Tanker Operations #07 - Portable Pump Supports Tanker Fill Site
By President Mark Davis
February 26, 2015
As we have seen before, a good quality portable pump can help support a tanker shuttle operation by providing water for fill site operations. Obviously, it is tough for a 250 gpm pump to support a 1,000 gpm fire flow - but with the right set-up and a couple of fill sites, a larger (400 gpm) portable pump can certainly be useful. During our October 2013 rural water supply seminar in Ashville, NY we were able to have students practice using a portable pump to set-up a fill site for loading a vacuum tanker. The portable pump drafted from a large lake and discharged its water into a large dump tank from which the vacuum tanker then self-loaded. The set-up worked really well - by keeping the pump running, the dump tank would fill up by the time the vacuum tanker arrived to load. The vacuum tanker would quickly load without issue and head to the dump site -meanwhile, the portable pump would immediately begin to refill the dump tank.
Crews get the portable pump ready to deploy. The goal was to draft from the lake and pump water into a portable dump tank - from which the vacuum tanker would self-load.
A floating strainer was used on the portable pump's suction hose.
Once the dump tank was full, the vacuum tanker loaded - meanwhile, the portable pump kept running.
This type of pumping set-up is sometimes called an "open relay." (Disregard the engine in the background, it was part of a different evolution that day.)
