Help with Brush Fire Water Rig

[scollins]

YES

A "canteen holder" or "holder" for a 1-gallon water jug would be good to add, in addition to just a bottle of water on the tractor.

I have a small cooler with food and water that goes in the cart before a prescribed burning or pile burning operation.

I have a 50 caliber ammo box for the fire shelter. That reminds me. While I'm waiting for the North Dakota blizzard to end, sounds like a good project to bolt one to the cart for the shelter.

I added a drip torch holder since I took that photo..

I try to leave room for the leaf blower or chain saw.

In your neck of the woods, I would keep the cart (or your tractor) on a wide fire break or mowed fuel break during a fire. Around here, I park the rig in the black or on a wide mowed fire break. The GPM is not enough for your neck of the woods but would be great for putting out spot fires in the yard within your 100 foot wide brushed out area around your house (unless they force you to evacuate).

SC

 

[lutt]

I am looking for a way to have some water available for some medium sized brush fires on my property. We are constantly burning limbs, dead trees, etc and I want a way to have some water available to suppress the fires if they tend to get out of control.

The average size brush pile is approximately 15-20ft in diameter and approximately 6-8 feet high. I do have a 100 gallon 3 point hitch sprayer with a good wand and decent pressure. I know this is not much, but it is certainly better than nothing.

I also have at my disposal a 250 gallon tote tank and a portable gas water pump that is supposed to pump up to 9000 gallons/hr. We have a 5ac lake I can pull water from to fill my tote tank, but the piles of brush are too far from the lake to draw straight from the lake to the brush piles with hose.

My thought are, after disking around the brush pile:

1) use the 100 gallon tank with the tractor if needed. This would be very mobile but will not have lots of volume. Would this be sufficient?

2) set the tote tank close to the brush pile (with pallet forks) and hook up the water pump (but not turn it on) and have it on standby in case the fire starts to get too big. Then, if needed, I can start the water pump and pull from the 250 gallon tote and put out a large volume of water in a short period of time. I only have a 25ft "blue" 2" hose. I don't have any type of fire nozzle, etc and I imagine I would go through the 250 gallons pretty fast. I have made an adapter that will allow me to hook up a standard garden hose to the 2" blue hose, but I am afraid of what such a large volume of water may do to any type of standard sprayer nozzle, not to mention if it will harm my pump because of reduced flow of water.

Please give me your opinions on what I should consider.

Hey, Trook I live in Northeast AR.not to far away.Since you have the tote and pump,find you a pickup truck trailer and mount the tote and the pump on the trailer,go to your local fire department and see what they do with there hose they put out of service,get you a 100' of 1" or 1 1/2" , a adapter for pipe to fire hose fitting,and a fire hose knozel and there you go. I figure you just need something to keep it from getting out of hand,that would do it. LUTT

 

[MBTRAC]

Controlling a pile burn or hazard reduction burn is all about the initial preparation,having water/resources avaiable for fire supression is only one aspect:
- Try to conduct pile burns on level ground as radiant heat will preheat material on the high side of any slope, making wildfire risk far greater & supression far more difficult; as a minimum containment/defensive lines/defensive must be on level ground or the low side of any slope.
- Clear around the proposed burn a containment/defensive perimeter line, sufficently distant from the proposed/potential major radiant heat sources to enable you to comfortably fight the fire (i.e.directly next to a large pile burn is going to hot for you to fight any fire, so you need to consider where you could reasonably expect to fight the fire from, similarly a containment line surrounded by 4' high dry grass, or brush etc.). The containment line should be min. 12' wide back to bare earth (easiest way to create is via a tandem disc plough)
- Fire supression water min.200gal should be readily mobile(i.e. tractor/towed trailer/truck), instantly accessible & provide pressurised water on demand (i.e. pump/tank set up running continously to provide a water source) - Minimum 5hp fire high pressure pump & 60' of 1" hose f/w adjustable fire nozzle + long handle shovel &/or McCleod fire hoe tool. And for larger higher risk burns place static water suppliers (e.g. 220gal pallecon/totes) around the site, the use of foaming agents like household detergent is also recommended as it will extend your water fire suppression capabilites x3 because of the smothering/cooling effect.
- Self Preservation/Welfare: wear long sleeves/pants or overalls,(all clothing must be of high fire retardant material- i.e. all cotton/denim/wool), leather riggers gloves, cotton cap/hat & for potential smoke/ember attack carry goggles & a thick cotton "face" mask (that can be watered down & wrapped around to cover your mouth/nose as a filter) on your person, together with at least one military style canteen of drinking water (also place additional drinking water sources around the site/equipment as dehydration is a major threat with any fire activity)
- When lighting pile burns, light from the sides/perimeter (rather than the middle) so the fire reaches it's maximum intensity after the sides have burnt in, thereby clearing a perimeter & on a harzard reduction on a hill/undulations burn from the highest point first to enable the fire to burn slower down the slope.

We seasonally conduct c.1000+acres of controlled hazard reduction burns & various pile burns across our farms to lessen the fuel loadings & bushfire threat - the hazard reductions may look pretty spectacular but it's all reasonably safe/low key & in the event of a major fire this preparation gives us containment lines to work to/from.....& over the years our our farms have become reasonably self sufficent in terms of our fire fighting resources/skills...the photo's are of our recent October controlled burn, & a couple of our 6x6 farm trucks fitted with c.2000gal tanks& pumps for the fire season)

 

[CompactTractorFan]

View attachment 288232

I built a "fire cart" out of a heavy duty lawn and garden cart, Fimco 15 GL spot sprayer with the 1 GPM pump replaced with the bigger 3.8GPM 12V electric pump. I plumbed it into a sprayer hose reel with 100' of 5/8 inch garden hose & nozzle. I mounted tools, portable pump can, etc. It can tow behind an ATV or lawn tractor, with the electric pump plugging into a pigtail ans switch on the lawn tractor.

Go out 10' or more and brush/mow out a wide fire break to burn out to secure your pile. Burn when the relative humidity is at least 40%, and secure the downwind side of the fire break first with a "black line".

Nice job! :thumbsup:

Is the pressure/volume you get from the sprayer comparable with that from a standard residential garden hose?

 

[aczlan]

Had some questions on our situation which is somewhat similar, but didn't want to fill this thread, so I started a new one in the projects forum: Medium brush fire water rig ideas and questions

Any thoughts over there would be appreciated.

Aaron Z

 

[59 Sons]

300 gal tank
5 hp Honda high pressure "fire pump"
100' 2" suply hose, 150' 1-1/2" discharge hose with ball valve and spray nozzle.

I can set the pump out on the ground and run the 2" suply from the tank to the pump, but mostly the pump stays on the tail of the pick-up and I use a 3' long suply hose to connect them. Then I will hook up 1 or 2 50' lengths of 1-1/2" discharge line,(set up with quick connects) fire up the pump and crack the nozzle valve. I recirculate the water by placing the cracked nozzle back into the tank lid.
I have used this to monitor all my burn piles, and to fight a wildland fire that started 5 miles away and ended up 30' in front of my house. The only thing I would change is the discharge line. Dragging 100' of 1-1/2" line full of water by yourself is rediculously heavy. You can lay down plenty of water with a 1" line. That was what the real fire fighters in my yard were using.
Originaly I had this setup on a trailer for fire piles, but I decided the dedicated old pick-up was easier to manuver for moving fires. Glad I switched.

 

[59 Sons]

My "Water Bufalo" doubles as a garden water suply. So in addition to the fire pump, I also have a 12volt submersible down in the tank on a 25' garden hose. Thats fine for filling up the gravity drip buckets, slowly, but I dont think it would be effective against fire, mabe there are other 12volt pumps that develop more pressure, mine would never achieve enough pressure to spray.

 

[scollins]

Nice job! :thumbsup:

Is the pressure/volume you get from the sprayer comparable with that from a standard residential garden hose?

For a little 12V electric sprayer pump, I was surprised. The nozzle put a small stream of water on the roof of the machine shed.
During the summer and late fall, the garden hose is replaced by 100' of 1/2" Ag spray hose with a deluxe spray wand and is used for spraying leafy spurge, canada thistle and other weeds in the pasture and woods.

This does not replace a "wildland fire truck", but fills a "gap" way back on narrow woods trails between stretching hose way back in the woods or hauling around a backpack pump everywhere.

For bigger stuff, I have an 80 gallon slip-on unit with a Briggs & Stratton 6:1 gear reduction engine hooked to a Series 7700 Hypro sprayer pump that puts out 10 GPM at 100 PSI at the end of the 150' 3/4 Ag sprayer hose on a reel. I use that to respond to wildfires. The "fire cart" is used when burning back yard leaves, brush piles off a trail, and for underburning off my trails (where a truck will not get in through the trees) under the "right" conditions.

 

[scollins]

View attachment 288503
300 gal tank
5 hp Honda high pressure "fire pump"
100' 2" suply hose, 150' 1-1/2" discharge hose with ball valve and spray nozzle.

I can set the pump out on the ground and run the 2" suply from the tank to the pump, but mostly the pump stays on the tail of the pick-up and I use a 3' long suply hose to connect them. Then I will hook up 1 or 2 50' lengths of 1-1/2" discharge line,(set up with quick connects) fire up the pump and crack the nozzle valve. I recirculate the water by placing the cracked nozzle back into the tank lid.
I have used this to monitor all my burn piles, and to fight a wildland fire that started 5 miles away and ended up 30' in front of my house. The only thing I would change is the discharge line. Dragging 100' of 1-1/2" line full of water by yourself is rediculously heavy. You can lay down plenty of water with a 1" line. That was what the real fire fighters in my yard were using.
Originaly I had this setup on a trailer for fire piles, but I decided the dedicated old pick-up was easier to manuver for moving fires. Glad I switched.

Beautiful classis Jeep pickup truck!

Excellent choice on the Honda WH20X pump. These things, for the money, really "kick ash". At an agency in Eastern Montana, where we covered an area over 2 million acres, we equipped all of our wildland engnes with the WH20X as both a refill and portable pump, where we had an irrigation ditch or Bighorn River to pump from.

Some "thoughts" of mine -

I could not make out the "model" of the truck, but from the 5-bolt pattern on the wheels, it must be a 1/2 ton pickup. If the tank is filled to the brim, that is 300 GL x 8.34#/GL = 2,502 pounds for the water, alone, on a truck designed to hold (1,000 pounds)? That could make the truck squirrely to steer, easy to tip, hard to stop on a hill, and real easy to "tip" or "roll". Some of the VFD's run 300 gallon tanks on their 3/4 tons, and that is really too much weight. My "rule of thumb" is 75-100 GL on a half-ton, 125-150 GL on a 3/4 ton, and 200-300 GL on a 1 ton truck.

In addition to how much weight you carry, the configuration of the tank also comes into play. You want your "center of gravity" fairly low to prevent a rollover when traversing hillsides.

Without any "baffles", say you had to make an "evasive maneuver" on a winding mountain road, or if your tire should happen to drop into a hole, a 1/2 tank full of water would be 1,251 pounds suddenly shifting from 1 side to the other in the back of your truck. The same thing could happen if you suddenly had to "slam on the brakes" - 1,251 pounds in the back would suddenly shift, in a rig designed to carry 1,000 pounds. That is why partially filling a big tank to stay within weight limits could cause you some safety issues?

I saw where there was just one strap holding down the tank. Are you comfortable wth this?

If you are staying on level ground and driving real slow with no terrain issues, or when just using the rig as a stationary setup, maybe this works O-K?

Maybe put a smaller tank on the truck for "pump and roll", with 100' of 1" fire or 3/4" rubber Ag hose, and drop the trailer nearby with the 300 gallons to refill from?
Keeping the 1-1/2 inch discharge line on the big trailer and 300GL tank in case the fire starts to involve a machine shed or barn, might be handy as "backup".

 

[59 Sons]

Many valid points raised! This is a J4000, which is a 3/4 ton, but you are right, I am pushing the limits. Tank is wedged in there with blocks, tight to the front. The strap only holds the tarp from blowing off, but I also have never taken the truck out of 4WD Low and 1st gear. I inherited the truck with the property, and since it is stripped, it has no significant value, and cant legaly go anywhere, thus I do abuse it. Next year I will probably switch to the 1 ton ford flatbed for the fire season. Much easier to operate, and more capable.