Rural Water Supply Trick

[N2DFire]

5pts384 & jaybird210

What captstanm1 is talking about doing is (and excuse me if I go way beyond too simple) taking a section of your hard sleeve and sticking 1 end into each drop tank - then take a 1-1/2" line with a fog nozzle on strait stream or a smooth bore nozzle and put it up in the end of the hard suction that in the tank you want to pull water from. Position the nozzle so that it's trying to push it's stream through the hard sleeve.

The vacuum created by this will cause the remaining "volume" of the pipe to fill with water and you have just created a jet siphon.


There are commercially available devices that do this, but if you're looking to get by on the cheap - this will do.

An alternate idea - if your drop tanks have drain chutes - you can connect these together making 1 large drop tank.
There are commercially available devices to connect the chutes with, but in a pinch you can turn one chute "inside out" (pull it into the inside of the tank) and then pull the chute from tank 2 into the inverted cute on tank 1 - roll a cuff in them to keep water from getting between them and viola!

The down side to this is that the water level in the tanks will always equalize - therefore it might be a good idea to use a low level or a floating type strainer instead of the ole barrel if your not already.


5pts384 - you are exactly on the money that a second drop tank (and even a 3rd) would have helped your traffic problems on the fireground side.

As for the fill site - there are a couple of things that may have helped out.

1) Establish a second fill point - you don't necessarily have to go to a totally different site if you have the water capacity at your current site, just move up/down/over far enough to safely get a second truck in & out.

If you don't have room at the current site, then you can consider establishing a second site. If you go this route (and keeping in line with my next point) - send the larger tankers/tenders to the farther site & the smaller ones to the closer site.

2) Separate where large tankers/tenders fill from where the small ones fill.

3) Once a good number of larger tankers has arrived on scene - consider removing the smaller ones from the shuttle operation altogether.

[distchief60b]

oops...my bad

Sorry fellas....I should have been more specific and more detailed. Thanks N2Dfire for helping me out.

He is exactly right...use a large hard sleeve secured to one corner of the tank. All you need is a 50' section of 1.5" or 1.75" hose and about 50 PSI...(so you dont lose much from your supply capability)..You actually only have to "crack" the discharge to get 50 PSI and this creates a venturi that pulls the water across. The line with the "jet siphon" affixed to the end of the hard sleeve is in your secondary tank. When your primary is low...open one of your jet siphons and fill the main tank. If you have 3 tanks down you then have 2 secondary tanks and 3 to dump into. You can also affix an open butt 3" to one of the secondary tanks and run a line out 150'. If you have a unit that can not dump fast or one that has to pump off the load, they know in advance that this is where they hook up.(This is where preplanning and knowing your responding units capability comes in.) By doing this you leave the "dump" site open for the "drop and run tankers". Most all tankers now have side dumps, so having multiple tanks means several can drop at the same
time.

There are many many different ways you can set up tanks.... I can think of one where my old department had a 2000 GPM Pierce Pumper. We had a major fire at a county club. We used 5 tanks for that fire and this pumper had every discharge working. Picuter the pumper angled in at the corner of the building. One tank in front using the front intake, one on drivers side intake and one on officers side intake. In front of each side tank was another with a jet siphon to the main tanks on each side. The front tank was supplied by that 150' gutter line. Additionally (2)3" lines were being pumped up hill to this pumper from a draft site about 800' away. The draft site for the shuttle was about 1 mile. The reason it was set up this was was that the original site with the 3" lines was not a very good site and not much water flowing to allow a build up in it even after we damned it up. The pumper was flowing Capacity plus a Master stream at about 650 GPM. The 5 tanks totaled 10000 Gallons of water on the ground. With the set up we were able to dump 3 tankers at once and the "pump off's provided some slush. We had 8 "dump and go" tankers in this scenario and about 3 "pump offs" I believe. We managed to maintain that capacity + flow for about 5 hours using that set up. Keep in mind the fill site was only a mile away and the pumper on site was filling using a 5" at max flow the units would take. The dump site was big enough that no turning around was required. Also...weather conditions were perfect. A mild spring night with no rain and no fog.

The most stressful thing was putting it together and making it work...robbing equipment from this and that as they arrived. The building was about 75% involved when we arrived and it took about 30 minutes to get this set up going. But we had exposure problems also and the building itself was really old and really huge.

5pts....look me up at Daytona Next week if you make it to the Chief's conference and we can talk rural water...

[hwoods]

Stan's on the Money.........

Thanks Stan, You covered the whole lesson plan...... Couple of points on Rural Water Supply. 1. If you can get some 6' PVC pipe, you can make siphons, cut 3 pieces 2 - 3 ft long, take 2 elbows and make a U shape. The other thing is traffic management. Try to run one way traffic all the time, if possible. Nothing screws up traffic worse than two big red trucks (one full, the other empty) hitting headon on a narrow road. Oh yeah, almost forgot. If you can't do a siphon, use a portable pump of a couple hundred gpm to move water from the second tank to the first. Stay Safe....

[rfcmitch]

We use a ladder and a tarp. Little bit more handy, for us atleast.

[Poin28]

Along these same lines, anyone have any tips for keeping the intake strainers clear of debris/algae/etc. I know it's best to avoid drafting from areas with obstructions, but it's bound to happen sooner or later.

Thanks in advance.......

[distchief60b]

You can use a ladder to keep it off the bottom or I have seen some departments run the hard sleeve through an old inner tube they carry on the unit and inflate it when they need it.

If you want to spend some money then you can get floating strainers.

[5pts384]

If you put the strainer in a 5 gal bucket it will help keep the trash out, takes the water from 2ft up. We used a ladder to stay out from the side of a dug pond and a bucket to keep off the bottom and it worked for us.

stay safe

[hwoods]

Got A Redneck With A Rifle??

Just Kidding, BUT the 5 Gal. plastic bucket is a good idea, We have a bunch on our Trench Collapse Unit. We took a couple of them and made lots of holes in them to work as a strainer. Always use the strainer on the suction hose, but put the end of the suction in the bucket, gives you a 2 strainer effect to clean the water as much as possible. Folks that I know who are knowlegeable in pump maintenence say that sand and sediment are a big cause of wear in pumps. Stay Safe....

[4bugles]

In reference to "cheap" jet siphons...

Some years back, our department switched to AFFF, and got rid of all of our high expansion foam nozzles off the truck...Like most FD's we didn't throw them away, we put them in the back of the station to collect dust. One of our firefighters decided to cut the fitting and discharge nozzle out of them and weld it to a piece of flat iron making it a jet siphon (Chief's approval was received prior of course). The flat iron is bungee'd to the ears of the hard suction and it's as easy as that.

If you don't have the high expansion foam nozzles, you may be able to pick them up at State or Military Surplus Depots pretty cheap.

Also, I have heard of departments digging holes to catch the runoff from firestreams to reuse the water, I have never had the opportunity to try this, has anyone out there actually been on a call where they did?

[HFDCLanger]

put these possible draft locations in as waypoints on your GPS device. You can then determine proximity to those locations with the push of a button.

We have our entire district GPS mapped with everything from commercial buildings to fire stations to dry hydrants and water supply points. Our new apparatus will have MDTs on the doghouses and heads-up displays for the driver and officer.