Putting away

Well I packed up my hoses today and put them away for the winter. Early October, but it was warm today, and the hoses were flexible and well-behaved. So I filled a 55-gallon barrel with rolled-up garden hoses.

This year I've been using that open-top barrel as a soaker tub for my bagger tube. Lawn clippings accumulate inside the tube that brings the clippings from mower to bag. Accumulated clippings choke the flow, as sure as accumulated debt chokes the economy. When the mower chokes I have to disassemble the bagger to clean it. It's a pain in the -- well, you know. So I started hosing out the tube -- and soaking it before I hose it out.

Don't need the bagger for the winter, and the barrel's a perfect place to put the hoses. Oh, yeah, I was gonna write about my hose layout, but I didn't get to that yet. Pretty soon. Anyway, the hoses fill the barrel.

Meanwhile, the barrel: It was in the back yard when we bought the house. I ignored it for years. But I kept it because I thought it might come in handy, and finally now it does. Anyway, it has a drain hole in it, a few inches up from the bottom.

Not just a hole. There is a "bulkhead fitting" in the hole so it won't leak. And on the outside of the barrel, garden hose threads. So I can connect up a garden hose or whatever.

Another thing the previous owner left is a garden hose shutoff valve. An ugly little one, but I didn't have the heart to throw it out. I kept it just in case. And after eight or nine years living here, one day I looked at the hose fitting on the barrel and put one and one together. That's what that old shutoff is for! So I put the shutoff valve on the 55-gallon drum so it could hold water, and used it to soak the bagger tube.

It improved my baggerworks a little. But I have to clean that tube more, and maybe get some kind of spray to coat the inside and make it slippery. What kind of spray, I don't yet know. Meanwhile...

After the soaking, the water in the drum was dirty with grass clippings and yuck. I opened the shutoff to drain it, and it clogged up good. When the water level got low enough I could tip the barrel, I dumped it out and left it.

I looked at that barrel for a month. Looked into replacing the bulkhead fitting with a bigger one, but big ones cost a lot more than little ones. So I just thought about it, instead of actually doing it.

Recently, getting ready to store my hoses, I took the shutoff valve off the barrel. And I happened to look at it. Fully open, it has a tiny little hole, only about 3/8 of an inch diameter. That's the reason it gets clogged, I thought. So I bought a new shutoff. "Full flow". I measure 5/8" diameter. Doesn't sound a lot bigger, but it is.

Never measured a "full flow" fitting before. I was thinking 3/4", like the largest standard garden hose size. Nope: 5/8", like the most common size. I assume, most common. Anyway:

The 5/8" ID opening of the fitting on the right has 2.78, almost 3 times the area of the 3/8" ID opening on the left. So I'm thinkin the fitting on the right can move almost 3 times as much water per minute, all else equal.

And regarding the context described above, the fitting on the right is a lot less likely to clog than the fitting on the left. That's my bet.

8-sided nuts on hose fittings, not 6-sided. I never noticed that before.

Oh, and the swivel nut on the bigger fitting, that's one of those two-piece assemblies with the teeth that break off. As noted in the first post on this blog, and also in a recent one.