Our forest fire precautions

[atgreene]

Wow, great thread.

As a fire fighter out East I seldom get to see the size fire you folks have to deal with.

A couple thoughts:

Pumps, go for pressure over volume when dealing with nozzles and sprinklers. You need reach and enough pressure to create a stream tight enough and hard enough to reach what you need to. A volume pump at 15 psi may not even be enough to take the kinks out of the hose.

O2 tank, better off getting a SCUBA tank with compressed air or use a compressor tank. Pure O2 under a cloth tarp would cause one heck of a fire when ignited. Be very careful.

Tanks, would a fold-a-tank work for what you need? Fill it during fire season or when needed? Cheap, lightweight and can be used by the FD easily. Portable Collapsible Fol-Da-Tank | Water Supplies | Dump Tanks |

Sprinklers are great, but they may cause the barricade or foam to be washed off. You may want to go with one or the other.

Hose fittings. Unless there is something different from here, FD's and Forest service usually use Iron pipe for forestry (1-1/2") and National standard for larger hose. Iron pipe is a much finer thread than National, I'd suggest checking with them and make all yours the same as theirs.

Good luck!

 

[RedDirt]

Wow, great thread.

1. Pumps, go for pressure over volume when dealing with nozzles and sprinklers.

2. O2 tank, better off getting a SCUBA tank with compressed air or use a compressor tank. Pure O2 under a cloth tarp would cause one heck of a fire when ignited. Be very careful.

3. Tanks, would a fold-a-tank work for what you need? Fill it during fire season or when needed?

4. Sprinklers are great, but they may cause the barricade or foam to be washed off. You may want to go with one or the other.

5. Hose fittings. Unless there is something different from here, FD's and Forest service usually use Iron pipe for forestry (1-1/2") and National standard for larger hose. Iron pipe is a much finer thread than National, I'd suggest checking with them and make all yours the same as theirs.

Good luck!

atgreene,

Thank you for your comments.

1. Good to know.

2. Yeah, I thought of that about the 02 after I posted. I have a couple scuba friends that only dive once or twice a year. Maybe one would let me store one of their tanks here.

3. I like the folding tanks but they are just as spendy (or more) as a permanent tank. I found one on ebay last week. At $650 for 3000 gal still too much for me right now.

4. I have metal roof and gutters on the house. I'll not Barricade the roof; that'd be a waste if I ran the roof sprinklers. But the eaves and walls should hold the barricade and the roof sprinklers shoot beyond the house perimeter to dampen the surrounds. At the shop I have metal roof but no gutter. Here I expect running the roof sprinklers will wash off the bottom foot or so barricade from the walls. I have a concrete apron in front and a gravel road abutting one side. I'll put a 3'-4' wide gravel path at the back and other side, keep it cleared of pine needles and oak leaves, and I think this will have to do for low wall protection. The low walls will be wet from the roof edge splash and the upper walls and eaves protected with the Barricade.

5. I sure thought USFS and local FD used NH threads even on 1 1/2" hose. I'll need to check, that's what I have. If they have IP I'll need to get a couple of adapters and wire them onto the hydrants. Good heads-up, Thanks.

RobertN,
I agree. Fire truck access is right at the top of the list of preparedness. A fire truck could bump the full length of three sides of my four buildings. I have a circle drive with the house in the center and the out buildings on the outside radius and two entry gates to the property that connect to the circle drive. There are at least two places turn around.

If nothing else I would think the top 3 priorities for fire preparedness would be:
Evacuation/Egress Plan
Defensible Space
Fire Truck Access

I put defensible space before truck access because there is no reason a homeowner can't improve this where as a major driveway project may be out of reach for some, at least immediately.

 

[charliepff]

Most automatic nozzles have operating pressures of 75 to 100 psi. This is to make the nozzle work to it's full capability. It should tell you on the nozzle what pressure is required. Now your hose hase resistance in it. Which will cause a pressure loss. IF there are no pressure gauges. Try to find a cheap inline one and tie it in at the nozzle and find where you need the throttle to be for the proper pressure at the nozzle. That is the simplest way to do it with out getting into friction loss calculations.

 

[RedDirt]

Most automatic nozzles have operating pressures of 75 to 100 psi. This is to make the nozzle work to it's full capability. It should tell you on the nozzle what pressure is required. Now your hose hase resistance in it. Which will cause a pressure loss. IF there are no pressure gauges. Try to find a cheap inline one and tie it in at the nozzle and find where you need the throttle to be for the proper pressure at the nozzle. That is the simplest way to do it with out getting into friction loss calculations.

Right now I am running on a small town domestic supply.

In my post of 6/28 above I hooked up a pressure gauge to a 3/4 garden hose bib close to my meter and had 70psi static pressure. When I turned on my forestry nozzle running through 1" dia meter restriction, 150ft 1 1/2" pvc, 1 1/2" galv hydrant stand pipe and 100ft cotton jacket the pressure dropped to 55PSI at the garden hose bib. At this pressure I was putting out almost 30gpm as measured by the domestic meter (1cuft/16sec).

Three questions to you firemen:
1. Does the above test mean I had 55PSI at the fire nozzle?
2. Does this seem like a decent volume and pressure for fire protection? By fire protection I mean wetting down buildings and grounds in a reasonable length of time and having the ability to put out a small fire or keep a larger fire at bay until reinforcements arrive. It "seems" like it is; a whole lot more than a garden hose output, but you guys are the experts.
3. Can I, should I, run a small pump, say 30gpm @ 55psi, between the standpipe and fire hose to boost my pressure?

 

[atgreene]

I'll do this again. I typed out a long respose and it was lost, so here's a repeat.

A couple things to remember:

Residual pressure is what you have for pressure when you are flowing water at the rate desired.
Static pressure is what the pressure is when no water is flowing.
Residual pressure is what matters.

40 gpm has a friction loss of 4 psi in 100' of 1-1/2" hose. If you need 50 psi at the nozzle, then to get 40 gpm you need 54 psi +-. (40 gpm is as low as my chart goes and I'm too tired to do the math for lower flows).

Sorry, fire call , be back soon

 

[atgreene]

Back, sorry, had a box alarm.

What do you have for a nozzle? Charliepff is correct as to nozzle pressure. Every nozzle is different, automatics are 100 psi at the nozzle, while staright bore are 80 and forestry nozzles are usually 50 or so. I assume you probably have a red forestry nozzle that twists on? If so, 40 to 50 psi at the nozzle is adequate.

In answer to your question, it is NOT adequate to fight a wall of fire or enter a burning building, but for general brush/wetting down it is ok. The more pressure you can put to it the further the stream of water will reach. In that way it is different than an automatic nozzle.

As for a pump, it wouldn't hurt, but be careful not to cavitate (pull too much water from the street valve) as it will make an ineffective stream from the nozzle and cause you to loose presure.

If the local FD knows they can tap into your 1 1/2" line to fill their trucks as they protect your property they are much more likely to choose your house over someone with a garden hose.

I hope this was helpfull, good luck

 

[charliepff]

atgreen;

Thank you for chiming in. I just finished two 12 hour days. Apparently the week is going to be busy here. I forgot to mention forsestry nozzle pressures. It sounds like there is sufficient pressure at his nozzle. A good way to tell is to look at the stream. If it is a nice clean stream with good reach it is sufficient pressure. If it is week or broken up it is not the right pressure. This is definately a good thread.

 

[RedDirt]

Thank you both.
My nozzle is a forestry type, twist to adjust full stream to wide fan. It is pictured in the hydrant standpipe response to hotwheels above. My horizontal full stream reach is in the 65-75 ft range and the vertical stream is 25-30ft, maybe 35ft, so I can get up pretty high into some nearby trees. I may get another of these nozzles, they are only a few bucks on ebay and even quite reasonable new.

I'll let the local FD know I have the 1.5" hydrant standpipe available at my house but there is a 2.5" hydrant at my property corner 150ft from the house. We also have a couple acre water district reservoir a few hundred yards down the road past my house so there is a good water supply close in the neighborhood.

 

[Hotwheels]

RedDirt,
I hope you have not had to implement your fire precautions?
JR

 

[RedDirt]

Hotwheels,
Not yet, thanks for asking. Pretty bad around here but at least the wind has stayed down. The air quality has been terrible for weeks but I favor that over fanning the flames. I think we've seen blue sky twice in the past three-four weeks.

We have a group of seven fires nearby, these are named the Canyon Complex fires. The closest is 3500 acres, six miles upwind, and we are watching that closely. It has jumped to the south side of the Middle Fork of the Feather River. We are a mile south of the South Fork so it would need to get up to the ridge, drop into the South Fork then get up to our ridge. Forecast is for light winds into next week so we are fairly safe...for now.

Just above that complex a few miles is the Concow fire now at about 40,000 acres I think and has been burning for about three weeks

Found a good website for monitoring the fires. Updated maps, sit reps, etc. It is a national map allowing pan and zoom right to your driveway. GeoMAC (Geospatial Multi-Agency Coordination) - Wildfire Support

Have you found the pump you were looking for? I just got a Agri-Supply catalog today that has some low volume, medium pressure pumps that might work for your ATV rig. These are in the 25-50 psi range 1 to 5 gpm. 12vdc, 5 to 14amps. They are built by Flojet and made for use with portable spray rigs with auto shut-offs. A 2gpm, 50psi 8amp pump is offered at $60.