The current hose is black rubber on both applications. I have to admit, this head is a mystery to me as it does not work like any we have had in the past. It is a Groco, appears to be maybe a model "HF", has a little metal lever on it. With past boats (all Jabsco) it was a simple operation to move a lever one way to draw water in, lever the other way to pump into the holding tank. This one does odd things, listening to the noises and kinda looking things over I'm not really sure what it does? For example, while winterizing.......the boat is in the water, intake seacock is open, bowl has a tiny bit of head chems in it. I move the lever to draw water in and it comes into the bowl blue from around the top? It actually does not sound like the water is being drawn in from overboard. Move the lever the other way and it sort of sounds like it is going into the holding tank. I put a couple of gallons of pink antifreeze in the bowl and was actually not sure it went into the holding tank. It almost sounded like it was going back out through the seacock. When doing the last pumpout the holding tank was almost empty. Not that we used it a huge amount, but I did play with the head. BTW, throughout the end of the season, when drawing water in, it was full of black yick, hence the reason to change out the hose.