Firefighting stuff.

[245dlc]

As some of you know I'm a Volunteer FireFighter here in Canada which means I'm only paid on call and when I'm at home or in town and my pager rings I run either to the Fire Hall or direct to the fire scene in my own vehicle. Anyway I came upon this interesting gadget that allows a Fire Department (very important to rural fire departments like mine) to draft water without using a rigid suction pipe so basically the responding pumper doesn't have to get real close to a stream, lake, pond or whatever and risk getting stuck on a soft river bank. Typically what we do with our Fire Department and many of the rural ones around here is we use a very large and powerful 20hp V-twin Honda petrol powered pump with a 4" suction and two 2 1/2" discharges and we can use it to either relay pump to a pumper or load tanker trucks like what we did during that big bush fire we were fighting last October. However this device the Turbodraft Fire Fighting Eductor uses a 2 1/2" to create a venturi that pushes water into a 4" supply hose that can supply a pumper up to 1000 gallons a minute! This of course depends on the capacity of the pumper, friction losses etc.
However for a Fire Department like mine where we don't have any proper fire hydrants other than a well connection in our fire hall this could save our hides during a big fire event. I also e-mailed the Fire Chief about this device so I'll see what he says about that next time I see him, we have a very small budget but we have been talking about having a few fundraisers this summer to raise money for badly needed new equipment.

http://www.turbodraft.net/index.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyQvUHJFaj4

[Muz]

I was certainly wondering how they can draw as much water from a dirt bottom pond .. so the simple answer is a buoy .. or a booyee as you would say ... hec I havent transgressed and got that wrong with the 'other' side have I ?

[245dlc]

I'm a little surprised that Wee Jim didn't have anything to say about this invention as he's in the Fire Service, must be too busy. Yeah when we have to draft from a pond we usually have a floating strainer or even a boooey or buoy to keep the strainer from sitting on the bottom and to prevent the suction from drawing a vortex which would allow air into the suction hose.