portable hydrants

[Fire Eater 07]

just wondering how many F.D's carried portable hydrants, manifolds, and if and when they used them.

My full time F.D. uses them at all commercial fires and occasionally at a residence depending on conditions- more than one apt., wind, next engine delayed, etc....

My part time F.D. has them on the trucks but never use them...

For those of you who have no idea what one is...its a large heavy appliance that has 2 5" openings and between 4-6 2.5" discarges
1 5" goes towards the fire( usually to a Ladder truck) and the other side goes back to a trimese,well that is for suppling a Truck....you can also use it in other ways
just wondering
stay safe

[570eck]

At my vollie sta. we have the maifolds as we call them. Used at any scene that requires laying the 5in.. Can't say we've had to use them for any purpose recently but the versitility is nice. A problem I have seen is people not understanding them. I've argued with several people who don't think you can turn them around, while they might no be "designed" that way, it is not a clappered valve so you're basicly just useing it as a "pipe/hose".

[Looper]

We carry them on each engine and our 100' tower. We have used them on several big fires where we split one 5" line into several 3" lines to support multiple pumping apparatus. We have also used it the other way, with multiple trucks supplying a single 5" line. The biggest use we have for them is to cap off the 5" during annual hose testing operations.

[nsfdjr]

We have one on our engine but i havent heard of it used. Will come in handy for a fire at a large commercial building.

[BFD847]

Our dept. had several different configurations of manifolds. They were purchased some 20 years ago with one of the pumpers. When I started no one on the dept. really knew how we would use them. Further more no one could remember ever having them off of the truck at a fire scene. I could see were they would be handy on a large fire flowing multiple lines and supplying multiple trucks. How ever in our scenario we do not have the municaple water supply to use it any way. By the time we utilize the discharges we already have we really do not have the residule to supply any thing else. So we did not put them on the new apparatus. We still do have them taking up room in our mezanine.