Reporting available flow for all hydrants (when opened)


 

Product(s): WaterGEMS, WaterCAD
Version(s): 10.00.00.XX and higher
Area: Modeling

 

Problem

Is it possible to report the discharge available at each hydrant when it opened? (emitter coefficient applied) For example to be able to annotate or color code on the available hydrant flow for all hydrants.

Solution

Typically this type of analysis is not used and the automated fireflow feature would be used instead. A pumper truck is typically attached to a hydrant so that the flow is greater than it would be if the hydrant were to simply be opened. Typically there is little value in seeing how much flow you get simply from opening a hydrant.

The Flushing feature can be used to confirm if opening of one or more hydrants results in adequate pipe velocities (to flush and clean them). The Flushing tool could also be used to accomplish a "batch hydrant" run:

  1. Set up a new flushing study and flushing area for the scenario in question
  2. Select your pipe set and nodes of interest and set the flowing emitter coefficien
  3. Right click on the flushing area > Add > New conventional events (batch), then click the folder icon (with the green lightning bolt next to it) and choose All Hydrants (or you can select the hydrants of interest)
  4. Click the green check mark to create a conventional flushing event for each hydrant
  5. Click the flushing area and click compute
  6. From the report menu in the flushing tool, click Flushing Area Summary Table

What if I want to color code or annotate on the hydrant discharge? (predicted flow)

  1. Create a hydrant User Data Extension (UDX) with the "real" data type:



  2. Open the Flushing Area Summary table from within the flushing tool and click the button at the top to export to CSV
  3. Edit the CSV (in Excel for example) so that you only have columns for the Element (label) and the "predicted flow" (hydrant discharge)
  4. Set up a connection to the Excel file using ModelBuilder. Select the Element (hydrant label) column from the spreadsheet, for the Key field, and map the predicted flow column to the user data extension you had created.
  5. Color code or annotate on the user data extension.

See Also

Conducting Flushing Studies in WaterGEMS and WaterCAD