Wednesday 4 August 2021

How to fix a garden hosepipe that was full of twists and kinks

I assume that lots of people already know how to do this, but I had to work it out for myself.

All you do is wait for a sunny day or two, lay out the hosepipe in the garden as straight as you can; remove twists and kinks by hand; stretch the bent bits; pin it down with stones if necessary etc.

Then just leave it for a day or two, hey presto, not 'good as new' but certainly much better and much easier to roll back into a coil.

12 comments:

wiggiatlarge said...

Only a temporary fix, if the weather stays hot you are back to square one, you get what you pay for with hoses as with much else, investing in a top quality non kink hose will put that problem to bed, look for those that the trade use or similar.
They also last a lot longer.

Mark Wadsworth said...

W, sure, I'll have to repeat this every year or so. It's only ten minutes' work.

The Jannie said...

wigiatlarge is right - first buy a better hose!

The lay it out straight idea works better if you then run hot water through it for a couple of minutes followed by a few minutes of cold. Our hot water is at 50C: we don't often get that much sun!

Doonhamer said...

Wind it back onto the reel with full water pressure in hose. i.e. valve at end closed.

Mark Wadsworth said...

DCB, how do I connect it to the hot tap? The garden tap has a connector that clicks onto the connector on the hose. The hot tap in the kitchen doesn't.

D, sounds sensible, would you leave tap on, or just leave the hose full of water? if you leave the tap on it will just drip at both ends.

Doonhamer said...

Reeling with full water pressure.
Turn off tap feed to hose after reeling. The hose on the reel will tend to retain its unsquashed shape. Good when you want full flow through partially unreeled hose.

Mark Wadsworth said...

D, thanks for explaining. I might try that, but tbh I never do any gardening apart from mowing the lawn, the wife does, and I can't be bothered explaining the science of this to her.

James Higham said...

Too tempting to write, 'Ooo, kinky,' so I shan't.

benj said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
benj said...

If you lay it out in the sun and fill it up with water, it will get hot enough for one free shower. Never done it myself, but my penny pinching father did.

Btw, if you enlist the help of the children in a game of hosepipe tug-of-war, you'll probably find that really helps.

Scrobs. said...

I've been buying those squiggly hoses which scrunch up into a small polythene bag after use.

They last about a year, but are easier to control, if you can wait the three hours for them to finally empty...

Mark Wadsworth said...

JH, somebody has to make that comment, those are teh rules.

B, that sounds like a lot of faff, plus it'd drip all over the place when I take it upstairs to the bathroom. Kids too old for actually 'helping Dad'.

S, which are two reasons for not buying them, but ta for info.