Secure Hose Storage: Best Practices and Safety Tips

Bruce Quick and Jason Witmier discuss hose bed storage and hose retention systems on fire apparatus, focusing on attack and supply hose and what NFPA requires. They explain how incidents—including a crosslay launching and damaging vehicles and a fatal case where a five-inch coupling killed a child—drove NFPA to add mid-cycle retention requirements, later broadened, and how hose storage moved from minimum hose amounts to minimum cubic footage. They cover practical design and deployment considerations such as varying true hose diameters by manufacturer, packing methods affecting storage space and nozzle placement, securing bumper wells and crosslays, slide-out trays, and simple retention options like Velcro straps versus tarps, lids, or doors. For supply hose, they emphasize coupling clearance, heavier retention needs, and cover/door tradeoffs. Key takeaways: plan for future hose changes, don’t remove retention, and design systems that reduce climbing and work.

Chapter Markers:

00:00 Tragedy Sparks Change

01:21 Show Intro and Housekeeping

02:06 Hose Beds Overview

02:53 NFPA Rules and History

06:43 Sizing Hose Storage Right

09:06 Attack Hose Wells and Lids

10:47 Loading Crosslays Safely

14:42 Retention Systems That Deploy Fast

18:42 Nozzle Fit and Crosslay Design

19:30 Supply Hose Storage Basics

21:23 Supply Hose Retention and Covers

25:19 Top Three Takeaways and Wrap

More - https://rigrecon.com/podcast/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

The scary one was, and I don't know if it was the city of Pittsburgh, but I know it was in their area. They launched 5-inch, and a coupling hit a little girl and killed her. That brought out a temporary amendment immediately where NFPA said, we gotta do something. We gotta make sure this hose cannot come off. So there was they don't do temporary amendments very often. I shouldn't say changed, but updated. But this came out mid-code cycle and they said we need to fix this.

SPEAKER_01 1:26

Before we get started on today's topic, let's go over a couple housekeeping at housekeeping items. Make sure you follow us on social media. You can find us on Facebook and Instagram. That's at Rig Recon. Visit our website, rigreecon.com, for all the latest apparatus information and new content daily. We just went through and overhauled a little bit of the homepage of the website for some easier navigation. You can find those comparison charts real easy, all this podcast content. And then most importantly, you can get this podcast wherever you find your podcasts, including YouTube. And as of recently, we're also featured as a video podcast on Apple and Spotify as well. So you can watch it through those platforms too. So uh Jason, you and I today, another episode here. We want to talk about hose beds and hose bed storage and hose retention systems. And I know that you kind of thought you wanted to break it down in some segments here, so I'll let you take it away.

SPEAKER_00 2:15

Yeah, and when we talk about hose beds, I mean just the subject hose beds, it can mean a heck of a lot. I mean is is it attack hose, is it supply hose, is it in the running board, is it a cross lay? So to kind of simplify and break it down, we're gonna talk about all of it, but we're gonna kind of organize. We're gonna talk a little bit about attack hose storage to start. Then we'll go into how do you do the retention of the hose for the attack hose, then we'll get into supply hose, not quite as complicated when you get into the supply hose, but we'll talk about the supply hose, what some of the options are, and what some of the retention is for the supply hose as well.

SPEAKER_01 2:53

So let's start kind of where we do on a lot of these apparatus subjects. Let's start with NFPA and what the code says you should do. The law.

SPEAKER_00 3:01

That's right. Uh so all joking aside, NFPA is not a law. We've talked about this before, but it is it is a code, it's a recognized standard, and it is something that everyone needs to be aware of and follow. So it's changed over the years. For the longest time, you didn't have to secure your hose. Obviously, you needed somewhere to store your hose. You've always needed somewhere to store hose on a fire truck. But for years, it could just be wide open. And there were some problems over the years. There's some there's some there's a funny story I'll tell you, and then there's a scary story I'll tell you. So the funny story happened with my own fire department. Uh, I won't I won't call out the brand of hose, but there was a brand of bows that was known to be very slick when it was brand new. Sure. So uh we're responding to a call, no retention, just an open cross lay on a truck, uh, typical 200-foot attack line with uh an L card nozzle on the end of it. And uh we we were partial to pistol grip, so it did have a pistol grip on it. I I was responding to the call not on the truck, and I was the captain of our company at the time, and I got called to go somewhere else. And I'm like, Well, the fire's here. Why am I going here? And they said, Well, there was an incident with your truck. So as our truck made a turn, they launched the cross lay because it's slippery. Yeah, rig pitched a little bit, kind of high speed, I'm sure. I mean, nothing dangerous, but enough that it launched it. It just so happened to wrap the hose around a police car, caught the pistol grip under the tire, and the driver didn't notice it and kept going. Oh, jeez. Uh, ripped the pistol off, uh, damaged about 10 vehicles with that nozzle bouncing down the road. Funny incident that we can laugh at now. I'm sure the insurance company didn't think it was funny. Right. Nobody hurt that that kind of brought into the forefront hey, this can happen. The scary one was, and I don't know if it was the city of Pittsburgh, but I know it was in their area. They launched five-inch and a coupling hit a little girl and killed her. That brought out a temporary amendment immediately where NFPA said, we gotta do something, we gotta make sure this hose cannot come off. So there was, they don't do temporary amendments very often. There's the code gets changed every five or six years. I shouldn't say changed, but updated. But this came out mid-code cycle, and they said we need to fix this in 2016. It went into the code, and then in 2024 it became a little more broad. So the retention part of it is in there. Hose storage itself is in the code as well. That's changed over the years, too. NFPA used to be very, very specific. They used to say, Oh, you need to carry this amount of hose at a minimum, it could always exceed it, but you got to carry at least this much uh attack hose and this much supply hose. That changed in 2016. They said, you know what, we don't need to do this anymore. Let's just say you need to give them an area to store hose on the foot on the truck, and they made it a minimum cubic footage. Now, now that can mean a lot. So we'll get into that as we talk about how the hose lays out. But the bottom line is the code says you have to have storage for hose, and the code specifically says you have to have a retention system that prevents unintentional deployment of the hose from the top, side, front, and rear when your apparatus is in motion.

SPEAKER_01 6:42

So we move to cubic footage now, right? And that seems to make sense, but let's talk about the attack hose. We know the size of it. You got an inch and a half, an inch and three-quarters, and we know the length, so cubic footage should just be math, right?

SPEAKER_00 6:57

It should be simple. Uh, it should be very easy. Uh so the the first thing that comes up here, and we are not a hose manufacturer, and I think a lot of people in the industry probably don't know this, but uh inch and three-quarter hose. That should simply be 1.75 inches diameter, right? And you would think that is straightforward. It's not. The the funny thing is, so you got someone that comes out with an inch and three-quarter hose, and let's say they make it exactly 1.75 inches inner diameter. Now, the thickness of the hose is of course going to change the width a little bit, but the next guy come out and says, I got an inch and three-quarter hose that has less friction loss. Well, how did I get less friction loss? Did I change the material inside somehow? Is it is it lubricated somehow so I don't have friction? No, they made it bigger. So you'll find an inch and three-quarter hose that's 1.88 inches in diameter. It could be all the way up towards two inches in diameter. There was no code that said you couldn't be bigger than an inch and three-quarter, it just said you had to be at least an inch and three-quarter. Right. So it's it's really important to look at what brand hose are you using and what's the actual measurement. And you can get that from the hose manufacturer. When the hose is flat, what's the width of a fold? How thick is it? Now, how thick it is is gonna change some over the life of it. When it's new, it's very stiff, it's very hard to pack. Uh, if you don't get all the air out of it, the thickness isn't quite as critical, but the width is very critical when you're setting up. The next part of it is how are you gonna pack it? Now, there's a lot of ways to pack hose, and that's that's not a rig recon topic, yeah, but it certainly is several brass tacks hard facts topics. So if you if you watch some of our brass tacks hard facts videos, there are several videos out there that go through the the different ways to do a Minuteman or a flat load, lots of different ways. Those all matter because it matters where that nozzle's gonna end up, right? Is it gonna be inside the hose pack? Is it gonna be hanging out the end of the hose pack? That could change the width of the storage area. So these are things you need to consider.

SPEAKER_01 9:05

No great points there. And what about something like a well on the front bumper? We often see attack lines stored there. Is the lid required to meet code?

SPEAKER_00 9:14

So a lid specifically, like a tread plate fold down lid, not technically required, but something. The code says I gotta uh support it from all sides and the bottom. Well, that's done. It's it's in a well, but the top is gotta be secured as well. So when I hit a bounce, I can't have that hose bounce up out of the well and now fly out onto the road. Some people will accomplish that with something as simple as a velcro strap. Uh, some like a lid because they're out in the elements. Maybe they don't want that well to potentially fill up with rainwater. I mean, the well's gonna have holes in it no matter what, you're gonna put wet hose in it. Sure. But you know, maybe maybe it's on a running board on the side and I want to be able to stand on that running board. So now the hose is down inside the running board and there's a lid over top of it. What you want to consider is how quickly can I deploy it and how am I going to get it out of there? And then how am I gonna store it? Especially if it's a front bumper and I'm putting like 200 or 150 feet in there, and now I want to stretch it out. If I get a car fire, it's not that far away. Am I just gonna pull out all 150 feet? Or do I have it in 50-foot sections that I can break it apart? Or you'll see again on some of our video series, you'll see things like a triple uh roll of loops where you hook your arm through all three, and now you're laying out a perfect accordion of 150 feet, only 50 feet away from the vehicle. So there's a lot of different ways to accomplish it, but the bottom line is you gotta secure it in that well somewhere.

SPEAKER_01 10:46

Right. And we've talked on previous podcasts about reducing the climbing on the apparatus and the reaching up high. And many people do a lower cross lay to accomplish that, but maybe talk about ways you can pack the hose without climbing up into the dunnage area.

SPEAKER_00 11:01

So when you when you do a cross lay, it's it's a great point. We we have touched a lot, Bruce, on hey, I don't want to crawl up on the rig because I can get someone injured. Right. And the most popular way to pack a crosslay was crawl up the front of the body with some folding steps, hopefully. Hopefully you're not standing on the discharges, but we all know we tend to do that at times. Right. Uh, don't step on the light shield. I'll tell you that will fold over pretty quickly and you will have an injury. But you were crawling up into that dunnage area. And I learned recently that maybe dunnage area can be a top uh a term that's special to the East Coast. Uh, we're talking the area above the pump, so where your deck gun typically is located. You're crawling up into that area, then you're hanging down over the front end and trying to pass hose back and forth. It can be difficult. You can pass it from side to side. A lot of people will stand on the running board and just so that you're at chest height, and now you're passing the hose back and forth. If you're doing that, just make sure that whatever you've done for the top of your retainment system is something you can get out of the way. Because as I get to the top of that hose load, that hose needs to be up in the air. So I wouldn't want a fixed lid that can't be raised because I'd never be able to pass that hose back and forth once I got near the top. A real popular option is a slide out tray. Now they come at a cost, and there's things you need to consider. If I'm doing a slide out tray, I'm probably not doing the plumbing up through the floor of the tray. Because now, once I've packed the hose, how do I slide it in, connect the discharge to the tray, and get it back in place? A lot of different materials for the tray. I've seen them made out of aluminum. Uh, stainless steel would probably be a little extreme, but a real popular option is poly. If I do the tray out of poly, now that poly material is going to slide very easily to go in place in the aluminum holder. What you gotta make sure you're doing is when you're building that, if you're doing a tray, make sure you stress to your OEM. I want to slide out tray in there, so I want the inside of the tray to be this wide to fit my hose and nozzle. And then the cross lay area obviously has to be wider to hold the tray.

unknown 13:15

Right.

SPEAKER_00 13:15

And then how am I gonna lock that tray in place? Again, my retainment system is holding back hose, which it alone can be fairly light. But now with that whole tray and the weight of that tray pushing against it, I might want some type of a latch to keep that tray in place. Right.

SPEAKER_01 13:33

A good point there. And you mentioned the code for retention. Has this always been a part of the standard?

SPEAKER_00 13:38

So, yeah, it it wasn't always a part of it. Uh we talk a lot about NFPA on our podcasts, and and we talk a lot about what it does and how to meet it. Uh it hasn't always been something you had to do, but it's something that you should think about doing. Uh, the the example here would be if I've got an older truck and let's say I got a truck that was built in, let's say the code came into effect in 2020, and I built this truck in 2015. Technically, it doesn't have to meet the 2020 code. But you don't want to be the guy that was driving that truck that had that hose launch off and kill a poor little girl. You didn't do anything wrong, but you're never gonna live that down. That's gonna live with you the rest of your life. A retention system, inexpensive, very simple to do, very retrofitable to any fire truck out in the market. So it's really something you should think about adding to your rig if you don't have one now.

SPEAKER_01 14:41

No, good stuff. And then so the retention systems for the attack hose, it it sounds like it can be pretty secure. How do you secure it um, but also have it readily available to deploy as well? This episode is presented by ROM. Every firefighter knows that seconds matter. That's why ROM designs roll-up doors, cargo trays, department lighting that helps crews access equipment quickly and keeps that apparatus organized for the jobs ahead. Learn more about the products trusted by firefighters and manufacturers across the industry at romcorp.com.

SPEAKER_00 15:16

Now, back to the show. When these systems first started to get required, that was the biggest thing we would get is complaints from the firefighters saying, Hey, when I get on scene, I got a lot of things to worry about. I'm I'm I'm gearing up, I'm packing up. When I want to get that hose, I want to grab it and go. I don't want to be messing with a door, I don't want to be pulling off all kinds of straps. So there were very complicated systems in the beginning that got simplified. Uh, you can accomplish it with a net, you can accomplish it with some velcro straps. Some people will go as far as putting a door that physically has a gas shock and lifts up. That might be a little extreme, but if you're doing an enclosed pump panel, now it's already behind the door. So now I don't need an additional retention system. We get asked the question quite often: well, if I got a roll-up door and I have the hose behind the roll-up door and the hose slides and pushes against the back of that roll-up door, is that going to mess me up? Depends on your roll-up door, I guess would be my answer. Uh, if it's an ROM, no. One of the things that we teach in our classes on our doors, the inside of our doors are concave. And that is done by design. So the slat has a little bit of a concave shape to the back of it, so that as you try to raise it, if something has pinned itself against it, it's naturally gonna want to push itself back away from the door. So that way the door doesn't get locked up by the hose pinning against it. Am I saying that if you put a big cylinder in there and pin it to the door, you can't jam a door, you absolutely could. Sure. You could also jam up the hinge on a or the lock mechanism on a regular hinge door and not open that door. So it can happen. But when you're doing roll-up doors, that will work. Uh, if you're doing something like a tarp, consider how you're gonna affix that and fasten it. Think about the cross leg. When I get there and I want to deploy that cross lay, I want to flip that tarp out of the way right away. A lot of people like to do the little metal buttons. You grab that tarp and you pull on it, after three or four years, you're gonna rip through that metal button. It's just gonna happen. The the metal snap is a cheap option, probably not gonna last. Uh, the Velcro strap has been the best that we've seen. And you can do a very simple Velcro strap with what's called a footman's loop that is screwed onto the side of the panel. You can bring the strap through it and back over itself. Works very well. Two rips to get it open, you can throw the tarp up out of the way. A lot of people will do a tread plate cover across the top of the crosslays. That way, if they need to walk across the rig for some reason, they can walk from the dunnage onto that, it will support their weight. But they still have the tarp on the side to be able to flip that out of the way quick. We've also seen the tarp go all the way up over. Uh, if the tarp goes across the top, that that's absolutely fine. Make sure you've secured it somehow because you will get air that will blow down in there when you're driving the rig. It's naturally gonna want to try and pull that tarp up. The other thing to think about is if I put a tarp across the top, I'm not gonna want to walk on that now.

unknown 18:27

Right.

SPEAKER_00 18:28

Like that, that is a slippery surface, and I'm gonna be walking on top of hose, which potentially is gonna crush down in, and I'm gonna get tangled up in the uh dividers in there. So these are all things you got to think about. Another consideration on a cross lay is we talked already about the nozzle. Where's the nozzle gonna store? Uh, think a little bit about if if I'm doing a nozzle that's gonna be inside, so it's gonna sit inside the crosslay. Maybe I want to hold my divider back a little bit. So we've seen people spec, cut the divider back eight, ten inches from the edge of the rig. And that way the nozzle can hang there. Typically, a cross lay design that you can pull it either direction. If your nozzle is larger than the width of your hose, which a lot of times the bale on the nozzle is, and you haven't sized the crossleigh big enough, you're not going to pull that hose through the other side. The nozzle's gonna get stuck in the middle.

unknown 19:26

Right.

SPEAKER_00 19:26

So that those are things you want to think about when you're doing the design.

SPEAKER_01 19:31

Sort of move through the segments here. Let's go to the supply hose side of things. So let's shift our focus there and and do the same concepts apply to supply hose as they would to attack hose here.

SPEAKER_00 19:42

Supply hose is a lot simpler. Uh, it's it's definitely less complicated because there's not nearly as many options. I mean, typically we're talking about a three-inch or a five-inch hose here. There was some four-inch out there. In some rare cases, there's some six-inch. Uh, once again, so your your OEMs have a calculator. Most of them have a calculator available to them that says if I've got a box that's so many inches wide by so many inches tall by so many inches deep, how many feet of hose can I fit in there? But what they need to know from you is the width of that hose and the thickness of that hose. Then they can feed that into the calculator and say, okay, this will hold a thousand feet of five inch. Most of them, when they do it, they put a 10% error factor on there. So they're only telling you about 90% of what it will hold. So usually if they say it'll hold a thousand, it'll probably hold a little more than that. But what you want to consider is your couplings. Where are you storing them couplings when you lay that hose in there so that that comes off properly? You don't want a coupling that has to flip over when you're deploying hose because it can get caught in other things. So thinking about how tall does it have to be to get all the couplings in and how am I going to store that hose. The other thing is if you're putting it in like a well on the side of the rig, a lot of people will carry a short section of five inch in the side well to hook to the suction server for quick deployment, or maybe even for a discharge to feed another rig. Again, don't forget, I have to secure that in that side well. Just because it's five inch and not an attack hose doesn't mean I don't have to worry about it. I still have to secure it at that point, even though it's supply hose. Right.

SPEAKER_01 21:23

And again, with the retention, you know, we talked about a lot of ways on the attack hose side, but um, maybe talk about what changes when we're dealing with supply hose.

SPEAKER_00 21:33

The the biggest thing that changes with retention on the supply hose is number one, it's a heavier hose. So it it's it's got much more weight to it. So my retention system may need to be a little more beefy, depending on what I'm looking at. The second thing is the deployment of the couplings. So if I pack that hose down in there tight, but now let's say I've most people will arrange a lot of their couplings to sit at the front of the hose bed. When I say the front, I mean the front of the rig, so not at the back. Back where you're deploying it. Right. So now when that coupling comes out, it kind of has to ride up over the other hose. Well, if that coupling, if it's five-inch hose and that's a five-inch round coupling, coupling doesn't crush down, but the hose does, unfortunately. They haven't figured that out yet. Well, there's an invention for us. Exactly. So when I'm deploying that, I need to make sure I have enough space above it to get that hose out. So a lot of tarps are very popular. If I do a soft cover tarp, that soft cover tarp has some give to it. The other really popular option are doors on top of the hose bed, tread plate or roll-up. I mean, ROM, we make a roll-up door that covers the hose bed. When you're doing those doors, there's a couple things you want to consider. Number one, you want to make sure that you've left enough depth so the couplings can get out because those hinge doors aren't going to give. The other thing is think about the length of your rig and how those doors are constructed. So if I've got a body that's somewhere around 10 feet long, that's now your typical hose bed's about 72 inches wide. I've split it in half, so that's 36 inches. That's a door that's 36 inches tall by 10 feet long. That's a heavy piece of tread plate. Right. Typically, your OEM's going to put a gas shock on there. That's going to help you for raising it. It's also going to maintain it in the raised position so it doesn't fall down. I've seen some people where they'll they'll split the back covers, but they'll only go halfway back with those covers, and then they'll put one solid cover across the back that flips up. So it's it's kind of a three-piece design. I've also seen a really neat design, which is a tread plate rolling cover. So it's kind of like an accordion, it slides over top of itself, that gets the back open, and then the whole thing hinges up so that you have access into it. Remember, when you put that retention system on top, you're going to want to walk across that at times. There are times you need to get up there and get at things in the dunnage area. If you've got coffin compartments, you need to get down into those coffin compartments. So give consideration to what type of walking surface is up there. Is it tread plate, anti-slip, something that I can lay on? A lot of these teams, like strike teams on the West Coast, when they go on deployment, they don't want to sleep on the ground because of rattlesnakes. Right. So they're out on the deployment, they have to get some downtime. But if they get on a sleeping bag on the ground and now they get dipped by a rattlesnake, they got a bigger problem.

SPEAKER_01 24:40

Right.

SPEAKER_00 24:41

So they'll sleep up on top of that hose bed cover. So they don't want to tarp. They don't want to be sleeping on a vinyl cover that's sinking down into the hose. So they want those solid tread play covers. The the ROM door, that that's a sliding roll-up door that can go on the hose bed. Uh, it can support the weight of a firefighter. It can actually support up to, I believe it's 600 pounds. So you can easily have two firefighters walking across there, but it's not an anti-slip surface. So while you can support the weight of a firefighter, you want to be very cautious if you're walking across the top of that.

SPEAKER_01 25:18

No, that makes sense. And as everybody should know by now, as we wrap up, we always give our top three considerations, sort of summarize the show. And we talked, you know, about attack host, storage and retention, and then about supply uh storage and retentions with some some good Jason stories in there as well. So, Jason, as we wrap up, uh top three considerations from the episode today.

SPEAKER_00 25:38

First thing I would say is when you're building the rig, give some consideration to how long are we going to keep this in service? Yeah. Big, big departments, it's probably 10 years. Uh, us smaller volunteers out there anymore, a lot of people used to run on a 15 or 20-year plan. Now that rigs cost over a million dollars, I think you're gonna see a lot more staying in service long. So, so think about I just built this rig, it's gonna be in service for 10 or 15 years. How old's the hose I have right now? Oh, it's it's seven or eight years old. I'm probably gonna replace the hose during the time I have this rig. Plan for the future. That hose may change. Maybe your cross legs were inch and a half and now they're gonna become inch and three-quarter. That means they're gonna be wider. So try and plan for the future. You don't want to make it too loose that the hose can easily slide out, although you do have a retention system to hold it. But just think about growth in the future and don't limit yourself. Um, the next thing would be protect yourself. Don't put a retention system on there. I've seen this over the years. We're gonna buy the cheapest net we can find and we're gonna spec it because now the OEM says you're good to go. And as soon as we back it into the garage, we're gonna throw that in the trash room and we're gonna put it back on. Don't be that guy, don't be the one that has that incident. We don't want to read about you in the newspaper. You don't want to have to do it uh or deal with it. Uh, you still see it every day. Fortunately, not fatalities, but I know my local fire department where I'm at, not so long ago. I mean, within a few weeks ago, a company deployed all their five-inch no weight o'call. They don't have a tarp on the back, and they didn't hurt anyone, they didn't cause any damage. Fortunately, it wasn't a working fire, or they would have got there and had no O's. Yeah, they did make a lot of work for themselves. It's not fun rolling a thousand feet of five inch on the side of a highway. I can tell you from personal experience. The the last thing for three takeaways, I'll say, is work smarter, not harder. Design a system, think about how you're gonna deploy your attack lines, think about how you're gonna load that hose. If a tray makes it easier because you can set the tray down on the table or on the floor, pack it, and then get two people to lift it and slide it in. Uh, if it's a really long attack line, think about how heavy that's gonna be. If I'm lifting that tray with 350 feet of attack hose in it, I mean that's a pretty long attack line. But but just give those type of things consideration. When you're designing the rig, you've got all the flexibility in the world. Once it's built, now you're stuck. Now you got to deal with what you have. So give it a lot of thought and plan out so that you can make the best rig for your department.

SPEAKER_01 28:24

Uh good stuff today, Jason. And again, this wraps another episode on Rig Recon Live. If you haven't already, you can follow us on social media. You can get this podcast wherever you get your podcast, including YouTube, and visit our website, rigrecon.com, for all the latest apparatus information and all of our podcast content. Until then, spec the best.