Clear your defensible space

[GlueGuy]

Storage tanks are installed all the time. It's above ground, but our winters are pretty mild. Worst it's ever been is 21F. for about a week. Any house remodel above a certain size gets the fire district to evaluate you for fire safety.

Some of our neighbors have the pump/genset setup, most do not. Kind of depends on who inspected, etc. That's the frustrating part.

For us the fire requirement was 4,500 gallons, and the domestic requirement was 1,000 gallons. However, anything above 5,000 gallons requires an engineered foundation for earthquake safety. (notice that our requirement was 5,500 gallons)

We got around the engineered foundation requirement by installing two 5,000 gallon tanks (actually, they're 5,500 gallon tanks that are labeled 5,000 gallons; tank companies know the drill). We kinda like this setup, as there is a bit of redundancy with this.

We get both domestic water + fire fighting water from the same tank. Domestic water is drawn from the top 1500 gallons, below that is all fire fighting water (8,500 gallons).

There is so little water around here, and it is so hard to get to, that it makes sense to some degree. A lot of the neighbors get somewhat peeved at the planning dept. being somewhat gestapo-like in their approach.

The GlueGuy

 

[StoneHeartFarm]

Its a whole different world. We used to have cisterns here, (which I am using as a reference to help myself understand what your system is like), but they went into disfavor years ago. I can understand the water being hard to get at, and a large storage system would be the ideal way to handle the situation. What is the pumping capacity of your well?

We couldn't get away with above ground water storage tanks here. -30 for a week or so in January, and I've seen -50 (Now THAT's really cool! /w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif). I'd have a big icecube in my back yard. I've read about using storage tanks and low flow wells with pumps that run almost all the time. Just never knew anybody who had a situation that could use it. Is that what you've got?

SHF

 

[GlueGuy]

Exactly. Our well puts out about 5 or 6 gallons per minute (450' deep). We pump from there into the storage tanks. We draw domestic water 15" from the top to a pressure system that uses another 80 gallon tank (and another pump).

The fire hydrant is fed from the bottom of the storage tanks (5" line), the hydrant is a 2.5" fitting.

The GlueGuy

 

[StoneHeartFarm]

Okay, its starting to come clear now. I've read about these systems. I've just never talked with anyone that lived where you could actually USE one. Like I said, its a whole different world. Most anywhere here, you can dig a hole 30' deep and have water bubbling up in the bottom. Not drinking water, but plenty good for throwing on a fire. The secondary pressure pump I remember too. Otherwise you need to have the tank a good height above the house in order to provide adequate pressure.

Does your pump then run most/all of the time?

SHF

 

[GlueGuy]

The well pump only runs about once every two or three weeks (takes that amount of time for the two of us to use 1500 gallons). The pressure pump runs for a couple minutes every time we use another 25 gallons or so.

If we hadn't built the house at the top of the mountain, we could have gotten by without the pressure system. As it is, it has about 10' head to run household stuff. Enough to fill a glass of water or toilet (or a s_l_o_w fill of the bathtub), but not enough to take a shower.

My Dad/brother live in Minnesota. They have the easy access to the water table and the cold weather you get too. /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

The one thing that we get easy is perk. Almost never any kind of standing water around our house. Ground perks like a son-of-a-gun.

The GlueGuy

 

[StoneHeartFarm]

The ground perks good, but I'd hate to be the guy at the bottom of that mountain /w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif /w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif.

SHF

 

[GlueGuy]

Tell me about it /w3tcompact/icons/crazy.gif. The guy that lives near the bottom (about a mile s/e of us, and about 1000' below) had a slide year before last near his water tanks. About an acre of his property took a 500' "trip" down, and plugged up the creek for a week or so. Continuing rain washed that out. However, some of the big, old douglas fir trees (2'-3' diameter) were quite impressive in their repose....

The GlueGuy

 

[StoneHeartFarm]

Its enough to make you wonder if those stories about the whole state sliding into the ocean are true /w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif. Sorry, that would drive me nuts worring that the house would slide down the mountain while I slept. Of course, with a big enough tractor, you could pull it back up. /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif

SHF

 

[RobertN]

Rat, Aint nothing like that ditch water over here. My property is d-r-y dry. CDF says 30' minimum, but they are advising 100', which I think is better.

We just had a bunch of tankers running last nite; somebody had something escape on thier property, buring about 75 or 80 acres. They had a big tanker "64" come out of Chico. I was stuck at the station; we ran out of apparatus to get to the fire....

I saw a thing a few years back about a plane like you describe. This one has been around since the 50's, running in Canada I think. They had four at one time, but the big four-prop thing was too expensive to keep up. I think they are still running the one. It does a low, slow pass over the water, and opens a intake. They skim the water up, and go dump. It was really impressive.

One of our Captians fathers said he had not seen this bad a start to a season in his time, going back to the 60's.

RobertN in Shingle Springs Calif

 

[GlueGuy]

Beats the heck out of worrying aboout tornados. I've done both, and I think that picking the right spot (like ours is on rock), and proper earthquake safety is a lot easier to do than the annual tornado dance. To each his own I guess. /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif


Oh, do I need a bigger tractor? /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif

The GlueGuy

 

[MarkV]

Robert,
A couple of years ago, I spent a few days in Barcelona, Spain while my wife was on a layover. (she is a flight attendant) Barcelona is a harbor city with a ring of mountains around it that were burning. There were 5 or 6 of these large tanker planes skimming the bay for water day an night the whole time we were there. I was told it was a major fire. Sure was impressive to watch those planes. I would seem that that has to be some tricky flighing given that they are inches off the water and taking on a lot of weight.

MarkV

 

[StoneHeartFarm]

GlueGuy,

The wife worries about tornados. I don't. They're pretty rare here and never very big, not like the plains states. I worry more about lightning strikes (Michigan is #2 in lightning related deaths) and the roof collapsing from the snow load every winter. (So what did I do, built in the middle of a field on top of a hill /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif). Blasted big lakes increase both the snow and the lightning. /w3tcompact/icons/crazy.gif Actually, living on top of the mountain could have some advantages, especially if you get mad at the neighbors down below. I'm talkin big potato shooter here. /w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif

SHF

 

[RPM]

Of course, you guys have all heard the mystery story about the man found dead in a forest, miles from the sea, with scuba gear on? The question is - how did he get there ...

 

[RPM]

Re: the flying part of taking on water. There's a couple of pilots who can talk to it in more detail, but I believe that the process is simplified by the ground effect - the air just above the ground is denser and provides more lift.

The Soviets used to do a line in very large military planes that would take advantage of this for transporting heavy military equipment long distances - aka the Ekranoplan. This type of plane is known as a WIG in the west - Wing In Ground effect if I remember rightly.

More trivia from RPM ...

 

[JATO_RaT]

Since these planes use the water to land on, they are pretty hydro dynamic. Its interesting to see the force of aerial equipment they have out here in the West to knock down fires. On any given major fire, the freeway will shutdown if smoke gets bad and entire caravans of dozers from D9's to D4's from CDF (CA. Division of Forestry) make there way to the fire. When its really bad even the local folks with heavy equipment get called in. I assume that since the Eastern portion of the US gets intermittant rainfall throughtout the year its less of a problem. Just in case any of you folks from back on the right coast did not know, out here in the West, the rain shuts off about in May and won't be back until October or November. From June throught October its all irrigation.
The fires are typically in the mountains up in the Sierra Nevadas or the foothills leading up to the mountains (where RobertN and I live) Rat...