Home fire fighting

JimS

Member
I now this is not for amateurs, but I have some experience at this and fought the Nuns fire here in Sonoma county. I want to ask if anyone had experience with the various home/wildland fire systems available. I found the systems I have linked below of interest. Comments appreciated.

http://www.homefirefightingsystems.com/
Home fire
 
Not sure about that one in particular. But if in an area prone to wildfires I have seen in real life how using foam on a structure ie your house can have a very good chance of saving it from the fire. They move so fast that basically the house is passed by. I can see that pump being of some help if you have a close enough water supply and get to it in time. That is usually not going to be the case in a fire though.
 
I think if you can catch a fire when it's just getting started certainly you can do it yourself. I've put out a few with just the front loader on a tractor. Once it really gets going the only thing to do is get away from it and let the professionals at it. What worries me is some of my neighbors will burn trash or debris when the wind is blowing 30-40 miles an hour.
 
Jim,
If your handy you can build your own and save a lot of money. This is what I have done, I put a davey pump on a 2 wheel dolly and have 200 foot of hose with a nozzle and several fittings. You need to do several things to make it effective. Fire mitigation is the best, it is on going and never ends. You also need a water source, we have a 4000 gallon stand alone cistern with a dry hydrant. County code requires the cistern and the fire mitigation for a new structure in the county we live in (Boulder County, CO). We built new in 1994, what a pain that was, took us 9 months to get a building permit. I practice with mine every spring and make sure the engine and pump are working, you know how gas with ethanol and small engines are. These pumps are designed to put out a small fire or pre soak a structure,(sprinklers, wild fire pre treatment kit). They are not designed to put out a raging wildfire. The foam/gel systems are great, but some of foam/gel have a shelf life. I have a injection system that I use regular dish washing soap. Soap and water will go 3 times farther than water alone. The best thing to do is set it all up and get out of there, let the fire dept use your equipment. There is a lot of info out there, get or make the best system that fits your needs.
 
Lot's of years on a rural fire dept, and every time we came to a fire the farmer, and maybe a couple of neighbors are trying throw pails of water, or squirt from a garden hose. Sad to be in a house and see them filling pots in the kitchen sink because they can't get water! They've their own well! Our house on the farm I ran a dedicated 1" copper line from the pressure tank to ea floor into a closet. Ea floor has a gate valve and 25 ft of surplus canvas fire hose. Very simple, but if lightning strikes, wood stove goes nuts, Christmas tree explodes, you can deal with it. An old auction 500 gal poly water tank sits on an old hay rack with a pump. I can use it to fill pasture stock tanks, water trees or squirt on a grass fire until help arrives......... High pressure water on a grass fire just blows it all over and starts new areas.......... My thoughts. Simple/cheap and effective
 
I am a 54 year firefighter,pump and engine operator. Our protocol is for the first crew members take a water can extinguisher along with forcible entry tools when first entering a structure fire unless it is very involved--it is amazing how many fires we can knock down and get under control with just the pressurized water can
 

I have knocked down a few fires with my 2.5 gal water with foam and I still have it in service. While wild land fires are rarely a threat here in NH, I attended a few demonstrations of foam when it first came out. Anyone contemplating a system like this should have foam.
 
(quoted from post at 08:35:21 03/17/18) Lot's of years on a rural fire dept, and every time we came to a fire the farmer, and maybe a couple of neighbors are trying throw pails of water, or squirt from a garden hose. Sad to be in a house and see them filling pots in the kitchen sink because they can't get water! They've their own well! Our house on the farm I ran a dedicated 1" copper line from the pressure tank to ea floor into a closet. Ea floor has a gate valve and 25 ft of surplus canvas fire hose. Very simple, but if lightning strikes, wood stove goes nuts, Christmas tree explodes, you can deal with it. An old auction 500 gal poly water tank sits on an old hay rack with a pump. I can use it to fill pasture stock tanks, water trees or squirt on a grass fire until help arrives......... High pressure water on a grass fire just blows it all over and starts new areas.......... My thoughts. Simple/cheap and effective[/quot


I was thinking of something like that . Installing a frost hydrant between the submersible pumped well and the pressure tank in the house .
Some of my house interior has domestic sprinklers . I still have to finish installing a sprinkler in the kitchen, laundry room and garage .
 
As railroad engineer I was involved in an accident created by 4 kids wanting to see a train wreck. Short story: Track being repaired, kids put 4' chunks of rail across tracks that penetrated fuel tanks on both locomotives (3000 gal fuel on each). 2nd engine had flame 8' above it. Local small town fire dept did not have foam, but chief got 2 cases of liquid dish soap from VFW, dumped into porta tank. Fire was out in 5 minutes. Hours before any hazmat crews arrived.
 
(quoted from post at 20:15:15 03/17/18) As railroad engineer I was involved in an accident created by 4 kids wanting to see a train wreck. Short story: Track being repaired, kids put 4' chunks of rail across tracks that penetrated fuel tanks on both locomotives (3000 gal fuel on each). 2nd engine had flame 8' above it. Local small town fire dept did not have foam, but chief got 2 cases of liquid dish soap from VFW, dumped into porta tank. Fire was out in 5 minutes. Hours before any hazmat crews arrived.

What is VFW ? https://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/VFW
 
VFW is normally "Veterans of Foreign Wars" a local eating and mainly drinking establishment that washes a few dishes.
 
(quoted from post at 17:15:15 03/17/18) As railroad engineer I was involved in an accident created by 4 kids wanting to see a train wreck. Short story: Track being repaired, kids put 4' chunks of rail across tracks that penetrated fuel tanks on both locomotives (3000 gal fuel on each). 2nd engine had flame 8' above it. Local small town fire dept did not have foam, but chief got 2 cases of liquid dish soap from VFW, dumped into porta tank. Fire was out in 5 minutes. Hours before any hazmat crews arrived.

Soon after our fire dept. got set up with foam we had a tractor fire in the yard of a house. six feet from the house. We got the fire out quickly, but it reignited because gas was running out of the burned fuel line. I pulled the foam line and set it up, and with just a few seconds of foam it was out and stayed out.
 
I have a structure in the NM mountains with heavy pine and fir all around me. It would be a big job to cut back 100' clearance around the home, and I really don't want to do that either. I spoke with our local fire dept chief and of course, he said mitigation first is far better than fighting the fire once going. But - his suggestion which I took up was to get a very old pumper and tank from a decommissioned fire station, make sure the hoses and pump are good and have it parked and ready to use.

His rationale, which makes perfect sense to me is that much of the equip from the 70s and 80s is hardly used, and with some careful maint and new hoses can still be very effective.

Last fall I bought a 1989 Hush pumper with 750 gal and two discharge ports which can deliver 1000GPM. I had to fix the brakes, and some other small jobs but now it sits behind my house, ready to work. It took me two weeks to learn all the stuff, how to pump, how to spray, and lots of time testing things.

The only downside to this is that if the smoke is too heavy for people to breath, it's also too heavy for the engine to run. Same with the small home pumper systems. I figure if I don't use it, someone from the fire station will get it running and make use of it. I can't keep the tank filled in winter as it will freeze and destroy the pump and maybe the tank. I'm going up there in early April and fill it up, and check everything out again.

It has the good old Detroit diesel and Allison auto trans, bulletproof to run, but takes a lot of gas.

I paid $7000 for it, and drove it from central NE to middle of NM.
 

We live in an a essentially unprotected district in northern NY. Structure and grass fires are our concern. For most 0o the year I keep a 300 gal cube in a field truck with a simple gasoline powered pump in it with reducers on the 100 of ft hose I have to a garden hose size. Not perfect by any means, but it works better than spitting on the fire. I also have an old portable fire dept pump rated for 250gpm I'm working on. (A Rupp-Gorman IIRC for those wondering) What I'd really like to do is what docmirror suggests and get an older fire pumper with tank. In my state if you have a private fire truck you'd likely be sued into oblivion by local fire companies and anyone else that thought they could make a dime if you claimed you had a "fire truck" for local use without it being part of the local fire service. But! If you had "former" fire truck for washing manure off floors or maybe some sort of crude irrigation, you might be okay. Pretty darn sad when you have to think about liability for protecting your own property or your neighbors.
 
(quoted from post at 07:40:29 03/18/18) I have a structure in the NM mountains with heavy pine and fir all around me. It would be a big job to cut back 100' clearance around the home, and I really don't want to do that either. I spoke with our local fire dept chief and of course, he said mitigation first is far better than fighting the fire once going. But - his suggestion which I took up was to get a very old pumper and tank from a decommissioned fire station, make sure the hoses and pump are good and have it parked and ready to use.

His rationale, which makes perfect sense to me is that much of the equip from the 70s and 80s is hardly used, and with some careful maint and new hoses can still be very effective.

Last fall I bought a 1989 Hush pumper with 750 gal and two discharge ports which can deliver 1000GPM. I had to fix the brakes, and some other small jobs but now it sits behind my house, ready to work. It took me two weeks to learn all the stuff, how to pump, how to spray, and lots of time testing things.

The only downside to this is that if the smoke is too heavy for people to breath, it's also too heavy for the engine to run. Same with the small home pumper systems. I figure if I don't use it, someone from the fire station will get it running and make use of it. I can't keep the tank filled in winter as it will freeze and destroy the pump and maybe the tank. I'm going up there in early April and fill it up, and check everything out again.

It has the good old Detroit diesel and Allison auto trans, bulletproof to run, but takes a lot of gas.

I paid $7000 for it, and drove it from central NE to middle of NM.

Doc, don't worry about the truck, it will still be running when you are unconscious. Put a straight stream nozzle on your attack line for maximum reach, and once a year pull the hose off and repack it with folds in different places so that the inner liner doesn't crack and stop the flow of water.
 
(quoted from post at 12:00:02 03/18/18)
We live in an a essentially unprotected district in northern NY. Structure and grass fires are our concern. For most 0o the year I keep a 300 gal cube in a field truck with a simple gasoline powered pump in it with reducers on the 100 of ft hose I have to a garden hose size. Not perfect by any means, but it works better than spitting on the fire. I also have an old portable fire dept pump rated for 250gpm I'm working on. (A Rupp-Gorman IIRC for those wondering) What I'd really like to do is what docmirror suggests and get an older fire pumper with tank. In my state if you have a private fire truck you'd likely be sued into oblivion by local fire companies and anyone else that thought they could make a dime if you claimed you had a "fire truck" for local use without it being part of the local fire service. But! If you had "former" fire truck for washing manure off floors or maybe some sort of crude irrigation, you might be okay. Pretty darn sad when you have to think about liability for protecting your own property or your neighbors.

Add a dose of liquid dish soap to that water tank and you will make that 300 gallon tank of treated water as effective as 3000 gallons of untreated water .
 
(quoted from post at 16:27:22 03/18/18)
(quoted from post at 12:00:02 03/18/18)
We live in an a essentially unprotected district in northern NY. Structure and grass fires are our concern. For most 0o the year I keep a 300 gal cube in a field truck with a simple gasoline powered pump in it with reducers on the 100 of ft hose I have to a garden hose size. Not perfect by any means, but it works better than spitting on the fire. I also have an old portable fire dept pump rated for 250gpm I'm working on. (A Rupp-Gorman IIRC for those wondering) What I'd really like to do is what docmirror suggests and get an older fire pumper with tank. In my state if you have a private fire truck you'd likely be sued into oblivion by local fire companies and anyone else that thought they could make a dime if you claimed you had a "fire truck" for local use without it being part of the local fire service. But! If you had "former" fire truck for washing manure off floors or maybe some sort of crude irrigation, you might be okay. Pretty darn sad when you have to think about liability for protecting your own property or your neighbors.

Add a dose of liquid dish soap to that water tank and you will make that 300 gallon tank of treated water as effective as 3000 gallons of untreated water .

Been doing that in my pressurized water extinguishers I carry on the balers for years. Can't really do it with the cube because that's water for the sheep!!! :lol:
 

We sell tractor parts! We have the parts you need to repair your tractor - the right parts. Our low prices and years of research make us your best choice when you need parts. Shop Online Today.

Back
Top