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High Pressure or High Volume for Brush Fires
Our dept has had the county buy brush units for our volunteer fire company for a few years. The one 4x4 pickup truck we bought in the 70s was a 3/4 ton unit and we put a 200 gal tank and high volume pump on the unit. We also had a home built brush guard which was great. The county step in and told us the unit was over weight. So the tank was size down to 150 gals and the brush guard lost the bottom part of the guard which was a 3 inch pipe.
Later we let the county purchase the replacement unit in their colors in the 80s. It was another 3/4 ton beefed up to 1 ton with a 100 gal tank and no brush guard but had a high volume pump. The crews notice they ran out of water faster so they modifed a 1 inch booster line and put a garden hose nozzel on it.
After a while this unit was replaced with a 2000 unit, this time a 1 ton with a front winch, cross the bed tool box and still a high volume pump, 125 gal tank and a garden hose nozzel.
There has been talk by members to buy our own unit. I have been researching and seen high pressure and low volume skid units for sell by different companies. I figure buy a good 1 ton or better unit with a good flatbed body go to a local fire apparatus rep in the area and have them build us a unit that will meet what we want.
I have seen some nice ideas from members of FFN and from apparatus builders with websites.
The thing is to have enough water and pressure to knock and reach the fire without having to chase it across the woods, fields or where ever we need to respond. Maybe even have a foam tank as a extra.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Mike Schlags (Captain Busy) Retd on
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Kind of a tough post to comment on because you are not really asking a specific question but instead, kind of ramble about various issues your department has experienced. It seems like you first off need to put together a department sponsored apparatus and equipment committee to debate the pro's and con's associated with developing a brush truck that will meet your needs. Do this to help focus your concerns and come up with a consensus to solve your vehicle problems.
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Permalink Reply by Jim Conrad on
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the state in which i live gives us brush trucks to use for ourselves and fight fire on state land. we have an f-450 with 400 gals and an f-550 with 500 gals. the booster lines are all three quarter inch for water conservation. it really seems to help. the units have a hook up for inch and a half line so i am not sure what the pumps are high vol. or high pressure. they are both darley though. the state went to three quarter booster after testing showed that the fire gets put out just as fast. also one hundred feet of booster line is a lot easier to drag around than one inch. neither truck has a foam cell in the tank but have a holder for two five gallon foam jugs with a scotty foam system. we rarely use any foam. usually the tender is close by so we can just refill. hope this is good info. yes we call them tenders in the west!
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Permalink Reply by ashfire on
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I guess I wanted to show what we have had to use. I remember seeing ads in old trade magazines a friend's Father had who was a volunteer. There was the Jim Beam high pressure pumpers that had the special nozzel for high pressure fog. A few depts in the county had them. I think most of them were built on 4x4 chassis so they were use as brush units.
If you buy a unit today you might end up with a high volume pump where a high pressure pump might help save water and make a knock quicker with less efford.
There are a few companies that build high pressure skid units for trucks but there are some built for the small ATV units
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Permalink Reply by Don Catenacci on
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My POC FD has a 5/4 ton military surplus 4x4 GMC pick up truck with a 150 gallon water tank, an 8 gallon foam tank and a 70 gpm pump that maxes out at around 100 psi. We have 2-150 foot 3/4 inch garden hoses with TFT Bubblecup nozzles, and a 200 foot crosslay of 1 inch forestry line.
The gpm capacity of the pump really has little to do with how fast you run out of water. It is how much you are flowing out of the hoseline. You can have a 2000 gpm pump and run a 10 gpm nozzle off that pump and your water will last you all day, or you can flow a 2000 gpm mater stream and be out of water in a minute. The bubble cup nozzles we use flow 20 gpm and make awesome foam from dishwater type foam all the way up to darn near shaving cream type foam. We ALWAYS use foam on brush fires. It eliminates ever having to go back and extinguish rekindles. So in our mind it is cheap to use because it eliminates call backs.
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Well I just reallized I use the wrong name for the company that built high pressure pumpers. It was John Beam which was bought by FMC which went out of bussiness years ago.
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beamspray.net/2012/01/25/fire-killing-wallop-april-1964I just found one of the ads I remember from the magazine.
http://beamsprayer.net/2012/01/25/fire-killing-wallop-april-1964
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Permalink Reply by Oldman on
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We utilize 2 F350 4x4s. One with a 250 gal tank, a low volume100psi pump with a 3/4" booster line. The other has a 300 gal tank, again a low volume 100psi pump and 1" booster line, which will soon be replaced with 3/4". Both have 100' of 1" wildland hose we can add for off truck work. We also utilize TFS approved Class A foam which is usually batch mixed in the tank instead of a system. We carry Pro Pak's for small brush piles.
Never had a high pressure system on a brush truck, but I do remember having 2 John Bean pumpers with the high pressure pumps and nozzles that looked like small rifles. I never figured out whether the water put the fire out, or whether it was blown out.
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Permalink Reply by Moose on
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We have a '95 F-350 with a utility body, a fixed pump on the rear of the bed, 250 gallon tank, and we use the 1" Forestry line that we keep 250' of in a crosslay type storage box running the length of the bed, and we have 10 soft body indian tanks. In a pinch we take our portable, self priming 250GPM pump and draft from a pond or stream through a 2 1/2" hose to supply the brush truck, or use as a handline. (with 2 1/2" to 1 1/2" reducer and 1 1/2" hose and nozzle)
We recently purchased a used 4 wheeler with dump body and are speccing a new skid unit with 75 gallon tank, 20gpm pump with pre-connected 1" booster and we will store 1" forestry line below the pump ready to deploy, and a rescue body to carry stokes basket and jump bag for rescues. The pump will have the ability to draft, so if we find a water source we drop the skid unit near it to draft and supply the forestry lines while the 4 wheeler returns to pick up more manpower.
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Permalink Reply by Russ Gregston on
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Typically a brush truck has these things called hand tools ie polaski, Mccloud, fire swatter and my favorite a Fedco or back pack pump. On our brush rig we only carry 200 gallons of water. The pump is a Wildfyre Ultra-Stryker performance pump and works quite well. Now I'm not trying to start a debate on brush tactics but in my experience you do have to chase it off into the woods to get a containment line around it sometimes using long hoselays, so pressure is your friend .
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If what I have seen about using high pressure for firefighting is that if a high pressure nozzle is used the steam comes out in a pressure fog which would be smaller water dropplets. I think the small the dropplest of water the better it can knock a fire and cool the air around it.
There is a company call IFEX which has a firefighting system which uses high pressure using air, water and foam. They have a backpack unit which has a water tank and air tank. The nozzle looks like a bazooka. The water and air build up in the nozzle and when the tigger is pulled it explodes out of the nozzle in short blast. A backpack unit can knock a car fire with 4 or so blast.
The company makes bigger units which can fit on or in vehicles. One unit mounted on a hummer looks like a large double barrel shot gun. They have a unit that can be mounted on helicopters and used on brush fires hovering or at low speed pass. The unit can even knock building fires by shooting into windows.
Just imagne what if FDNY or NYPD had such helicopter units on 9/11
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Permalink Reply by Bob Callahan on
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Huh?
You do realize that the fire load between the burning jet fuel and the contents would have been far beyond anything that a helicopter, or even multiple helicopters could have carried, right?
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