Fire Hydrants

All the fire hydrants throughout the city are dry hydrants. This means that when you turn off the hydrant the water drains back out of it.  This keeps the water form freezing and damaging the hydrant.  We open and flow test each hydrant twice a year.  The flow test readings are what we use to paint the tops of the hydrants.  The blue hydrants have a flow of 1500  GPM ( gallons per minute ) or greater.  The green hydrants have a flow between 1000 - 1500 GPM.  The orange hydrants have a flow between 500 - 1000 GPM.  The red hydrants have a flow of 500 GPM or less.

1500 GPM or greater                               1000-1500 GPM

500-1000 GPM                             500 GPM or less

All of the fire hydrants have marker tags affixed to them.  This tag helps us to identify them for preventive maintenance.  We also use a GPS (global positioning sensor) to find the latitude and longitude of each hydrant for our GIS (geographic information system)  program.  This enables us to have the location of each hydrant on a computer in the fire truck.  In the event of a fire we can easy identify the location of the closest hydrant.  We also place a blue reflective marker in the center of the road adjacent to the fire hydrant.  This marker also makes it easy to locate the hydrant at night from the reflection of our head lights.

Blue marker in the center of the road