Shovel out your fire hydrant

If you live in an area serviced by fire hydrants, take a few minutes and shovel out the snow around the nearest one. The time it takes you could save a house or a life. Maybe yours or a family member. I hope it never needs to be used.

^^ good tip.

We always clean off nearby elderly neighbor steps, around the fire hydrant and make a 3' wide path for the postal dude...on my block they still walk.

Great reminder. Thank you...

At our desert house, we just shovel the sand from it. The other places, someone else does that.

Here in the UK fire hydrants are located below ground in small pits with a cover.
This can slightly delay obtaining water in case of fire, but does have the merit that the hydrant cant freeze nor be damaged by vehicle impact as regularly happens in the USA. Nor are our hydrants liable to interference by youths.

The underground hydrant is much less obvious than the USA ones, and the location is indicated by a sign on the nearest building, post, tree etc. The sign contains two figures, one indicates the horizontal distance in meters between hydrant and sign. The other figure is the diameter of the supplying water main.
Standard fire hydrants connected to the water mains are marked with a yellow and black sign. Other color signs in a similar style denote hydrants connected to other water sources.

Firefighters are expected to know the location of hydrants in their area, the signs are to guide fire fighters working away from their usual area.

I see our fine fire folks come by occasionally and drive through my neighborhood. Sometimes they even test out the hydrants. They will stop and talk to the kids and even let the little ones on the truck. As a tax payer, I find this awesome. They will sometimes paint the hydrants a bright yellow and green color. It's strange, some hydrants look like they haven't been painted since Picaso was alive. Others look new?
We have a blue reflector in the road indicating where the hydrant is. Another neat thing I see, is whenever they get a new team or crew, they come by and do a walk through my place of work. They like to know the building lay out. It is kinda cool to see 3 big fire rigs show up and they all come walking in. Our local guys seem real serious and dedicated. Hopefully, we never need them! I can tell you this, our local guys don't get paid enough for the danger they can face.

RedLED said:

At our desert house, we just shovel the sand from it. The other places, someone else does that.

Click to expand...

This time of year, I weed-eat the grass from around ours. It makes it easier to find and reduces the firefighters chances of tripping on an unseen obstical or hole.

~ Chance

No hydrants where I live. They have a tanker truck that they refill from local farm ponds. They set up what looks like an above ground swimming pool and pump out of that.

GaryM said:

No hydrants where I live. They have a tanker truck that they refill from local farm ponds. They set up what looks like an above ground swimming pool and pump out of that.

Click to expand...

That is the practice in more remote parts of the UK that have no piped water supply, or only a very limited supply. The fire engine carries typically a few thousand litres of water. If more is needed then a tanker is used. We have two main types of water tanker, one is a standard road tanker as used for say beer or milk, but painted red. The other type more resembles a standard fire engine and carries a ladder, a pump, hose and other equipment, but has a much larger water tank than a regular fire engine.

UK fire brigades also have available "hose laying trucks" these carry a mile or so of fire hose that can be paid out from the moving vehicle.

Contrary to popular culture via Hollywood, when a car drives over a fire hydrant and breaks it off, water does not spray in the air like they show on tv.
They have break-away devices that allow it to be broken off near ground level without the water spraying in the air like that.

The knob on the top operates a plunger type device at the base of the unit that is typically about 3' below ground.

Sometimes you'll see paint colors at the top that isn't the same as one say... a couple blocks away etc. That is a color coded flow rate that shows the firemen how much draw the pump truck can place on a hydrant. See if it's a low flow system the pumper has to suck water out to keep hoses pressurized. But too much suction can collapse certain pipes or suck gaskets out of the joints. Very bad, and very expensive to fix later.

I'm not a fireman, nor play one on tv. I'm a consultant roadway inspector and that involves all aspects of infrastructure construction or upkeep. Fire hydrants are one of my favorite items.

Once I rejected some about to be installed. The "brand" was not on an approved list of allowable due to a weak brass fitting in the break away part. This lead to the part breaking while fire fighters were hurredly cranking this brand open during fire calls. It was a contraversial call on my part. Meetings ensued. A batch of folks from the company, engineers, repair folks and firemen attended one. An engineer says "a fire hydrant is a fire hydrant, who cares?".... A fireman retorted "say that when your house is on fire and that coupling breaks so I can't get water to put the fire in your house."
A few weeks later the manufacturer redesigned the coupling and by late that year those fire hydrants were placed back on the list of approved fire hydrants in that city.

Mr bykfixer,
Thanks for the info, and may I add.. good call!

Chauncey Gardiner said:

This time of year, I weed-eat the grass from around ours. It makes it easier to find and reduces the firefighters chances of tripping on an unseen obstical or hole.

~ Chance

Click to expand...

Ditto

Beamhead said:

Ditto

Click to expand...

Hey Beam! You and I, we're great Americans! :laughing: Truely L@@King out for the folks.

~ Chance