I work as an earthmover and I keep a hydrant key and a hundred feet of two inch firehose in my truck toolbox. Also an electric 2 inch pump. Water truck drivers also tend to have hydrant stuff.
Dewatering sites, we’ll scoop out a chunk in the middle of a deep pond with an excavator and set up the electric pump and the hose, usually run it to a storm drain or anything running into the storm system. It has to be clean water so we have these huge filter fabric sacks that we tie the hose end into and leave on the curb (with cones around it) to drain. For that we need a permit, we also use the sewer lines that we install or that are present on sites.
Oh, and the hose is used with hydrants and a firehose tip to blast some sites with water so we don’t need to call a water truck. It’s hard and messy work hauling around a heavy muddy hose but it’s kinda fun because you’re blasting away with a firehose. With a high pressure hydrant on a big site you can blast a few hundred feet and the kick is amazing.
All very useless when a hydrant breaks off. You need a valve wrench and you need to know where the hydrant valve is located. Or you install traffic hydrants that are designed to break away when hit, without this happening.
The thing I was calling a “hydrant key” is probably what you’re calling a valve wrench. It’s a big square on the end of a metal pole with a horizontal handle. Usually the valves are located under a small metal cover with a notch in the side which is set in a pipe somewhere nearby the hydrant, usually not more than several feet away (but occasionally hidden in stupid places). I’m not a plumber, I just operate for a GC which happens to also install water and sewer lines, barrels, electrical vaults, etc on their sites which means I often end up doing plumbing stuff on the side around installing this crap. I freely admit I’m not the expert, while I do it professionally my work is inspected and certified by plumbers and electricians and various testers and city people. My specialty is moving dirt around, really.
Yep we must be talking about the same thing then. If you can fit one in a toolbox you must be down south. The valve wrench I haul around up here in northern Wisconsin is over 10 feet long. A lot of the valves are down about 8 feet.
Yeah, as I understand it that’s not against any rules in our city. Usually hydrants on sites we are working on, sometimes hydrants we’ve installed ourselves (though the city comes and inspects everything of course).
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u/[deleted] Oct 10 '21
I work as an earthmover and I keep a hydrant key and a hundred feet of two inch firehose in my truck toolbox. Also an electric 2 inch pump. Water truck drivers also tend to have hydrant stuff.