Cold Weather Operations: Insights and Tips

In this episode of Rig Recon Live, hosts Bruce Quick and Jason Witmier explore the critical topic of Winter Apparatus Operations, focusing on how cold weather affects fire apparatus and firefighter operations. Learn about the impact of freezing temperatures on pumps, plumbing, walking surfaces, and other vital systems, and discover practical methods to prevent damage, such as circulating water and running a dry pump. The discussion also delves into the challenges posed by cold weather to aerial devices and electronic components, as well as strategies for firefighter rehab in freezing conditions. Stay informed and prepared as weather patterns change, making cold weather operations an increasingly relevant topic for fire departments everywhere.

Chapter Markers:
00:00 Introduction and Social Media Plugs
01:02 Winter Apparatus Operations Overview
01:47 Cold Weather Effects on Fire Apparatus Systems
04:45 Preventing Pump and Plumbing Freezing
06:01 Storage and Non-Pump Operations in Cold Weather
08:42 Handling Water Tanks in Freezing Conditions
10:22 Electronics and Air Systems in Cold Weather
12:50 Insulating and Heating the Pump House
16:11 Aerial Devices and Cold Weather
19:09 Firefighter Protection and Rehab
22:25 Proactive Steps for Cold Weather Operations
23:36 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

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Transcript

RRL - S2E2 - Cold Weather Ops

[00:00:00] 

bruce-quick_1_02-04-2025_133101: You're listening to another episode of Rig Recon Live. I'm Bruce Quick alongside Jason Witmier. And before we get started, make sure you follow us on social media at Rig Recon. You can find us on Facebook and Instagram, and then you can get this podcast wherever you get your podcasts, including YouTube.

And most importantly, visit our website, break recon. com for all the latest apparatus content, podcast content, and more. As we get into 2025, we're going to be doing a lot more projects on break recon. So make sure you're continuing to [00:01:00] visit the site to see all the latest and greatest content. Jason, this is Todd, Winter Apparatus Operations, Cold Weather Ops.

I know it hits close to home for us as of recently, so we'll get in. to that a little bit later, but you know, a lot of people are affected by the cold weather this year, and that's no different for fire apparatus and firefighters. So let's just start it off with some of the systems that can be affected by cold weather when it comes to fire apparatus.

jason-witmier--he-him-_1_02-04-2025_133007: It's, it's, it's kind of funny. I think those of us in the Northeast were used to it or, or anywhere in the North, but when, when people in Texas are being affected by cold weather operations, it's difficult and obviously they don't plan for it. I mean, when you're specking a rig for Texas, you're not necessarily looking at freezing temperatures, but the reality is you're not going to design your rig around that, but you probably have to consider it.

So some of the systems that are affected and things that we need to consider when we're talking about cold weather operations. and plumbing are probably the biggest and they're probably the number one key [00:02:00] because they're going to be the first thing that's really affected. when you look at other things on the rig, walking surfaces, obviously if I get a buildup of ice on a walking surface, I have to worry about how to deal with that and what's in there. that you might not think of air systems. They can be affected by it. Obviously the engine and electronics, the aerial device, there are several different devices on the rig. They're going to be affected by cold weather. And then probably most importantly, and it's one of the last things we're going to cover is our own personnel. I mean, our own personnel are obviously out in those elements. So now we need to consider when they get back in the cab, is there anything special we can do to try and rehab our personnel to still operate the rig when they're back in that cab in cold and wet conditions.

bruce-quick_1_02-04-2025_133101: Right. And we hear constantly, don't freeze the pump, don't freeze the pump, but sometimes it happens and it can be very damaging and very costly and we [00:03:00] have some personal experience with this as of late. But what exactly happens when you freeze a pump?

jason-witmier--he-him-_1_02-04-2025_133007: So what, what you need to think about is water, when it freezes, water expands about nine times. if I were to just take water in a container and, and freeze it, it's going to expand up out of the top of the container. It's not a big deal unless there's a lid on that container. I'm not going to cause any damage. So if I have a little bit of water laying inside my pump, so if I've got a take a two and a half inch pipe, and I've got just a little bit of water laying in the bottom of that pipe. That water freezes, it expands, it has plenty of space to go, not a big deal. We don't have a problem. If I take that same two and a half inch pipe, and it's full of water, compacted, the water is in there tight, and now I freeze it. When that water expands, it has to go somewhere. typically gonna go to the weakest point, which a lot of times is your valve. or back into your pump it's going to cause something to burst or [00:04:00] break. You look at something like an inlet on a pump. If you've got that whole intake full of water and you expand it, a lot of that in times that intake is attached with a Victaulic That Victaulic can be the weak point. So it will break that Victaulic or worst case scenario, it'll break the plumbing. It'll physically crack the plumbing. Our most susceptible area is probably our drain valves. It's the smallest line on the truck. So it's usually only about a half inch or three quarter inch drain line. hose itself is usually plastic, so that's not a big deal. But the drain valve itself can be made out of things like brass or other non ferrous materials, and those are going to have a very small line in them. They're going to crack really fast.

bruce-quick_1_02-04-2025_133101: Yeah, so just give me the steps you can take to prevent freezing the pump and the plumbing.

jason-witmier--he-him-_1_02-04-2025_133007: So there's a couple different ways to look at it. The first is let's talk we're on scene and we're [00:05:00] operating. For on scene and we're operating, most people that operate in really cold weather have have a system and they know what they're doing. I mean there are extremes to all of this. If we've got some listeners in Alaska, They're really experienced with some unique situations.

I would think even the northern U. S. can get into those really deep cold temperatures. got situations I know up in Alaska where if they lay a five inch line from the hydrant into the rig, it gets so cold out, if they're not moving water, they'll freeze that five inch line.

bruce-quick_1_02-04-2025_133101: Right.

jason-witmier--he-him-_1_02-04-2025_133007: have to basically set up a loop, so that they're always circulating water through that line. That's the biggest thing that we want to consider inside the pump, is keep water moving. So, whether it's circulating water into the atmosphere, back into a tank, I'm just on a closed system on my rig, think about opening my tank to pump, opening my tank fill. Just like I would do if I was overheating the pump. to do that if I'm in a [00:06:00] situation where I may freeze the pump, because I'm going to keep that water moving at all times. The second thing to look at is storage of the truck, or non pump operations. And quite often people think, oh well, I store my truck in my firehouse. My firehouse is heated. So it's not a big deal. How many calls do you run for medical assist, carbon monoxide, smells and bells calls, AFA's, where the pump's not in gear and you're not running the pump. Now that truck's sitting outside in the cold weather. And something like a half inch line, it can only take about two hours tops, and you'll freeze that line. if I'm sitting outside, there's a couple things I can do. One would be like we talked about, putting that pump in gear even though we're not using it and circulating water. The other thing that a lot of companies in the north will do is run a dry pump in the cold season. to run that dry pump, You have to open [00:07:00] everything and that's where people lose sight at times. They see that master drain and they don't understand what that does. And they think, well, I opened the master drain. I drained everything on the pump. You drained everything inside the pump itself. bleeder lines, those sit between the valve and the discharge. So take your driver's side primary discharge. Typically that's a piece of pipe coming off the pump to a valve. Then I've got my valve going to the panel. to an elbow with a cap on it. So if I've drained down the pump, but I haven't opened that valve, I've got water now trapped between the valve and that discharge outlet, which has a cap on it. So that's a trapped area where I'm going to freeze that and it's going to expand and break.

bruce-quick_1_02-04-2025_133101: Right.

jason-witmier--he-him-_1_02-04-2025_133007: opening my bleeder line or my drain valve, I'm draining that water out of it. See it all too often where people think, oh, I'm I opened the master drain. I'm good. No, you have to open every individual drain line. Now the [00:08:00] next thing to consider if you're going to drain your pump down and run a dry operation is, is my tank to pump line truly working properly and sealed up? that's not something simple that you can look at. That's something you just have to test by opening everything on the truck, opening all the blank dreeter, all the drains, all the bleeders. and all of the different plumbing and then looking to see is anything dripping out after I've drained it all down. I'm seeing some drip still coming out hours later and maybe I'm seeing my tank level gauge go down some, then I've got a leaky tank to pump line. The problem with that is it's going to continue to drop water into your pump that can freeze. And you're going to run out of water eventually on your tank.

bruce-quick_1_02-04-2025_133101: What about the water inside of my water tank?

jason-witmier--he-him-_1_02-04-2025_133007: So when we get to the water tank itself I, I honestly, when I built a truck years ago for Alaska, I asked this question. I said, well, do we need to put a heating coil in your water tank? Do we need to worry [00:09:00] about that? And the, the chief kind of chuckled and said, no, that would be a real problem if we freeze the water tank. It takes several days. When you, if you just Google, how long does it take to freeze a 500 gallon water tank, first thing that even the AI on Google is going to tell you is there's a lot of factors that come into play. Well, of course, is the tank exposed? And when you think about a tank inside our body, your first answer is, well, sure, it's exposed.

bruce-quick_1_02-04-2025_133101: It's, it's not insulated. Well, it's not insulated, but it's sitting inside of a body. So there's metal on the outside. There's a half inch gap, or I'm sorry, a two inch gap all the way around that tank, typically. So I don't have the wind blowing directly on the tank. I don't have the tank exposed directly to the element. is giving me some insulation even though I don't have physical insulation panels or a wrap around that tank. It would take days to freeze a 500 gallon water tank. If I were taking a rig out of service and I were going to let it [00:10:00] sit in below zero temperatures for several days outside, I may want to drain that water tank down. if it's just my normal truck, going to be sitting in my heated firehouse. It's going to run a call and maybe sit outside for three, four hours on a call. I wouldn't worry so much about freezing the water tank at that point. I Right. And, you know, not only in cold weather are we fighting, Not trying to freeze the pump, right? But firetrucks today are made with so many different electric components and they have electrical features to them. Is there anything to be concerned on that side of things when it comes to cold weather ops?

jason-witmier--he-him-_1_02-04-2025_133007: mean, electronics are susceptible. Most of the electronics that you will see on a fire truck are tested and you see that they're tested to like 40 below C and about 85 degrees C above. But what that's testing is if I freeze it, And then I bring it back, does it still work? The question is, when it's at that frozen temperature, does it work? you'll find is most electronics will [00:11:00] work, but they will tend to get sluggish at times. You'll also have to worry about if you have any exposed screens. Those exposed screens can build up ice and things like that. So, while the electronics aren't nearly as susceptible, they can see some issues. Circle back, we touched on air, and thinking about, well, the air doesn't necessarily freeze. Well, no, the air doesn't freeze, but the water in the air freezes. So, one thing to consider is your airlines on your truck. And it's not so much a way to protect them from freezing, it's having an air dryer on the truck. Emptying your tanks at times, bleeding off your air tanks to get any moisture out of there. Because what's happening is you're in a cold atmosphere outside. you're, you're running that air compressor and you're building air pressure for your brake system and other things on your rig. That air is heating up. It's cold outside. When that air compressor shuts down, now that air is cooling down, you are inherently going to build [00:12:00] up condensation. As you build up that condensation, it can freeze in the lines. So bleeding your tanks off quite often and getting that excess air out of there will prevent any freezing in there.

The other thing it will do is it will make all of your systems last longer because that air is going to corrode inside there if it gets into devices and sets.

bruce-quick_1_02-04-2025_133101: Right. And circling back to the electric components, I know it can be specific maybe to the manufacturer of the product, but say you're on the fire ground and your screen freezes up, are there any quick troubleshooting tips that we have you could go through?

jason-witmier--he-him-_1_02-04-2025_133007: Boy, there's there's not a whole lot you can do other than trying to keep the ice off of it, wiping it down. Some people will try and protect some things by putting some extra installation around them. It's not like you're going to hit it with a heater and just heat it up real quick on the scene and get it back in service. You know, the other thing we talked about the pump house and we talked about when you're out on scene operating. But one of the big [00:13:00] things that you want to consider if you're in a very cold area, so. You know, trucks that you see built in Minnesota, Wisconsin, up in those, maybe in Maine, the North New England states. They'll often insulate the pump house. Now, it's really cool when you get into an insulated pump house. in mind, you can get in some serious cost here. But some of the things you can look to do with your insulated pump house. You can get insulation that goes on the inside of the pump house and insulates those openings where things like a push pull rod goes through. Where your gauges go through. You can put an insulated pan on the bottom that slides in. What you want to be careful of is you want to make sure that that pan has an area for all your drain lines to come through that maybe the pan is removable everywhere except for the drain line where the drain lines come through. The pan can be fixed. The question becomes, why am I worried about pulling the pan out? Why am I worried about uninsulating things? Well, most of these trucks, even in [00:14:00] Alaska, They work in cold weather quite often, but they also work in warm temperatures for part of the year. now overheating the pump becomes just as much of a problem. that, that pan needs to be able to pull out so that we can service things, but also so that we can go into warm weather operations. We can heat the inside of a pump house. Couple things you can do to heat the inside of the pump house. One is if you run a vertical exhaust, you can run that vertical exhaust pipe up through the inside of the pump house. Now I've got a great area that's giving off heat and radiating it into the pump house. with that one is, I can't turn that off in the summer. So now I have that same heat coming in there in the summer. other thing is with how our exhausts have gotten complicated with things like DEF fluid and after treatment devices, that exhaust is quite bulky and it's hard sometimes to get that vertical exhaust in there. So the second option are heaters. There's two different. There's basically three different heaters you can get for [00:15:00] inside your pump house. One would be a hot water heater, which is going to be running off of the hot, the antifreeze or the hot water in your engine. that's going to take time to heat up until things get going. Another would be an electric heater. That's simply using electric to a coil to generate heat inside that pump house. solution and the one that I've seen used the most in really cold weather operations is a diesel fired heater. So now you've got a nice little compact heater that's going to sit in your pump house. It ties into the diesel tank for your engine, so you've already got the diesel fluid on board. It's not something else you need to add in. And when you turn that on, you get a nice heat source inside that pump house. One of the things we see freeze the most at times are your gauge line. That's a really small line. so much a fear of breaking, because that's typically a plastic line. And it'll handle that expansion, but it'll freeze up and not let you see operations anymore. [00:16:00] So we'll see people wrap insulation tape around those gauge lines. There are heated tapes you can buy that actually plug in and work off your 12 volt DC electrical system to heat that line up and prevent that from freezing.

bruce-quick_1_02-04-2025_133101: How about aerial devices? Any special considerations for cold weather ops?

jason-witmier--he-him-_1_02-04-2025_133007: So the aerial device itself isn't so much concerned about the cold weather when it first goes out. mean, hydraulic fluid can get a little bit gel like and not operate as well when it's really cold out. But as you heat that up and run it, you're going to be running it through a pump and you're going to heat that fluid up and that's not so much of a problem. So it's not the cold from that standpoint. The standpoint of cold on an aerial device is freezing of water as it gets onto it. So if we're out there operating our aerial device and it's below zero or below freezing even, and we've got a fine mist coming out of our Discharges on scene. We want to be careful that we don't ice that aerial device up [00:17:00] a couple reasons for that.

One is the obvious one. I've got people going up and down and I don't want them on a slick rung or they're going to fall off or I don't want them operating in a platform that is now an ice skating rink in the bottom of the platform. But, but the other thing to think about is the weight. Aerials are very susceptible to weight. You're, you're given weight ratings. You can only mount this much equipment up in that bucket. You can only have this many people on the device. It gets very touchy when you extend it out to a certain zone. You'll see weight charts that tell you if you're at this angle, this far off the side of the truck, here's your weight rating. As we add that ice to that aerial device, we've changed all of that now because we're adding weight that we didn't expect. something we need to be very careful of. It also can be an issue when it comes to operations. When I go to retract that aerial device, I've got a buildup of ice on it. may have some issues with retraction and extension as that ice builds up on things. We've, we've seen some pictures over [00:18:00] the years. you get out in these cold atmospheres and you're working a big fire, you can't necessarily think about that stuff in the heat of the moment, but there are things you need to plan for and think about going ahead.

bruce-quick_1_02-04-2025_133101: Right. Do you ever see any complications in cold weather with roll up or slam doors, or is that generally they're used pretty often? So,

jason-witmier--he-him-_1_02-04-2025_133007: Tip, tip, I mean you could build up ice on the roll up door and you may have to give a little bit of a wrap on the roll up door to bust it off. If, if you haven't built it up really hard, It'll come off very easily and as you roll it up it's going to want to break because those slats are going to separate. With a slam door we typically don't have as much of an issue with that because it's just going to build up on the face of it and we're just opening it up. we see a bigger problem with the slam doors if they leave it open. If I leave my roll up door open it's not such a big deal. Water, sure that mist is blowing in now it's blowing into the compartment but not onto the door because the roll is kind of [00:19:00] protecting itself. With if I leave the slam door open and I've got an accumulation of ice now it's getting into my latch system It's getting into my locks. It's getting into my pistons and things like that

bruce-quick_1_02-04-2025_133101: right. So not only is the fire apparatus exposed to cold weather, but you know, so are firefighters on the fire ground. So what are your recommendations for protection and maybe rehab as well?

jason-witmier--he-him-_1_02-04-2025_133007: So there's a couple things I mean when we talk about rehab in the fire scene Obviously people get into large vehicles where they can bring their crew into They get into tents where they have heat in the tents and that's more an operations thing that we're not necessarily Focused here on on our rig recon stuff. we're talking about is You You've got a simple six man cab and you had a fire and the guys were out operating the cold. Now they need to get back in that cab to go home or they need to get back in that cab to stage for a little while, but they're wet and they're cold. There's a couple things we want to consider. every fire truck by default has a heater in it. That [00:20:00] heaters primary purpose is to defrost your windshield. It is going to provide heat to your crew as well. But if you really want to heat up that cab, especially in the rear, you want to consider some options for auxiliary heaters. There are things that you can install in places like the footwells. can be again, three different styles. They can be electric operated. They can be hot water operated, or they can be diesel fired. If you really want to pump a lot of heat in there, there's a bunch of insulation options we can do in a cab and insulation in the cab that works for you in multiple ways that works for you when it's hot. It works for you when it's cold. works for you from a sound deadening standpoint. if I've insulated the cab extra heavy, I've now knocked down the sound inside the the cab from the engine. I've insulated it in the winter to hold the heat in. I've also insulated it in the summer to hold the cold in.

So, when I'm running my air conditioning system, it's going to help that cab stay cooler longer. Those [00:21:00] are things you want to ask your OEM about. Most OEMs offer a special insulation package you can pay for. The additional heater's a big thing. one thing that I see people lose sight on that I really want to touch on is the defroster. windshield's critical. I'm driving that truck and I don't want that fogged up. Most defrosters will work on a normal ambient situation of pulling out of the firehouse where it's warm, going into a cold atmosphere, my crew's in there but they're all dry, and now I turn on my defroster because I get that little bit of a fog on there like you would in your car, and it clears it. Where the problem comes in is, now the rig's been sitting for hours outside in the very cold. And it's running, so the cab's kind of warm. If we have a heater in there, it's really warm. now my crew gets in and they're soaking wet and cold. they start to warm up, and that water on them starts to evaporate, I really pump a lot of moisture into that cab. [00:22:00] That's where I'll fog that windshield up really fast. something like an auxiliary fan, you can get auxiliary fans that mount in the corner of the windshields. So that when I turn my defroster on, it helps circulate the air. It's not so much that I need more hot air, it's that I need air movement. I need the air to physically move across the windshield in order to let what is warm do its job and defrost that windshield for me.

bruce-quick_1_02-04-2025_133101: Right. And as we sort of sum things up here, I think you hit on it on the head right when we started the podcast, that weather is changing across the country just as fast as technology is in the fire service world. And like you said, it might not be an everyday occurrence for Southern departments, but it could be a, you know, once in a generation type cold, or it seems like it's happening more often.

And are there any proactive steps that these departments can take when specing new apparatus? Or is it more of just being proactive as it comes up type of thing?

jason-witmier--he-him-_1_02-04-2025_133007: [00:23:00] I think for the people who don't get cold weather all that often, we all know the price of firetrucks is way up. We talked about this in one of our last episodes. more costs by adding systems that you'll use Once in a generation, maybe once every other year, might not be the right way to go. But being aware of things like circulating my water, draining my pump down if it gets really cold out, those are things that don't cost any additional money. They just take additional training and knowledge for the crew. So if I'm in an area that's normally not freezing, those are the type of things that I really want to stress and and concentrate on.

bruce-quick_1_02-04-2025_133101: Yeah, I think you hit it really well there. Again, as we summarized, we talked about cold weather operations for the fire apparatus. We hit on even firefighters themselves on the fire ground and just some ways to be proactive in keeping that pump from freezing and some things you can do to keep your electronics warm as well as fire apparatus continue to change.

Jason, as usual, as we wrap up, I'll open it up for any final comments.

jason-witmier--he-him-_1_02-04-2025_133007: [00:24:00] you are talking about potentially thousands and thousands of dollars of damage. You're talking about an extended period of time out of service where you now need another rig. Don't take the chance. If you think you're anywhere near close to freezing, drain that pump down or circulate that water and prevent it from happening.

Because once it happens, you'll probably never let it happen again. 

bruce-quick_1_02-04-2025_133101: It's cold outside, so make sure you watch this one and make sure you're up to training on cold weather operations. If you haven't already, you can find this podcast wherever you get this podcast and make sure you go back and watch previous episodes. We recently highlighted. We talked about the new NFPA standards, and we talked even about pump sizing.

So a lot of these things coincide together. Follow us on social media at Rig Recon on Facebook and Instagram. And also visit our website, rigrecon. com, for all the latest apparatus content. Until then, spec the best. [00:25:00]