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What Lies Beneath

Posted by Catherine / October 29, 2008

Fire HydrantsI love taking things apart. Seeing how they work. It's like pulling the articulated arms and legs off your action figures and learning about compression coils and ball-joints.

Having less (though not no) action figures now, I have to find other outlets for this simple pleasure.

Like walking past construction sites and having "a-ha!" moments when I catch a glimpse of the white noise infrastructure of my city, disassembled. Infrastructure like fire hydrants.

I don't know how I thought fire hydrants worked. I probably never thought much about how they worked at all. But I imagine that my Sesame Street explanation was that the hydrant was just a "cap" on "water". The water just... got there.

Now my model has shifted, and whenever I see a fire hydrant I'm going to see something bigger. The hydrant as just the dangly fishing lure on that much bigger deep sea fish. Cool.

Fire Hydrants, alternate


Discussion

4 Comments

Corina / October 29, 2008 at 11:19 AM
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super cool, catherine - great photo/post! I love city-innards :)

David Oliver / October 29, 2008 at 12:50 PM
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You should watch How It's Made on the Discovery Channel. I recently saw a segment about how fire hydrants are made.

jay / October 29, 2008 at 4:20 PM
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Fire hydrants are connected to the water line located below the frost line (typically 6ft? under ground); that's why theres a long pipe below the hydrant; when not in use, the water self-drains, preventing water from freezing in the winter.
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1498/why-doesnt-the-water-in-fire-hydrants-freeze-during-winter

Nathan House / October 29, 2008 at 5:38 PM
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Wow, I never imagined there was so much going on beneath them. Some how I just picture a big vat of water...not really. Great pictures Catherine.

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