L47TLBwannabe
Silver Member
I started this build the summer before last for a number of reasons but one of the main one's being at work we do quite a bit of brush mulching/cutting with our two excavators one is a Kobelco SK210LC that we have fitted with a Promac 52" Flail mulcher and the other is a Hitachi ZX160LC often fitted with a Promac 36" CMP brushcutter fitted with a mulching disc. Some of our jobs are on private land and others are on public land usually mulching for drainage ditches and in the past pipelines and powerlines. We've gotten in to a bit of a dry cycle the last couple years and one of the owners had been on a pipeline job in Northern Ontario, Canada and was on a rock outcropping full of moss and had turned a little bit with the steel track and managed to make a spark which caught the moss on fire, he said they dumped their coffee flasks, mugs, and water bottles on this little patch to extinguish it and finally got it out.
So it made me think maybe I should make something for jobs like that and having quite a bit of wildland firefighting experience as a volunteer firefighter and training. I started to gather some of the things I would need like my little 2.5h.p. 1" water pump some hose and sprayer fittings from a local ag supply store and eventually found a suitable candidate for a water tank in the form of a white translucent 55 gallon poly drum from a local poultry farmer that had held some kind of chlorine based cleaning agent so I knew it was a little more than clean. lol I would of liked to go with a bigger tank but I'm limited for capacity in my current truck as I'm already transporting a 125 gallon diesel slip tank with a 12 volt GPI pump for refuelling equipment on our jobsites.
I set everything up so the barrel would be lying on its side with a raised vent to limit spillage from sloshing and so the 2" NPT bung would be on the bottom to feed water to the pump I also eventually incorporated a bulkhead at the opposite end as a recirculate and refill port. The recirculate function is meant as a way to prevent the pump from cavitating in case I have to stop the flow of water while repositioning the truck during a fire.
I also built a wooden cradle out of some scrap lumber I had that was taking up space to keep the tank from obviously rolling around. I'm not much of a carpenter and I don't have any experience welding or metal fabricating but I seem to have a natural knack for building stuff out of pipe pieces, hose, and I like small engines and playing with water. I used poly pipe fittings as much as possible to prevent any corrosion and to keep the weight down.
I also assembled things so the pump is easily dismounted so I can take it to any water source like a pond, creek, swamp, or river and pull a draft to refill the tank quickly as any water body around here is usually pretty soggy at the edges and difficult to get close to with a truck. So far I haven't fought any fires with it but I have used it clean the cattail fluff and dust from the excavator radiator when I was doing a bunch of brush mulching last year and it worked very well since the pump doesn't produce enough pressure to damage the fins on the oil coolers or radiator. Its rated for 42psi at 41gpm, I usually have it necked down to 3/4 garden hose size.
This winter I bought a larger more powerful 2" pump that produces 7h.p. and 85psi at 125gpm its necked down to 1.5" discharge with a quarter forestry coupling but for the truck and because I'm only carrying 55 gallons of water at best I have some adapters to neck down to 3/4". It still needs some more testing and I'm going to set something up so it has a proper relief valve, and on this new to me tank I recently bought I still have to put a bulkhead in it, but so far I still think I like my 55 gallon barrel a little better. I have a few photos of my set up as it progressed last year and changes I made as I improved the initial idea. Its loosely based on some 'homemade' set ups that several Volunteer Fire Departments in my area have built to put on ATV's and UTV's.
So it made me think maybe I should make something for jobs like that and having quite a bit of wildland firefighting experience as a volunteer firefighter and training. I started to gather some of the things I would need like my little 2.5h.p. 1" water pump some hose and sprayer fittings from a local ag supply store and eventually found a suitable candidate for a water tank in the form of a white translucent 55 gallon poly drum from a local poultry farmer that had held some kind of chlorine based cleaning agent so I knew it was a little more than clean. lol I would of liked to go with a bigger tank but I'm limited for capacity in my current truck as I'm already transporting a 125 gallon diesel slip tank with a 12 volt GPI pump for refuelling equipment on our jobsites.
I set everything up so the barrel would be lying on its side with a raised vent to limit spillage from sloshing and so the 2" NPT bung would be on the bottom to feed water to the pump I also eventually incorporated a bulkhead at the opposite end as a recirculate and refill port. The recirculate function is meant as a way to prevent the pump from cavitating in case I have to stop the flow of water while repositioning the truck during a fire.
I also built a wooden cradle out of some scrap lumber I had that was taking up space to keep the tank from obviously rolling around. I'm not much of a carpenter and I don't have any experience welding or metal fabricating but I seem to have a natural knack for building stuff out of pipe pieces, hose, and I like small engines and playing with water. I used poly pipe fittings as much as possible to prevent any corrosion and to keep the weight down.
I also assembled things so the pump is easily dismounted so I can take it to any water source like a pond, creek, swamp, or river and pull a draft to refill the tank quickly as any water body around here is usually pretty soggy at the edges and difficult to get close to with a truck. So far I haven't fought any fires with it but I have used it clean the cattail fluff and dust from the excavator radiator when I was doing a bunch of brush mulching last year and it worked very well since the pump doesn't produce enough pressure to damage the fins on the oil coolers or radiator. Its rated for 42psi at 41gpm, I usually have it necked down to 3/4 garden hose size.
This winter I bought a larger more powerful 2" pump that produces 7h.p. and 85psi at 125gpm its necked down to 1.5" discharge with a quarter forestry coupling but for the truck and because I'm only carrying 55 gallons of water at best I have some adapters to neck down to 3/4". It still needs some more testing and I'm going to set something up so it has a proper relief valve, and on this new to me tank I recently bought I still have to put a bulkhead in it, but so far I still think I like my 55 gallon barrel a little better. I have a few photos of my set up as it progressed last year and changes I made as I improved the initial idea. Its loosely based on some 'homemade' set ups that several Volunteer Fire Departments in my area have built to put on ATV's and UTV's.
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A setup like the OP's would have been a vast improvement.
