Hi Guys
Just thought I would let you all know my thoughts on Gardiners new Thermobore. I've done 3 days with it so far and I use the water as hot as I can get away with.
First thing is that this hose does retain a little more heat than what I've used before. For nearly the past year I've used Brodex heavy duty and I had found that this retained more heat than other hoses, but the thermobore seems to retain a little bit more, nothing to write home about but it is noticeable although over a long length there is still a fair amount of temperature loss. On Monday I was working an old council estate which required regular lengths of 80m+, the water was still warm at the end.
As regards using the hose, it's nice and supple. I think that this would be appealing to cold water users as even when the water is stone cold, the hose is really floppy and lies flat on the ground. Reeling in is made much easier as the hose is much less likely to catch on itself. You can kink the hose if you try however I don't think that the hose would hold a memory of a kink although I might be wrong. I've not had it kink on me in use.
On Tuesday I had some office blocks and put a massive heat cycle through it with no ill effects, the hose seems to hold it's integrity very nicely.
The only downside that I've seen is that the hose has an outer diameter of 12mm which is a nice size, just a bit bigger than microbore, however after day 1 I measured it and the outer diameter was 14mm. It's not grown anymore since and is still smaller than the previous hose that I was using. Initially I had to up the pressure on the pump controller a little so that the pump wouldn't cycle, however since the hose has expanded I'm able to turn the pressure back down, the flow rate has been fine. Although I think it would have been nice for the hose to remain at 12mm the expansion of the hose is a lot lot less than what other hoses have expanded by.
All in all the hose is pretty good stuff very appealing to hot users but also giving cold users the experience of hot supple hoses.
Hope this helps anyone interested.
Simon.