Simple Garden Hose Repair

This simple garden hose repair can resurrect old leaking garden hoses and give you years more use from your old hoses.

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Do it yourself Friday will be a chance for both Mrs. Stoney and I to share some of our skills in hopes of helping you be more self-sufficient.  Mrs. Stoney is a wiz at tons of stuff around the house, from no chemical cleaning to photography to making homemade gifts.  So I will try to get her to contribute every once in a while.

I am a “jack of all trades, master of none”.  But over the years I have found that most household tasks and repairs I can do myself.  The only things I won’t tackle myself are complicated electrical repairs or plumbing that requires soldering pipe.  Anything else is fair game and I see it as a chance to save our family a lot of money.  If you are careful, do your homework, and take your time most home repairs can be done by the homeowner.

Now I can’t guarantee that every Friday will be a “do it yourself Friday” on the blog.  But any time I do a project and I think it can help you, I’ll post about it.

So let’s start out with a simple garden hose repair project that I did this week:

Garden Hose Repair

So it’s happened to us all, we accidentally step on the end of our hose, or maybe run it over with the car or like mine, the hose is just so old that the hose end starts leaking.  Hoses are expensive right!  This spring mine just started leaking like crazy and making a mess.

So what do you do, throw out the hose and buy a new one?  No way!  Use this simple garden hose repair.  Just go to Walmart, Home Depot or the local hardware store and buy a hose end replacement.  In fact when the end of the gardening season comes around a lot of the box stores are looking to get rid of what’s left in their inventory and they have some great clearances.  I think I found mine on clearance for like 75 cents and I bought a couple just to have when I needed them.  75 cents and about 10 minutes of my time is way cheaper than the $25 to $50 I would pay for a new hose, especially for one as long as this one.

Here’s how you replace your hose end:

First, cut the old hose end right off with a sharp knife.  Cut it back a few inches so that you cut off any damage or rotting that might be present.

Next clean out the inside of the hose.  Some hoses have ridges inside the hose and it helps to get a good fit for the new end if you take a sharp knife and carefully trim down those ridges down to the depth of the new end.

The rubber in hoses gets stiffer with age.  This will sometimes make it hard to insert the new end into the hose.  It helps to take a screwdriver and work that end open a bit.  Just gently stretch the end a bit to widen the hole.  A little petroleum jelly may also help you get the new piece in the hole.

Next, and this is very important, remember to put the O-ring clamp on the hose.  You don’t want to get that end inserted just to discover that you left the o-ring clamp off.  Then you will have to take it all apart and start over.

Now it’s time to insert the new hose end into the hose.  Depending on the age and diameter of your hose this could mean a bit of work.  My hose is 10 or more years old so I ended up using a rubber mallet to get it seated correctly.

It’s important that you get the new end inserted all the way.  You want all the hose surface possible for the clamp to grab onto and prevent leaks.

Finally, move the clamp in place and tighten it down as tight as you can get it!

That’s it!!  10 minutes for this garden hose repair and just a few bucks and you have saved your hose!  I showed how to install a male end of a hose, the hardware and procedure for the female end are very similar.  You can even use these inexpensive pieces to repair a hose with a hole in the middle buy adding a male and female end and essentially making one hose into two.