OT Safety Bulletin

RFFS Foam Production Testing

It is important to be sure that fire vehicles are capable of delivering foam that complies with the OTAR Part 140 requirements in terms of rate of discharge, volume and foam quality. Several years ago ASSI created a spreadsheet - similar to the one available to download here - to assist personnel with their calculations to ensure their vehicles can deliver in accordance with Annex 14, Volume 1, Table 9-2. Stanley Airport in the Falkland Islands liked the spreadsheet and adapted it for their own use and they use it on a regular basis when testing vehicles. Not only does the spreadsheet make the calculations easy, it also serves as a good record of each test conducted. If the information entered into the spreadsheet is accurate it provides the following data:

• Capacity of water tank
• Capacity of foam concentrate tank
• Amount of time it takes to discharge the media
• Rate of discharge in litres / minute
• Percentage of foam concentrate to water
• An indication of whether there is sufficient foam concentrate remaining for the required second shot.

The sheet also has entries for date of test, the vehicle tested, etc so the end result is an informative record sheet that can be filed with the rest of the vehicle test records. It is important to know the accurate amount of water each fire vehicle will pump though. An Oshkosh Striker, for example, that holds 11,356 litres of water won’t necessarily discharge 11,356 litres of water. Some time is required to ascertain the actual discharge figure otherwise the test results won’t be as accurate as they should be. The same applies to the foam concentrate tank.