Why your garden hose keeps breaking — and what to do about it

Leaks. Kinks. Cracks. If you’re experiencing the trifecta of garden hose problems, know that it’s not just you.

Hoses today are not good, says Anthony Brewington, a gardener in Leighton, Ala. “It’s so strange that I remember this, but my dad bought three long hoses from Sears Roebuck way back in the 1970s, and he had them up until I think 10 years ago. And now, if I get two seasons out of a hose, I feel lucky.”

Brewington is not the only gardener having an annual — rather than perennial — hose experience. Bethany Adams, an interior designer in Louisville, has had an “abysmal” time with hers. “We bought the house we live in now probably seven years ago, and I feel like the amount of money I have spent on hoses, I should have just put in irrigation seven years ago and it would’ve paid for itself two times over by now.”

For Michael Hogan, a technology publicist in Columbus, Ohio, “there have been summers where, I’m not kidding, I have replaced hoses three or four times throughout the season.”

Industry pros have a few suggestions for selecting — and maintaining — a garden hose so it will go the distance. Here are their best pointers.

Look for multiple layers and UV resistance

“What you’re looking for is something with multiple layers inside it,” says Robert Bell, a landscape architect in Washington, D.C. Better hoses, he says, have three or four layers: including a food-grade inner coating for water, and a tough-yet-flexible exterior coating that is UV resistant. “It’s in the sun all day. It’s hot. It’s obviously near water. So getting a really good exterior coating is important,” he says.

Bell himself uses the Canadian-made Everlasting Garden Hose (from $115 for a 25-foot hose); the Flexon Pureflo is made in the United States and also drinking-water safe, at a significantly lower price point (from $29.99 for a 25-foot hose). “The ones I’d stay away from are the expandable ones. … They’re supposed to take up less space, which I understand, but they last about six to eight weeks, maybe,” Bell has found. “They just never seem to hold up; you can run them over very easily with wheelbarrows and shoes and dogs and things like that.”

Take extra care with lightweight options

For Bev Shaw, a horticulturist and Colorado Master Gardener based in Fort Collins, Colo., the benefits of those lightweight options are worth their sometimes less-than-resilient nature. “I was in landscaping for 15 years and dragged around a lot of heavy rubber hoses. Some of them were really high quality, and I would bet they would’ve lasted a lifetime, (but) I don’t buy those anymore,” Shaw says.

Instead, she employs expandable, flexible hoses on all three spigots of her half-acre property. “They are so much lighter: I can curl it up around my arm and hang it back on the hook, and they don’t break my plant if I drag it against the edge — so that’s what I’m buying now.” She finds they do last longer if they stay out of the sun, and she also takes the time to add a rubber garden hose washer to each spigot before attaching the hose. “A lot of times it’s at those connections where they start to leak and spray, and it can be fixed with something that costs [not much more than] a nickel,” she says.

Add another hose or two

Brewington’s solution to his hose woes has been to place multiples, stored in whiskey barrels, around his third-of-an-acre property, so that he doesn’t have to drag them very far. “The less far you have to drag them, the better,” he says.

Landscape designer Rosalia Sanni of Greenwich, Conn., agrees, and recommends enlisting an irrigation company to add more spigots to your landscape. “You end up running into more problems if you are actually stretching a hose a very long distance,” she says. Relying on several, shorter garden hoses — of ideally 25 feet or a maximum of 50 feet — can prevent a lot of the problems that you might experience if you are yanking to reach a spigot, she says.

Store it properly

One final tip from the pros: Take the time to curl your hose up and put it back after each and every use. “I had an issue relatively recently where we were not very careful and did not put our [hoses] away before the landscapers came and they got completely damaged,” Sanni says. “If you’re going to use the hose, just make sure you put it away after you’re done using it, because people can walk over it, mowers can go over it.”

Bell loops his Everlasting Garden Hose over a simple garden hook. “If you can put them kind of coiled out of the way on the side of a building, they last longer.” He has had it for three years and counting.