Suncast CPLSTA125B 125′ Wall-Mounted Side Tracker Garden Hose Reel for 5/8″ Hose with Guide for Patio or Garden, Dark Taupe
$29.97
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The Suncast Sidetracker Hose Reel is an attractive solution to garden hose storage. With its durable construction, this mountable hose reel is built to last and looks great on any patio, lawn, or landscape. A strong, reinforced system ensures a watertight connection between the removable reel and hose. The retractable hose guide makes winding and unwinding easy and kink-free. The Dark Taupe and Java colored reel complements your yard. No need for tools as this hose reel comes fully assembled. With its 125 ft. capacity, this mountable reel is a great solution for small lawns, patios and apartments. Suncast takes pride in helping customers enhance their indoor and outdoor spaces with quality products that are stylishly designed. You take pride in creating a beautiful environment. We take pride in keeping it that way.
MOUNTABLE HOSE REEL: Ability to mount on fence, side of house, or wall. Ideal for small yards that need extra space
RETRACTABLE HOSE GUIDE: Makes winding and unwinding of the garden hose easy and kink-free
CONVENIENT STORAGE: Reel is removeable, allowing for quick and easy winter hose storage
DECORATIVE: Beautiful Dark Taupe and Java colored reel complements your patio, backyard, garden, or other outdoor space
IDEAL SIZE: Hose reel measures 19″ x 5″ x 25″ and has a 125′ hose capacity
8 reviews for Suncast CPLSTA125B 125′ Wall-Mounted Side Tracker Garden Hose Reel for 5/8″ Hose with Guide for Patio or Garden, Dark Taupe
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$29.97
Edinorlando –
This reel is perfect for me
The main reason I ordered this reel is to replace an identical one that I’ve used for at least eight years. I liked the way it mounted to my house and wanted to use the existing screw holes to hang the new one. The old one cracked at some point due I think from the old design, age and the fact that I recently added a heavy 100 foot 3/4 inch rubber hose.I read some other reviews before ordering where people complained that it was flimsy and leaked like crazy. Thought I’d try it anyway. It mounted just fine and I see where they have beefed up the casting exactly where my old one cracked. So far so good. After installing though it leaked like crazy and I thought, maybe those reviews were correct. I contacted Amazon and they replaced it promptly.In the process of installing the new one, I realized that the leak was my fault and not the reel’s. Where the short hose attaches on the inside, I had cross threaded the connection and didn’t notice it during the initial installation. While it was a little trick to connect, I was embarrassed for sure since I consider myself to be fairly handy. This is a good product and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to friends and family. That said, it would certainly pair better with a lighter weight hose. A hundred feet of 3/4 inch rubber hose full of water is a challenge. Rather than return the replacement, I decided to keep it and pay for it since the problem was mine, not Amazon’s or Suncast. I also hope this review clears up the misconception that the product is leaky or flimsy. Used correctly, it’s great.
R. W. Russell –
Excellent, but some precautions and maintenance required
I have three of these on my property, two on the wall front and back and one along a fence. They are superbly convenient, providing that you observe some installation precautions and understand that occasional maintenance will be required.First, when installing your hose, don’t choose one that is extra stiff and especially not one with a spring or other reinforcement at the female connector. That goes to the inner bib on the reel, and the hose must turn in a tight circle as you begin to wind it. Next, use teflon tape on the threads of the male end of the supply hose, then screw it on as tightly as you can. Do the same on the inner reel bib where the hose connects. If that supply hose leaks where it connects to the mount, you’ll have a large job on your hands to fix it. Be prepared to accept a small amount of leakage there after some usage. A minor drip is less bother than taking it all apart to repair.When choosing your hose, pick one that’s shorter than the stated maximum for your particular Sidetracker model. Mine is rated at 125 ft., but that much 5/8 inch hose full of water is VERY heavy–you can expect it to crack the reel eventually (and one of mine did for that reason). Instead, I now use a 75 ft. hose and the reel handles it much better.When mounting the reel base, don’t expect the supplied hardware to be adequate for all installations. Your particular job may require something more robust, or even a custom wood framework. The photo shows one of mine, on my home’s exterior stucco wall. A similar framework was required to mount the reel along my fence line. It exerts a lot of torque when you wind it, so its mounting must be very sturdy.If the reel binds or scrapes a little in the mount as you turn it, dismount the reel (very simple) and spray the mount’s surface with WD-40 where the reel seems to make contact. Then just reinstall the reel, and you should be good to go. That’s a quick and easy fix for a common problem, and it works.Finally, at least once a year dismount the reel and coat the o-ring at the axle hub with faucet grease, from your hardware store. Take care not to get grease in the small water openings at the hub. Then, remount the reel, and you should have friction–free performance for another year.Suncast is very good if you need replacement parts. Find them at suncast.com, and I do best by calling them on the phone for orders. One common replacement item is the handle on the reel; easily broken if you overdo it while winding. I bought 6 at a very low price, just to keep in stock. (They seem to avoid breaking when you have the replacement in stock!)Important operating tip: after using your hose, turn off the faucet and open your spray nozzle to release the pressure. Then rewind the hose, allowing water to drain from the nozzle. You want the hose as empty as possible when winding, to minimize the weight on the reel. You’ll also don’t want to maintain water pressure on the couplings when the hose isn’t being used–that will only make a leak very likely, as seen in some of the other reviews. And like any hose, disconnect the feeder from the faucet and drain the hose as much as possible if you have freezing temperatures outside.With these precautions, you can expect the Sidetracker to keep your hose exceptionally neat and handy, and to perform very well over the long term. Just expect to do a little routine maintenance on it once in a while.
RemedyRepair –
Some tips for a more secure installation.
I installed and successfully used one of these hose reels for several years at a prior house. I moved recently and have just installed four of these at the new house. This hose reel is, undeniably, a bit flimsy, but there are some steps you can take to make it less likely to fall apart.Be aware that to get 125 feet of hose onto this reel, you must use 1/2″ diameter garden hose. Hose that are 5/8″ or 3/4″ diameter must be shorter.1) The wall mounting hardware supplied with the reel is only for WOOD. It says so in the installation manual, which advises you “consult your local hardware store for alternate mounting supplies.” If you are mounting it in stucco, as I did, you must visit your local hardware store and get four expanding inserts or toggle bolts that are suitable for stucco. Those will be a lot bigger than the supplied mounting hardware for wood, and you may end up drilling larger holes in the plastic reel to accommodate the larger mounting hardware. Use fender washers under the head of the bolts or screws to distribute the stress over a wide area of plastic. If you choose to ignore this advice and use the wood mounting hardware in stucco, be aware that when you are pulling the hose straight out from the wall, you are also pulling the mounting hardware straight out of the wall. Eventually, it will fail. However, if you can situate your hose reel on the side of the house such that when you pull out the hose, it’s being pulled parallel to the wall, the flimsy wood mounting hardware may work fine.2) When you connect the supply hose inside the reel to the rotating connector, it’s pretty easy to kink the hose because it needs to make a fairly sharp right angle bend out of the rotating connector to exit out the side of the reel. It might be useful to jam a coiled metal spring, about 6″ long, inside the hose to facilitate bending without kinking. I didn’t do that, but it may prevent troubles down the line.3) The stationary plastic connector inside the reel where you connect your yard hose is also pretty flimsy. If you pull the hose out in a big hurry all the way to the end, there is a good chance that you will break off the angled plastic connector if the hose reaches the limit of it’s length and you are still pulling on it. To defeat this, I wound on the beginning or first length of hose 1 1/2 times around the reel, and then I tiewrapped or zipwrapped the hose to itself, on the opposite side of the reel from the plastic connector. That way, the last few feet of hose are never pulled off the reel, they get stopped on the opposite side of the reel from the delicate plastic connector. In any case, avoid vigorously pulling the last few feet of hose out of the reel, because there are additional dangers: you may pull the whole unit off the wall, or you may break the plastic catch that holds the rotating reel on the stationary mount, leaving the broken reel on the ground with the stationary mount still on the wall.4) The stationary plastic connector inside the reel where you connect your yard hose does not have much clearance around it. Therefore it’s mildly difficult to tighten the hose onto the connector. If your hose has some plastic finger grips on the connector that “help” you tighten the hose to a regular faucet, you may find those grips make it impossible to attach the hose to the plastic reel connector because they make the hose end connector too large to fit into the limited space inside the reel. You should use a hose with no enlarged helpers on the female end connector, or you may have to cut off the helpers. By the way, I found that a basin wrench made it easy to tighten the metal hose connector onto the plastic reel connector in the limited space available.5) When you get ready to wind your yard hose onto the reel for the first time, pull the hose out completely straight and make sure you unwind any kinks or unnatural spirals that may have developed in the hose when you were hand-winding it in the past. You want to wind a completely straight, unkinked hose onto your new reel. If you are putting a brand new hose on the reel, you should unroll it like a wheel out to it’s full length. Do not just pull it straight out from it’s coil, because that puts a lot of unnatural winding into the hose.6) All the hose connectors inside the reel are plastic, and fairly easy to destroy by cross-threading. Make sure the female hose ends that you are connecting to the plastic reel are clean and perfectly round, not having been squashed under some car wheels. There is a tube of silicon grease included in the installation kit to lubricate the rotating water connector, and I used a tiny amount of the silicon to lubricate the threads of the hose connectors so they went on easily. If you find yourself forcing those hose connectors, you have some kind of problem that needs fixing before you proceed further.7) Because you cannot put a huge amount of torque into tightening a hose onto the plastic connectors of the reel, it’s very advisable to put a NEW soft rubber washer inside any old hose you are putting on the reel, replacing any old washer that’s hardened with age. The new washer will make it less necessary to over-tighten the connection in order to stop leaks.I’ll let you know in a few months if I have any problems with the four hose reels I’ve installed recently. I have used these reels in the past, but always with the modifications detailed above. I’ve been satisfied with these reels in the past, but probably only because I recognized their limitations and compensated for those.August 2012 UPDATE . . . After 16 months of use, all 4 of the hose reels I installed are still working fine. Except the one I installed in stucco using the included wood mounting screws DID get pulled out of the wall. Since I reinstalled it with stucco anchors, no problem. When I reinstalled that, I did put a spring coil inside the hose where, inside the reel, it makes a sharp turn. That theoretically cuts down on hose kinking at the connector, but to be honest, none of the other 3 reels have any problem delivering water flow at adequate pressure, so this may be a non-issue.December 2013 UPDATE . . . My four hose reels are still working fine, 32 months after installation. Two of the reels get daily use, the other two are used about once a week. Pay close attention to item 1 and item 3 above to make the reels last longer. I find that when I’m reeling the hose back in, I get a smoother kink-free wrap if I leave the hose pressurized while winding it, and I manually guide the hose back and forth as it’s winding on the reel, so it builds even layers of wrap. Turn the water off after winding is complete. (I’m assuming you have a nozzle at the end of the hose which can be shut off during winding to retain water pressure in the hose.)With some care during installation and use, you can use this inexpensive plastic hose reel for years. Or you can pay lots more for an all-metal hose reel, such as the Liberty Garden Products Decorative Non-Rust Cast Aluminum Wall Mounted Garden Hose Reel With 125-Foot Capacity – Antique Finish 704.
Doqtur –
This was my second one. The first one lasted more than five years so for the price I really can’t complain. The second one mounted right in its place as the design has not changed. These are perfect for narrow spaces between the houses in the suburbs. I don’t think I would put more than an 80 foot hose on there though.
didi –
This garden hose reel is ok to keep your hose without knots and stored. It is in plastic, not very strong. Need to be careful with it.
Amazon Customer –
Very sturdy and easy to install. Definitely recommend this product.
Carl2000 –
What junk! Spent over an hour trying to drill into studs- but the screws are too short to fit through the plastic and drywall to make a good connection. After many drill holes and finding some longer screws it was all hooked up.Finally mounted, turned it on and leaked! Took it all apart to diagnose and the issue is in the product not the connection- it was tightly screwed on properly.I knew from others’ reviews I was taking a chance. You’ve been warned!
Brian A. –
not crazy about the handle for the hose winder-too small to effectively work, so I end up rolling the reel by hand.