The Truth About Garden Hoses

Feb 9, 2015

We’ve been talking about getting prepared for emergencies. We started with the most obvious need – water. So, if you haven’t been with us, look back through December 2014 and January 2015 to see how the Richens picked out a barrel safe for drinking water and a hand pump for each of the families on our Christmas list.

Filling our water barrel with the correct hose.

Here we are in February and have you filled your barrel? No? I hope at least that you have decided to buy one and are setting it up. As we set up ours, we found a flat place out of the sun and not destined to be under a lot of debris after an earthquake, or under water when the creek rises. In our yard, that place was the north side of the house, near the water spigot and also near the side porch.

And now, my well-prepared friends, it’s time for us to fill our drinking water barrel and test the system. Just turn on the spigot and there you go, right?

Not so right. While searching for our barrels and the water pumps, I discovered the Cancerous Garden Hose Controversy. It turns out that garden hoses are made with some chemicals you don’t want your family drinking. Lead is the most obvious problem. It comes out of garden hoses in rates up to 18 times higher than the federal drinking standard. Moreover, there are other chemicals in your garden hoses that cause cancer, including some we recently worked to take out of children’s toys.*¹

The correct hose for drinking water only.

"What? " you say. “My garden hose has dangerous chemicals?”

This is not evidence of a conspiracy. Garden hose manufacturers are expecting you to drink water inside your house and water the lawn outside. The safety police haven’t told them that people may be filling barrels with water to drink in case of an emergency. And no one in authority has come to the conclusion that lead in garden water might not be great for your soil.

Soil studies exist, showing a possible negative effect, but you know what’s been happening with climate change studies, right? Study, re-study, write definitive papers and then engage in debate with each other where money is mightier than reason*². Thus, we can guess that lead in your garden soil is at least two years from debate, so we hose users might as well change what we can change, eh?

And that means we find a type of hose NOT made with lead. It turns out that there are manufacturers of drinking-water-safe hoses. More costly, but safe. rubber or polyurethane hoses are the go-to material.

A little online research gives us opportunities to buy these types of hoses and have them shipped to us. Brand names advertised as drinking water safe can be found at the following stores and websites: Amazon, Sears, Home Depot, elementhose.com and many other places. Go look out there because this is not an exhaustive list.

So, yeah! for the makers of safe-to-drink hoses!

I hoped to find such hoses in Portland, Oregon, where I live, so I called several hardware stores. I got some clerks for whom “Huh?” is the go-to answer, but still, I almost always got passed to the person who knows. Both of my local hardware stores, Beaumont Hardware on N.E. 43nd and Fremont Street*³ and Park Rose Hardware on N.E 120th and Sandy Boulevard both carried rubber and polyurethane hoses. Beaumont Hardware carries the Element brand in 25 foot ($13) and 50 foot lengths ($27). A good price.

Park Rose Hardware carries the Contractor’s Choice brand of polyurethane hose. There were rubber hoses at Park Rose Hardware as well, but the ones they carried were designed to use with hot water, and store indoors. So, rubber of this type is not exactly what we’re looking for.

Package for drinking water only hose. Non-toxic material.

Contractor’s Choice, a Eugene, Oregon company makes a polyurethane hose called Gatorhyde (Tough as its Name) The 25 foot length cost almost $30 and has a limited lifetime warranty. The 50 foot Gatorhyde costs $ 40.

At my hardware store, the lady who knows hoses told me this was the hose she would buy because it is light, yet tough and easy-handling. The hose remains flexible above 165 degrees and below zero.

Moreover,*4 the hose ends are not brass, but nickel plate. That means gone is another source of lead. (Brass is copper plus zinc with lead. The lead leaches out into your water.)

So, I bought the Gatorhyde version and brought it home, happy as a well-fed gator.

Those of you who have been following this blog on disaster readiness, may wonder if I paid for five hoses for my five families. Nope. Too close to the Christmas purchase of five barrels and five steel hand pumps. I bought one. This hose will make the rounds of the five houses in short order, filling five barrels and then it will be stored in our garage until time to empty and refill the barrels with fresh water.

How often will you refill, you ask?

Well, guess what. Mold free water is the subject of another blog. Coming soon at https://www. raerichen.com/blog

Rae: Always Asking

OH! About my stars *** in this blog? See below:

*1 Other not so drinkable chemicals in hoses include cadmium and the phthalate DEHP at 4 times higher than federal drinking water standards (see ecocenter.org for the study by the Ecology Center in Ann Arbor Michigan, and healthy-stuff.org for further discussion.)

*2 “Money is mightier than reason?” you ask. And I respond, “When did you stop paying attention to reality?”

*3 Yes, Portland, Oregon has a Fremont Street named after this explorer and politician who had nothing to do with Oregon. Naming choice of the developer? Not sure. There is a process for changing street names in Portland, thank goodness.

*4 Moreover? Bet you haven’t seen that word since you took your one and only class in British- Literature. Evidently, the word Moreover was alive and well in Arkansas in the 20th century, because it was a favorite of my mother. As in “Moreover, Sharon Rae, if your room isn’t clean by six o’clock . . . “   You get the meaning.

Hold the Hose

May 11, 2015

Remember that fantastic water pump I told you about? The one that goes with our barrels of drinking water? Well, not so fantastic after all.

I didn’t see that the pump had a huge drawback. It has to be lubricated. Meaning, it does a great job if what you want to pump is oil or petrol. But water? Bloody hard on the thing.

So, you may remember that I tested my pump in the kitchen sink. The next time I got it out to try on the water barrel, it froze in mid crank. Urchhhhhh! Several unboltings later, we see the problem. Rust. No lubricant (which we wouldn’t have wanted in our water anyway) and thus, no motion.

So, back to the Parkrose Hardware. They took back and credited me for the four un-fried pumps. I kept the one I ruined in case anyone in the neighborhood ever needs to pump oil from our vast underground reserves

The new plastic pump without lubricant, non-toxic.

And I bought a new pump. This time, I explained myself a lot more clearly to the fellow in the hardware store. He took me right to this pump which is designed for water only. Its plastic parts are not toxic. It fits exactly in the hole at the top of our drinking water barrel and . . .

Tah-dahhhh! It has the added plus that it is the same blue as the barrel.

I just knew you’d all care a lot about color coordination!

Here is the pump installed.

If you are getting your family ready for emergencies, the Barrel Pump at Parkrose Hardware (or any True Value Hardware) is SKU#8898728 and costs 39.99 . If you are buying for your whole family, ask about discounts for multiple orders of the same item.

Get ready for emergencies and I’ll see you after the apocalypse – or just after the next bug-in-the-water emergency.

We store the pump and other tools for the barrel in our garage. Small building, less lumber to plow through to get to the pump and the other storage. some storage is in our canning cupboard in the basement.

Being Prepared

for the Big One

Originally published June 6, 2014; republished September 1, 2019.

My friend, Ruth Jones, has tried to take care of her neighbors and her friends by joining Neighborhood Emergency Team (NET) program. Convincing complacent friends to be prepared has been an uphill slog for Ruth, but she keeps at it.

Last month, friends were at my house for lunch. We talked (not for the first time) about Ruth’s hope that we are actually collecting the things we need to survive the next (and way overdue) big earthquake in Oregon.

Disaster strikes. Are you ready?

So, because Ruth has been trying so hard to get our attention on this subject, I challenged those who were at lunch to tackle the first and most important part of the list of emergency needs – water.

My challenge was that by June (the next month) we should all have the suggested amount of water for every member of our family stored in our garage or basement.

Since I was the one who proposed the challenge, I had to go out and do.

I bought a five gallon bottle of water for each person living in the house.

So, guess what we used when Portland recently had its boil water alert…

And now, I’m thankful and a lot more ready to get prepared for other emergencies.

I am going to tackle Ruth’s list from Neighborhood Emergency Team.

I’m going to work down the list one item at a time because even one day of the Boil Water Alert showed me how much we take life in modern times for granted.

And, friends, I hope you will join me in getting prepared. There are great resources for us. The first place to go is  The Portland Bureau of Emergency Management.

Take a look at the suggestions for planning, for collecting needed resources and especially for communication during an emergency.

Remember in a real emergency we may also be without the internet, so print off those to-do lists. Take them with you when you are getting items. Keep whittling down that list and meet me at the communications center tents set up for our neighborhood in the event of the Big One.

(Mine will be at Irvington School playground. Figure out from the map on the website where your communications center will be.)

Here is an image of disaster -- a shockwave.

It doesn’t matter if the next emergency is just an icy winter, a boil water alert, or a more devastating event, I’d like to urge my friends to be ready, and then relax.

Too often, I’ve relaxed first, thinking about getting ready.

I’m glad I didn’t relax before I did step one – Water.

Become trained as a member of a Portland Neighborhood Emergency Team (NET). Or at least learn what you need to do to be prepared.

Visit The Portland Bureau of Emergency Management

READINESS RESPONSE RECOVERY

Phone: 503-823-4375 Fax: 503-823-3903 TDD: 503-823-3947

Look us up. We can help you get ready.