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Floating Portables
Our part of the planet has a lot of rural roads that wind through the hills and valleys. Most of the valleys have some type of stream flowing through them that leaves us with an endless water source year-round. While our primary method is through a water shuttle with portable tanks and sometimes utilizing relay pumping, we have taken to the use of the static water supplies along with the shuttle.
Portable floating pumps used in tandem are set in the water source and each discharges through a 2.5" to a clappered siamese fitting. The siamese fitting is attached to 4" LDH of the length needed and that is connected to a fitting on a collapsible porta-tank. We station a mutual aid pumper at the fill site to fill tankers. With this setup, we can tap into any one of the many static water supplies in the area and really shorten our distances travelled for the shuttle. If the water supply is close enough, we can even eliminate or augment the water shuttle.
Using a 2500 gallon porta tank at the fill site instead of directly to the pumper's onboard tank speeds up the process and allows time to refill the porta tank between tankers.
One setup we had used two floating portables, 50' of 2.5" to the siamese, and then 450' of 4" LDH with a 30 foot increase in elevation from pump to tank. We filled the 2500 gallon porta tank in just a little over 9 minutes. Might not seem like much, but it sure cuts down on road miles after a few hours.
Running full-bore, each pump uses about 2 gallons of gas/hour. Maintenance is not too involved and replacing pump seals (on a rare occasion) is fairly simple.
I have a few pictures of this operation from our first training with these if anyone would like - drop me a line at drbrye@mchsi.com if you have any questions.
Portable floating pumps used in tandem are set in the water source and each discharges through a 2.5" to a clappered siamese fitting. The siamese fitting is attached to 4" LDH of the length needed and that is connected to a fitting on a collapsible porta-tank. We station a mutual aid pumper at the fill site to fill tankers. With this setup, we can tap into any one of the many static water supplies in the area and really shorten our distances travelled for the shuttle. If the water supply is close enough, we can even eliminate or augment the water shuttle.
Using a 2500 gallon porta tank at the fill site instead of directly to the pumper's onboard tank speeds up the process and allows time to refill the porta tank between tankers.
One setup we had used two floating portables, 50' of 2.5" to the siamese, and then 450' of 4" LDH with a 30 foot increase in elevation from pump to tank. We filled the 2500 gallon porta tank in just a little over 9 minutes. Might not seem like much, but it sure cuts down on road miles after a few hours.
Running full-bore, each pump uses about 2 gallons of gas/hour. Maintenance is not too involved and replacing pump seals (on a rare occasion) is fairly simple.
I have a few pictures of this operation from our first training with these if anyone would like - drop me a line at drbrye@mchsi.com if you have any questions.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Will Manuel on
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At Nikiski Fire in Alaska we have 3 Tanker Trucks, both of our engines carry about 1000 gallons, and we have all of our tankers equiped with Foldatanks. Our tankers will dump into the Foldatanks (where the the engines will draft from) and then drive to a water source to refill (we have a great many lakes down almost any road). We also have a couple of the floating portables.
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Permalink Reply by Holly on
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I wish we had something close to use the floating portables. We have to shuttle water to the foldatanks and draft it with the engine or the mini pumper.
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Permalink Reply by capt4021 on
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We use water shuttles and a nurse tanker. We normally have either our tanker which is a 3000 gal tanker or our mutual aides tanker which is 6000 gallons and we have engines run from the water source to the tankers and fill the tankers up. Or if the run is close to the murderkill river or delaware bay we just draft straight out of them into the fire scene.
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Permalink Reply by phillip hice on
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Have you ever heard of torbo draft. It can be used in lakes ,creeks , swimmingpools . You pump 2.5 in. line into it an get 5" back. We put up against 2 floating pumps and it was as fast if not faster. I think it works with up to 200 or 250 ft. of hose. No gas ,nothing to brake. Just use a pumper. We have a 5 rateing hauling water and 4 more tankers coming from other depts.
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