What do y’all use to fill your water truck?

It seems that there is always somewhere in Australia that is severely droughted.
In regional areas, at least, town water supplies are preciously guarded.
A national newspaper, this morning, quoted the Mayor of one town that is using a bore to supplement there dwindling water suppply....”if the bore sh1ts itself we’re buggered”.

Queenslander; we use a very similar set up with 2 Honda 4” pumps and this home made towable tower. Allows us to pick up around 700 gallons per min from ponds.

Our town will loan out a hydrant meter with backflow protection. pretty decent rates. even for contractors watering grass on new house developments or big hydroseed trucks. If you get caught molesting a hydrant without permission, hang onto your ankles. The FD doesn't use meters. Though did discover a little mislead from the water dept, they got funds for a new 1.5 million gallon tank to suppliment the existing 1 mil gallon tank. We had a big fire and were sucking down 8,000 gpm if not a little more. Well a couple hours in, it seems the towns low water alarms were going off and the water dept came in to start the pumps, 600gpm or so and threatened to shut off the hydrants. It turns out, they built the 1.5 tank and took the 1m gallon tank offline so we didn't have 2.5m in storage that we were paying for all along....

Contractor said:

Queenslander; we use a very similar set up with 2 Honda 4” pumps and this home made towable tower. Allows us to pick up around 700 gallons per min from ponds.

Click to expand...

I’ll have to file that idea for future reference.
Looks like you use 4” plumbing on those pumps.
I once borrowed a 4” pump that, for some reason, was wearing 3” hoses and I’am sure it didn’t put out any more than our 3” pump.

Condition of the pumps matters a lot as to the output pressure, I rebuilt one 2" pump where the impeller was 1/3 gone, the new clearance was only a few thou and the pressure went way up, enough to pop a few un clamped hose couplings that were previously fine. I suppose a dead head pressure number is a good thing to know, indicator of pump problems.

Yes that's pretty true most of us "out of towner's" filling tankers in Australia

There are pumps & there are pumps. A 3" or preferably 4" volume pump with a wide impeller is the quickest way to move water fast in a water truck application. Hydraulic run types do the job but aren't in "the hunt" against the good portable varieties.