Veg Plotting: Autoreel Hose: Product Review

When I blogged about Testing Times way back in April, little did I realise it'd be this long until I revealed the results of testing my autoreel hose. But I've been uncharacteristically girly and patiently waited for NAH to fix it up. A minor tantrum from me when we got back off holiday means at last I've been able to try it out.

What's really great about being offered this for review is we actually needed a new hose as our old one (at least 20 years old) was a winter casualty. It's now more suitable for porous pipe duties rather than watering ones. You can just see it looking rather forlorn and lost at the back of the photograph.

I was really fed up with my old hose. Winding it up after watering was such a faff: the hose would constantly get kinked; the winding mechanism often got stuck and I had to do a lot of bending down. Consequently it would spend most of the summer in an unreeled state lying in wait for the unwary to trip over it - usually NAH - when venturing outside.

Those problems are no more. I now have a hose which doesn't kink, is soooooo much longer than the other one (because this one's 40 metres long I can now water all of the back garden and the front in one go - yay) and thanks to that nifty little ball mechanism you can see in the photo, it smoothly reels itself back in when I give the hose a little tug.

You may have spotted the reel isn't fixed to the wall, which means I haven't tested how the reel can be turned to best advantage depending on where I want to water. NAH thought the hose may be too heavy for the rubbish building of our modern house, hence his reluctance to fix it up. He worried it might fall off, especially if it gets yanked in various directions.

I'm sure the guys at Hozelock* will have something to say about that. However, by not fixing it up properly I've found this has two distinct advantages**. Firstly, the reel fits in a slot between a load of pots on the patio just like the old one did, so I haven't had to shift about 15 heavy pots out of the way.

Secondly, it's portable, so I've been able to take it up the allotment for tree watering duties. My plot is equidistant from 2 taps on the site and previously I've struggled to water the lowest part of the plot where some of the trees are. My apples are now all plump and rosy cheeked in appreciation ;)

NAH thinks the downside to not fixing the reel up is that it topples over when used. That used to happen with the old one anyway, so it's not a problem as far as I'm concerned. Overall, it's a massive thumbs up from me :)

* = thanks for taking the music off your website, it's so much nicer to visit now :)

** = there might be a third as I can store the hose inside over winter, which will help keep it in good condition. Only time will tell...

Source: http://vegplotting.blogspot.com/2011/09/autoreel-hose-product-review.html

ned kelly ned kelly supreme irs lucy mississippi state football mississippi state football