Hoses may not seem like a “Pro” tool, but if you work with concrete, airless sprayers, or pressure washers, then having a good hose will save you time and money. Recently, the Stanley Fatmax Professional Grade water hose was launched by Bond Manufacturing. The new hose is the first product in a series of proprietary solutions that will use new hose technologies to prevent kinking and other common frustrations of water hose use.
Stanley Fatmax Professional Grade Water Hose Features
The Stanley Fatmax Professional Grade water hose uses a combination of polyurethane and PVC they dub “PolyFusion technology”. It makes the hose lighter and stronger and helps it retain its shape so that it’s harder to kink. It’s also just plain harder, making the hose scratch-proof and abrasion resistant. You may not care what your hoses look like, but if they scratch and scrape easily you’ll lose hose integrity over time. Eventually, after enough abuse, they can develop soft spots and fail. The new technology lets these hoses stay solid and flexible down to -15 degrees.
Specifications
- Coupling material: Aluminum
- Hose material: Poly/PVC
- Product diameter: 5/8 in.
- Product length: 25/50/75/100/150 ft.
Using the Stanley Fatmax Pro Grade Water Hose
We’re coming into Spring in Florida, so we can’t speak to the freezing capabilities of the new Stanley Fatmax Professional Grade water hose, but we can report that it coils and uncoils easily and seems to hold up very well to scrapes and mild abuse. I like the threaded nozzle-side connection which features a rubberized coating. The entire handle rotates on the supply side, letting you easily make a connection to any hose bib or water faucet source. Compare that to a normal hose which utilizes only a small threaded portion of the hose to make the connection. The only downside is that, while you can use a wrench to loosen a “stuck” hose connection, continued use on the rubberized coating would likely damage the hose end.
I liked the lightweight nature of this hose. Compared to my standard “green” pro-level 50′ hose it sheds about 1.5 pounds. That’s noticeable when you’re hauling it—and particularly when you’re dragging it to various areas on the jobsite. Another thing I noticed is that, while the Stanley Fatmax Pro Grade Water Hose is fully capable of kinking when its empty, the kinks are much harder to find (or create) when there’s water filling the tube. Check out what happened to the Fatmax hose when we turned on the water:
We connected the Stanley Fatmax Pro Grade Water Hose to our Briggs & Stratton Ampliai hose powering system and used it for some high pressure applications like cleaning the side of a house and washing our upgraded Ford F-150 SuperCrew truck. This was a great application as it allowed us to see the hose under significantly more water flow than normal. We also stretched it out, recoiled it, and pulled it from a bound up mess. In most cases, the hose did a pretty good job of untangling itself—the key is making sure there’s water pressure before you try to pull it free.
The new hoses are available in 25-, 50-, 75-, 100- and 150-foot lengths and will retail between $30 and $100.
Beware of this hose: the connectors *always* break/separate from the actual hose. You may get a few months, maybe a couple of years, but expect them to fail, and be sure you have a backup hose at the ready. This is such a frustratingly defective design–check the Amazon reviews. Easy enough to fix, sort of, with aftermarket parts at your own expense (money and time), but then you lose the grips at the ends, part of what makes the hose special, and you get infernal dripping. The hose itself is great, and I own and still use three of them,… Read more »
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