Readers of this blog have an interest in gardening and that of course means that there is an interest in garden tools that will make your work in the garden easier and more enjoyable. 3 years ago I came across what I thought was a fantastic product called the Dramm Rain Wand at a display at my favorite nursery Berkeley Horticultural.
These wands were 30″ long offered the ability to water at the base of plants with minimal effort for the gardener and they came in a rainbow of really nice colors. I bought one for $30 and loved it…until micro-holes appeared along the 1/3 section of the wand closest to the water nozzle. Since I’ve never dragged the wand on the ground, I had to conclude that the holes were the result of the metal wand touching some rose thorns when I watered. I used silicon sealant to repair the leak and things were looking good until the handle of the wand started to leak and I couldn’t find any way to repair what was obviously a manufacturing problem.
I kept the wand around for the rest of the season looking wistfully at it and wishing I could figure out a way to repair it since it cost me $30. It finally made its way to the landfill when my wife protested that I was keeping a useless piece of trash that was cluttering up the garden.
The next year, I decided to give Dramm the benefit of the doubt and bought a new yellow wand (at this point my investment in Dramm added up to $60). The wand worked like a dream and then my wife asked me to buy one for the hose on her side of the garden. I hesitated buying another $30 wand, so I went to OSH and got her a 30″ wand, manufactured in China. It wasn’t a pretty color like the Dramm and she thought I was getting the good stuff for me and being frugal over what I bought for her (a bad position for me to be in 
). So, I returned the Chinese-made wand and bought my wife a pretty red Dramm wand (which increased my Dramm investment to $90).
Before the end of the summer (2010), both Dramm wands had failed. My yellow one was once again leaking from the handle onto my shoes and the red one would no longer close off the flow of water.
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I bought Dramm because of the design, the color choices, and because it is an American-made product. Supporting American-made products is important to me because that creates jobs! Unfortunately my economic patriotism cost me a total of $90 over three purchases and all I have to show for it are faulty watering wands. Judging by my experience with faulty Dramm products, I’d have to compare Dramm product quality to 1970′s era Detroit manufactured automobiles that gave us no-quality products including the explosively popular (pun intended) Ford Pinto and the Chevy Vega.
All joking aside, Dramm Corporation has serious manufacturing quality issues that cause its products to reliably fail. If you are looking for a watering wand and don’t want to be bent over a barrel to purchase an expensive and faulty product, save yourself the headache and (God I hate to say this), go to the hardware store and buy yourself a Chinese-made wand at less than 50% the cost of a Dramm. At least if the Chinese-made wand has a manufacturing problem it won’t harm your gardening budget as much as a Dramm will.
I hand water my entire garden and I need wands that will work now that summer is here. So, I’ve notified Dramm of my displeasure and I’m ready to vote with my wallet by laying down some American greenbacks to buy two Chinese-made watering wands at OSH. Unfortunately due to Dramm’s lack of product quality and the lack of other American-made products in the stores, I’ll also contribute to the trade deficit we have with China. My act of protest won’t single-handedly contribute to the loss of American jobs, but if Dramm continues down the path of poor product quality, it most certainly will play a part in lost American jobs.
Jeff Bucher
June 19, 2011 at 6:31 am
West,
First let me apologize for the problems that you are having with the Dramm wands you purchased. We at Dramm, all 51 employees working in Manitowoc Wisconsin, will make sure you are completely satisfied. I am certainly glad that someone reading your blog felt strongly enough about our product to give us a heads up that you were dissatisfied.
Not having the chance yet to talk with you I can only draw from the clues you have on your blog. First the evidence of small hose are consistent with Galvanic corrosion. First let me start with the science from Wikipedia-
Galvanic corrosion is an electrochemical process in which one metal corrodes preferentially to another when both metals are in electrical contact and immersed in an electrolyte. The same galvanic reaction is exploited in primary batteries to generate a voltage. Dissimilar metals and alloys have different electrode potentials and when two or more come into contact in an electrolyte a galvanic couple is set up. A galvanic couple can also be set up on a single metal or alloy due to the metal surface not being homogeneous or if the electrolyte varies in composition, forming a concentration cell. The electrolyte provides a means for ion migration whereby metallic ions can move from the anode to the cathode. This leads to the anodic metal corroding more quickly than it otherwise would; the corrosion of the cathodic metal is retarded even to the point of stopping. The presence of electrolyte and a conducting path between the metals may cause corrosion where otherwise neither metal alone would have corroded.
Now the simplified version – Our wand is made of Aluminum and the lever is made of Zinc and our coupling is made of brass. If your water supply is high in minerals then that can add one more metal attacking another in this situation. If you leave water in the wand while not using it, it acts as the “The conducting path”. So our first step is going to be to ask you to just simply drain your new wands I am going to send you after you use them. Different parts of the world have higher and lower mineral content in their water supply and this can be the variable that is hardest for us to control.
Next is the plunger valve. Yes, you are correct that is the biggest challenge to keep from failing. We noticed from your pictures that you have the older version and the new version of our lever. The older version (without the DRAMM in the molding) had a plastic plunger with an O-ring on it riding in and out on the actual zinc cast material. As the metal changed it could start to prematurely wear on the O-ring, our test showed average of 28,000 cycles before failure with a flow rate of 5 gallons per minute. Three years ago we redesigned the lever. The new lever (with DRAMM in molding) upgraded the plunger to brass and inserted a high density plastic sleeve to prevent the O-ring from contacting the metal direct. This new version yielded us an average of 103,000 cycles before the O-ring failure and a flow rate of 11 gallons per minute.
Although the valve is much better I cannot guarantee that with you specific water supply that it will not still be our Achilles heel. We may find that you are better off with is quarter turn ball valve type of wand. I will include that along with the three lever valves I am sending you.
Please give me a call on Monday (my cell 920-… number removed before posting) and we can get the address where we can send your replacements. Several years ago we use to brag about how our quality defect rate was less the 3/10 of 1%. But then we started to think that if you only dropped 3/10 of 1% of all babies in a hospital would that be acceptable? The answer is clearly NO. And if we are going to survive as a manufacturer in the United States we can’t drop any of our babies (wands). I took a survey at the factory in Wisconsin and no one wants to work for $8.00 per day like our competition. However, we do want to make sure the you are completely satisfied with everything that DRAMM has our name on.
Thank you in advance for giving us a chance to work with you.
Jeff Bucher
General Manager
Dramm Corporation, Manitowoc Wisconsin