Dripping Hose Bibs
qofmiwok
| Posted in Green Products and Materials on
These seem like a great solution to eliminate dripping hose bibs. Before I order and install them, does anyone have long term experience with them, good or bad they could share?
Thanks!
cz 6B
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Replies
I don't like that design, and it's also pretty expensive. What I don't like are that plastic piece you need to connect the hose will bring the hose out from the wall a fair bit, which means more stresses on the fixture and more risk of breaking that plastic piece at the connecting point with the fixture. That plastic piece is also a propreitary-looking thing that would probably be easy to loose, making the fixture useless until you could get a replacement part. The other issue is that vacuum breakers often "pfft" a little water out, especially if you are using a remote valve (like one of those handheld sprayers with a shutoff handle on it). The design of the fixture at that link is such that those "pfft"s of water will run down the side of the house, and if you have a lot of iron water in your water they way I do, you'll end up with orange stains under each fixture.
I'd go with a standard frost proof hydrant hydrant myself, which is around $20-30 or so, directly accepts a standard hose fitting, and has the vacuum breaker out a little from the side of the house where the "pfft"s will run down the hydrant and the hose more than they will run down the siding on the house. If you want a quick-disconnect hose fitting, you can get a little screw-on adapter for a few bucks at any box store.
Bill
Is there anywhere one can get a 22"+ standard frost proof hydrant? The Aquor one above is the only one I was able to find in a previous search, but I balked at the price.
qofmewok,
I prefer hose bibs (and really all shut-offs) to use a ball-valve, not gaskets or washers. I also like the connections to be accessible, so they can be replaced.
Yeah, I'm done with shut-offs with washers. Ball valve or nothing. They have quarter turn frost-free sillcocks now that work really well.
Washers are an especially bad idea with outdoor faucets that get turned off in winter, drying out seems to be really bad for the washer.
We've had these for a year or two. That's not enough time to test their longevity, of course, but so far they're working fine.
I agree with the other commenters that the design is inherently less robust than a standard screw-on fitting and ball valve, but we chose these for their convenience and appearance, and haven't yet had reason to regret the choice.
Same here. They look nice, work fine. I have replaced a lot of standard hose bibs that froze because I forgot to shut off the water and drain them before we had some hard freezes. These I can just leave on. If you do a lot of bucket filling, these are great because of how far they extend out from the wall and you can just attach a sprayer to the end of the plastic piece, no hose needed. The only complaint I have besides the price is that sometimes it is hard to get the plastic nipple inserted because the water pressure seems to be high.
Matt Risinger made a video of those on his Build Show network and used them in his new house. It should be noted that it was content sponsored by House Hydrant. They look interesting and result in a clean finish at the house, but I'm always wary of anything that requires a custom part to operate. If they stop making them for any reason and you need it, you'd have to replace the entire fixture.
The video made me check them out, but I'm going with ball valves.