How often should you drain and store your garden hoses?

Why bother

Water left in freezes and splits the hose and the pipe. A thorough-tier job. Skippable when life's busy, worth it when it isn't.

Why it's a range

Drain before the first hard freeze. Frost-free climates can skip it.

What the job involves

1. Shut off the spigot and unscrew the hose, plus whatever's clinging to the ends: nozzle, splitter, timer, quick-connect, the lot. While it's still attached it traps water against the spigot, which is the whole problem.
2. Drain it. Lift one end and walk the water out, or drape the hose over a fence or railing and let gravity do it. Give it a shake to clear the pockets that hide in the kinks.
3. Coil it loosely while it's still warm and bendy, roughly two to three feet across, tie it off with twine, and screw a cap on the end so nothing crawls in over winter.
4. Store it indoors for the freeze season, garage, basement or shed. While you're at it, cap the bare outdoor spigot with an insulated faucet cover as a backstop.

Do it yourself, or pay someone?

Yourself, no question. Ten minutes, no tools, and the hose is away. A pro only shows up for the repair you're dodging: a plumber runs about $45 to $200 an hour (roughly $140 average), an outdoor faucet repair is $50 to $300, and a full spigot replacement lands around $75 to $500 installed. The faucet cover is a few dollars at any hardware store.

What skipping it costs

$150 to $15,000, depending on which side of the wall the ice cracks. Leave a hose screwed on through a freeze and the trapped water can't drain. It freezes, expands, and the pressure cracks something. If it's the hose and spigot, you're at the bottom of the range: a split hose is $44 to $135 and a cracked spigot is $50 to $300 to repair, about $155 on average. If the burst is on the indoor side of the wall, you get a flooded wall cavity, and that's where the money is. Water damage from a frozen, burst pipe is one of the priciest common home claims, averaging $10,000 to $15,000. The disconnect takes ten minutes.

Signs it's overdue

• A hose still screwed onto the spigot with a frost warning in the forecast, or one left attached straight through the winter.
• The hose comes out of storage stiff, bulging, or sporting a split or pinhole leak. That's water that froze inside it.
• The spigot drips, won't shut off all the way, or the wall around it goes damp the first time you turn the water on in spring. Classic signs the stem cracked over the cold months.

When to start thinking about it

Give yourself about 7 days' notice. That's when Grumpty starts grumbling, so it doesn't land on you the day it's due. Mark it done and Grumpty sets the next one, every 12 months, so you can go back to forgetting it exists.

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