When we went to install a new generator at the fire station I served at we found that the pressure in the streets line was only end use pressure at about 15 inches of water column. It just couldn't supply enough gas to start the generator. We called the Natural Gas supplier to get them to upgrade the supply on our block to medium distribution pressure, which being a fire house we could force them to do because end use pressure street lines had been declared obsolete and no longer acceptable by the States Public Service Commission 2 decades previous and they had to replace lines to a list of critical loads, such as fire stations, on demand. The local hospital had really made them howl by demanding service to supply a natural gas fueled turbine Alternator set which could run the whole hospital. The Hospital was too far from the fire station for their 4 inch line to benefit us. As we new we were about to move into temporary quarters so the station could be replaced, being too small for modern fire apparatus and worn out, we asked if the generator could be started on propane and then run on the natural gas supply. Their engineers came up with something they liked better. They offered to run a six inch line off of the much smaller street line, 2 inches I think, to use the length of the 6 inch as a reservoir of sorts to provide enough natural gas for starting our new 100 KVA Engine Alternator set. That was never installed because we moved. We moved the Engine Alternator Set a block away to the temporary station and ran it on Propane. When the new fire station went in a diesel generator was installed so as to standardized with the other stations in the county.
A couple of months after the new NG or LPG set arrived, while they were hemming and hawing about how to do the temporary service, while the station move was being scheduled. It was still sitting on it's shipping pallet when a severe ice storm struck. The power went out just after the aerial ladder truck was dispatched for a response to a structure fire. Our World War 2 civil defense generator, being unhappy about being replaced I suppose, failed to start for the first time in 50 years. The crew pulled the door release which the rolling door installers had installed in the wrong end of the pull bar to the overhead chain drive socket. When the bar was released it fell down with its chain end hanging down like an aircraft landing hook. The back rail of the rear mount aerial's platform caught the pull bar and pulled the door down on the truck as it was going out the door. Ball bearings from the rollers flew everywhere. Since I was assigned to the engine, which was not due to respond on that call, I got to help remove the wreckage of the door and clean up the ball bearings. I did my share and more, using a magnet taken from a DC motor that was sitting in my work van, without slipping and falling. I had pulled ice cleats over my boots which kept me from actually walking on the ball bearings. Several of the guys did fall and 2 got injured badly enough to be transported to the hospital with severe sprains and 1 broken ankle.
Next morning I called the electrical supply house I was in the habit of using and ordered the bugs, insulating pads, and wires to connect the new generator. The propane company came through with a 500 pound propane tank and the temporary piping. I wired that Cummins into the existing Onan transfer switch by bugging on to the existing supply conductors from the old generator, connected the control wires, and threw the switch to automatic. It started right up and powered the station for the next ten days while crews from Quebec Hydro and the Tennessee Valley Authority helped put the areas grid back together.
Tom Horne
