Should You Pay More For a Garden Hose?

!: Should You Pay More For a Garden Hose?

Would you rather have a high quality garden hose - or a cheap one? Price against quality is always difficult to decide on, and hose pipes are no different. To help you make the choice, let us then look at what you get for your money in the different price ranges:

Around 10$:
This is the domain of cheap hoses. You don't get a lot of layers of material, like you do with better hoses - and the layers are thin. 10-dollar hoses will kink easily - any connectors included will likely be plastic. This may be good enough for you if your needs are not the greatest. It will certainly work fine for washing the car or watering a small lawn. But do get a cheap garden hose reel for this one, to get a bit more durability out of it

Around 25$ and up:
Good hoses start here. You get 5 layers or more, the material is better and handles high pressure better. You can get a good 100-foot hose for less than 50$ without a problem. A good quality reinforced rubber hose or perhaps a polyurethane hose will not kink easily - even if run over by a car. It will still benefit from being stored on a garden hose reel - and so will your work in the garden.

Whether you should pay more than 50$ for garden water hose is a good question. When you reach those price levels, you start entering the realm of professional quality hose. Even though "professional" is a word tacked on to almost anything these days, truly professional tools and equipment are something else than consumer-goods. With a pro hose, you are getting the really tough stuff. Extra heavy brass garden hose fittings - and perhaps extra heavy garden hose too. A really strong reinforced rubber hose can be quite heavy - so much so that you may find it uncomfortable to use. Some of these hose pipes are not intended for manual use anyway, but rather for large lawn sprinklers and such.

My choice? Around the 50$ mark will get you the most bang for your buck, but that is merely my opinion. Generally, if you get a decent hose and treat it right, it will last you for five years, and easily more. That is what I would aim for anyway.