A few years back I bought a yellow hose (specifically this one McMaster-Carr ) to use as the leg-hose on my GB costume. For the first year or two of use, it worked great with no real problems. The next few years I noticed that it was getting tacky to the touch, but after a quick polishing with a cotton cloth it was like new again. These days (some six years later) the hose is oozing a canary-yellow goo that sort of has the consistency of shampoo. Now I have to polish it, hang it up to drain for a few days (to empty out some of the goo built up in the hose) give it a quick detergent bath, hang it up again, and then polish it again whenever I want to wear it.
I imagine that since the hose is meant to have caustic chemicals running through it, and I don’t use it for that purpose, something in the PVC is breaking down through lack of exposure to something.
So the questions are…
Do those of you with clear hoses / clear hoses dyed yellow run into similar issues after years of use?
And… Do any chemists out there know how to stop, slow, or combat this decaying process? Or even just some good methods for cleaning off the goo?
The idea of having to replace the hose every three years or so feels rather wasteful and irresponsible.
