G'day Gary,
OK, the machine pumps hot water into the carpet via a pair of Gernie heads in a wand and immediately extracts it again through a second part of the wand. It is NOT a "steam cleaner" but a professional machine that is absolutely amazing to watch - your carpet literally changes colour before your eyes, and the mud it extracts has to be seen to be believed - and this from carpets you would swear were perfectly clean.

Right, it has a clean water reservior and a grey water reservior. The hose fittings I want are intended to allow quick connection of supply and pump out hoses so he doesn't have to mess around with buckets to fill and empty it all the time.

There are screw fittings using US thread (SAE?) already there with blanking plug and cap to prevent spillage when there are no hoses connected.

One screw fitting is female, the other male.

In Australia, we use quick connect fittings that clamp to each end the hose. These fittings are female and receive the male portion of the screwed fittings that fit to, for example, a garden sprinkler or trigger nozzle or the like. These appliances require the male threaded adaptor for the quick connector as they have a female threaded opening built into them.

At the other end, the yard tap (faucet?) has a male threaded outlet so we use the female threaded quick connect adaptor for that end, thus the hose can be used in either direction as both ends have the same quick connect receptacle.

From what I can see in the online catalogues you guys in the US seem to use some other kind of system, 'cos I cannot seem to find all the bits...

We need to equip 2 hoses:
1st hose:
US quick connect receptacle clamped to one end and an Australian quick connect receptacle at the other end.

2nd hose:
US quick connect receptacle clamped to one end, the other end will be au natural as it will just empty down a drain somewhere.

For the machine we need:
1*male threaded (US 1 1/16" thread {3/4" ???} quick connect adaptor
1*female threaded (US 1 1/16" thread {3/4" ???} quick connect adaptor

The hoses will be 12mm - near enough that a 1/2" quick connect adaptor will be fine - just stretch the hose a little - no problem.

We specifically do not want to clamp hoses to threaded connectors as it will waste time and be awkward trying to twist 30 or 40 metres of hose to screw the things into the machine.

All the hardware sites seem to have plenty of the male threaded adaptors - does the US use yard taps (faucets?) with female threads??? It sure seems that way... And the hose quick connect receptacles - how do you fit these 'cos I can't seem to find anything that simply clamps to the hose - they all seem to have a female thread in them rather than a mechanism to clamp to the hose ?????????????????

We want to use brass for durability. This is a commercial operation and reliability is important.

If I seem confused it's because I am. The garden supply web sites don't seem to have all the bits, certainly not in the way I expect from what we use here.

--=-- My credo: If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing - just ask my missus, she'll tell ya laugh --=--
You're only paranoid if you're wrong!