How To Create A File To Show All the Hydrant Locations In My Town For GPS
Wed, 01/05/2011 - 4:51pm
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 13 years
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One thing that I value greatly besides respect & committment to my family & friends is my service to my community. Besides being a prifessional firefighter in the GREAT City Of New York, I also volunteer much of my free time to my hometown in one of the suburbs of Long Island as a Volunteer Firefighter. Unlike the City, we do not have a fire hydrant strategically placed every 150' - 200' and that can cause a problem since when responding to fire calls, knowing where a hydrant is can be a problem.
I was hoping that someone can help me with how to create a file so that I would have the locations of EVERY hydrant in my fire district.
Z
Addresses or coords
Do you have the physical address of each hydrant? Or better yet, the L/L coords of each one?
@fletchz
There may be several things you can do depending on how many there are. Since you are a volunteer, can I assume that you have been by every hydrant?
Your manual talks about the "Where Am I" screen (if you don't have a manual get one at https://buy.garmin.com/support/manuals/manuals.htm?partNo=01...)
You could go to each hydrant, capture the coordinates using "Where Am I" saving them to favorites (I think, although it might be "recently found"). When you had them all in favorites, you could read your favorites using Extra POI Editor (EPE) and create a POI file.
If you did this, we could walk you thru that process.
You might use Google Maps/Earth to find them using the photos and save them that way.
So, back to the question, how many are there?
.
Does your hometown's city/town government have a GIS department? They might already have the hydrants mapped as a data layer.
Alternately, as noted above, go to each hydrant location with a GPS unit and mark a Waypoint at each one.
Then connect the GPS unit to a computer and download the Waypoints as a GPX file.
Water Co
... I also volunteer much of my free time to my hometown in one of the suburbs of Long Island as a Volunteer Firefighter...
Hey fletchz. I was in Syosset back in the 80s. Depending on the district, the idea of mapping each hydrant is daunting, but I can see how valuable that would be.
The first place I'd check is the water district(s) that serve your FD. They may be able to provide maps, locations, or even GPS coordinates.
Another venue would be to check with surrounding departments, districts and fire companies to see if any of them have similar databases. If so they may be able to provide contacts for the information you need.
Of course, if you district is small enough, it may be easier to drive around the district and marking each hydrant as a poi. No matter how you build your master file, you'll need to do some ground truthing to make sure the hydrants really are where they are supposed to be, if they are there at all, so this is probably the best way to do it.
Good luck in your efforts. I'm sure it'll be well worth it.
Drivesmart 66, Nuvi 2595LMT (Died), Nuvi 1490T (Died), Nuvi 260 (Died), GPSMAP 195
Previous Discussion
A fire hydrant POI file was discussed here some time ago. The topic starts out talking about a fire hydrant icon, but keep reading. The OP gets into more detail about how he built his POI file.
Tampa, FL - Garmin nüvi 660 (Software Ver 4.90), 2021.20 CN NA NT maps | Magellan Meridian Gold
File For Hydrant Locations
There may be several things you can do depending on how many there are. Since you are a volunteer, can I assume that you have been by every hydrant?
Your manual talks about the "Where Am I" screen (if you don't have a manual get one at https://buy.garmin.com/support/manuals/manuals.htm?partNo=01...)
You could go to each hydrant, capture the coordinates using "Where Am I" saving them to favorites (I think, although it might be "recently found"). When you had them all in favorites, you could read your favorites using Extra POI Editor (EPE) and create a POI file.
If you did this, we could walk you thru that process.
You might use Google Maps/Earth to find them using the photos and save them that way.
So, back to the question, how many are there?
There are quite a few hydrants, but I think your suggestion re: going to each location & hydrant might be best and then record each one of the coordinates. It will be a little time consuming, but I guess these things have to be done. Now you mentioned the Extra POI Editor (EPE). Is that the same as the regular POI Editor, or do I have to download that from somewhere? Before I do this though, I will have the Chief check with the Water Dept. to see if they have a list of coordinated of each hydrant in the town; that would save me a TON of time. But either way, I think that I will need your assistance to build a file, or at least you can point me in the right direction. Thanks so much and I will be in touch.
It would be just as easy
to locate street addresses and then map the coordinates online using one of the gps mapping programs. That way you can easily copy and paste into a spreadsheet.
Re: Water Co.
... I also volunteer much of my free time to my hometown in one of the suburbs of Long Island as a Volunteer Firefighter...
Hey fletchz. I was in Syosset back in the 80s. Depending on the district, the idea of mapping each hydrant is daunting, but I can see how valuable that would be.
The first place I'd check is the water district(s) that serve your FD. They may be able to provide maps, locations, or even GPS coordinates.
Another venue would be to check with surrounding departments, districts and fire companies to see if any of them have similar databases. If so they may be able to provide contacts for the information you need.
Of course, if you district is small enough, it may be easier to drive around the district and marking each hydrant as a poi. No matter how you build your master file, you'll need to do some ground truthing to make sure the hydrants really are where they are supposed to be, if they are there at all, so this is probably the best way to do it.
Good luck in your efforts. I'm sure it'll be well worth it.
Hey RockNiceHunter, thank you for the valuable info. The town is only about 1.6 square miles in size, however, for a small town, we do catch quite a bit of "work", actually more than in some parts of the City. So even though I am going to check with the Town Of Hempstead Water Dept., I will still have to physically check the coordinates or at least correct them if they are slightly off. One of the worst things is to know you are going to a "working fire" and trying to guess where the nearest hydrant would be. Trying to figure whether the nearest hydrant is the one 500' before the address or 150' past it around the corner can be hair raising. With this invaluable info programmed in the GPS, I would know whether to do a flying stretch or a reverse lay for the Attack Hose. Anyway, thank you so much for the brainstorming ideas. have a Happy New Year, and I will let you know how things turn out.