Brush Truck

[milfordchief]

My department is in the process of specing out a small CAFS brush truck. Anyone have any experience with CET? Would like to hear from you if you have, good, bad or indifferent.

[Bushwhacker]

My department is in the process of specing out a small CAFS brush truck. Anyone have any experience with CET? Would like to hear from you if you have, good, bad or indifferent.

I have worked with New CET's Not impressed, or disappointed. Personally I would only run with a Wajax( Now Wildfire) Or Hale.

[simpleguy68]

Get the Rowe Industries (www.cafssystems.com). Hale pump and the simplest to use and very effective CAFS (plus it has a lifetime warranty).

And before anyone jumps me for being a salesman for the company, I have NO financial interest in Rowe. However, we've demo'd several different CAFS units and this was the easiest to use.

[MColley]

My first question would be why are you putting a cafs pump on a brush truck? Second I would make sure you have an appropriate pump for forestry. High pressure, low volume. Typicly you need to pump over long distances but you don't need a lot of water. Unless of course you are planning on useign the truck as a dual purpose. In which case I would defantly go Hale and talk to them and explain the application.

Our brush trucks has a 250GPM pump a 500 gal tank and about 3000' of forestry hose. I can make 175PSI at the tip with over a 1000' off. It works excelent it is a pump from a canadian manufacturer Carl Thibault.

[PaladinKnight]

My department is in the process of specing out a small CAFS brush truck. Anyone have any experience with CET? Would like to hear from you if you have, good, bad or indifferent.

I have had poor experiences with CET.

We replaced all of our brush pumps with Waterous PB18-3030.

100 GPM @ 110 PSI (380 L/min @ 7.6 bar) to 400 GPM @ 15 PSI (1500 L/min @ 1 bar) / 3" intake, 3" discharge.

We added foam but not CAFS. The pump can double for other purposes and will easily support 2 handlines if needed. Pump can draft from static water source.

We haul 375 gallons (2915 lbs) on our F550 Brush trucks.

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And no... I don't sell or have a vested interest in Waterous Pumps.

I will gladly accept another PB18-3030 for my endorsement however.

[simpleguy68]

My first question would be why are you putting a cafs pump on a brush truck?

Believe it or not, wildland firefighting was one of the very first applications of CAFS (by the Texas Forest Service back in the 70s or 80s).

Being able to extend your water supply through the use of CAFS is the reason you'd want to put it on a brush truck, plus the added air pressure means being able to pump over longer distances with LIGHTER hoses.

[RangerJake72]

best advantage for CAFS on a brush truck aside from the reduction in water use would be for structure protection, being able to foam a house in dry shaving cream that will stick and last for much longer than a wet foam

[MColley]

I guess that makes sense. Having never used a cafs truck I cant say one way or the other I just don't know enough about them. I know here in Nova Scotia we have an abundance of water sources and don't typicaly have an issue with water supply. That being said thats where a good forestry pump comes into play as well since they are designed to pump over long distances at high pressure and low volume which helps to sustaine your water supply. A good portion of our fires aren't considered to be an Urban interface fires either since a large portion of Nova Scotia is still trees and not devloped.

I suppose in the interface enviroment a cafs truck would be very benafical.

Again I would look to Hale or Waterous myself for something other than a forestry pump. Again not knowing enough about cafs I'm not even sure if either of these two comapny's make cafs pumps

[simpleguy68]

Rowe Industries builds a truck that uses the Hale HP200 pump coupled with either an underhood compressor or a compressor ran by the same auxilliary engine that runs the pump.

CAFS just allows you to make better use of your water and foam. Even with straight wildland fires (no WUI), it allows you to put down a wet line and keep going.

[emberhawk]

You could take a look at a Darley CAFS unit. They rolled out with a lower cost version about a year ago called the mongoose. They had it on the back of an unruh fire brush truck at the FDIC show in indy in 09. It was supposed to be really low cost compared to other CAFS units out there.