Vehicles
The fire engine pump
A powerful centrifugal pump that turns a truck into a moving water supply.
- Typical rating
- about 4,000–6,000 L/min
- Pressure
- about 10 bar at rated flow
- Stages
- one or two
- Driven by
- the truck’s own engine
Numbers are rounded, typical values — real machines vary.
A pump on wheels
Most fire engines carry a large driven by the truck’s engine. It takes water from a hydrant, the truck’s tank, or even a lake, and pushes it through long hoses to the nozzles.
Some pumps have two stages that can be switched: side by side for lots of flow, or one after the other () for high pressure — to reach the upper floors of a building.
Drawing from a lake
When there is no hydrant, the pump sucks water up from an open source. It needs first, and it can only lift water a few metres — and the 10-metre limit set the rules.
Physics you already know
Long hoses add a lot of , and friction grows with flow squared. The pump operator reads pressure gauges to keep the where the firefighters need it.