HOZELOCK WONDERHOZE STRETCHES

About 16 years ago I bought a Hozelock Compact Hose Reel and hosepipe which was attached to my home's wall. It is still as in good condition as it was when I bought it but I started to find it problematic having to pull the hosepipe out of the reel and haul it through my small garden without knocking down plants with it in the process. As I have a balance disability (sorry, I don't mean to harp on about it but it is important for those with other challenges to know), it wasn't ideal for me struggling with the hosepipe which kept kinking as it came off the reel, or ideal to be lugging a watering can around either.  Then I was mooching around a garden centre with a friend recently and spotted the Hozelock 'Wonderhoze'. 

Hozelock 'Wonderhoze'

It is simple to use. You attach the Wonderhoze to a tap (you will see I have white plumbing tape on my tap as that tap connection always manages to drip whatever I attach to it) and you turn on the water, The Wonderhoze worm suddenly fattens up, raring to go.  Easy.  Now, a word of warning before you dash out and buy one, it's a bit weird.  It's like watering with a giant earthworm. The Wonderhoze stretches in use by about three times its empty length and it is the expanded length which is advertised on the packaging.

At both ends of the Wonderhoze there is a Hozelock Aquastop connector which means that if I disconnect my Hozelock 2669 Multi-Spray Gun from the end of it, for example, the water is trapped within the Wonderhoze and I don't get a shower in the process.  If I disconnect the Aquastop connector from the tap, then the water is also trapped in the hosepipe. NOTE: You will want to turn off the tap first if you don't want water still flowing from it, obviously.  

What I found a bit of getting used to was the pressure inside the Wonderhoze.  As long as there is water inside the hosepipe, under pressure, it is fat and similar to a normal plastic hosepipe but more flexible so, to get the Wonderhoze soft again for easy storage, you have to empty it.  I turn off my outside water tap and then use the nozzle/gun to empty it. Believe me, it holds a lot of water (I empty mine into a watering can). While the water is being ejected, the worm starts to wither and shrink like the witch's legs under the house in The Wizard of Oz, and it becomes more flexible.  

My garden is only about 30ft x 30ft and so I bought the 12.5 metre which can easily drape the hosepipe over my outside tap when empty, as seen in the above image. 

Hozelock Compact reel c.2010