The Best Garden Hose Crimping Tools

A leaky garden hose is an absolute pain. It often results in a pressure drop, making it hard to wash or water with the hose, and it sends gallons of wasted water down the storm drain simultaneously. It’s inconvenient, wasteful, and could be expensive if left unchecked.

That’s why repairing damaged sections of your garden hose is crucial to extending the hose’s life and solving the problem immediately. There are various methods of repairing a damaged garden hose. Today, we will discuss crimping.

What Is Hose Crimping and Why Do We Do It?

You’ll need to crimp your garden hose when attaching a new fitting or end to your hose. It’s a process by which you fasten the metal fitting to the hose itself, most efficiently done with a crimping tool, which we will get into later.

Various Types of Garden Hoses

First, we will cover the various types of garden hoses, as what material your hose is made from will determine your success while crimping. Common garden hose materials include:

• Vinyl
• Rubber
• Polymer
• Metal

In addition, the hose may have a unique trait in its design or function, including:

• Braided
• Expandable

Regarding crimping, the rubber and polymer options are the easiest to work with. Rubber and polymer hoses are more malleable, so crimping a hose around another section of hose or a metal fitting is more reasonable.

Vinyl hoses, on the other hand, are often inexpensive and rigid. They sometimes survive crimping but might suffer further damage depending on the quality of the hose. Metal is stiff and hard, making crimping possible but physically demanding. The same goes for braided and expandable hoses, which require additional effort to succeed due to their unique textures.

Best Hose Crimpers You Can Buy for Your Garden Hose

Crimping a garden hose starts with a high-quality crimping tool. These are sometimes called pincers or ear clamps. Here’s a couple that we’ve found to be good options.

Best Hose Crimping Tool For The Money

Our pick for the best value garden hose crimper is the JWGJW PEX Clamp Cinch Tool Crimping Tool. This tool accommodates hose diameters of up to 1”, which is often significantly larger than your standard garden hose.

Best All Round Hose Crimping Tool

As the best hose crimper for most people, we also recommend the Proster Single Ear Stepless Hose Clamp Crimper. This tool is easy to use and comes with various clamps for numerous applications, even outside of garden hose repair.

To crimp using these tools, simply place the section of hose or fitting inside the crimper, apply light pressure, rotate approximately 90 degrees, and do it again. Repeat this until you feel the hose fit snugly around the component you are attaching.

Here’s the best video I could find on how to properly crimp a garden hose using this exact tool:

Pro Tip: If you don’t have a blow torch like he does, you can boil some water and put it in a coffee mug. Soak the end of the hose in the water before inserting the new fitting onto the hose.

Best High End Hose Crimping Tool

For your high-end crimper, look no further than the New Line NHC860: Water Hose Crimper. It’s big and heavy, but that just makes getting the work done an absolute breeze. If you have space in your shop or shed, it’s worth the high price tag.

Using the New Line is slightly different from the other crimpers, specifically because it has a completely different design. The New Line is heavy and meant to be placed on a table or countertop.

For this reason, bring your garden hose to the shop or shed and crimp using the tool on the flat service. If carting your hose is unrealistic, bring a workbench or other sturdy, portable surface to the hose and get the work done in the yard.

DIY Crimpers

No crimpers on hand? No worries!

A heavy-duty pair of pliers could work, and most people have at least one decent pair lying around the shop or their home. We prefer rounded plumbing pliers over flat or needle-nosed kinds, as the rounded ones accommodate tubular shapes more easily and have less risk of puncturing the hose exterior. The similar shape helps wrap where you need the crimp and apply pressure in a very similar fashion.

There are some garden hose fittings that come with a clamp that doesn’t require a crimping tool. This fitting from Clarks, for instance, crimps the hose by tightening a screw on the clamp.

A warning with these cheap fittings that you crimp with a screwdriver, they are a bit awkward and leave a jagged edge sticking out from the screw & bolt design they use. Plus there’s always a chance that screw comes loose. A proper hose crimping tool that we listed above is a better solution.

If you’re really in a bind, you could always wrap the section in duct tape to hold it together and stand on it. Applying weight could give you a good result, but it’s iffy compared to doing things professionally with a dedicated hose crimper.

As they say, though, desperate times call for desperate measures.

How to Crimp the Fittings of a Garden Hose

Sometimes it’s not the hose that requires crimping. Instead, the metal fittings, end pieces, and couplings could use a crimp, whether it’s during the initial fitting or down the line when they begin to warp from wear and tear.

With a great crimping tool, it’s no problem whatsoever. Again, place the section of the hose and/or fittings into the “mouth” of the crimper and apply some pressure for a short duration. Rotate 90 degrees and do it again. Repeat this a few more times until you are satisfied with the snugness of the hose and fittings.

If you have properly measured the diameter of your hose prior to purchasing replacement pieces, you should not need to crimp or will only need to do minimal crimping to get a good fit. However, if you find yourself crimping over and over for a long time, consider that you could have the wrong size piece, or you may have to apply more pressure.

How to Connect a Garden Hose to Another Garden Hose

Crimping is useful for connecting one length of garden hose to another. This process allows you to effectively extend your current garden hose to reach all areas of the property with just one fixture.

To accomplish this, you’ll need a piece to attach one end of the hose to another. It’s called a coupling. Double-check the threading on your hoses to ensure everything is a good match, as a female end piece will only connect to a male end piece and vice versa.

Once you know you have the right parts, simply screw everything together, and that’s a great start to enjoying a custom-made super-long garden hose. While we have our crimper out, we’ll give it a quick crimp to ensure everything is snug and secure.

Doing this will ensure you get good water pressure even way down the line and that no pieces leak for any reason. Next, take your crimper and apply gentle pressure to where the hose and the coupling meet. Then, spin the crimper around 90 degrees and repeat. Perform this movement over and over until everything feels snug and secure.