On April 12th, the Ohio Fire Chief's Association's Water Supply Technical Advisory Committee hosted our 8-hr LDH/Relay Pumping Seminar in Delaware, Ohio. The seminar was held at the Delaware Area Career Center and was taught by Mark Davis and Alan Butsch. The focus of the 8-hr program was to review the basics of LDH, drafting, and relay pumping in a classroom setting - followed by an afternoon of practical work pumping water using a 5-pumper relay operation. The career center worked out great for the practical activities because of its large available spaces and because of the large pond located at the fire training field.

In all, five pumpers and a hose reel truck were used to support the 3,550 ft relay pumping operation. The drill began by using just the source pumper, Scioto Twp Engine 372 (1,500 gpm) and the attack pumper, Ashley Community E312 (1,250 gpm) in the operation. The result was a flow around 700 gpm when the source pumper discharged water at 100 psi.

Next, Delaware Engine 302 (1500 gpm) was brought on-line at the 1900-ft mark. The crew had to break into the 5-inch line by separating a coupling after flow in the relay was stopped. When flow resumed, a total of just over 1,000 gpm was achieved while the source and relay pumpers both discharged at 150 psi.

From there, the BST&G Engine 351 (2,000 gpm) was added by using a TFT Oasis Valve and then the Mount Gilead Engine 15 (1,250 gpm) was added using a normal LDH 5-way manifold. The drill was well-attended by folks from all corners of Ohio - plus a few from West Virginia.

Many thanks to TFT, Firovac, and Fol-Da-Tank Company for providing funding to support the course.