What’s with the Colors? The Poles? The Flushing?
They’re short, different colors and sometimes steal an otherwise perfect parking spot.
Rockville residents might not give much thought to fire hydrants. But the city spends a good deal of time and money ensuring hydrants are in working order, so that if we need them, they’re ready. They’re part of a city water system that includes nearly 174 miles of water pipes, 4,168 valves and 1,407 fire hydrants.
Rockville is investing more than $1.5 million each year to replace water pipes that are 50 years or older, so that the city’s water system maintains adequate pressure for fire hydrants and continues delivering clean water to the community.
Here are a few questions, answered, about Rockville’s hydrants:
Why are they painted different colors?
The colors indicate the rate of water flow through the hydrant. It is important for firefighters to know the flow so that they can quickly determine which hydrants to connect their hoses to.
“The ones that are low flow, they need to know that in case they have a large fire,” said Steve Sokol, the city’s operations maintenance superintendent. “They can go to one down the road to get the higher flow.”
The city is beginning an initiative to paint hydrants to follow National Fire Protection Association guidelines. As part of the city’s water main rehabilitation program, the Department of Public Works is phasing in the new colors, which include painting all hydrant barrels yellow to increase their visibility at night. The tops of the hydrants are painted a color that indicates their flow rate. Hydrants with flows less than 500 gallons per minute are red; up to 999 gpm are orange; up to 1,499 gpm are green; and 1,500 gpm and greater are blue.
Most city hydrants are still the old color scheme: red barrels and black tops. More than 80 percent of the city’s hydrants have flows greater than 1,500 gpm. Hydrants with lower flows that have not been repainted have rings to indicate flows of less than 500 gpm (red rings) and from 500 to 1,000 gpm (orange rings).
The city’s water main replacement program is replacing low-flow hydrants. By July 2017, 56 of 67 hydrants with flows less than 500 gpm will be upgraded. By July 2020, hydrants whose flows are less than 500 gpm will be upgraded.
What does the city do to keep the hydrants in working order?
Rockville has a systematic flushing program to remove accumulated sediment from the water system. DPW crews open and close water valves and fire hydrants in a certain sequence, producing enough water velocity to scour the pipes. By operating the water main valves, crews can assess their functionality, leading to better system maintenance and operation and better water quality for homes and businesses.
To learn more, visit www.rockvillemd.gov/water and select “Water Main Flushing.”
OK, so what’s with the poles?
The poles, attached to the hydrants like antennas, serve as markers of where hydrants can be found – and avoided – when buried by heavy snow and allows firefighters to quickly identify their locations.
Residents are asked to remove snow from around hydrants so that fire crews have easier access to the hydrants in an emergency.
The poles also provide an important marker for snow plow crews.
“Several hydrants were damaged during the [February] 2010 snowstorm because they were not visible under the depth of the [Snowmageddon] snow storm,” Sokol said.
The poles work.
“We didn’t have damage reported after the [January] 2015 [Snowzilla] blizzard.”