We test our hose in the summer months once a year, we do one truck a month. sometimes we just test the hose but other times we have a drill and set up pump relay. we have 2500 feet of 4 inch. we have 2500 feet of 3 in, and 1/3/4 hose we have 3,000 feet we test.
Permalink Reply by Rob on March 15, 2009 at 1:47am
We will be borrowing a local departments home built hose tester. It is a manifold system with 5 discharges and pressures it up to desired pressure and maintains pressure for the duration of the test. It also has a 2 1/2 in port to put water in and fill the hose before you start to pressure it up so you are not there all freaking day waiting on it to fill. We test yearly. My station alone (4 stations total) we have 2 engines. One is stricktly back up / 2nd out butthe other one is fully loaded plus some spare hose. We have 900' 1 3/4", 1000' 2 1/2", 1500' 4", and we still have about 200' of 1 1/2" still floating around (use it for work details mainly).
We normally test our spare hose first then let it dry. Then we'll test 1 truck at a time as soon as hose is pulled off we put dry tested hose right back on keeping the truck in service and fully loaded with hose.
I can’t remember whose standard, NFPA or ISO but we test all hose once a year. We use a store bought tester and do 1 truck at a time, tester will do 1500ft at a time. We use to test with the trucks pump but this puts a tremendous amount of undo stress on it, besides we were told by our truck MFG that the tester was a lot cheaper than having them rebuild a pump.
Permalink Reply by John on March 19, 2009 at 12:09am
We have test equipment that we hook all of our hose onto and pressurize it and check for leaks, or any hose to coupling separation Etc. And we test it every year.