Recommendations please of where and what is the best garden hose to buy?

All the hoses I have seen at the Home places are crap.  Just bend it and see if it restores easily or leaves a crease that will eventually crack.  Our local supplier has a blue hose that is perfect - but not branded so can't tell you much more.  The bend test is the best, I think.

Sadly I could write a bloody thesis on garden hoses, we have about 12 around the garden, most are different, non are perfect!

My personal preference for a garden hose is one with a large internal diameter, volume, thats the quickest way to water! the downside is they get heavy and fail the "bend' test miserably.

The smaller hoses that are braided are ok for everyday use, hoses that are just a single pice of plastic are the worse, though they are the cheapest!

I used hoses professionally for 45 years. It was only towards the end of my career as a gardener that hoses began to appear that were usable at high and low temperatures and they were expensive. 

I have resigned myself to buying new lengths every year or three. 

NOTE: a new boy on the block seems to be based on metric sizes and doesn't QUITE fit the usual fittings. Check first.

I bought a cheapish 5/8” x 15 m hosepipe from Mega Home about 3 months ago.

It is in direct sunshine quite a lot and expanded and started to slip out of the nozzle fitting under pressure.

It has expanded so much that I cut a short piece off another length I have ( not in direct sunshine ) and it fits inside the expanded one, giving me a better grip when tightening the nozzle.

 

Still works okay.

 

Sorry, not much of a moral to this story [emoji20]

just like to share.

 

Merry Christmas [emoji319]

Like others I found the local stuff to be junk and it went into the bin immediately. I got 3/4" hose bibbs and a 3/4" thick rubber hose to match from true value and that hose can really sing. I can fill buckets in a blink and get super long range spray, rarely kinks. 10 years later good as new, never looked back.

 

18 hours ago, bankruatsteve said:

All the hoses I have seen at the Home places are crap.  Just bend it and see if it restores easily or leaves a crease that will eventually crack.  Our local supplier has a blue hose that is perfect - but not branded so can't tell you much more.  The bend test is the best, I think.

I have tried many with poor results. This one I have found to be the best so far and is also blue.

That looks just like the several we have - except there's no printing on mine.

+1...the blue hoses look to be the best after many years and many hoses and they stretch just right over a threaded nozzle with no fitting required...

 

oh, santa with hoses in his sleigh...

 

 

Cut the end at about 45 degrees. Ten stick your thumb on the end to get a spray!  If you then recut the very,very end straight it sprays better

 

A reasonably priced quality garden hose I have experienced zero problems at my home in Buriram province is from Thai Pipe. This national brand is sold at better home builder merchants stores. There certainly are some horrible garden hoses packaged with German or Japanese sounding names.  

Thank you everyone for your replies.

Thai Watsadu and Home Works both have blue plastic 5/8ths piping in 30 metre reels, packaged by Garten for 700 Baht.
Their loose equivalent by the metre is 29 Baht.
Supercheap also has what looks like the same for 20 Baht per metre.        
 

By all means avoid clear, unless you *really* like algae.

Some blue hose, often sold pre packaged at a 10 meter length, 20 meter length, 30 meter length is a poor quality item that will expand in the heat and fail the first time a pick up truck rolls over it. Higher quality garden hose is often sold by the kilo when cut to length. Clear hose is a recipe for disaster and disappointment in Thailand. 

One of those things to bring in from home if luggage allowance allows.My 30m non-kink hozelock is still running strong after 10 years here.

How well do the standard (crappy) compression fittings fit on the blue hose?...

1 hour ago, sfokevin said:

How well do the standard (crappy) compression fittings fit on the blue hose?...

 

We have some of the unbranded blue "rubber" 5/8" hose, the standard compression fittings fit just fine and tighten leak free.

 

YMMV of course.

 

Wifey also has a fair bit of 1" clear tube which she uses on the jungle garden. It's cheap but we usually only get 12 months or less out of it before the splits (fixed with duct-tape) are bigger than the tube. I think I'll splash out next time we replace them and get some 1" blue.

 

2 hours ago, Arjen said:

I like this hose. 

We've had several local versions, they're great just like the video.

 

Unfortunately they have all failed with splits in the inner tube after 6-8 months, I've patched (and shortened) them a few times but Wifey finally decided that a regular hose reel with 20m of the blue stuff on it was more practical, and with a bigger inner diameter has better flow when cleaning the bird droppings off the upstairs seating area.

 

Also, do NOT buy one of these, unless you want a dribble, the inside diameter is just too small for a decent flow.

 

Takaia (Japanese product) 5/8" hose from Thai Watsadu is the best IME, but double the price of the standard hoses that they stock. Green hose with silver-white cross-hatching. Have 20m lengths at 4 strategic points in the 1 rai garden and they show no signs of splitting after 4 years. Cheap makes hardly last a year before you start cutting them up and rejoining.