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COMMON QUESTIONS |
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Which
Home Firefighting® products are right for me ?
Ultimately, only you can decide what equipment
is best suited for your application. However to better assist you, we
offer the following information and suggestions...
Home Firefighting® equipment is the
same equipment used by fire departments throughout the United
States and worldwide. After extensive
testing, we have selected to include as part of our Home Firefighting®
product line those products which best provide homeowners with the added ability to pre-treat their their home/property and, if needed, fight
a fire directly, while balancing price with performance.
Our #1 suggestion when
choosing a fire protection system is "ASK TO SEE A PUMP PERFORMANCE
CURVE". We provide pump performance curves on all our pumps.
A pump curve clearly shows how your pump will perform under actual
firefighting conditions (See our pump narrative below).
Garden
Hose Foam Kits
At a minimum, adding
a 3/4" GHT Home Firefighting® Garden Hose Foam Kit to each of your existing
garden hoses will make your standard water supply 3-5 times more
effective for fire suppression than plain water alone. These kits
can create fire breaks, coat walls or roofs and put out small fires
quickly and easily.
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Home Firefighting® System
The next level up is a high-pressure Home Firefighting® System which can draft from your pool, lake or
storage tank. Our systems use a gasoline engine driven
twin-impeller fire pump to provide the high pressure and high flow
rates needed for firefighting. (See below for more info on
pressure and flow)
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High-Volume
Fire Hose Foam Kits
Larger foam kits can be
attached to the hose end of a pump system to provide even larger
amounts of foam which can be used to pre-treat your roof, walls,
deck, trees, shrubs and other flammable areas around your home as
well as for fighting larger fires with a limited water supply. |
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Barricade®
Fire Blocking Gel Kits
Gel can be applied to all exterior structural surfaces including metal,
glass, stucco and wood, creating a long lasting thermal barrier.
When applied to vegetation,
Barricade®
gel can increase the defensible zone exposed to wildfire and
will not damage plant
life with the exception of possible leaf drop. |
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Stationary
Pumping Systems
The ultimate setup
involves the installation of a Stationary Pump System which consists
of a permanent water supply connected to a stationary Home Firefighting® brand
Fire Pump and one or more
hydrants placed around your home & property to provide multiple
hookups in the event of a fire. These systems are designed to meet
the specific needs of your property and require
installation & maintenance by an experienced do-it-yourself
homeowner or a licensed contractor. |
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When
choosing your equipment, some questions to ask
yourself are:
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How big
a water supply do you have?
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What
family members will use the
system?
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Can
your family members operate the system, hose and nozzles you have selected?
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Will the
equipment be compatible with your local fire departments equipment?
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What
makes our pumps better than other pumps ?
In one word...
Performance
Our
Home Firefighting® Fire Pumps are
designed to produce the flow and
pressure required for real firefighting.
While other large diameter outlet water pumps are designed to produce
high flow rates at low pressure,
our pumps produce both high flow and high pressure.
While flow is important in delivering a
large quantity of water, without adequate pressure, a fire pump is
of little use since it cannot deliver that water very far.
To better understand this
you first need to understand
the difference between flow
and pressure... |
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Flow is the
volume of water leaving the pump over a given period of time and is
usually measured in GPM (Gallons Per Minute).
Don't be fooled by pumps
with high GPH values (Gallons Per Hour) as you must divide that number by 60 to
get actual GPM. Flow is
important to know and control as it determines how fast you will use up
your water supply.
Pressure is
the force at which the water leaves the pump in PSI (Pounds per Square
Inch).
For each pound of pressure, water can be raised 2.31 ft in
a vertical pipe. Pressure
is important as it controls how far the water can be pushed, both
vertically and horizontally.
With any pump, as Flow
increases, Pressure
decreases. Therefore, in order to properly evaluate a
pumps performance for firefighting you need to know its Pressure rating
at the rates of Flow you will be using when firefighting.
Most pumps advertise their
maximum PSI and maximum
GPM. This can be deceiving since maximum PSI is
achieved at zero GPM ("no-flow"
or "static" conditions),
while the maximum GPM is
achieved at minimum PSI (close to zero pressure). Remember, what really matters is how many PSI the
pump can produce at your GPM requirement!
To determine the suitability
of any pump look at it's pump curve (see our Firefighter® pump curves in
the chart below). By following the curve to a specific flow rate
you will be able to determine the pumps output pressure at that flow
rate.
Common firefighting
equipment flow rates are 15-30 GPM for 1" hose and
30-60 GPM for
1.5" hose. So logically, you want to a pump that can produce
the greatest Pressure at these
Flow rates, to provide you
with the greatest possible reach.
FACT: While
larger municipal fire
engine mounted pumps can deliver from 90-300 GPM, those flow rates are
unnecessary for homeowners and usually end up wasting a large amount of
water. They also make the hose much harder to handle &
control.

Our Home Firefighting®
Fire Pump
offers greater Pressure than
other pumps at these typical firefighting Flow rates.
The pump heads used on our pumps have been proven effective through years of use
in the Australian Outback and are currently being used in homes & ranches
throughout the U.S. as well as by government and private forestry
firefighting vehicles worldwide.
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What type of fire hose should I use?
Single jacketed, forestry fire hose is more maneuverable, lighter in
weight and more economical than double jacketed fire hose. That's
why many fire agencies including USFS, CDF and others use single
jacket forestry hose for both structure and wildland protection.
While some people may try
to sell you double jacketed fire hose, there is no reason for the
average homeowner to use it. Today's single jacket forestry hoses
are lightweight extremely durable, kink resistant and can easily provide
the flows needed to operate most fire equipment including foam and gel
eduction systems. THESE ARE NOT THROW AWAY HOSES !
Our Home Firefighting® fire hose
is manufactured for us
by Key Hose (The largest manufacturer of fire hose in the US.) to NFPA,
USDA
and/or UL/ULC standards using
state-of-the-art weaving processes to produce a rugged and durable hose
product to meet the needs of firefighters! Our added coatings make them as durable as many heavier rubber lined and
double jacket hoses that weigh twice as much.
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What size
fire hose should
I use ?
The size of hose to use depends upon your particular situation and who
will be using it.
While 1.5" hose can flow a
greater volume of water than a 1" hose, it comes at a cost. A 1.5" line is very
difficult for most people to hold onto for any
length of time. 1.5" hose is also THREE TIMES as heavy as 1" hose
making it harder to move around your property!
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1" hose provides the
best compromise between volume and manageability. 1" hose can deliver
enough flow for most applications and is much easier for the
average person to hold and move, especially for a long period of time. After all, what good is a fire hose if you can't
handle it?
FACT: While 1.5" hose
is a primary hose for municipal fire departments, Forestry trucks
often use 1" line for fighting fires since it is more maneuverable under
extreme wildfire conditions. Also, if you look carefully at scenes of
municipal firefighters in action you will see there are usually 2-3
firefighters manning each 1.5" line due to the weight of the hose
and backpressure from the nozzle.
Our 9hp Home
Firefighting®
Fire Pumps can easily drive two 1" lines simultaneously, providing greater
simultaneous coverage than a single 1.5" line. Where long hose
lays are required, a 1.5" hose can provide reduced friction loss before
a transition to 1" hose for end of line manueverability.
3/4" hose is effective
for mop-up and smaller maintenance jobs like using a foam kit to paint a house with
foam or create a firebreak in grasslands around your home. It can be handled by pretty
much anyone with ease. Don't be fooled by it's size though, this
is not just another garden hose! It is designed to operate at
pressures far above those produced by your normal faucet.
Our consumer research
with both firefighters and non-firefighters has
shown an overwhelming preference for the maneuverability of a
1" fire hose by the average person.
However, since everyone has a preference, we offer our systems with
either 1" or 1.5" hose.
In addition 2.5",
2", 1.5" and
3/4" hoses and adaptors can be ordered separately.
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How much hose should
I have on hand ?
Ideally, you should have enough hose to reach
all parts of your house/property to be protected. Our
Home Firefighting® Fire Pump can feed hose runs in excess of 1000+ feet so the only
real limit is your budget and your imagination.
In some
instances you might want to have multiple lines running so two or more
people can protect different parts of the house simultaneously and you
aren't constantly dragging the hose back and forth. If
that is the case, remember to order an extra nozzle and valve for each
hose.
Friction loss is an
important factor to consider when running long lengths of hose. As
flow increases through a hose or pipe, so does friction loss (a decrease
in pressure). When flowing 30gpm, a 1" fire hose will loose 15 PSI
through a 50' length of hose. This is rather insignificant when
using our high pressure (150+ psi pumps) but is of great significance if
using a cheaper "trash" pump based system.
So if you are need long
hose runs we recommend using 1.5" for the hose lay to reduce friction
loss, reduced to 1" at the operating end for easy of use by the
operator.
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What is
CLASS-A foam and what is a foam kit?
Foam additives break down the
waters surface tension, thereby increasing waters penetration into
porous materials and
slowing down it's evaporation rate.
This creates a longer lasting and
better insulating fire barrier. Adding a CLASS-A foamant actually
increases waters effectiveness up to 500 percent !
A foam kit is used to add a foamant to the water. Class-A foamant
is used for cellulose based fires such as wood, paper and other porous
materials plus tires and other rubber compounds. It is NOT
intended for use on hydrocarbon (gasoline) based fires where an AFFF
foam would be used instead. |
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While there are many ways
of adding foam, we prefer using a post pump eductor along with an
aspirating nozzle at the end of the hose. Our end-of-line foaming
kits utilize a solid foam cartridge or 1.5 gallon jug which can be easily replaced and adds
little weight to the end of the line. The built-in eductor mixes
the foamant at a 1% solution, the standard solution for most Class A
foam applications.
FACT: Foam eduction kits
are designed to operate at 100 PSI nozzle pressure AT THEIR
RATED FLOW IN GPM.
Note: At a 1% eduction rate,
1 gallon of
CLASS-A foam
will treat approximately 100 gallons of water and increase it's
effectiveness 3-5 times while covering approximately 4000 square feet. |
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