Yesterday's "Surprise".

[Kranky 1]

We've had so much rain lately, everywhere you go it's all mud. Luckily this year most of our work has involved road reconstruction, so we've been able to keep working on those jobs even during the wet spell.

Yesterday at the shop during lunch we were joking about never needing the water truck this season, might as well put it away, ain't gonna be no use for it.

15 minutes after lunch, the boss walks out in the shop and tells me to load up a 2" pump, a suction hose & 2 discharge hoses on the water truck, then go get a load of water from the Mackville quarry, and go fill a swimming pool!

Ironic, eh?

Pics of the operation:

It makes the unloading go much faster by pumping the water, rather than using gravity feed.

http://i80.photobucket.com/albums/j188/HKJr23/Job%20sites/Work2010011.jpg

http://i80.photobucket.com/albums/j188/HKJr23/Job%20sites/Work2010010.jpg

http://i80.photobucket.com/albums/j188/HKJr23/Job%20sites/Work2010009.jpg

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Then, after the "pump off", I had to hook on to the pool contractors truck and pull him out of the mud in the front yard where one of his guys had driven it off the driveway into the slop.

.

[RSTrans]

Kranky, is your water tender gravity feed for the discharge at the spray heads or just for the 2" line?

The tenders we have out here and that I have run have always been power with air-controlled individual spray heads. We have a pump driven 1 1/2", 2" and 3" line along with a garden hose line and usually a 1" line also. If I were to ever build another tender it would be set that way for multiple purpose uses from Fire Service to Construction use.

I always carried 200' of 1 1/2" Fire Hose , 25' of 3" Filler Hose, 100' of 1" Rubber Hose (Engine Protection Line), a backflow with a meter and 3 hydrant wrenches. If I went to a fire I doubled the 1 1/2" fire hose and 100' of 3" line plus carried a hard suction line and a screen so that I could pump from a pond, pool, lake or stream so engines could draft off of me. I am a bit surprised if your truck is strictly gravity feed, I didn't know anyone still did it that way.

[Kranky 1]

It's got a PTO driven pump for the front and side spray heads, and each spray head can be controlled individually from inside the cab. There is no provision to discharge water thru a hose from the PTO driven pump. I do think it should have a 2" pressure discharge connection though for these type of jobs.
There is gravity feed to the rear sprinkle bar (which doubles as the rear bumper), and this is fed from a 2" manually operated gate valve on the back of the tank. I disconnected the line running to the rear sprinkle bar and hooked the 2"suction line to the gate valve to feed the gas powered pump and fill the pool.

There is also a 6" quick dump gated connection on the rear.

When we need the tanker filled quick, we take it to the Mackville quarry (a stone's throw from the shop) and fill it from their standpipe:
http://i80.photobucket.com/albums/j188/HKJr23/Trico05001-1.jpg

We also have a 2" filler pipe sticking out the back wall of our shop, supplied by the shop's artesian well, but it takes several hours to fill it that way.

[RSTrans]

Hmmm, that is interesting. I guess everyone builds tenders differently depending on their intended use. May consider installing a fire hose line off of one of the lines to a spray head or take and make a quick connect so that you can take a spray head off and attach a male hose end so that you can have a powered line. The trucks that we have done by Valew have all the air-controlled heads also on quick connects so that I can take one off and have a powered 3" line. My take on the differences between your tender and the ones I run are because ours are all used for Fire Service and thus are required to have those items for Cal Fire and US Forestry Service Fire.

[saddletramp]

Nice set of flaps on the tanker Herb...........................................:): ):)

(I know, its not a dump truck...............)