Hozelock 2-in-1 60 m Empty Hose Reel

I moved into my new house 9 years ago and found a Hozelock hosepipe and reel there waiting for me. Used it all this time and it’s been great but it has now started to leak where the hose connects into the reel from the tap. With water seeming like our most expensive commodity lately, I thought I’d do the right thing and get a new one to save on what the incessant drips will cost over time. Looking for a like for like replacement with the 60m hosepipe that I need was working out waaaay too expensive and then I came across this. It’s just the reel, but that’s all I needed as there was nothing wrong with my hose. Got it on a prime day deal so the price was excellent in my opinion. It needed putting together which I did with the help of a Hozelock YouTube video which made it super easy. It’s smaller than my last one but I prefer this size as it’s much easier to handle. The typically good Hozelock quality is present throughout and it looks quite smart. It’s not super heavy so I can manage it easily and it rewinds quite easily. It came with all the attachments needed to fix it to the tap - reel - hosepipe - sprayer and as usual with Hozelock, it’s all clip in attachments so super simple. It also came with the wall mounting attachments which I haven’t used but they do look quite good. I have found that it’s definitely sturdy enough to free stand without any problems. All in all, I have a good looking addition to my patio and no more leaks so I’m very happy.

Very sturdy and holds 50m of hose no issue. The reel winds and unwinds really easy and does a fantastic job. However, building it wasn't very easy. The instructions written on the box were tiny and not completely clear. There are some self tapping screws that you need to screw through holes and into the metal frame. They simply dont self tap. You either need to drill a tiny hole or as i had to as i was in the middle of nowhere hit them in with a hammer to make a start. Once put together this is great, but for such a major leading brand they can do better than this for self build.

Holds 50m of 12.5mm hose well. Easy to put together and runs smoothly. Hose lock quality is brilliant . Comes with tap attachment and quick connections for the ends of the hose too. Haven’t used the wall brackets, but they look easy to install and sturdy.

Excellent robust hose reel. A much better reel than the all plastic reel I was replacing. Instructions to assemble can be accessed on line which is helpful to enlarge pictures to a size which is more suitable for my failing vision to follow.

This item does not come ready made. The assembly instructions for it are poor and difficult to follow. They are pictorial, only, and too small too see easily. On opening the box I immediately saw a long spring and wondered what it was for. I assumed it was to hold something in tension but could not imagine what that would be. When I reached the picture covering this it was too small to see what what was intended. After a great deal of thought I eventually realised that the purpose of the spring was not to provide tension but it was to be inserted inside the hose itself to prevent it from collapsing on itself in the first turn around the hub of the spool. Several of the parts are intended to be clicked permanently into place but it was difficult to make the "clicks" actually engage. The two screws intended to hold the bottom tube in place were too long (they could not be recessed sufficiently and would have projected) and I had to replace them with shorter screws from my own collection. The reel can be self-standing (which is what I wanted) or wall mounted. It could be that all of the screws provided were intended for the wall mounting but I found no screws of the right length for keeping the bottom tube in place My advice would be to take photos of all of the assembly pictures on a smart phone and then expand them to see better what is required. Far better would have been for the manufacturer to have given larger assembly pictures on the box and to have provided written instruction, especially including the purpose and location of the spring. A job which I had anticipated would take no longer than 15 minutes took far longer than this. At one point I was tempted to abandon the project. Having finally assembled the reel it seems to function well, at present. A final but important point: I had measured the length of my hose (25 metres) and so I had originally bought a 30m (pre-assembled) Hozelock reel. To my surprise its capacity was inadequate. A note on the reel said that its capacity was one length for one diameter of hose and a different, smaller, capacity for a wider diameter of hose. I had the wider diameter hose, which explained why it was inadequate. I do not recall this difference being explained on the website. I then returned the pre-assembled 30m reel and bought the 60m reel as a replacement, which is the subject of this review. I would advise checking on the diameter of the hose being used before making a purchase.

Our old hose reel had broken so a new was purchased and hoselock is a good recognised name , easy to construct and load hose onto , sturdy item.

Got this to run the 15 metres to our back garden fence and it takes the long hose and metal hose head with ease. The handle to wind it back up is easy to use, the mounting robust, although you do need to feed the hose with one hand so it doesn't just coil up at one side. Where it loses points for me is with the terrible installation instructions. The wall mount rawl plugs come with a handy guide and even a paper template to help with the measuring (not that I needed it), what wasn't obvious was, bizarrely, after measuring out the two points for the wall mounts to go, it has an additional step, after installing the first wall mount, of adding roughly another 10cms onto the second one so that the whole unit doesn't rattle around. I, unfortunately, missed this step, so my reel has a tendency to move around more than I'd like. Still sturdy, but why measure out two spots and then add another distance and another step because the first instruction is wrong?! Similarly, I ended up putting one part in the wrong side (easy mistake) but there are certain steps that cannot be undone once you've gone through them. Took a lot of digging to find the spare parts department (their website says it's closed but you can email them and they will sell you the part, despite what their website says) and got a spare sent out without too much difficulty or cost. I know it's a common complaint with this model but they really need to overhaul the instructions and/or the assembly to make it more straightforward!

Comes with everything you need except the hose itself. Be aware that you really DO NOT NEED the extra stopper connector that Amazon recommends you buy with this as there's already one in the kit. So don't waste your money on it.