Shore Hardness by Market: 72–75 for Canada, 78–80 for the Gulf

The same nominal hose can be supplied at 72 Shore or at 80 Shore, and both are correct. Which one you need depends less on the hose than on where it will be used, stored and dragged.

What the number measures

Shore A hardness describes how much a material resists a small indentation under a spring-loaded needle. It is a quick, cheap and reasonably repeatable check, which is why it is written into almost every hose specification. What it does not describe is strength, pressure rating or wall thickness: a hard hose is not automatically a strong hose, and a soft hose is not automatically a weak one.

For PVC hose, hardness functions mainly as a proxy for flexibility and for how the wall behaves under vacuum and under a clamp.

The ranges we publish, and why they differ

These are not marketing bands. They are the ranges that have proven workable in each market, and they are the reference we set production against when a customer does not specify hardness themselves.

The two ways to get it wrong

Too soft. In a hot climate the hose softens further on its own. Under suction it flattens; on a reel it kinks; at the coupling it balloons and starts to weep. The buyer then blames the wall thickness, orders a heavier hose, and finds it no longer bends where it needs to.

Too hard. In a cold climate a hard hose loses flexibility exactly when flexibility matters, and the failure is a crack rather than a leak — which is worse, because a crack appears without warning and usually at the worst moment.

How to specify hardness without guessing

• Give the application and the climate, not just the durometer. "60 m layflat for irrigation in northern Vietnam" tells a factory more than "75 Shore".
• Give the minimum bend radius you need. It is the constraint that hardness is really there to satisfy.
• State whether the hose runs under vacuum. Suction service punishes a soft wall far faster than pressure service does.
• Ask for the hardness of the delivered batch, not of the sample. Compound drift is real, and a ±2 Shore change is enough to feel in the hand.

One number that is not a specification

If a quotation lists hardness but not the test standard, the temperature, or the point on the hose where it was measured, treat it as indicative only. Hardness measured on the cover of a warm sample tells you very little about the same hose at 0°C in a warehouse yard.

Tell us the market and the lowest service temperature, and we will confirm the hardness band we would produce to.