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Hydrant colors... Are yours marked properly???
In my area, all of our hydrants are one color.... RED. Now dont get me wrong, I like the look of a classic red hydrant just as much as I like the look of a classic red fire engine but we have been asking the county to paint the tops of our hydrants according to their pressures for years now. I couldnt even tell you what the different colors mean because the only hydrants I've ever tapped were red.
Anyway... is there a national standard for what the colors mean according to pressure? and does your county, area, district, etc. actually go by this and paint the hydrants the right color?
Anyway... is there a national standard for what the colors mean according to pressure? and does your county, area, district, etc. actually go by this and paint the hydrants the right color?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by ashfire on
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Most hydrants in two counties in our area are controled by a water commission and are painted green top and white barrel. Now on pravite property I have seen all red hydrants or all white.
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Permalink Reply by Chuck Nondorf on
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Our hydrants have been painted with a yellow barrel and the caps and bonnet are color coded.
RED: 0-500
ORANGE: 500-1000
GREEN: 1000-or higher
BLACK: Dead hydrant
All RED or WHITE caps, bonnet and barrel are not yet tested.
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Permalink Reply by John A. Lawlor on
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In My Town of Parsons, TN...
We have several different colors...
The BEST hydrants are Blue, then Green, then Orange, then Red... And we stay away from the BLACK ones...
Blue ones we can get 1500gpm out of the pump..
Green Ones are rated at 1200
Orange ones are rated at 1000
Red ones are rated at 800
Black ones have very little static pressure to begin with, so we try and stay away from them..
They all have Silver Barrels and whatever Appropriate Color Top..
That's how it is my town...
John A. Lawlor
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Permalink Reply by FETC on
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Yes there is a national standard for hydrant identification on how much water can be flowed from a specific hydrant. Just curious, how do you know the very next hydrant can possibly flow double or triple the amount of GPM's as compared to the one "you tapped" on the lawn in front of the fire?
RED = flows less than 500 gpm
YELLOW = flows 500 to 1000 gpm
GREEN = flows 1000-1500 gpm
BLUE = flows greater than 1500 + gpm
All of our hydrants are silver, and the top bonnet is painted the discharge rating color.There are times in which I have a yellow hydrant in front of a fire, and on a side street we can have a blue, depending upon the piping configuration and main size, the blue maybe capable of flowing 2500+ gpms with upwards to 90-100 psi intake pressure.
FETC
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Permalink Reply by Steven on
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Our district has hydrants marked according to flow rates: 500gpm or less, 750gpm, 1000gpm etc. (I don't recall exactly what the numbers are.)
The different color codes are on the caps, the rest of the hydrant is bright red (the streets department just painted them this summer.) They used to be yellow but the color-coded caps have been around for "centuries."
Our streets department tests the hydrants periodically to confirm flow rates and there are some areas where two hydrants are fairly close together (in feet) and one has a better flow than another. It comes in handy for engine drivers/pump operators who want the most water available, obviously.
We also have a map in our radio room that, among other things, shows where all the hydrants are and uses the same color-coded cap system.
I don't know if there is a national standard for the color-coding. I'm not sure what the point of that would be since it's up to local departments to check, mark, monitor, and maintain their own hydrants. I do know that our next-door neighbor uses a different thread on their hydrants so when we go into their district for mutual aid, we have an adapter we need to use to get water from their system. Other neighboring districts use the same threads as we do, we also use a lot of portable water supplies because most of the region doesn't have municipal water systems.
There are national standards for threads, but I don't recall the particulars.
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Luckily we don't have to test them. Water department flows them for settlement and test twice a year. That information is loaded into our CAD which is availabe to the engine officer via our MDT.
Why don't we do this ourselves? We don't own the hydrants, water department does, maintenance, testing, and SHOVELING is all done by them.
BTW: Any hydrant damaged or replaced due to age need to be replaced with a non-draining plug, so even in the colder climates, we will now see the non-draining type hydrants due to new EPA requirements for assurance of cross-contamination drinking water. These new hydrants have to be pumped and winterized after every use.
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Permalink Reply by Benjamin A. Hoeffner on
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According to NFPA Standards the colors are as follows
Class C Less than 500gpm Red
Class B 500-999 gpm Orange
Class A 1000-1499 gpm Green
Class AA 1500 gpm and higher Light Blue
In all my career I have nver seen a hydrants marked with all four colors in one vicinity.
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The NFPA Standard is NFPA 24
That standard says it is recommended to indicate water flow available from each hydrant at 20 PSI
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Permalink Reply by John Rulli Jr. on
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My county is yellow.
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I know of a fire company that spent the money to have a fire hydrant chromed on their front ramp.
For a while stations in our county would paint the hydrant on their front ramps. Since most stations had their own colors for their apparatus they painted the hydrant the colors of the units. We painted ours black and white. Since they moved the hydrant to the corner and off our ramp we haven't touched it. Our sub station painted theirs red, white and blue. It was mostly white with red and blue strips.
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Not better for us Kali, but supposedly assure the quality of drinking water for the public.
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Permalink Reply by Derek R. on
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I'm laughing good right now. This is kinda funny to me. I'll explain. Where I live now, we have no hydrants. But growing up,I lived in a half decent sized town and ....well....... ok, for example....across the street from the house we had a "Snoopy" hydrant,..the one after that was a robot hydrant and the one after that was a butler hydrant..then a tree...then an eagle...ya kinda get where I'm coming from. I often wondered if it was legal, but that's as far as I went with it. The closest thing that resembled anything to do with the fire service, was one was painted as a dalmation.
Maybe I shoulda started a new post with this one.
Take care all.
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