I am from Tennessee, and we are trying to set up a water shuttle test for our fire dept. All of the videos i have seen for the water shuttle has had four or five trucks and two or three dump tanks. Does any one have exp. or video of doing it with one or two tankers and just one dump tank? I guess i was just wondering if any one has just settled for the min. of 250gpm, and not tried for a record breaker. Please let me know if you can help me. I need it!
The likely answer is "the insurance company won't tell you". Insurance is very competitive. One way to get and keep business is to price yourself a little below your competition. Once you tell someone what the cut will be for dropping the ISO rating a couple of classes, your competition can figure out how to undercut you.
How will they get than information? As soon as they give the information to the fire department, their rates are now public information and anyone - especially the competition - will have open access to it.
We're trying to find out the same thing, and we're getting stonewalled everywhere we ask.
If you can send me a snail mail address, unless you want it sent as a file (app 40 pages.) I'd be happy to send a copy of the New York State Water Opperations Course workbook. It is/was a very boring class, before NYS went to the FF-1 FF-2 standard. but the workbook still makes for good reference material.
If you use a single dump tank for your water supply system, be prepared to have interruptions in the water supply.
If you dump into the tank you're drafting from, you'll have lots of surface disturbance that will likely cause the pump to repeatedly lose its prime.
Using multiple dump tanks with power siphons not only puts more water on scene, but after the first tanker dumps its water, you will avoid drafting from and dumping into the same tank thereafter, unless you don't have enough tankers in the shuttle to maintain the water supply.
Contact the Tri-Community Fire Department in Collegedale, Tennessee for their ISO-rated tanker shuttle. They've been using it for around 20+ years. They include tanker design into their system, and they have no problem supplying 500 to 1,000 GPM from draft. They even supply master streams from the tanker shuttle on occasion.
Ok here is my understanding; 250gpm for 2 hours, mutual aid is OK, but have to be held for the period of time it take for them to arrive from their location, so having enough to maintain till they arrive is the key. This has to be conducted at least 1 mile from the water source. As for ISO, not all are using and have gone to their own system, but nobody besides iso has came and tested us, we went from an 8 to 6 some years back, best guess-ta-ment was $20-30 savings per household, not bad considering they were only paying around $50 per year in taxes to us.
First off, as I understand it MANY insurance companies are starting dropping ISO. That being said we still do all our ISO Stuff. we do a "practice" water shuttle every year. Here is how ours happens to be
1. From Dump site to fill site and back to dump site is 5 miles.
2. Fill site has 2 engines drafting from a lake
3. Dump site has 4 Tanks with Jet siphons
4. additional tank at the engine running the jet siphons
5 we use a total of 7 tenders.
6 We pump 1000 GPM for 2 hours straight.
7. all the equipment from our practice is from our own dept.
Also I am in the final phase of setting up a water supply task force for our entire MABAS division divided into 4 quadrants. so any dept in our MABAS division can request water and have it on the way.
Also all that being said as I recall our shuttle is just practice ISO has specific tests for dump times ect. that your rating comes from, also make sure to identify "wet hydrants" if you have any avalible for use for fill site I think you also get points for that.