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Do Your Hydrants Have Steamer Ports?
Do you have to hook up one or two from the hydrant to feed the engine?
How many of you have steamer ports to allow for a larger diameter suction hose?
Will your engine outpump your water supply? How big are your water mains?
Can you get enough water to the fire?
How many of you have steamer ports to allow for a larger diameter suction hose?
Will your engine outpump your water supply? How big are your water mains?
Can you get enough water to the fire?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Jeff Betz on
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The large majority of our hydrants have steamer outlets along with the dual 2 1/2. The older ones are "two-ways" (our term for 2- 2 1/2") outlets. We run 5" supply and that's all we "usually" need. The hydrants have good volume, but yes there are poor ones and great ones. We can pump more than some can supply, just about all departments can, no big surprise in most places. That's why we need to know what we are doing, ya can't be "brain-dead" running the pump.
A couple years ago I was the operator of our truck on a downtown fire here, and I had REAL SOFT inlet hose with just one line; STILL soft with 2 supply lines (soft means way low on the compound), and finally had sufficient volume with a third supply line into my 2 1/2" suction inlet. I flowed 1450 gpm or more from 11pm until about 5am in the morning. Big fire, big water!
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Permalink Reply by Joe Stoltz on
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Our new hydrants - first ever in town - have steamers as well as two 2 1/2 inch outlets. We will hook with 5 inch LDH to begin with, then hook big lines to the gated 2 1/2 outlets. We have Storz to hydrant adapters on our trucks.
Water main size 12 inches, no looped mains so we probably will outpump the supply.
Another question is what is the static pressure of your hydrants. Just before Christmas we went mutual aid to the next town over, and our pump was on a hydrant filling tankers. The static pressure was about 165 PSI! In other words water was flowing out of our 150 psi LDH pressure relief valves. I wonder how much water we can get from that baby.
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Permalink Reply by Paul Montpetit on
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OUR MAIN PROBLEM IS ABOUT 90% OF OUR CALLS ARE RURAL...WHICH MEANS IF WE DON'T BRING WATER WE DON'T HAVE WATER...SO MUTUAL AID IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT oops caps locked....sorry...We are capable of bringing just over 9000 gallons with us when we get called out...recently went with CAFS on our new engine...its remarkable on how much LESS water we now use...almost 80% less.....our mainline dwelling response engine has a 2000 gallon/minute pump on it.....or secondary/mva engine has a 1500 gallon/minute pump....We can move a lot of the wet stuff to the red stuff in a hurry if we have to....Paul
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Permalink Reply by Art "ChiefReason" Goodrich on
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Paul:
When you are running a rural water supply, I know it depends on the situation, but are you finding that you are drafting from a lake, closest town hydrant or from the station. We have a 6 inch fill at the station that we use.
However, that steamer port is nice if you have a hydrant at the outskirts of your village and you use it for your water shuttle.
Thinking out loud here.
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Permalink Reply by Engineco913 on
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Hadn't seen this post until last night. I went over my notes on the town water system to ensure my facts were correct before posting. Where I live, we have a steamer port on the front and 2 side ports at 2 and 1/2 inches apiece. We all have steamer lines on the Engine, but with todays Engines, they would collapse (potentially) the 8" branchlines of most of the Hydrants we do have. We generally Drop 2 Gate valve's with 2 and 1/2" to 4" adapters and lay a 4" line to the fire scene. If needed we can lay a second line in off the other side (which is gated and left in the off position) of the hydrant to the scene. Worrying about the series circuit of the water system we can't do a lay from the other direction because more time than not we will only rob ourselves of water from one hydrant to another. With 2 lines of 4" LDH to the fire scene we generally run into no issue with water supply, unless it becomes a Deck Gun operation in which we would start shuttling water with the tankers to help us in the neglect of water. (hasn't happened yet to my knowledge and we have had some big fires)
At one particular mill fire (see pictures on my profile) we had a fully involved roof fire and we had interior and exterior operations in effect at the same time. The Mill has a fire pump which pumps water to the sprinkler system (which was mostly operational but to little effect since the fire was over the sprinkler pipes) and also pumps to the fire hydrants (privately owned by the mill) on Location. We had 2 draft sites established by 2 class A Engines (one in front of the mill, one to the river across the street), 1 of the main hydrants at the mill operational (10 inch main to the fire pump) and also one town owned hydrant to the road adjascent to the mill tapped as well. (the town increased the water system pressure for us) We flowed 4 ladder pipes (each with their own water sourceto prevent overtaxing by putting 2 ladderpipes on 1 Engine, but we ran hand lines off multiple engines with 1 ladder per water source) at once for exterior attack on the roof (cathedral ceiling 25' above floor level) multiple 2 and 1/2" lines to deck guns on ground monitors inside operating, and at least 6 lines of 1 and 3/4" flowing inside. It was a massive operation but we were never in lack of water. Sometimes it's better to have multiple water sources outside the normal hydrant.
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We have an 8" main at our station, but usually we draft from a "dry hydrant" we have a few within our district....occassionally we have to draw water via lake, stream or a pond though...Mutual aid is very important here in rural upstate NY....our tankers are called out often for help....we usually set up 2 portable ponds on site and fill them with 2000-3000 gal tankers and use a 6000 gal tandem for nursing the ponds....In town we have hydrants available and they have both 2 1/2" and "steamer" connects...Our area is like huge....and many Amish farms have "chimney fires".....not much water available unless we bring it to start our attack.....Paul
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Permalink Reply by Curt Varone on
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In Providence we have have two water systems - a high pressure system and a low pressure system. The low pressure hydrants have steamer ports (and two 2 1/2" ports) while the high pressure hydrants have three 2 1/2" ports.
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Permalink Reply by turk182 on
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we have steamer connections on our hydrants but only a 4" main feeding them we have to watch how we us the water or we will suck the system dry so we have to get a tanker shuttle set up just in case the fire takes a will to extinguish.
there was a new water company the took over and the meet with us they are in the process of upgrading the system. they are putting an 8" main in it's place should be done within the next year or so.
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Permalink Reply by Chris Turner on
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I live in a very small town in central Ohio (We have about 2-3 dozen hydrants) and moles and miles of rural roads. I've been all over central Ohio and there are only 1 or 2 times I've seen 2-ways (A hydrant with only 2x2.5) EVERONE else uses that plus a 5" steamer.
Not to change the subject, but does anyone use 4-way hydrant valves regularly? I seem there a lot around here, but almostly ONLY in FT City Depts and rarely in more rural settings. You'd think they would be more popular. Always worked well for the departments I've seen use them.
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