I’ve seen firemen scrubbing their engines at the station. Do they use the truck’s hoses to rinse?
~Max
No they are too large and if they used the hoses off the truck then they would have to replace the wet hoses with dry hoses and then hang the wet hoses to dry. A lot of work. Plus to use the hoses off the engine they would have to run the engines at the same time.
As with most answers, it varies from “it depends” to “kinda.”
Every fire station I have ever been in - which is a lot - has garden hose or something of similar size in the garage of the fire station, or on the ramp outside. That will certainly be used for washing the trucks.
We used a 1.5" diameter hose to wash the trucks, which is generally the smallest (or second smallest) size fire hose you would find on a fire engine. We ran it at street pressure (60psi), though, not at the 100psi that the nozzle would be at if we were pumping for real. The volume of water we could throw was about 60 gallons a minute, which makes washing the truck that much quicker. The hose was already hooked up in the garage, it was the hose we used to refill the water tank. Add a nozzle and it’s ready to go for washdown duty.
I have used a line off of the truck to wash it down at a fire scene on several occasions. Mud from going off road, foam, rusty water stains, and smoke/embers that landed on the truck that you need to get off right away. By no means was it a wash to shine the truck up, it was a wash off big stuff sort of wash.
If you’re using water from the truck to wash it, you will need to replace that water, which is usually done with another hose. Why not skip a step and use that hose to wash the truck?
I didn’t even think about letting the hoses dry or running the engine. Thank you for the insight.
~Max
That makes a lot of sense. Thank you, I learned something today!
~Max