At the end of your hose?
We haven’t had a good, garden-soaking rain in my area for more than a week, and it’s been hot so I’ve been doing a lot of watering. But I ran into a problem when the coupling at the end of my hose (sometimes referred to as “the brass piece that water comes out of” or just simply “the hose end”) started leaking, and then wouldn’t stay attached to a sprinkler. The rest of the hose was in fine condition, so I just replaced the coupling. In this post I’m going to show you how I did it in case you run into the same problem, you need to replace a damaged section of hose, or you ever want to make a shorter hose.
Why would you want to make a shorter hose? Well, I have three hose bibs on my house–I keep two long garden hoses attached to the bibs located at the back and side garden part of the house, but the third bib is located on the driveway side of the house, and there’s no room to store a big hose there. However, I’ve found this hose bib to be the perfect place to fill my watering cans (after I’ve used up all the water in my rain barrels) or a bucket to wash the car. To make it easier to get the water into whatever container I’m using, I screwed on an angled hose connector (like this one* but it was less than $10) I found at the hardware store and then attached a short piece of garden hose:
So that’s one reason you might want to shorten a hose. Regardless of why you’re doing it, here’s what you need to replace a hose coupling:
- Hose coupling repair kit (buy the “male” coupling* if you’re replacing the end that attaches to a sprinkler, buy the “female” coupling* if you’re replacing the end that attaches to the hose bib), which includes a little metal clamp
- Sharp knife or box cutter
- Flat-headed screwdriver
- Hose to be repaired/shortened
The first step is to get rid of the damaged part of the hose. Cut straight across the hose with a sharp knife:
Then slide the clamp onto the hose, and get ready to insert the new hose coupling:
This takes a little bit of muscle–push the hose coupling into the hose as far as it will go (putting the hose in the sun for a little while to warm and soften can make this easier):
Then slide the clamp up near the top of the hose and use the screwdriver to turn the screw and thus tighten the clamp:
That’s it, all done!
*Disclosure: some of the links on this page are affiliate links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.
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