To store your garden hoses, hose reels are invaluable. They keep your hoses neatly coiled and up off the ground, safe from lawn mowers, vehicles and the suns’ harmful rays.

No one will be tripping over them, especially in the dark.

Hose reels come in three different styles: wall mount, portable and stationary cabinet.

The majority are built with plastic or aluminum. Heavy duty is best. The thicker the material, whether plastic or metal, the sturdier they are and the less they will flex.

Don’t be afraid of plastics, manufacturers have made great progress in developing tougher, more UV resistant products. Today’s polymers are less prone to cracking and becoming brittle. They feel much more “rubbery” then they once did.

Wall mount hose reels can be fastened to most any flat surface. The important thing is to get a good bond to the surface to resist the weight and twisting forces of reeling in a long heavy hose. They can be mounted to your house, garage, fence, even your potting bench.

They come in left or right hand crank and mount parallel or perpendicular to the mounting surface.  Portable hose carts have two or four wheels and can be easily pushed or pulled from storage to any hose bib in your yard. The only difficulty I’ve had with the wheeled units is they’re not heavy enough to stay put when a heavy hose is being spooled up. It can be a little awkward to wind the hose in evenly across the reel while keeping a foot on the cart so that it doesn’t move around while you crank. It is doable though, in fact this is the type that I use at home and I’m quite pleased with it’s robustness.

Some of the upscale models have a gear system that moves a leveling device back and forth as you crank. This keeps the hose nice and neat on the reel as you wind. Some are even water driven!

The stationary cabinet hose reels are usually built in to more permanent structures like storage units or potting benches.

There are a couple of other storage products, worth mentioning. While wall hangers and hose pots don’t offer the same ease of use that hose reels provide they are a great improvement over trying to coil a garden hose by hand. They are usually cheaper than the reels and some are very ornate and a beautiful enhancement to your garden.

Health concerns over the use of garden water hoses for potable water have recently come to my attention. I was more than a little surprised to learn that these issues have been around for at least 25 years. In fact worries about chemical contamination of drinking water prompted the State of California’s Proposition 65 in 1986. Proposition 65 is intended to limit our exposure to harmful substances linked to cancer, birth defects or other reproductive abnormalities. It covers both synthetic and naturally occurring hazards. In order to market products in the State of California warning labels must be included on packaging for products, such as garden hoses, that contain any of 775 substances found to be hazardous to human health. In regards to garden hoses the main culprit is the lead stabilizer found in polyvinyl chloride which is a common material used in it’s manufacture.In a recent test by Consumer Reports in the US, some samples of hose were found to be over the the government’s “safe” exposure limit. Some were 100 times over.

What does this mean to us? In my opinion, it doesn’t make sense to ignore such warnings. Like most environmental concerns even if the doom sayers are wrong I would rather err on the side of safety and avoid practices that may one day lead to my premature demise. If these warnings turn out to be correct then I’ve protected myself, if they’re not then I’m no worse off. On the other hand if I ignore the health warnings and they turn out to be legitimate then I’m going to regret it in a big way.

It seems that in this day and age we are continually being bombarded with health warnings. These are the unpleasant side effects of our insatiable quest for products and processes that make our lives “better” and more effortless. While many innovations in science and technology are truly amazing I suspect we are often unaware of their environmental and health impacts.

It’s time all governments followed California’s many fine examples of enacting safer health and environmental rules and regulations.