Why does my garden hose quick release keep popping apart?

Question

I recently bought a new garden hose. The hose seems to connect snugly to the existing fitting on the tap, but it leaks a bit and as soon as the water pressure in the hose goes above a trickle, it pops off. Any idea what's wrong or how to fix it?

Note that the loose plastic sleeve in the 2nd picture doesn't go all the way up, but as far as I can tell it's not meant to provide a seal anyway. Also, I have no idea what either side of the hose/fitting are called, which makes searching the Internets a bit difficult.

Answer 1

A hasty assessment: it is probably because it's a piece of junk. Give it back. I could blame pilot error: you are supposed to push it on until it clicks at which point it's locked on. You are probably not pushing hard enough. But the entire point of click-lock fittings is to be easy and foolproof. If the thing is amenable to having you THINK it's on, but it isn't locked, then it is definitively junk, failing to provide the one thing that distinguishes it from an ordinary screw-on hose. Alternatively, it may be a total piece of junk where you are in fact locking it but the cheap plastic parts are incapable of holding under normal water pressure. Either way, give it back.

Here, for comparison, are fittings that are increasingly better quality than yours. A reasonable all-plastic one, a "metal where it counts" one, and an all-metal one. Any of these would be fine. In your example, the bib adapter looks so flimsy it's bound to crack and fall off the spout within a week if you ever get it to actually hold.

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Answer 2

Those are called Quick Disconnect fittings, or QDCs. They are used all over the place in aerospace and industrial applications. They are also commonly used with air tools.

There are some that stop the flow when disconnected, and others that don't.

Good ones are pricey. The plastic ones you've shown are probably pieces of crap (that's a technical term). Like others have said, the problem is most likely the fact that the locking ring is not engaging properly.

Note that the good brass ones like the one shown in Jay613's answer has 3 little balls that should move freely. When extended as they are shown in that illustration, they grip the locking ridge on the mating/male part.

I'm not sure what the plastic QDCs use.

Answer 3

Could be simply that two incompatible systems are "vaguely able to appear to connect" but being two different systems, they don't actually lock.

If I understand your question correctly, you're using a new hose fitting with an old tap fitting - get a new tap fitting of the same brand/system as the new hose fitting.

Similar is not close enough to actually work.

In air hose quick disconnects, there are some standards that result in cross-brand compatibility, though there also multiple standards so one has to pick carefully. As far as I know, there are no such standards for garden hose quick disconnects. If you get two different brands that work together, it's either pure luck or you know that one of them "borrowed" the design details from the other. In general, the best assumption is that they are all incompatible.

Answer 4

It looks like there is no 'ledge' on the tap part for the sprung clips of the mating part to hold against. On your example, there is instead a 'chamfer' which will tend to push the white clips on the hose part back if the hose is pulled or water is turned on.

You could file the chamfer down to a ledge, but as other posters suggest, it would probably be better to get a good quality compatible set.

Answer 5

Sometimes they just need an agressive shove to join different brands together without popping off under pressure.

Partially repeating what others have said, quality ones are worth buying: In the UK Solid brass ones are available reasonably priced from places like Screwfix and Toolstation (apologies to mods if I'm not allowed to name brands).

My brass ones are over 10 years old and going strong (the rubber seals will eventually fail). Plastic ones usually only survive one winter outdoors. So the initial cost is worthwhile long term.

Answer 6

The original manufacturer for these parts is Gardena, the parts would be a "tap connector" and a "hose connector", see https://www.gardena.com/int/products/watering/hose-fittings/ .

Your tap connector looks fine (which does not guarantee it is produced to the right dimensions of course), but your hose connector looks rather cheap, so it might just be of bad quality and can't hold the pressure. In that case, you could try with an original Gardena part (pricey) or a knock-off of better quality.

Answer 7

The fact that the release sleeve appears to be stuck in the "open" position in the first picture gives me little faith that whatever springing mechanism keeps it in the "locked" position actually works well in service. Take a look at a google image search of any of these kind of connectors, from any brand :

They aren't jammed in the open position when not connected to anything. You describe the sleeve as "loose" - it shouldn't be. It should spring to the closed position or if it's one of the few types that are either open or closed, it shouldn't be "loose"

When in service it stays in place by those white fingers (3 of probably) inside the hose end gripping onto the ring above the rubber seal of the tap end. Crude sketch time:

The yellow arrow things in my sketch are those white plastic fingers. They hook onto the collar of the tap end (light grey) and stay in place because that outer sleeve stops them from springing outwards - in effect the sleeve holds them inwards. When you pull on the sleeve, the bit of plastic that pushes the fingers inwards moves down, and away and another part springs the fingers open so they no longer grip the collar. You can see this in action if you look at the movement of the white fingers while you move the locking sleeve between open and closed. The rubber ring(black in my sketch) seals the water (blue) in

Now imagine if the molding was poor quality and the collar/finger/both ended up sloped instead of a good sharp 90 degrees. This is common with low quality connectors:

It's going to be a lot easier for the water pressure (which is basically always trying to pull the joint apart in the same way you would by yanking on the hose) to separate; those angled surfaces will actively and more easily slide over each other forcing the white plastic fingers open (especially if the spring on the sleeve that releases them is weak, and cannot resist the fingers being forced outwards)

It doesn't take much imprecision to make slippy, bendy materials like plastic give way, and there's a lot of pressure in a hose, relative to these puny plastic fingers. Any additional effort you supply such as bending the hose back and forth as you water, or it rotating as it is connected, only helps further separate them if they aren't well made

Short version: I strongly suspect your connector set is junk and should be swapped out