I suppose it's more of a why are they doing it. About a year ago the water company opened a fire hydrant and let it pour water for a solid day.

This year they hooked up this gizmo and the hydrant has been pouring water down the sewer for two days.

I'm mostly curious why you would pour so much water down the drain so to speak. There are no water restrictions/ boil orders or anything like that in the area.

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Flow rate testing, bacteria testing, a number of things are possible.

it's done here as well,

I pass the last hydrant on the line (where county water stops) every day,

it will be turned on for a day or so,


was told it was to flush sediment, or that some work was done on a line somewhere and it was run to clean it our or get the air out (burb the lines)

no idea if that is true

I'm at the very end of the city water line, the hydrant by the house gets drained every other day to keep chlorine levels where they need to be. They pull a test sample each time at the beginning and 2 hours later

My neighbor two doors down) when I lived in VA lived at the end of the city water water line loop and his wife had serious skin issues that they thought was due to contaminants that accumulated there. The water co flushed the line once a month which seemed to help.

quote:

Originally posted by lyman:
it's done here as well,

I pass the last hydrant on the line (where county water stops) every day,

it will be turned on for a day or so,


was told it was to flush sediment, or that some work was done on a line somewhere and it was run to clean it our or get the air out (burb the lines)

no idea if that is true

I do inspections of water and wastewater plants. It's true.

They flush the system at the furthest ends to keep the chlorine levels up; to keep sediment from collecting in the lines; and after repair work is done.

Particularly if someone busts a line and it loses pressure - you can no longer claim it's clean water, so you have to repair the pipe and shock the repair area with chlorine and then flush the system drastically.

They flushed the hydrant in front of our house a couple years ago. People were complaining of the smell and quality of the water.

The amount of silt that came out of that hydrant was astonishing. Took about an hour before they shut if off. They had to do that for every hydrant in the area.

Huge difference in water quality after that.

Thanks for the info guys. I moved more rural about 5 years ago and had never seen this happen in my life until moving so I wasn't sure.

I'm on the BOD for a community water co (~330 homes, ~20 miles of mains). As others have said, we occasionally do it to flush the lines.

We have filters at our treatment facilities, but we still get extremely fine sediment that makes it's way into the system and coats the inside of the pipe (mains). When we have a leak, we have to turn off water to a section. When we turn the water back on it tends to pull the very fine sediment off the pipe walls and turns the water brown...we get nasty calls after that.

Also, the Fire Depts like to flush the hydrants every few years, which also stirs up the sediment and pisses off the customers.

I grew up with a fire hydrant in the front yard, and for the past 4 years have owned a house with a fire hydrant in the front yard.

Almost every time the hydrant was turned on it was the quick FD test. It was always manned the entire time it was flowing. Most of the time, they caused erosion in the lawn (both growing up and now) so I'm really digging the set-up pictured in the OP's post.

I grew up in the Upper Midwest and we had a swimming pool (i.e. every fall the pool drained down to minimum and every spring refilled). We were able to save a lot of time and money by getting a permit to refill using the fire hydrant. I don't remember much sediment coming off it.

It is one of these https://hydrants.com/eclipse-9700

As others have said an automatic flushing device. Made by the Kupferle Foundry in St. Louis, MO

Hmmmm. And all this time I thought the fire hydrant system was different from the drinking water system. Perhaps that's just in certain cities.

The reason I was told that was that they liked to make sure the fire hydrant system always had sufficient pressure as well as the volume of water available to fight fires.

Learn something new here on SigForum every day.
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Our local water utility does this both Spring and Fall. It is to get the water moving faster than normal to flush buildup off the interior walls of the pipes and get rid of particles that settle in the pipes due to slow normal flow.

As a plumber, I recommend that customers remove their aerators on their faucets to clean them, and while they are off, run the faucet wide open until it clears up, to accomplish the same thing in their pipes.

This is only necessary on iron and copper plumbing as the newer plastic pipes do not seem to get buildup.

Its an auto defuser used for flushing. Used also to help keep up the chorine residual up for low usage areas.

Don't worry.....the hot water should start soon.

Don't be so trusting. It could very well be a trick to charge you more fees. I recall a few years ago Denver imposed a big fee increase. Then someone noticed a big (big to them) water line out by DIA (doesn't include airplanes) running full bore, non stop. The excuse used or given was it needed to flow fast out there to keep up water quality. An equally believable answer was just more government waste.

To the guy filling his pool, look for a huge water and waste bill. The waste company or whatever they call themselves bills you on water used. They don't care if it never sees the drain, you pay based on what water you used. If your pool needs water and there is a water delivery company near you, just order a load or two and have them deliver it. Just like if you had a cistern. That way you only pay for the water, not the subsequent disposal of it.

I have set them out at the end of our mains when I worked in municipal water/sewer utilities. There is a timer that I set to flush the lines at 2:00am. Less water use at that time so water pressure isn't affected. We only used them in the warmer months when there was no chance of a freeze. In the winter I would schedule a crew to flush once a week during the day. In water lines at the end of the lines that don't get the higher chlorine flow, chloramines develop as a byproduct.