From Leather to Cotton to Synthetic: How Fire Hose Evolved in 300 Years
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Hose had to be developed before fire fighters could hope to confine a structural fire to a single building. Today, a variety of hose sizes and materials are avidly debated and evaluated as fire departments seek to improve their operations in terms of more effective fire attack.
In the days when literally millions of buckets of water were being thrown on fires and wet swabs on long poles were being used on burning roofs, countless fire fighters must have wished for a better way to’get more water to where it could do more of an extinguishing joh.
The gooseneck nozzle on hand pumpers introduced stream reach, but the stream could do no more than enter windows and doors of buildings or sweep over roofs—certainly not an effective application of a fire stream. Sometimes hand pumpers were placed so close to the fire in an effort to use their streams more effectively that they also were lost in the fire. An account of a fire that destroyed a large part of Blandford, England, reported that “the engines were soon burnt.”
Leather hose introduced
An answer to the problem was found in Holland when two fire apparatus inspectors in Amsterdam, Jan van der Heide and his son, Jan, Jr., made leather fire hose. The October 25, 1879, issue of the National Fireman’s Journal (which evolved into Fire Engineering) quoted from a pamphlet on fire hose written by an unidentified Englishman:
“In the year 1672, it (leather hose made by the Van der Heides) was first publicly tried, and was found to be so successful that, within a twelvemonth, the old engines (in Amsterdam) were discarded and were replaced by new ones to work with flexible suction and delivery hoses.
“Five years later, the Van der Heides were granted an exclusive privilege which secured to them the right to manufacture these hoses for a period of 25 years. This hose was made in 50-foot lengths, and was coupled by brass connecting screws.
“We find also, that at this time, besides the leather hose, pipe of sailcloth or canvas was manufactured, and that ‘a seamless fabric, covered with cement or paint, was used’. Here, then, we have the canvas and woven hose which has lately been brought forward as a new invention. The reason of this is to be found in the fact that canvas hose rapidly gave way before its rival, leather, which although it was by no means perfect, being ‘sewn together like a boot leg,’ and far from watertight, yet, to the mind of our forefathers, was evidently the superior of the two.”
The Van der Heide leather hose was made by securing the pieces of leather with copper “tags,” and Lowell M. Limpus in his “History of the New York Fire Department” (E. P. Dutton and Company, New York, 1940) wrote that the Dutch hose couldn’t be kept water tight, water pressure ripped open seams and the hose stretched too much.
It took nearly 90 years for leather hose to get to England and even more years to reach the United States. In “Heritage of Flames (edited by Donald J. Cannon, Doubleday and Company, Inc., New York, 1977) there is an entry from the diary of the Rev. Dr. William Bentley of Salem, Mass., that told of the trial of a new hand pump that used “hose not made of leather, but woven,” which “suffered water to waste.” In that same book, it was noted that sewn leather hose was made for a Philadelphia fire company in 1803. The 2 1/4-inch hose burst frequently because the threads rotted.
Copper-rivetted hose
According to the article in the National Fireman’s Journal, “In 1808 copper-rivetted leather hose was first made by Messrs. Sellers & Pennock, of Philadelphia; thus the honor of so great an improvement in such a valuable article belongs to an American house.”
Although leather hose was a great step forward, it had serious drawbacks. The leather had a deplorable tendency to crack and it required constant care to keep it flexible, and defects in the leather caused failures.
To try to minimize these problems, fire departments began to establish standards for leather hose. Pure oaktanned leather, with an average weight of not less than 22 pounds to the side, was required in what became known as “overweight” hose. The seams had to be double riveted with 22 copper rivets of no. 8 wire to the foot and leather splices had to be made with at least 13 rivets of no. 7 wire. This hose weighed about 84 pounds per 50 feet without couplings and it was expected to stand a pressure of 200 psi.
Cowhide was generally used for making hose, although it is reported that buffalo hide was frequently used in the Far West. To prevent cracking and maintain flexibility, the hose had to be treated after use. One method of treating hose was to use beef tallow mixed with neat’s-foot oil. The mixture was applied warm before the hose was entirely dry.
Patented hose oiler
However, the value of neat’s-foot oil was derided in an advertisement for “Noye’s patent engine hose oiler” that appeared in an 1878 issue of the National Fireman’s Journal. The hose oiler combined a pump, tank, hose caps and a gage so the hose could be washed, tested and oiled at the same time. It used a “castor oil hose dressing” to condition the hose.
The ad warned, “Neatsfoot oil should never be used in the oiler, as it congeals in cold weather and does not work well, oils the hose very unevenly, and in warm weather is so thin that a too great quantity is absorbed by the leather.”
Despite all the difficulties associated with it, leather hose gave the fire service still another step forward. Its adaptability as suction hose made it possible to draft with hand pumpers. This capability eliminated th the last need for fire buckets, which had been used to fill the tubs of the hand pumps.
Limpus reported that New York City fire fighters “promptly adopted riveted hose, but the firemen continued to lug it on their shoulders for the next fourteen years before it occurred to somebody to build a hose cart.” A hose reel was placed on an axle between the two cart wheels by Foreman David J. Hubbs of New York’s Eagle Engine No. 13.
Rubber hose
The unidentified Englishman quoted by the National Fireman’s Journal reported, “India-rubber hose was brought out about the year 1827 by Mr. Thomas Hancock of Fullham (England) and it is thus the latest invented of any of the principal descriptions of hose that are in extensive use.”
The first rubber hose was all rubber and it had the deplorable tendency to balloon at spots and burst. While it was more flexible than leather hose, it was still stiff and did not seriously compete with leather hose. Rubber hose, from three to seven ply, was made in 2 1/2 -inch diameter.
Rubber hose became reliable in 1871 when the B. F. Goodrich Company delivered rubber hose reinforced with cotton ply to the Cincinnati Fire Department. This hose was made by plying alternate layers of square-woven cotton duck and thin rubber over a rubber tube. The hose was finished with a final layer of rubber—like booster hose today.
Although today’s fire fighters would regard this hose as stiff and unwieldy, it was a vast improvement over leather hose. It competed with the cotton jacket, rubber-lined hose, and although it was a losing battle, this reinforced rubber hose continued to be sold for more than a quarter of a century.
Hose with fabric jackets
Back in 1720, a lace weaver named Beck wove hempen hose without a seam in Leipsig. Later, linen hose was made in Dresden by a linen weaver named Erke and also by a weaver in Silesia.
As far as can be determined, the arts of making a rubber tube and weaving a seamless fabric tube were mated successfully in the 1860s to produce jacketed rubber-lined fire hose. The October 1871 issue of the “Fire Record,” published in New York City, contained an ad in which the Odorless Rubber Company offered linen, rubber-lined “metropolitan steam fire engine hose” made under its patents of October 2 and October 16,1866.
The ad proclaimed: “This hose has been extensively introduced during the past four years for use on steam and hand fire engines, force pumps in mills, factories, hotels, railroads, mining, &c, &c.”
This hose, the ad noted, “has been severely tested, without leaking, under a pressure of three hundred pounds per square inch.” The ad also stated that similar hose made by other manufacturers was “an infringement on our patents—a matter which is now being settled by our Courts at Law.”
This ad also offered metropolitan four-ply steamer hose made “on heavy water-proof Cotton Duck” and “certified to be the best Rubber Hose in the country. It has been tested at 400 pounds pressure per square inch.”
Seamless cotton jacket
In an 1878 issue of the National Fireman’s Journal, the American Fire Hose Manufacturing Company of Chelsea, Mass., boasted that its “patent double or jacket hose” was “the first seamless cotton hose produced for steam fire engines. It has a record of about four years in the cities of Boston, Chelsea and Albany.” This hose was made the same as present-day double jacket, rubber-lined hose.
We don’t know how accurate “the first seamless cotton hose” claim was, and we have not the slightest desire to search for an elusive fact that most likely took shape in more than one factory in a relatively brief period of time. In this vein, we were interested in reading in the December 1,1877, issue of the National Fireman’s Journal that “M. Benner, Fire Marshal of the Chicago Fire Department, has ordered from the Eureka Hose Company of this city (New York), 10,000 feet of celebrated ‘Eureka’ Seamless Cotton Hose to replace the Rubber Hose now used by the Department.” The item noted that the cotton hose has undergone “a test trial of nearly two years in the Department” and at the end of that time was “as perfect and sound as when first put in service.” After this use, the hose was tested to 350 psi—the highest pressure for which the Chicago Fire Department had an available gage—without bursting.
However, the advent of cotton, rubber-lined hose was not accepted overnight. In the April 20,1878, issue, the National Fireman’s Journal reported that Binghamton, N. Y., awarded a contract for “first quality pure oak tanned double riveted leather hose,” and that there were “no less than ten manufacturers” competing for the contract.
In that same year, Samuel Eastman & Co. of Concord, N. H., advertised that the leather hose it made had nickelplated couplings, “which keep the verdigris from rotting the leather” and the copper rivets were tinned for the same reason. Eastman continued to advertise its leather hose until at least 1886.
Weaving improved
Linen eventually was limited to standpipe hose as manufacturers turned to cotton as the desirable yarn for municipal fire hose. The circular looms for weaving seamless cotton hose jackets were improved and hose manufacturers boasted of the quality of the various weaves they used in making the jackets. The coarse, stiff cotton jackets that were common into the 1930s were displaced by newer weaves that not only made hose easier to roll, but also felt smoother in handling. Some of the old, coarse weaves felt like rough, unplaned boards when you handled them.
The 300 and 400 psi proof pressures that were standard in the first half of this century were raised to 600 and 800 psi as stronger jackets were woven with the introduction of first nylon and then polyester yarns. Nylon had a brief use in fire hose manufacturing, but it pointed the way to the future in the ’50s.
Nylon and polyester yarns first were used in combination with cotton yarn, but although this provided increased strength to hose and improved resistance to abrasion, it did not entirely remove the mildew possibility.
The manufacturing of 100 percent polyester jackets provided the fire service with stronger and lighter hose and eliminated the mildew problem. Fire fighters soon found that they were tossing around rolls of 2 1/2-inch allpolyester jacket hose with the ease they associated with 1 1/2-inch, cotton jacket hose.
In 1961, the National Board of Fire Underwriters declared that it had raised its estimated service life of 2 1/2-inch hose from 7 years to 10 years because of the improved hose.
Advent of larger hose
While the fire hose customarily used was becoming lighter and stronger, some rural fire departments began to seek a way to obtain more water through pumper relays. They looked across the Atlantic and saw that European fire departments were using large diameter hose for supplying large volumes of water over long distances.
At first, 3 1/2-inch hose was tried in this country and its initial success led to the trial of 4-inch and even 5-inch hose. This polymer—man-made rubber— hose is extremely light and has a single jacket of polyester yarn between the waterway and the outer covering. The elastomers used in the waterway and outer covering vary with the different manufacturers, but the final results vary only in competitive quality.
This large diameter hose increased in popularity in the ’60s and can now be regarded as standard hose in both rural and large municipal fire departments. Rural departments going to large diameter hose are buying mostly 4-inch hose. With a pumper relay, one demonstration supplied 1000 gpm through a mile of 4-inch hose. A single pumper at the water source can deliver 500 gpm to the fireground through as much as 2600 feet of 4-inch hose and still provide 20 psi intake pressure at the fireground pumper.
One manufacturer reported selling more 5-inch than 4-inch hose to fire departments in large cities. By carrying 200 to 300 feet of 5-inch hose, the first-in pumper can stretch a “water main” from a hydrant on a corner to the middle of the block and then become a pumping manifold for attack lines.
Another manufacturer introduced double jacket 4-inch hose at the IAFC conference in Denver in September 1976. A 100-foot length weighs 70 pounds uncoupled, and the two couplings add another 8 pounds. The outer jacket is impregnated with Hypalon and the thin, smooth waterway is applied to become the inside coating of the inner polyester jacket. This new entry in the hose market maintains the American tradition of double jacket hose while competing with single jacket hose, traditional in Europe, on a weight basis.
Use of 1 3/4-inch hose
The ’70s have seen two developments that have resulting in a growing demand for a new size hose—1 34-inch. The introduction of a friction-reducing agent, first in the New York Fire Department, made it possible to deliver 2 1/2-inch attack line volumes of 200 to 250 gpm through smaller hose. New York decided that 1 3/4-inch was the right size and this size has become increasingly popular.
The other development was the automatic nozzle. More and more fire departments are combining an automatic nozzle with 1 3/4-inch (in a few cases 2-inch) polyester double jacket, rubber-lined hose to replace both 1 1/2 and 2 1/2-inch hand lines. Most of these departments are not using a frictionreducing agent at this time.
With plain water, friction losses in 1 3/4-inch hose have been found to be 12 psi for 100 gpm, 26 psi for 150 gpm, 45 psi for 200 gpm and 70 psi for 250 gpm. With a 150-foot preconnected line, an engine pressure of 168 psi will provide 200 gpm to an automatic nozzle working at 100 psi.
For a smaller fire, 1 3/4-inch hose, 150 feet long, can deliver 100 gpm to the nozzle at 118 psi engine pressure to provide 100 psi nozzle pressure.
A look to the future
Indications in the field are that the trend to 1 3/4-inch hose will gain speed. Whether 2-inch hose now being tried by a few departments will fall by the wayside or take over from 1 3/4-inch hose remains to be seen, but all indications are that 1 1/2 and 2 1/2-inch hose will be used less and less. One salesman, who has been active in training fire fighters in the use of 1 3/4-inch hose, remarked, “We just aren’t selling any 1 1/2-inch hose any more. It’s all 1 3/4-inch hose.”
In the last few years, more and more fire departments have replaced 2 1/2-inch hose with 3, 3 1/2 and 4-inch hose for supply lines, and some of the suburban and rural departments that have adopted 1 3/4 or 2-inch hose have adopted 4-inch hose as their larger hose for supplying both master stream equipment and pumpers.
These trends in fire hose sizes respond to the problems of reduced manning of paid companies and the daytime lack of manpower in volunteer companies. Fewer men can apply the necessary rate of water application to extinguish most fires.
