Garden Hose Fittings

There are various types of garden hose fittings widely available for all types of purposes. Homeowners often find themselves eventually owning a dizzying array, so it makes sense to plan out what you'll need. Here are some of the most common and useful ones.

Garden hose nozzles are obviously very popular and usually need to be bought separately. They include the standard twist nozzle, jet grip nozzles (the cheapies break quickly and easily!), and some more advanced nozzles that are more like adjustable shower heads sometimes! See the article on garden hose nozzles for more.

Many people swear by watering wands. Again I've found many cheapies do not last a season (especially if you have kids that may occasionally play with them whether you know or not). The Dramm Rain Watering Wand is popular. It's 30 inches long, has a comfortable foam grip, and unlike many other watering wands it's designed for watering and doesn't have lots of other settings you'll probably never use or know what to do with!

Quick connect fittings are very popular for obvious reasons to anyone that has had to screw on and off hoses, nozzles, sprinklers and other hose fittings a lot. Be aware that not all of them are compatible. The Gardena Garden Hose Quick Connector Starter Set is pretty popular as it contains what most gardeners and home owners need.

Y-valve connectors are also very popular to allow you to branch a single hose to two hoses or other watering accessories. Most of them contain dual shutoff valves and adjustable flows. I have not had a lot of success with plastic ones as they seem to break or leak pretty quickly, at least in my case. Then again I'm not particularly gentle on them. The Gilmour 915 Y Connector is a pretty rugged unit and available locally at my Ace Hardware store as well as at Amazon.

One last one to mention is the sprinkler, which comes in a dizzying array of types and options and more. I like the Gilmour 996D Pattern Master Impulse Sprinkler. It's simple and it works and it's well made.

It easily adjusts from 8 feet to 59 feet and covers up to 5800 square feet, for example a roughly 85 by 65 foot area. You can adjust the spray pattern including from square to rectangular and an easy flip dial adjusts the spray pattern left to right for full, partial and even in between settings. It's not indestructible, nothing is, but it's pretty durable.

There are probably dozens more garden hose fittings out there for all kinds of purposes, but this covers the major ones more gardeners and home owners need.