My hose reel got me again. For years I've been fighting a war against my hose. It started in the years shortly after I bought my first home. I couldn't afford a hose reel in the first couple years, and the hose I bought from Wal-Mart sat in the yard in the hot Illinois sun, bubbled up and popped.

So I bought a new hose and bought a hose reel to keep it wrapped up. The first reel I bought had a hand crank and I applied to much force and cranked the reel into oblivion by accident. I then spent several years going from one hose to hose reel after the next.

When I moved into my current home, I had a new issue develop. I have great water pressure! Now this is good for lots of reasons, but its hell on hoses. I had to buy a high pressure water hose to handle the water pressure that comes out of the faucet. Then I had to buy a new hose reel. This time I bought a big boxy contraption. It wound up the heavy duty hose and held it just fine.

The hose is fine, but the crank on this thing is seeking revenge against me for my murderous destruction of that early hose reel. I twisted off the crank years ago, and this distant cousin of that long lost hose reel is seeking revenge from my flesh.

Every time I crank this thing, no matter how careful I am, I end up slicing up my fingers on various protrusions or rough edges on this thing. Some of them I've been able to file down, but some just don't get better.

Ahh! but relief is in sight. I'm a gadget lover and more so lover of all things automatic. Anything that saves me a minute of work over and over again gives me another minute of my life to enjoy that much more thoroughly.

Now there's an automatic Hose Reel. It winds up automatically. Now you may say that I'm a little lazy, but if I have to wind up a hose lets say 1 time per week every week of every summer (GA summers are about 7 months long, that's 28 minutes per year. Multiply that by 40 years assuming I'll live to 74 at least and that 1120 minutes of my life spared or about 18 hours. I've basically given my life an additional day saved from this individual tedium. A day to spread out on the important things in life.

Here are a few of the models available. I usually opt for the 2nd option, the crate storage looking thing:


Now my first thought was that's a great idea, but its got to be powered by electricity or something and putting a plug to my hose reel didn't sound that smart. I WAS WRONG of course. The thing is propelled by water power so no electricity. That's why I'm not an engineer obviously.

I was looking around on YouTube and realized that I'm not the only one that has this issue with hose reels. Sharon Stone has many of the same issues and for whatever crazy Youtube reason actually took a look at this product at some sort of party or something.


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