New Yorkers Have Been Illicitly Cracking Open Fire Hydrants For Centuries
1–10 of 59 posts
Re: New Yorkers Have Been Illicitly Cracking Open Fire Hydrants For Centuries
#2This is good government as a public service, better than viewing the public as criminals-in-waiting:
>Since 2007, the New York City DEP has multiple programs to combat the illicit opening of the city’s hydrants. With very few exceptions, you can go to pretty much any firehouse in the five boroughs and ask for a spray cap. The fire department will come to the hydrant of your choosing, open it up for about 12 hours, and install a cap that creates several thinner streams of water, like a giant lawn sprinkler. This cap uses only about 25 gallons of water per minute
> And the DEP has a team called the Hydrant Education Action Team (HEAT), arrays of volunteer teens who go around their neighborhoods telling people about the dangers of opening hydrants and the benefits of spray caps.
Re: New Yorkers Have Been Illicitly Cracking Open Fire Hydrants For Centuries
#3This is good government as a public service , better than viewing the public as criminals-in-waiting: >Since 2007, the New York City DEP has multiple programs to combat the illicit opening of the city’s hydrants. With very few exceptions, you can go to pretty much any firehouse in the five boroughs and ask for a spray cap. The fire department will come to the hydrant of your choosing, open it up for about 12 hours, a…
I live in New York, I've seen kids on our block, and their parents, playing with one of those - including a shower-head attachment! - pretty much every day this week. It looks great - it's hot and humid as hell right now, a lot of families don't have an air conditioner, and there's not exactly a lot of public pools around (and forget water parks, or swimming in the rivers.)
This seems like a pretty good way of making sure people are happy and healthy.
Re: New Yorkers Have Been Illicitly Cracking Open Fire Hydrants For Centuries
#4>For Centuries
Forgive me, pure pet peeve: it's a tiny bit more than one century - the 1st reported issue is from 1906.
Anyway, it's great to see an example of looking for a solution instead of penalizing people.
Re: New Yorkers Have Been Illicitly Cracking Open Fire Hydrants For Centuries
#5I have memories of being in a school bus during the summer and driving through streets with open hydrants. Without fail, the kids manning the hydrant would grab a can and use it to direct the water towards the bus. The first time it happened, we all got wet, along with our books, papers, calculators, etc. After that, the bus driver would stop the bus and we would close all of the windows before going through.
Re: New Yorkers Have Been Illicitly Cracking Open Fire Hydrants For Centuries
#6This is good government as a public service , better than viewing the public as criminals-in-waiting: >Since 2007, the New York City DEP has multiple programs to combat the illicit opening of the city’s hydrants. With very few exceptions, you can go to pretty much any firehouse in the five boroughs and ask for a spray cap. The fire department will come to the hydrant of your choosing, open it up for about 12 hours, a…
I wonder if you could replace hydrants with intelligent nodes. They'd still have mechanical openings for fire department hookup, but they'd call have spray caps on permanently, and could be remotely controlled, monitored, and even opened for yearly hydrant flushing without staff venturing out to each hydrant. You could even monitor water pressure through the entire hydrant system.
Re: New Yorkers Have Been Illicitly Cracking Open Fire Hydrants For Centuries
#7OH my god! I've just had the greatest idea.
It's like UBER for cracking open fire hydrants.
See you all at the next YC pitch-day
Re: New Yorkers Have Been Illicitly Cracking Open Fire Hydrants For Centuries
#8This is good government as a public service , better than viewing the public as criminals-in-waiting: >Since 2007, the New York City DEP has multiple programs to combat the illicit opening of the city’s hydrants. With very few exceptions, you can go to pretty much any firehouse in the five boroughs and ask for a spray cap. The fire department will come to the hydrant of your choosing, open it up for about 12 hours, a…
I live in New York, I've seen kids on our block, and their parents, playing with one of those - including a shower-head attachment! - pretty much every day this week. It looks great - it's hot and humid as hell right now, a lot of families don't have an air conditioner, and there's not exactly a lot of public pools around (and forget water parks, or swimming in the rivers.) This seems like a pretty good way of making…
From a native Californian perspective, it just looks insanely wasteful of water. These are fed from some non-potable source, at least?
...Read TFA, nope. OK then. It is insanely wasteful of water.
Re: New Yorkers Have Been Illicitly Cracking Open Fire Hydrants For Centuries
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
I live in New York, I've seen kids on our block, and their parents, playing with one of those - including a shower-head attachment! - pretty much every day this week. It looks great - it's hot and humid as hell right now, a lot of families don't have an air conditioner, and there's not exactly a lot of public pools around (and forget water parks, or swimming in the rivers.) This seems like a pretty good way of making…
From a native Californian perspective, it just looks insanely wasteful of water. These are fed from some non-potable source, at least? ...Read TFA, nope. OK then. It is insanely wasteful of water.
> OK then. It is insanely wasteful of water.
It's only a "waste" if the water is scarce. People rarely talk about wasting air (except to call someone dumb) because the air is virtually unlimited.
For example in the UK it's damn near impossible to waste water because it rains so consistently. Water isn't scarce. You can't really waste it, because there's always plenty more.
Even if you could pipe the water from NYC all the way to CA it'd be prohibitively expensive.
So the only way this is "waste" is if it's depleting the aquifer faster than it replenishes. That's possible of course. But unlikely, because NYC has been huge for hundreds of years now. If they're depleting aquifers it's only very slowly.
Re: New Yorkers Have Been Illicitly Cracking Open Fire Hydrants For Centuries
#10This is good government as a public service , better than viewing the public as criminals-in-waiting: >Since 2007, the New York City DEP has multiple programs to combat the illicit opening of the city’s hydrants. With very few exceptions, you can go to pretty much any firehouse in the five boroughs and ask for a spray cap. The fire department will come to the hydrant of your choosing, open it up for about 12 hours, a…
I wonder if you could replace hydrants with intelligent nodes. They'd still have mechanical openings for fire department hookup, but they'd call have spray caps on permanently, and could be remotely controlled, monitored, and even opened for yearly hydrant flushing without staff venturing out to each hydrant. You could even monitor water pressure through the entire hydrant system.
It would make more sense to put pressure sensors someplace where a drunken yahoo with a brick couldn't cost the city $250.