I haven’t seen Tim on here commenting for quite a while.
This is the second van he has fitted this fixed internal reel upgrade to. The first was a Berlingo which he sold to someone in the North East. He also frequents this forum from time to time.
If the first upgrade hadn’t been a success, then I couldn’t see him replicating the upgrade on a new van. The only issue he had with the first upgrade was that he used a standard hose reel like we all mostly use. One day he found that the hose reel was slowly unwinding itself as he drove along. The end result was that he destroyed the female hose fitting. After that, he secured the reel to stop it happening again.
When he fitted this upgrade to his new van, he purchased a better hose reel that has an automatic hose lock, so the hose won’t unreel itself.
This is something I need to do urgently as I can now physically plot the deterioration in my back on a graph.
I have looked at each house I do and asked myself how I would park the van etc to do this job. There are a few that I would have to either discontinue or still carry my hose reel for those odd times. (On a couple of houses that have numerous house walls, objects and gardens, I roll my hose reel out the starting point, tie it off on something, and then walk the hose reel back to the van. I obviously couldn’t do this on those properties if I only had a fixed reel.)
Another issue I have is that of the spare wheel. If the wheel is under the rear of the van, then you will have to remove it. Tim left his behind in favour of a Puncture Repair Canister when he did the Berlingo upgrade. However, these are quite complicated to use and once you use them, the puncture can’t be repaired. The tyre has to be replaced. If you have a bigger van then you can usually find a safe place for the spare in the cargo area which I would recommend.
I also see the female end stop as a potential problem due to it being exposed when driving on dirty roads, but he have never expressed any concerns in this regard.
With the hose reel mounted internally leaky hose connectors will create condensation issues in the rear of your van. I've seen many posts on here from cleaners struggling to overcome this issue.
With regard to the first upgrade, Tim got a lot of ‘stars’ from fellow members on this site including Alex G who said that it was one the best jobs he had ever seen.