most of the time we just use hydrants but it depends on the situation every one is diffrent and i definatly think if you are buying a new tanker it should have atleast a 500 gpm pump and that frees up an engine.
do you understand what it takes to take something that allows a 38 tanker shuttle, (tri-county), that has certain membership requirements, and has been proven over the years. The 'old school' as you might call it, works for us in our areas. We have 25 sq. miles and in one call have 75,000 gallons+ and 3 didicated fill sites set up and running within 20 minutes. Our static sources are not anywhere close to roads, bridges, or driveways. Our old school ways work in our area and i believe that your vacuum tanker would have circles run around it with your hook and unhook times.
Im sure you would run circles around us in your areas.
Considering the fact that our response area has over 85% hydrant coverage and our tanker gets used maybe 10 times a year I think we'll keep it and use the money we would have to spend to "move into the 21 century" for something else.
Most of the time Tanker 633 is filled by an engine at a static source with 5" LDH. Even if we use one of the few hydrants in our area we always have a engine to fill the tankers, it takes to long to open and close a hydrant. We have 3 dry hydrants at this time. Tanker 633 is a vacuum tanker and we have filled with out an engine from a static source.
Paul are you using hydrants? If not how are you getting the water from the static water source
to your engines? What size hose and how many lines to you use to fill your tankers? Sounds like
your area has their act together, wish our area could do it. I agree with you use what works for you and what you have trained with. But don't come down on the vacuum tankers to hard, I could bring my vacuum tanker to your shuttle and fit right in. I would just let your engine fill the tanker thats all. As far as hook and unhook times, we use flex cord hard sleeves with Stoks couplings on them and the couplings have handles on them not lugs, so it is
easy and quick.
Most of the tankers in our area do not have pumps so they need to be filled. Our usual procedure is to have a mutual aid engine company establish fill site using whatever means possible - municipal hydrant, dry hydrant, pond, pool, creek, or lake.
Our tankers also carry 750 gpm trash pumps on the beaver tails to establish a water source in areas not accessible by vehicles. W e have not used them much over the past several years, though.