So I went to Lowes yesterday and picked up 300 ft of clear 5/16 hose for only $20 on clearance. Should I get a small hose reel or just coil the hose? Some guys use a bucket system. Seems like a lot of hose to coil into a bucket. There must be a technique to doing it. How do you guys manage the pure water hose?
PS: What’s your technique?
Is it one solid length, or in pieces? 300’ is a lot of hose, even at that small diameter. You’ll be creating some significant flow restriction if you use all of it. That said, I have heard of people doing it.
>>Edit: I believe Jeremiah Gibson [MENTION=2739]advantage202[/MENTION] uses a lot of 5/16" with a 100psi pump.
Personally, I just took the last 100’ off our 300’ hose reel. We’re running 1/4" polyurethane air hose. The flow is much better at that length, and so far I haven’t missed that last 100’. 200’ seems to be sufficient for reaching 3/4 of the way around the houses we do.
I can’t imagine trying to hand-coil 200’ or 300’ of hose. I’m sure I’d get good and efficient at it over time, but I can wind that reel pretty darn fast, without much practice! The trick is pulling manageable lengths of hose (maybe pick up the hose every 30’ or so) back with you as you work your way back toward the vehicle. If you’re careful not to get things tangled up, you can usually reel it all in with no problem. Nice thing about your size hose is that it will fit on a very small reel, probably even one built for 50’ of 3/8" hose.
You’re not that far from us. We should meet up when things slow down a bit 
Lol I was eyeballing hose reels yesterday for 200ft
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Yeah, I use the fold under technique when coiling a hose. It seems to work well. For that much hose, you might want a reel. When I hand coil hose and don’t secure it with velcro, I tend to find that the hose gets loose and wraps itself around every piece of equipment that I have.
A few isles down they have those round orange extension cable reels which would probably hold a couple hundred feet of hose.
For me the diameter of hose is determined by how long I will be working on a particular far side of a building.
If I’m there all day and I want to optimize all pressure possible I use up to 350’ of 1/2" to 3/8" before my 5/16" pole hose. This is all on a hefty hose reel.
However, if I am only working a couple hours or less I just go all out with 5/16". I use 350’ of Aquadapter hose at 25’ and 50’ lengths, hand wound because it naturally just winds. I have a small electricians cord reel with a 100’ length of black wcr hose. I’ve used 400’ at this setup. It all depends on how long you’ll be working on the far side of a building. Even if my flow is a trickle, but is still usable. It’s a toss up between lugging 100 pounds if reel or a less than ideal flow at the brush.
This is all based on 80 psi at the tap through a Hydrotube.
Joshua Adriance
Pure Water Window Cleaning
Montréal, Québec
I’ve got a DI cart and only do small houses now, less than 50 windows. I don’t think I’ll be putting more than 200ft of hose on my truck. Michael Moles 5 gallon bucket method of coil hose on another thread sounds very interesting. I’ll have to check out the small reels at Home Depot.
love me some 5/16!
we did a five story building last week 2 poles per 100 psi pump (I have two on my tank set up) and 2-300 ft 5/16 each. No problem.
Nice try, I’ll be using that 100ft as backup for the big commercial job I might want to do some day. 
Great score there, congrats! I would think buying a 300 ft reel for your hose may end up costing you quite a bit more than your hose, and it may be too big to be very portable. If you don’t always need 300ft of continuous hose all the times, it may be cheaper to cut your 300 ft hose in half and put each half on a cheap Home Depot Bayco 150ft 16/3 cord storage reel for $8 each. If you need more than 150 ft, you can always join the 2 sections together quickly with a coupler. But at least this way it’s much more manageable to deal with a 150 ft hose and reel at a time. Plus you can run 2 poles at once if you want.
I think you guys are right 300ft would be over kill so I coiled 200ft into a 3 gallon round Ettore bucket and it took me about 4 minutes. I think coiling into a bucket neatly is easier than coiling it into your hand neatly. It seems to me that the truck would stay neater with the bucket system than just loose 50ft coils lying around. (What do I know I haven’t even worked with it yet.)
That’s what I have. I coil 275’ of continuous 5/16 hose onto just one of those reels. It just has to be coiled tight to fit on.
I prefer too much hose to not enough. For most houses out here it is just right.
The extension cord roller thing is pretty nice.
Last I knew, minutes added up into hours throughout the year. 
Buddyo always the ball buster! LOL
I went to Home Depot and checked out the options for electrical cord storage. They all look nice but I’m not sure which one I would want to use so I decided to use Michael Mole’s bucket idea. He seems like a fairly intelligent guy. I will probably put the spare 100ft on a smaller cord holder.
[FONT=Verdana]Time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana]Into the future[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana]Time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana]Into the future
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whoa, your comment led me into a deep meditation into the concept of linear vs. perceived time. Steve Miller, where have you gone?
Why don’t you base your decisions on the thing’s merit itself instead of the worthiness of it’s originator? Smart people do stupid things and stupid people can occasionally do something smart. A certain tunnel blindness is produced from the purchasing of ideas wholesale.
I am basing my decision on a system that works for a guy who is running a multi truck operation. I kinda know Michael Mole better than Jared. I sure hope Jared doesn’t think I think he’s a knucklehead.
PS: I am quite sure that Michael Mole knows all about the electrical cord storage systems at Home Depot. I am assuming that there are some good reasons he went with the bucket idea. I am anxiously waiting for Michael to chime in.
"Whenever I’m faced with a problem and I can’t figure out what to do next I try to imagine a fella smarter than myself and then I try to think “What would he do?” Jean Hackman from the movie The Heist
(Close but not perfect from memory)
If I cleaned windows with my WFP at more than one or two houses a day like they do in the UK I might be concerned with a couple lost minutes wrapping up my hose at the end of a job, however I only do one or two houses a week with my WFP set up. 
