Geka vs. Hozelock hose fiittings

Anyone know / used Geka fittings?

I think they look to be the business, but I can't work out (nor find via Google) how they work / connect etc.

Brass Geka connectors are only £2, but looks like they have to have a jubilee clip to secure them to the hose. Which is fine, as its a one-time job, and I presume won't drip and leak over time like the Hozelock ones. Looks like Geka ones mate with each other, so no male-male adapter required, and anything will mate with anything else.

All the plastic hozelock ones I have had have cracked over time, and the ones on my 3/4" hose cannot be tightened enough to get water-tight - the hose is strong / determined!, and if it wants to be at an angle then the coupling seems to suffer :(

Plastic Hozelock fittings are typically £3, and then you need a male-male inter-connector, which is another £2.50

Brass fittings are £4-£5, and still have plastic inner-bits ...

So the Geka ones look more cost effective (and I reckon they will leak less)

Only downsides I can see of Geka are:

No AutoStop connectors (although there are blanking plates, so whilst not "auto" it is possible to shut off an unused "tail")

A Y-connector in Hozelock is £3.50 in plastic and £5 for brass. For Geka its £23 !!

I will need some adaptors when I want to get from Geka to a Hozelock device such as a sprinkler.

By the by, I am now using 3/4" hose instead of 1/2" as the flow rate is so much better. I read today that if you have 50M of hose then 3/4" flow rate will be 5-times as fast as 1/2" hose. If you are standing there, hand watering, that makes a huge difference :thumb:

 

Hello Kristen, I've just had a look at the Geka webpage and they do a Hoselock style fitting.
If you have a branch of Wilkinsons near you check out their own brand brass fittings. They are a standard fitting, identical to, and compatible with Hoselock ~ and they're a lot cheaper! Check out this pack.
I got some of these at the back end last year and they were half price which wasn't made clear on the pricing... had it been I would have bought a lot more, and probably should have done but the idea of rejoining the end of the massive queue didn't appeal.

 

Thanks. Yes, I agree there are cheaper sources, but there are cheaper sources of Geka too - I was just making the comparison that Geka is in principle simpler, and cheaper! (The Wilkinsons link you provide is for a mixed set including Tap connector and spray nozzle, so a good example of a Special Offer but I couldn't find individual brass hose connectors on Wilkinsons site)

I don't want to buy brass fittings that are "too cheap", as the threads will be rubbish and will cross-thread just the same as the plastic ones do. But having said that Geka has no threads (other than tap connectors), so doesn't have that issue.

I have discovered that Geka fittings can't be removed if the hose is under pressure, which might mean turning off at the tap to change a fitting from Device A to B (although if device A is running that will mean that the pressure won't be too great - although some risk of getting soaked in the process!)

I reckon that's part of Geka's strength - the connections make a stronger seal the stronger the water pressure is (and thus possibly they are not well suited to low pressure / gravity systems)

P.S. The link you posted is to an irrigation site, rather than Geka per se, hence they offer both Geka and Hozelock style fittings. The Geka fittings are a little hard to find on their site, but are here in case useful to anyone. The site I've been looking at for irrigation kit is cityirrigation which seems to be pretty competitively priced across the range - notwithstanding special offers elsewhere )

 

Not sure how I missed that, something of a senior moment there.

 

I've used something similar to those Geka before at Edinburgh Botanic Gardens and at my old college they seem to be what the professional gardens and such all use and they're very simple to operate they just twist together and lock they also happen to be very robust and less prone to breaking then other styles of plastic fittings like hozelock, one downside I find with them though is if there is any pressure at all in the hose then they are a real treetreetreetreetreetree to untwist...

I find they rarely leak and when they do it's usually because there's a hole in the pipe or the jubilee clip is loose ^^

 

I think it may depends a bit how long your hose is, and how many different "devices" you have.

Hozelock is convenient for plug-and-play and swapping things over. For more "serious" lengths of hose I reckon Geka is probably better.

I definitely would use brass - although the genuine Hozelock plastic ones I have lasted OK. But I have plenty of the cheap ones that are cracked, or have never threaded properly. They came "free" as the ends on leaky-hose that I bought, so they don't really owe me anything!

Here's a "typical" picture of one of mine. The "nut" at the bottom has split, and can no longer maintain sufficient tightness to keep the connection leak-free. I have others where every time I try to tighten them the threads jump, so that it becomes cross threaded and, again, its not possible to get them tight enought to be leak-free.

 

I've ordered some Geka fittings, so I'll let you know how I get on :thumb:

 

Kristen,
Am very interested in how you have hopefully managed to connect your new Geka fittings as am using 3/4" hose and these are the only fittings which I can find which claim to fit this diameter.

My tap is threaded so I want to use a screw on tap connector, to which I can quickly connect a coupling attached to the hose itself (and similar setup at other end of hose to screw on to machine). I can't see how any Geka fitting could act as a tap connector - ?

In order to connect hose to tap and machine connectors, do you need to have a pair of male and female 3/4" couplings at both ends and if so, will these connect to the brass 3/4" tap connectors which I already use with my 1/2" hose connectors?

Presumably the claws are just something to grip in order to twist the fitting - a bit like the wings on a wingnut - and all is held together by jubilee clips, which seem a bit primitive nowadays?

 

I do have Hozelock push-fit connectors for 3/4" hose - they are interchangeable with the 1/2" Hozelock fittings. But they are plastic and crack after some time. I have some brass Hozelock-style fittings, but even those contain plastic inner-grippers to grasp the hose, so still prone to disintegration - although the screw-thread on brass is stronger, so can be made tighter, and won't cross thread / jump threads easily.

I bought some Geka BSP female thread fittings, but they don't fit my 3/4" tap threads, so not sure what use they are! So looks like I need to put a couple of feet of hoze onto the tap fitting (using jubilee fitting) and then a Geka fitting on the hose (jubilee clip again), and then attach the long hose to that with another Geka fitting / jubilee clip.

Oetiker clamps are probably better than Jubilee clips - less chance of getting your fingers / clothes caught in them in normal use too.

I also found this, although I can't quite work out what it does!



I think its just a screw & clamp-to-hose fitting, terminated in Geka connector, to avoid having to use Jubilee clip - rather than a Geka-Hozelock interchange fitting

 

I've made a start with the fittings this weekend. A roll of 32mm MDPE pipe down the garden (as is the norm for me it will sit like that for months before a method of trenching it in is devised! particularly as it has to go under a pile of topsoil destined for another project, and a tree that needs felling and stump removal ... etc!!)

I made a complete horlicks of the MDPE fittings (which I've seen a plumber fit, barely more than hand tight, but obviously was not paying attention!). Water pissed out everywhere!

I'm amazed I couldn't find a YouTube/similar video How To on them ... anyway, solved that now (and I'll put some pictures on my Blog to help anyone else trying to use them for the first time.

So when its all done I will have 7 taps off the main 32mm backbone down the garden, and nearly all the garden will then be reachable from one of the taps with a single length of 50M 3/4" hose.

I'm definitely going to get out the stopwatch and time filling a bucket with 1/2", 3/4" and the 32mm MDPE pipe (before its all hooked up - so I have like-for-like lengths).

Maybe 3/4" would give you some pressure at the top of your hill John? After we spoke it occurred to me if you coil up the hose at the bottom of the hill and do a bucket-fill-timing-test how much worse is it (with same length of hose) at the top of the hill? If not much different then for sure 3/4" would help, if hugely different then maybe you are getting near to the top of the water tower when you shin up to the top of your thrombosis!! hill

 

I used to use Geka years ago found they were A1 quick to use all you have to look out for is the rubber seal get worn but that takes a few years

 

Ah, I was assuming you would have just "trailed" it, but you have some hose already installed that may not be so easy to replace.

I've done a "bucket" test. Time to fill two buckets:

Direct from outside Tap 1m12.5s

50M x 1/2" hose 1m52.1s +55%
100M x 1/2" hose 2m14.1s +85%

100M x 3/4" hose 1m26.8s +20%
200M x 3/4" hose 1m35.2s +31%

32mm first tap 1m20.1 (nearest to supply)
Tap 2 - 100M x 32mm 1m28.1s +10%

So a 50M x 1/2" hose takes 55% longer to fill a bucket, and a 100M hose takes 85% longer

Whereas a 100M x 3/4" hose only takes 20% longer ...

... and a 100M x 32mm pipe takes only 10% longer

Dunno how / if that relates to Head / Pressure though ...