Saw this going to a friend’s house- they bagged the fire hydrants….one thought was snow; but this is the first year apparently. And snow has been a mild issue this year compared to most.
this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2024
190 points (98.5% liked)
No Stupid Questions
35817 readers
1669 users here now
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Isn't that what paint's for? Seems like a lot of unnecessary plastic trash.
Cheaper to do bags than re-paint off-schedule. Usually cities have a schedule for maintenance, and the bag, in this case, is preventative for rust without being off-schedule for painting.
Salt resistant paint is industrial, and it’s expensive. Depending on the product, it can also be a two part system and need special preparation. And by expensive, I mean it can cost over a hundred dollars per gallon, if you aren’t getting a deal on it. That’s a big investment for a smaller town.
That seems like chump change for something that probably already costs over $1000, won't take a gallon of paint, and is meant to last for decades.
You’re forgetting the cost of removing them from the ground to have them sandblasted beforehand. This isn’t latex water based paint for your wall. You don’t just toss it on top of whatever is already there.
You don't remove them you strip clean and paint in place.
Lol down votes I've painted hydrants. You have obviously never. There would be no reason to remove them. Since you would also be disabling the hydrant to do it and what do you do if there is a fire? Here you dumb bastards.
load more comments
(3 replies)
I imagine a fire hydrant is pretty expensive as well. Can't imagine covering it in salt resistant paint would be that much of a price increase and even if it is I don't imagine it would be cost prohibitive if it means a 20 year replacement cycle vs. a 10 year cycle.
If anything this may be protecting them from dog piss.
You also need your pay to have each of them taken out of the ground and sandblasted before they are coated. Industrial coatings aren’t like house paint, you can’t toss on extra layers and move on.
load more comments
(2 replies)
Paint gets scratches, especially where things turn and rub against each other. You don't want the turning bits becoming seized and finding out at the worst time
Isn't the paint also unnecessary plastic trash?
Apparently, the same gets in and corrosion starts. The second article mentions a city that stopped doing it.
Maybe they reuse the bags. Bag up 5th Street, salt it, collect the bags and prep 6th.
hmm thanks for that.
Just FYI, the striped pole attached to the hydrant is so it can be found under snow.
I was driving down a highway once and noticed that there was a blue reflective marker on top of the concrete barrier every few hundred feet or so.
Took me about an hour or two before I noticed that it aligned with where the drainage basins were, probably for snow removal in the winter.
Why wouldn't they make the whole thing red?
It works in regular snow and blood snow
I believe there's some logic in alternating patterns being more attention-grabbing to our brains, which is why you usually see stripes on anything you need to be cautious around.
The pole isn't for locating the hydrant, per se, as much as it is for avoiding the hydrant. It's so you don't drive into it if it's covered in snow.
it's also for locating the hydrant when it's covered in snow. Historically we'd have 3-4 feet of snow and most places are more than somewhat lax about clearing out the hydrant.
Because its easier to see
It's also why flashing led road signs exist here in Australia around school zones
Not a great analogy for somewhere that has snow
To maintain freshness
Duh. No one likes a soggy, limp hydrant.
Possibly out of service. There are dedicated high visibility bags for this purpose but if whoever did this didn’t have one, this looks like a stopgap to help make it more obvious.
It does look like there's metal cables over the front and top thingamajigs.
It is amazing how many hyadrants I've suddenly noticed on the drive back. (and there were several new-looking ones that weren't bagged. Or maybe the bag came off. Apparently it happened in the fall.)
Firefighter here:
They're made from cast iron that likes to rust and the only thing protecting them is the Paint on them.
My guess is that the paint got scratched and they're bagging it up until they can repaint it.
For safe hydrant sex. Duhhh
Autoerotic asphyxiation.
It's to prevent unwanted pregnancies. Always bag up your hydrants, boys!
Remember! Flies spread Disease, so keep yours CLOSED!
I've never heard of this, & I'm Canadian.
I imagine out east, in the Maritimes, they'd have to put marker-poles on the things, because they sometimes get 5' of snow in a single onslaught, but ..
.. it simply isn't something I'd ever heard-of.
Our fire-departments deal with the snow & ice every ( normal, not now ) winter.
shrug
Isn't the street that concrete area from where the picture was taken? So if a snow plough comes to remove the snow, it essentially would burry the hydrant.
Related question. Why are north American hydrants all of the "stick up out of the ground as a permanent fixture" type, rather than the more discreet and less likely to be damaged "pipe fitting concealed beneath a removable plate" type?
So dogs can pee on them, dingus.
Probably because it’s still liable to be damaged (especially by freeze/thaw cycles,), the plate is liable to be lost, it’s harder to find- especially under a foot of snow-
And my personal favorite: tradition.
That deck post is looking a bit curved
Not my deck, not my post, lol.
My guess is to keep water from getting into the threads and freezing them shut.
if that were a problem, honestly, hydrants wouldn't have lasted a freeze/thaw cycle. Water expands and breaks shit (potholes for example,) it might get frozen and harder to open, but they have massively huge hydrant wrenches for a reason. (and it ain't compensating for their tiny hose...) (that's what the big hose is for.)
The identify the troublemakers in your neighborhood.
You’ve been added to a list.
I'm on soooo many lists.
one more won't hurt.
That’s another list, buddy
Evidence.
It's so we know what corner to turn at to find the Rave!!