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New Yorkers Have Been Illicitly Cracking Open Fire Hydrants For Centuries

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Re: New Yorkers Have Been Illicitly Cracking Open Fire Hydrants For Centuries

#11

Post by dangrossman »

setpatchaddress wrote: post #8
pavel_lishin wrote: post #3

Earlier 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.

NYC receives several hundred billion gallons of rainwater each year (source: USGS). That's just counting the ~30% of the rain that actually makes it to its streams and aquifers, discounting the portion lost to evaporation and transpiration. If it's not a scarce resource, they can waste 25 gallons a minute running some free sprinklers.

Re: New Yorkers Have Been Illicitly Cracking Open Fire Hydrants For Centuries

#12

Post by a1369209993 »

ArekDymalski wrote: post #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.

My first though on reading the headline was "has New York even had fire hydrants for centuries?". It seems they actually just barely have.

Re: New Yorkers Have Been Illicitly Cracking Open Fire Hydrants For Centuries

#13

Post by toomuchtodo »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #10
toomuchtodo wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You'd still maintain the hydrant form factor. The sensor would be internal.

Dibs. Going for YC '16, "Poseidon".

Re: New Yorkers Have Been Illicitly Cracking Open Fire Hydrants For Centuries

#14

Post by Zikes »

ArekDymalski wrote: post #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.

From the article:

The earliest “hydrants” in New York City (dating back to the early 1700s but lasting until the late 1800s) were simply buckets of water scattered around the five boroughs, left locked by the fire department so as to keep out thieves and vandals.

Re: New Yorkers Have Been Illicitly Cracking Open Fire Hydrants For Centuries

#15

Post by cpncrunch »

setpatchaddress wrote: post #8
pavel_lishin wrote: post #3

Earlier 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.

The spray cap doesn't seem insanely wasteful. Or at least, no more wasteful than a public fountain or swimming pool. The benefit seems to vastly outweigh the cost. Also, I'm guessing that NY has sufficient reservoir capacity to handle it, and the reservoirs fill up naturally when it rains, so you're not wasting a finite resource anyway.

Re: New Yorkers Have Been Illicitly Cracking Open Fire Hydrants For Centuries

#16

Post by GauntletWizard »

setpatchaddress wrote: post #8
pavel_lishin wrote: post #3

Earlier 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.

Perhaps you should live in an area habitable to humans, then. New York's reservoirs are overflowing [1], and that's after they dump water.

[1]http://www.nyc.gov/html/dep/html/drinking_water/maplevels_wi...

Re: New Yorkers Have Been Illicitly Cracking Open Fire Hydrants For Centuries

#17

Post by benev »

msandford wrote: post #9
setpatchaddress wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 al…

Here in the UK we do have pretty regular problems with the water supply, to the point that hosepipe use is sometimes regulated. There's even a website you can check to see if there's currently a hosepipe ban: http://www.hosepipeban.org.uk/hosepipe-ban-current-situation...

It does rain a lot here, but there's also issues with the size of the reservoirs and the amount of water being drawn.

Re: New Yorkers Have Been Illicitly Cracking Open Fire Hydrants For Centuries

#18

Post by rayiner »

setpatchaddress wrote: post #8
pavel_lishin wrote: post #3

Earlier 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.

NYC has plenty of water, brought in via aquaducts from upstate. They had the sense to build the city not in a desert.

Re: New Yorkers Have Been Illicitly Cracking Open Fire Hydrants For Centuries

#19

Post by msandford »

benev wrote: post #17
msandford wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 al…

Here in the UK we do have pretty regular problems with the water supply, to the point that hosepipe use is sometimes regulated. There's even a website you can check to see if there's currently a hosepipe ban: http://www.hosepipeban.org.uk/hosepipe-ban-current-situation... It does rain a lot here, but there's also issues with the size of the reservoirs and the amount of water being drawn.

Point taken!

I visited Scotland in the spring and there was water trickling everywhere. I should have qualified my statement much better.

The other error I made was extrapolation from Scotland to the whole of the UK. Here in the US it takes a lot of travel to go from one "region" to another, and the conditions change slowly. But I could see that the whole of the UK doesn't necessarily have uniform conditions either.

Re: New Yorkers Have Been Illicitly Cracking Open Fire Hydrants For Centuries

#20

Post by dredmorbius »

cpncrunch wrote: post #15
setpatchaddress wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The spray cap doesn't seem insanely wasteful. Or at least, no more wasteful than a public fountain or swimming pool. The benefit seems to vastly outweigh the cost. Also, I'm guessing that NY has sufficient reservoir capacity to handle it, and the reservoirs fill up naturally when it rains, so you're not wasting a finite resource anyway.

Fountains and swimming pools typically recycle their water, needing only small amounts added to offset evaporation and splash loss.
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