after we moved into our house (Sept 2007), my husband moved the hose reel into the garage, without the hose on it!

I rolled my eyes, attached the hose, wound it up, and wheeled it over to the faucet. When I got there I realized there was no leader hose. Roll my eyes again & head back to the garage. No leader hose in there either - we needed to get a new one. Whoo who, a trip to Home Depot!

With the flowers already planted, I hooked the hose directly to the faucet & moved on with my plan.

Did you notice that I was writing this post in September? Well it's time to replace the spring flowers (mostly dead by now) with fall flowers. So I got rejuvinated in my hose reel challenge. I got out the teflon tape & the leader hose I bought in the Spring and started with my pristine red hose.

How much teflon tape does it take to water flowers? I'll tell you:

• I have a quick-connect on the sprinkler head so both ends needed it
• The green hose meeting the red hose also has a quick-connect - two more pieces.
• The green hose at the hose reel has no quick-connect so it's only one piece.
• Leader hose from the hose real - again no quick-connect - one piece
• Leader hose meeting the timer should only be one piece, but what is this??????

The leader hose has a male & female end - normal! I attached the female end to the hose reel, but the male end had a problem. The timer is also a male attachment. I needed a hose repair kit in order to make the other end of the hose female; thus, be able to attach the hose to the faucet. Back to Home Depot!

Back to the teflon tape list:

• Attach the leader hose to the timer - one piece
• Attach the timer to the faucet - last piece!!!

That's eight pieces of teflon tape - good thing a had a brand new roll!

I rolled up the excess hose, turned on the water, went up on the porch & grabbed my sprinkler wand. Nothing happened. There must be a kink somewhere. Nope, there was water spewing out the bottom of the hose reel. Darn-it! Somehow during this process, I had done something to the end of the hose. I needed another hose repair kit. Yay, another trip to Home Depot!

All is now well because I got a repair kit and one of those little pieces of hose with a spring on it to prevent kinking. That little piece has two ends on it (because it gets attached to the hose, it's not a repair kit) so there were two more pieces of teflon tape involved.

I turned on the water again and it spewed out the bottom of the hose reel again!!!!!!! Apparently, I didn't have the connection between the springy hose and the hose reel tight enough. I got that fixed with my handy, dandy locking pliers from my personal tool bag - stole it out of my husband's tools, but he had two & I use it more. Maybe there wasn't anything wrong with the other hose end after all - probably a wasted trip to Home Depot.

Still counting the teflon tape from the first attempted connection, because it was piece used up, I was up to ten pieces of teflon tape. Whew, I could now water the flowers.

Did I mention a storm was rolling in last night? I'm sure everyone driving by thought I was an idiot for watering my flowers before a storm. Hah, got them! We never got more than a sprinkle! Good thing I watered.

So, it takes ten pieces of teflon tape & three trips to Home Depot to water the flowers!

Silver lining:
1. It only took three trips to Home Depot - not bad considering the general concencensence is six trips for a typical repair.
2. I am an expert at teflon tape application & fixing hoses.