75 PSIG on a straight bore 2 1/2" (before friction loss deductions) is worth 1600 GPM :eek: That’s one high colonic.
Damn and here I was thinking you couldn’t push much more than 300GPM through a 2.5 before friction gets ugly…back to the books for me…
There’s a visual I don’t need.
What we have here is a failure to communicate!
drachillix is talking about a 2-1/2" handline, I’m guessing with a 1-1/8" smoothbore tip - ~300 gpm is your theoretical max before the line gets a little unwieldy. At 75psi nozzle pressure, you’ve got 317gpm. With 138 lbs of nozzle reaction. We’re going to need three men, a small boy, and a mule to hold that back. I think we can do it…
danceswithcats is talking about a 2-1/2" master stream nozzle tip. 1600 is about right (I get 1565, but what’s 35gpm?). I’ve got about 700 lbs nozzle reaction, hopefully you left your deck gun mounted on the truck for this one.
In other news…
alice_in_wonderland, thanks for starting the thread. Everything I could come up with, again, has been said. I appreciate everyone’s responses, particularly BiblioCat. If you’ve ever in southern New England, drop me a line, you’re welcome at our table any night (that goes for Fir na tine, danceswithcats and drachillix too, of course)
Almost forgot…
Assuming a 200 lb person, one foot away from the nozzle opening, and a 1-1/8 smoothbore tip, we’d need 100 psi nozzle pressure giving 366 gpm to levitate someone. Pulling my 2-1/2" preconnect at 200’ long, I need a pump pressure of 182 to make this work.
I think we can do it.
I would like to state my admiration and respect for firefighters. I had a house fire, it is a horrible experience. The firemen did very little to save our home. It became a smoking hole in the ground. I was outraged and launched an attack on the incompetence of the idiots. After I had time to cool off (no pun intended) and regain the capacity for logical thought, I had a sit down talk with the Chief. He explained to me that when they arrived it was obvious the house was a goner, they were putting their efforts into knocking down sparks to save the houses next to us. Emotions placed aside, it is logical.
I will also say my family was ill prepared for a fire, no plan at all other than “RUN!!!” We had no rally point, and it took several minutes to establish everyone made it out, and several firefighters were about to walk into a burning hell to look for a missing person. By grace of god we established everyone was accounted for before they went in. I was Army, (Infantry), a police officer for eight years, consider myself a fairly ballsy kind of guy, and I don’t have half the kind of intestinal fortitude these VOLUNTEER guys and gals got.
You got a problem with one or two bad seeds, attack them, not the other 99.9% of Firefighters that do a job most of us (Including me) would be afraid to do.