pumping a whole lot of water

[RobertN]

I got to play with a 2" solid fire stream today. It was simply amazing! I am working on my Class-B Fire Fighter drivers license. We have to not only be able to drive, but also run all the pump operations. So today we practiced...

With a 2" solid bore tip, and a deck mounted monitor, we pumped ~1100gpm. That's at 80psi, at the nozzle(105psi at the panel, 25psi friction loss through the plumbing...), pumping off a hydrant supplied through LDH.

It was really amazing to see the reach and power the stream had. It was also amazing how much water was used. We were running for a few minutes, over pump ops, valve ops, ect. In 5 minutes, we could have filled most small swimming pools!

 

[njrqs]

Robert

The amount of water I can get out of my little petrol firefighter pump amazes me.

However, now playing around with a real one would be a blast !!!

Just don't drop the hose. I reckon it would break your legs with way they fly around on the ground !!

Cheers

 

[Thomas]

Its amazing the force of water more so under great pressure.

I tip my hat to the fire fighters etc.. for they do put there life on the line at any given time.

Those fire fighter that jump out of a plane and land in a forest fire and fight the fire to the end,those men and woman are a breed all by themselves.

 

[Robert_in_NY]

When we were digging our pond the water kept filling in to quickly and filled it up which makes it harder to dig out so we rented a 6" pump. It was a nice one with the electric start diesel, we flooded out my neighbors orchard and then some with that thing. I have no idea how many gpm's it was pushing but it drained our pond in a couple hours while it was still feeding from all the springs here. At the time it was close to 300,000 gallons in the hole. Funny part was my neighbor was complaining his pond was going dry since we cut waterflow till ours filled up, he wasn't complaining any more after that.

 

[rdln]

I bought a 2" 5 hp pump on sale at qf&f about 3 years ago to water the newly seeded area around my pond. I made a nozzle by drilling 3/16 inch holes in a 2" PVC endcap on a 2 foot piece of PVC and hose clamped it to 150' of hose. I drilled the outside holes on a slight angle to spread the pattern. I was amazed at the distance the water would travel I am sure your pumper is 10x as powerful.

 

[RobertN]

It was way cool! We had some neighbors coming out to watch the show even. We only ran for a few minutes, since it is a huge use of precious water. On a large fire, where a stream like this is used in addition to hand streams, so much water is used that people complain to the water district about really low watyer pressure. In training, we stick to one stream, so we have minimal affects on the water supply.

In this case, the monitor is hard mounted on top of the truck. It is amazing to see the water go a couple hundred feet, still maintaining it's shape as a solid stream. The hard part was, I had to get the guy that was training me to move aside, so I could try too; it's one of his favorites to play with too/w3tcompact/icons/grin.gif

We train to retrieve a loose hose. We use an old hose with the brass removed from the end. As you note, it can be dangerous. With a nozzle on the end, there's enough weight flailing around that it can kill a person.

 

[RobertN]

Wowsers! Looking at the Northern catalog, thier 4" , 11hp pump gets 36,480gph. I can just imagine what a 6" pump with a beefier motor could get! Exstrapolating(sp) from the numbers for pumps shown in the catalog, a 6" pump could easliy be around 65,000gph.

 

[Robert_in_NY]

Lets just say I didn't try and hold on to the hose when it was running. The 6" line was flipping back and forth and it drained our pond in a matter of hours. It was probally close to 70 or 80k gph. I wish I had a reason to drain our pond again so that I can bring it back in. Later