City of Powell River is in the process of colour-coding its nearly 700 fire hydrants.
Manager of operational services Shawn Cator said the city has not painted its fire hydrants in many years. This program is an opportunity to paint the hydrants, but also, to give them a colour-coding at the same time. The intention is to paint between a third and a half of the hydrants this year and carry over to next year.
Cator said he believes the operations department/engineering department had a conversation with the fire department about the plan to do the colour-coding on the hydrants and the fire department agreed it was a good idea. The colour-coding shows the different pressures/flow per hydrant.
“A firefighter has an indication of what he’s dealing with at a fire,” said Cator. “There is a national standard that designates the colours for flow.”
Superintendent of public works Murray Steer said having the hydrants painted is helpful for the firefighters and also for city staff.
“When we are operating and maintaining the hydrants, it is helpful to understand what we are dealing with,” said Steer. “The majority of our hydrants are the same pressure and most of the ones you’ll see out there are blue, there’s a few green ones and even fewer that are orange.”
Blue hydrants have the highest flow and orange the lowest.
Cator said the engineering department models the water system and the model calculates the pressures in each zone. The computer model is calibrated to actual testing in the field, so there is a model of the whole infrastructure. The model predicts the pressures and it is calibrated in the field by Cator’s crews, who actually run the hydrants, measure the flow and test residual pressures, and that helps to determine that the model is correct.
“The model was updated recently,” said Cator, “and that’s where the data comes from.”
