They are not weather proof, you definitely want to keep it in a sheltered area, on a covered porch for example, another option is up in the attic over a soffit vent. You also want to be sure to use a check valve as a siphon will ruin the pump if the pump stops for any reason. Hose does restrict flow, basically the more hose you have the more the volume of air drops, with that said, the WS3 designation means it can pump against 3 meters of water so these are a fairly high pressure pump, 8 psi. I don't have exact numbers, I know at my old house, Schego was no longer available in the US at the time, but I tried many pumps and had to make a 30ft run with the air pump on the porch outside, I tried a modern Corallife Luft pump (the purple one from who knows where, not the old brown one from Germany which was a very good pump except for being loud) the output was cut in half after 30ft. I found an old WISA pump on eBay and that was able to have the same output at 30ft, no drop, and these are pretty comparable in specs as far as pressure WISA just was always even more heavy duty in the housing/materials, everything on a WISA is metal, the housing, the air output nipple, etc, but they were always a $400+ air pump and they havent been available in a very long time as the only real market was old industrial airstone powered skimmers and they were bought out by a US industrial pump supplier and I think they only make vacuum pumps now.