Tanker Fill Hose & Adapters

[wkc1902]

Our county departments are attempting to unify the fill hose adapters used on tanker fill hoses. Please comment on which adapters you are using and the pros and cons. In general there are storz and cam-locks. I'm sure there are others. What size adapter is preferred? Also what size fill hose are you using? Due to weight, is 4" too much to handle? Are two 3" fill hoses the answer?
Thanks for you help!

[s0231198]

Almost everyone in our area uses 4" stortz on their trucks, which I think works really great. There are a few depts. that still run the 2 1/2" thread on so we carry 2 1/2 to 4" stortz adapters for that instance. not very often that we use them. As for fill hose we all run dual 4" lines to manifolds that are turn backwards so that we can bleed excess water and pressure out of the line to take it off. (We also use them b/c the truck to the dry hydrant is usually off the road into someones driveway and so the pump operator doesn't have to keep shutting down the valve at the truck.) this way we are filling with 2 4" lines instead of just one to keep flowing capacity. this whole system seems to be working really great.

[SBLGFD]

We use dual 3" with 3" cam-locks. We tried the LDH for a while but the rest of the mutual aid was all smaller. We are able to fill in the 1250-1500 gpm through duals. We run 5" LDH to a manifold then 50-100'of 3" this is easy to move around depending on where the driver stops.

[MFD]

i know on out tanker we got 2 2.5 inch intakes (to fill the 1500 tank) but we usually only fill with 1 2.5 inch cause at the last barn fire they had (if i remember right) 4 tankers (that's counting ours) running and we'd fill 2 tankers at once with the same pumper. If you get 4 2.5s the pump guy(which i helped cause our main pumper was pumping into the fire)is a lot for him to watch when they say "cut the water or give me water" there's advantages and disadvatages of 4 inch the thing i like about it is it's a LDH so you can move a lot of water with one hose. (that makes it easier for the pump man at the pond,lake,river or where ever your water supply is)
now the disadvantage maybe i sound like a wuss but you get 50 ft of 4 inch with some water in it after a tanker full it's as heavy as a bear.
now about couplers: We run the old national standard.(i know my both counties we firefight in run these couplers) now the bad thing about these they take a little longer to hook up than like your cam lock. but out of Stortz vs cam lock I'd definately go cam lock they hook up and unhook quickly and real easy. There's a department about 30-45 mins away they got all cam lock it's nice not to have use spanners all the time .

[Grit76]

what's a tanker?

[Dalmatian90]

Some would have you believe it's a big plane

[Bowbreaker]

Dalmation, a tanker doesn't have to be that big. We use Single Engine Air Tankers (SEATs) here that are spray planes that hold around 500 gallons.
That said we fill tenders or tankers from a manifold with two 2 1/2 in hoses.
We are in the south central part of South Dakota and the departments west of us call trucks that shuttle water, tenders and the departments to the east of us call them tankers. Some times it gets a little confusing.