By Bill Adams
Did you ever start a conversation you wish you hadn’t? Over morning coffee, I showed the raisin squad some photos taken at the FDIC International of some traditional side-mount pump operator panels that have been narrowed to just a few feet in width. While admitting that’s good for a rig’s wheelbase and overall length, I said most were unsafe because discharges, inlets, and crosslays are too close to the operator’s head and more importantly the operator’s reproductive organs. Much discussion followed. One white hair commented that you only need two gauges—in and out. Another said he’s rested his knees against supply lines for twenty years so he could “feel the pressure” and he never had one come apart.
One picture showed Storz discharges, so the conversation meandered off to hose connections, which some of the hard-of-hearing members called Storz, stortz or stortzel. Harry, who occasionally dozes off when reading the paper, looked up saying “Schnitzel? I like cutlets.” No Harry, we’re talking about Storz couplings. “Spätzle? Dumplings are good.” Harry—its sexless hose couplings. “What’s sex got to do with fire hose?” Forget it; can I pour you another cup?
Getting back to reality, I proclaimed pumpers should be laid out to make life easy and safe for the engine company’s crew when performing its primary mission—humping hose. I got slam-dunked by the younger generation who came in to listen to us white hairs argue. “Times have changed, old man. We don’t hump hose any more. That’s not our primary job. We only get first aid calls (EMS), low batteries in CO detectors, false automatic alarms, disconnect battery cables at accidents (MVAs), frozen sprinkler lines, and fumes in the area. Oh yeah, we had a grass fire last week.” Regardless, shouldn’t the panel be laid out safely for those few times you do hump hose? “Nope. There’s only so much room, and we gotta carry a lot of stuff. Humping hose ain’t a priority anymore.”
One active member said the rig wasn’t compliant because its Storz discharges looked bigger than 2½-inch and 2½-inch is the largest that’s allowed on a pump panel. That started another squabble. NFPA 1901, Standard for Automotive Fire Apparatus, and pump discharges was a topic I thought was covered last year in "Apparatus Purchasing: Pump Discharges." I guess not.
Wondering if the standard changed, I looked at the 2016 edition of NFPA 1901 and conversed with Wyatt Compton, Fleet Sales Application Engineer for Spartan. Wyatt said Spartan built the rig in question for export to South America and it is NFPA 1901 compliant and UL-certified. NFPA 1901 sentence 3.3.51 defines discharge outlet size as “The nominal size of the first fire hose connection from the pump on a discharge.” Compton says, “Typically we (Spartan) have interpreted it as the first ‘fixed’ connection as it exits the pump compartment. For NFPA rating, the pump must have enough NST (aka NH) connections to achieve pump test. So as our internal standards go, the first threads must exit as NST, and then can be adapted to various ‘special’ threads.” He adds, “Where the confusion starts is that there must be an elbow for essentially any hose connection above the frame rail height, but that requirement doesn’t specifically call out NST threads, nor does it call out that it must not be an ‘adapter’ to up-siz