# 3/4" water hose / quick connects



## ishtarbgl (Mar 1, 2021)

For my hoses I only prefer 3/4" to gain as much water flow as possible. I really need some quick connects at the spout itself to make things easier for me. However, as I understand it, quick connects will reduce water flow considerably. Does anyone know of a quick connect that retains the 3/4" diameter so that the flow of water is not reduced?


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## TulsaFan (May 1, 2017)

Eley


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## g-man (Jun 15, 2017)

This:

https://www.eleyhosereels.com/products/garden-hose-quick-connect-system

edit: Tulsa beat me to posting it.


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## ishtarbgl (Mar 1, 2021)

g-man said:


> This:
> 
> https://www.eleyhosereels.com/products/garden-hose-quick-connect-system
> 
> edit: Tulsa beat me to posting it.


Buy...buy...buy! Wow...I am maybe way more excited about this than I should be, but I spent hours trying to find a product like this. Thanks so much. Just perfect.

Since that didn't seem terribly challenging for the lawn gurus here , let me expand on why I felt I needed this product. As I said in my original post, I'm a stickler for 3/4" hoses and getting all the water pressure I can get. We actually have very good water pressure where we live so I'm thankful to use it.

I badly want a retractable hose reel for my 3/4" hose. Once again, I reached the end of the internet trying to research this and without spending a $1,000 I haven't found one. They all leverage 5/8" hoses to get to the hose reel and then the internal tubing inside the hose reel is also 5/8". I am almost certain this will literally cause a bottleneck in my water pressure.

Now that I know about Eley products and the fact that they go to the effort to make an unobstructed 3/4" Quick Connect, I thought for sure my search would be over. After all, if they know to make that product and they make hose reels then certainly they should incorporate 3/4" tubing in their hose reels....right? But they dont! Not only that they don't even have 3/4" hoses? I'm going to write them and ask why. Maybe there is something I'm missing.

In the meantime, if anyone knows of any kind of wall attachable hose reel that has 3/4" internal tubing, please let me know. If I could find that, then I wouldn't have to try to make something on my own and you don't want to see what that might look like. 

Thanks again for the help.


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## g-man (Jun 15, 2017)

Most people confuse pressure with flow. Similar to voltage and amperage. Your house breaker trips on high amperage and not on voltage. A larger ID will restrict the flow less than a smaller one. For 3/4in hoses, you will likely need to go thru a farm type store. For a 4ksqft lawn, I think a 5/8in will be more than enough. Do you know what your water lines feeding your spigots are? 1/2in PEX? 3/4 copper? That will affect your total flow more than just the hose you use.


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## ishtarbgl (Mar 1, 2021)

g-man said:


> Most people confuse pressure with flow. Similar to voltage and amperage. Your house breaker trips on high amperage and not on voltage. A larger ID will restrict the flow less than a smaller one. For 3/4in hoses, you will likely need to go thru a farm type store. For a 4ksqft lawn, I think a 5/8in will be more than enough. Do you know what your water lines feeding your spigots are? 1/2in PEX? 3/4 copper? That will affect your total flow more than just the hose you use.


I understand. I'm probably not using the terminology correctly, but I'm speaking about the volume of water that I can receive at the end of the hose. I know from experience that yes, a 5/8" hose might provide more pressure, but it will provide less water than a 3/4" hose for the same amount of time.

And you are right, I'm sure for lawn activities 5/8" is fine, but for other tasks I do the volume of water I can receive from a 3/4" hose over a 5/8" hose is imperative.

I don't have any problem finding 3/4" water hoses. Home Depot, Lowes, Amazon.com, all have them. The struggle for me is the bottleneck at the hose reel. They just don't seem to make wall attachable hose reels with 3/4" internal tubing. If that is the case then I'm left with designing something myself. I'm just surprised that a product like this doesn't already exist.


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## ionicatoms (Mar 8, 2020)

The length of tubing in the hose reel itself is so short that the difference in diameter isn't going to make a practical difference.


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## mowww (Jan 16, 2018)

ishtarbgl said:


> g-man said:
> 
> 
> > This:
> ...


I have confirmed with Eley, for all current reels the gooseneck is 3/4". You do not need to buy the additional 3/4" adapter anymore. If you have 3/4" leader and 3/4" hose, your whole system from spigot to the end of the hose is 3/4".


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## ishtarbgl (Mar 1, 2021)

mowww said:


> I have confirmed with Eley, for all current reels the gooseneck is 3/4". You do not need to buy the additional 3/4" adapter anymore. If you have 3/4" leader and 3/4" hose, your whole system from spigot to the end of the hose is 3/4".


Ahh...you totally beat me to it.  Eley sent me an awesome response and said just that as well. So awesome.

I'm starting to wonder about ionic atoms comment as well. Since the Eley hose reel comes with a 5/8" feeder hose, it will give me a chance to test it as well. I could probably do something like have a continuous stream of water with two scenarios and see how quickly both fill a five gallon bucket:


Eley hose reel + included 5/8" feeder hose + 75 feet of 3/4" hose

just the 75 feet of 3/4" hose

If I ever get around to testing, I'll post my results here. Thanks again for the help!


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## Mightyquinn (Jan 31, 2017)

Just FYI, Eley use to sell a 3/4" hose as I have 2 of them, one on each reel but for some reason they quit making them a few years ago. You can check out THIS thread as it may give you some ideas for hoses and I believe there is a mention of somewhere you can get custom hose lengths especially if you want a 3/4" leader hose.

Just curious if you have 3/4" spigots at your house that you are hooking all of this up to?


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## ishtarbgl (Mar 1, 2021)

Mightyquinn said:


> Just curious if you have 3/4" spigots at your house that you are hooking all of this up to?


lol...great question. Ya' know, I never looked. Would have felt kind of stupid if there was a bottleneck there and I was dreaming up the water pressure I had. But I just checked and the internal diameter of the spigot is 3/4". I'm pretty sure all the copper is 3/4" as well.

I still ponder ionicatoms comment that a short run (maybe 5 feet) of 5/8" tubing when everything else is 3/4" won't make a significant difference. This will be easy enough to test once my products come in, but I'm a little surprised there isn't some kind of formula I could use to try and accurately forecast the result. Or I should say, I'm sure there is some kind of formula, I just don't know what it is.


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## ionicatoms (Mar 8, 2020)

LOL. I eagerly await your experiment.


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## ishtarbgl (Mar 1, 2021)

ionicatoms said:


> LOL. I eagerly await your experiment.


I received my equipment. I wanted to buy the Eley hose reel, but after looking at the dimensions, it just wouldn't fit. Our spigot is right next to our driveway and I didn't want to run a feeder hose all the way to the back of the house. The 17" - 18" dimensions would have just stuck out too far and I know someone (I'm including myself) would run into it.

So I purchased an Ames hose reel instead. It is cheap, but for the sake of this experiment offer some decent data. It does have a 5/8" feeder hose (very short, maybe 3 feet) and the internal tubing is 5/8" as well. Additionally, I purchased a 75 ft Flexzilla 3/4" hose. I liked the fact it was lighter than many other hoses so I wanted to give it a try. I intentionally bought the 75 ft length because I knew that was the max that would fit into the Ames hose reel and I thought my old hose was 75 ft. I was wrong. It was actually 100 ft and it is the Neverkink brand (also, 3/4"). Neverkind is pretty high quality because this hose has lasted me over 13 years now. It still holds water fine, but I'm tired of just how heavy it is. I do like the Flexzilla and now I'll probably be returning the 75 ft hose and getting a 100 ft hose instead. In lieu of the data I'm going to return the Ames hose reel and build my own hose reel. The data will explain why.

I simply timed how fast a 5 gallon home depot bucket would fill up using different scenarios.


75 ft. 3/4" Flexzilla hose by itself - 42.66 seconds

100 ft. 3/4" old Neverkink hose by itself - 41.90 seconds

75 ft. 3/4" Flexzilla hose with Amex hose reel (5/8" feeder tube & 5/8" internal tubing) - 46.60 seconds

So a 4.5 second difference may not seem like much and I would say for most gardening and lawn applications, it is not. However, I can easily tell a difference in water pressure at the end of the hose turning on a spray and for my applications this matters. Mostly, this would just be for washing my car. The pressure difference is enough that I would notice it so I hate to say it, but I'm going to go to the trouble to build my own hose reel using Eley's 3/4" quick connects and 3/4" feeder hose. This will be more work, but check off all the boxes I'm looking for. I have no doubt that half-way through the project I'll be wishing I spent the money on an Eley hose reel and just mounted this thing in the back of the house and be done with it. 

Thanks again for all the feedback here. This was exactly the information I was looking for.


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## mowww (Jan 16, 2018)

@ishtarbgl thank you for taking the time to do all of this. I really appreciate it. Interesting that the 75 3/4" took longer than the 100 3/4".


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## ishtarbgl (Mar 1, 2021)

mowww said:


> @ishtarbgl thank you for taking the time to do all of this. I really appreciate it. Interesting that the 75 3/4" took longer than the 100 3/4".


Actually, I'm sure those were pretty close to identical. That small difference could have been the result of any one of a number of factors, mainly my own reaction time to start and stop the timer as well as time when the bucket actually became full. All this really told me is that there is no discernable difference between 75 ft and 100 ft 3/4" hoses. The difference when adding in a small length of 5/8" hose is much more significant.

In case anyone is curious, before I actually did my real-world tests I did try to look up formulas that might forecast what this result might look like. They exist (bernoulli's equation and venturi tubes), but unfortunately, I'm too stupid to apply the equation properly (thanks college). However, the venturi tube did give me some idea that the addition of the 5/8" hose might be significant. This is a dramatic example, but I'm sure you sort of get the point. I thought it was a good illustration about how pressure does drop even when the diameter of a tube is reduced.


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## ionicatoms (Mar 8, 2020)

@ishtarbgl did you collect the numbers above using the nozzle you plan to use for washing the car?


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## ishtarbgl (Mar 1, 2021)

ionicatoms said:


> @ishtarbgl did you collect the numbers above using the nozzle you plan to use for washing the car?


Yes, but it is simply a hose shut off valve. This 3/4" attachment allows for full unobstructed 3/4" water flow while also providing different levels of spray patterns. And it's pretty much indestructible. It is sort of like this one. All the data was gathered with the valve completely open (solid stream).


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