New FH Drill: Fire Flows

[WTFD10]

At the risk of visiting an old debate, this month's online drill was a timely topic for my department. We did some flow tests last week and were shocked and dismayed at what we were actually flowing vs. what we thought we were.

Here's the drill: Are You Putting Enough Wet Stuff On The Red Stuff?

We are in the process of making some nozzle changes and making up some pump charts in the engines for a minimum of 150 GPM from 1 3/4" lines and 250 GPM from 2 1/2"

Two Related Questions:
What is your departments SOP/SOG for flows for a single family dwelling, multiple dwelling and commercial occupancies?

Has your department done any testing with flow meters/pitots to see what you're actually flowing? If you have and it was less than what you thought, what changes did you make?

[Halligan84]

Our 1 3/4 are set up for 185 - 200 with smoothbore and fog. Our 2 1/2 is at 325 with smooth. We use an inline flow meter to set the engine pressure for each preconnected line and mark it on the gauge. We did find that members when asked to gate the automatics to what they thought was 1/2 varied incredibly. The numbers were very close with the smoothbores, but we had pitot'd them before anyway

[Bones42]

What is your departments SOP/SOG for flows for a single family dwelling, multiple dwelling and commercial occupancies?

SFD - 1 3/4 MFD - 1 3/4 or 2 1/2 depending on fire load C - 2 1/2.

Has your department done any testing with flow meters/pitots to see what you're actually flowing? If you have and it was less than what you thought, what changes did you make?

Yes, found we were flowing more than what we thought. ****ed off a nozzle dealer as he guaranteed we weren't flowing enough water. We did, though, change to lower pressure nozzles that would allow us to keep our flows over 150gpm for 1 3/4 and 250gpm for 2 1/2. We changed to Akron break apart nozzles. Gives guys both worlds to use , an adjustable stream and/or a smoothbore by unscrewing the tip. Through our testing (and not formulas, calculations, books) we found the gpm to be only about 10 different with the same psi.