Your house is on fire and the fire department has arrived. Firefighters head to the nearest fire hydrant just in time to prevent serious damage to your home, but there's just one problem — it doesn't work.
Faulty fire hydrants are a common problem around the world. Just a few months ago, a fire on Long Island, east of New York City, burned on while firefighters looked for a fire hydrant that wasn't frozen. That's why George Sigelakis from Sigelock Systems is redesigning the fire hydrant.
"People live under a false sense of security," said Sigelakis in an interview with FastCoexist. "People don't realize they need it until they need it, and when they need it, it doesn't work."
Sigelakis has been working on the new design for decades, first setting out to change the fire hydrant in the early '90s. He spent 20 years researching and developing models. Now, Sigelakis says his prototype, the Sigelock Spartan, is the safest and most efficient design he has ever come up with.
Before he could get to that point, Sigelakis had to figure out why regular hydrants would stop working. As it turns out, there are multiple problems with the design of the fire hydrant.
The first is that the majority of fire hydrants are made from cast iron, which is prone to erosion over time — causing leaks and freezing of the water. The second problem is that they're very easy to open, meaning that they could be misused. On full blast, a fire hydrant can pour out more than 1,000 gallons of water per minute, which is wasteful and can also be dangerous, due to the force of the water.
Because of this, Sigelakis had to create a fire hydrant that would be hard to break into. The Spartan is enclosed in a locking mechanism that eliminates the possibility of someone using a crowbar to pry it open. Instead, the hydrant can be opened with a special tool, which firefighters will of course have access to.
To replace the cast iron, Sigelakis swapped it out for a mix of stainless steel and ductile iron — two materials that are very corrosion-resistant. Not only that, but the hydrants are coated with a special powder that prevents rust.
"This will last 200 years, maintenance-free," continued Sigelakis. "This is a maintenance-free hydrant."
These hydrants have gone up against the elements, with one being installed in Long Beach, N.Y., right before Superstorm Sandy. It was submerged under several feet of salt water for more than eight hours, and still works like new. After that – instead of ordering new parts for damaged fire hydrants – Chris Windle, water superintendent of the Long Beach Water District, simply replaced them with the Spartan, and plans to have 130 of them installed by Christmas.
Of course, replacing fire hydrants won't come cheap. Just bringing the fire hydrants into Newark, N.J., could cost up to $500 million. Only time will tell if the fire hydrants are as strong as they set out to be, but they certainly look to be better positioned than old fire hydrant designs.
