A bunch of things affect the design shape of a liquid carrying tank. Perhaps the most important consideration is vehicle stability while making a turn. Ideally, for the best stability the loaded vehicle's center of gravity should be as close to the ground as possible. An elliptical style tank has a cross-sectional area similar to a rectangle, which when compared to a square of the same cross-sectional ... (Full Story & Photos)

Last week we installed another one of our bridge-mount dry fire hydrants in New York State, this time in the North Country in the Town of Champlain near the Canadian border. The installation used our angle-mount design and an ETT suction head and stream strainer. New to this design was the use of our "Vermont" high-hat clamping bracket mechanism that allows us to install the system on rail posts ... (Full Story & Photos)

Following up on last week's News Story, here is a "Keystone" style valve on a front mount pumper. As we noted last week, the butterfly valve was once very popular in the rural American fire service and slowly got replaced by more "fire-service" designed valves. The use of a suction inlet control is still very important today regardless of type and location (internal/external). In the photos shown ... (Full Story & Photos)

What was once a mainstay in the "rural FD" community is rarely seen these days...but does still exist. The "Keystone" valve...as many old-timers might call it...is simply an external suction inlet control, butterfly-style valve. The "Keystone" terminology came from the brand of valve...similar to the notion of calling all facial tissues a Kleenex. In most instances the butterfly valve worked quite ... (Full Story & Photos)

There are a number of variables effecting the usable flow from a jet siphon-style water transfer device. Much like the collaborative work that we did on suction strainer testing in 2017, our 2012 project on jet siphon flow testing showed wide variances in the flow produced by the devices. We were never able to quantify the various water motives needed to make the test devices perform at optimum flow. ... (Full Story & Photos)

Nothing fancy here...just some ideas on how to store a Holley Transfer Pipe on your rigs. Anything that can be done to get a water transfer system set-up as fast as possible is going to have a positive impact on water supply operations. We really like the pre-connected hose carried on Tanker 2. That device got deployed and placed in operation really fast during our 2-hour drill in Riverton that ... (Full Story & Photos)

Another simple but important message. When setting up a dump tank operation to flow in excess of 1000 gpm folks need to plan to build out the arrangement to accommodate several tankers dumping at the same time. While effective water transfer operations are probably the more critical item to "keep an eye on," the person in-charge of the dump site needs to also ensure that dumping operations are not ... (Full Story & Photos)

On June 2nd, around 50 folks from Riverton and the surrounding Litchfield County, Connecticut area participated in a 2-hour rural water supply drill. The drill culminated our 16-hr Rural Water Supply Operations Seminar that was sponsored by the Winsted Area Chiefs and hosted by the Riverton VFD. All of Saturday day and Sunday morning were spent reviewing the best practices of hauling water with tankers. ... (Full Story & Photos)