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The San Franciso Fire Department makes its own wooden ladders by hand

gizmodo.com

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Re: The San Franciso Fire Department makes its own wooden ladders by hand

#181

Post by JackCh »

emodendroket wrote: post #151
toomuchtodo wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tax base just isn't there sometimes. I've seen community budgets where everyone is hanging on by a thread. Not quite as bad as Native American reservations, but up there.

Sure, many communities have that problem. But I think there are at least some where that would not be the case anymore if they raised their tax rates.

There are plenty of communities in America that have professional fire departments. Particularly cities where there is actually a tax base to support it. You'll find volunteer fire departments in pretty much any working class town where the manpower is capable and willing but the money is lacking.

Re: The San Franciso Fire Department makes its own wooden ladders by hand

#182

Post by coryfklein »

DannyBee wrote: post #147
exDM69 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The material they show in the article is massive. Thick, long and heavy. Even if there are kilns big enough, the wood would no longer be straight after a fast kiln drying. A 50' 3x3" board would be twisted and bowed so much that the ladder would be a spiral staircase. It doesn't matter for 20' 2x4 destined for a construction site. Even if the wood was kiln dried, it would still have to acclimatizate for months or yea…

"The material they show in the article is massive. Thick, long and heavy. Even if there are kilns big enough, the wood would no longer be straight after a fast kiln drying." This is not true, depending on timeline. It's true of the production rate kilns, and as you say, it doesn't matter for construction lumber, which is why they do it. But assuming 3+ years to dry your 3x3" board, even doing it in a kiln at a 6 mont…

These ladders last decades so presumably most of the shop work is in maintaining existing ladders, not in pumping out lots of new ones.

It would be a waste of time and money to kiln fire the wood for 6 months when you can just order it 1-2 years in advance and leave it in the corner to accomplish the same purpose.

Re: The San Franciso Fire Department makes its own wooden ladders by hand

#183

Post by cascom »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #83
pastor_elm wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is a big difference between the pride of individual being a firefighter (many people feel this and are willing to take the job with no pay or benefits even though firefighters are at risk for a whole range of occupational induced diseases) and the pride a community feels for an organization and their willingness to support them.

Some communities simply can’t afford to pay a fire brigade, hence a volunteer squad where everyone chips in.

For most small towns I think its more the fact that a fire is a pretty rare occurrence (a couple call outs a year with a major fire every few years) so its more of a cost/benefit decision - they're willing to add ~5 min to the response time for a rare event in order to deploy $1m+/year to other higher priority areas

Re: The San Franciso Fire Department makes its own wooden ladders by hand

#184

Post by JackCh »

SllX wrote: post #157
xienze wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fiberglass, probably. Which is what SF should be doing.

You see this is what I don't understand. Here lies a pretty cool article about a pretty cool practice demonstrating how the SFFD maintains their own equipment, to their own specifications (rather than an approximation thereof), and for less money than simply farming it out to a vendor. There might even be an applicable (to HN) lesson here on the value of employing an in-house toolmaker, whatever your profession may b…

I think a big part of it is a tendency of tech/engineering sorts to have an allergic reaction against any sort of tradition. Old fashioned is worse than uncool, it's dumb and outs you as an inferior mind to the engineering who is always rational and pragmatic and has no time for tradition.

In other words, it's a social disorder.

Re: The San Franciso Fire Department makes its own wooden ladders by hand

#185

Post by blattimwind »

padobson wrote: post #135
DannyBee wrote: post #53

I can't think of any reason to acclimatize them this way instead of kiln drying/vaporizing them (depending) to roughly the right moisture content and waiting for 1% change (instead of kiln drying them to 0, or waiting forever for completely green wood) There are studies going back to the 70's by the forestry service (and others) showing there is no change in mechanical properties of pine/fir from these drying schedul…

I'm not sure how many degrees of separation this knowledge is from programming, but it's got to be one of the highest values I've ever seen on HN. Bravo.

FYI hobbies and dayjobs are not legally mandated to be correlated.

Re: The San Franciso Fire Department makes its own wooden ladders by hand

#186

Post by JackCh »

wnoise wrote: post #144
burger_moon wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I looked up g11 and g10 for their structural heat limits, because I know they have a higher heat resistance than most fiberglass, and are limited to around 150c/ 300f. I looked up what a typical house fire burns at which is 600c/1100f. This is actually a great case where asbestos shines. It's nonconductive and can stand very high temperatures. If not for the whole cancer thing.

> This is actually a great case where asbestos shines. Asbestos is heavy as rock.

Asbestos is rock.

Re: The San Franciso Fire Department makes its own wooden ladders by hand

#187

Post by gamblor956 »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #116
reaperducer wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When used with a suitable resin, fiberglass has significantly better resistance to heat and flame. And how's the price compared with wood?

I can't imagine it's not better than wood ladders made in a low volume specialty shop in SF

You'd be completely wrong. They have access to a lot of wood up there, the space to store that wood, and the time to dry it completely. The actual woodworking itself takes a small fraction of the time, and the overall cost of a wood ladder built this way is under $1000.

In contrast, a high-heat-tolerant resin is expensive. The amount of such resin needed for a table-sized ladder would cost in the hundreds; for a 50 foot ladder, the resin alone would cost in the thousands--and that does not include the cost of other materials, or the cost of actually making, test, or shipping the ladder.

Re: The San Franciso Fire Department makes its own wooden ladders by hand

#188

Post by emodendroket »

JackCh wrote: post #181
emodendroket wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, many communities have that problem. But I think there are at least some where that would not be the case anymore if they raised their tax rates.

There are plenty of communities in America that have professional fire departments. Particularly cities where there is actually a tax base to support it. You'll find volunteer fire departments in pretty much any working class town where the manpower is capable and willing but the money is lacking.

Yes, I am aware. But, again, the money is lacking in part because there is no will to raise taxes.
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