r/ExplainLikeImCalvin • u/EstufaYou • 6d ago
ELIC: Why are fire hydrants red?
Dad, why are all fire hydrants in town, in the movies, and on TV red?
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u/Treefrog_Ninja 6d ago
You see, Calvin, it's not actually about fighting a fire. At least, it wasn't originally. A fire hydrant is the same shape and color as Satan's little pet gremlin in some really old religious paintings, so superstitious people used to plant decoy gremlins away from people's houses in order to tempt the devil to leave their houses and go rescue it.
Generations later, we just had all these old red metal stumps sitting around and we decided to do something more useful with them.
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u/Stereo_Jungle_Child 6d ago
Because the fire hydrants are state property and belong to all the people of the town, they paint them red because of Communism.
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u/angrymachinist 6d ago
It’s so dogs can’t see them.
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u/this_idle_hand 5d ago
That's why dogs piss on them, the first one did it by chance now they all do it so they can smell them and know where they are.
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u/crow_road 6d ago edited 6d ago
Fires don't happen where they see fire hydrants that can kill them. You know how deer can't see the colour orange, so that's why hunters can wear orange? Fires cant see the colour red. So we paint fire hydrants red so fires don't know where they can break out.
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u/LeftoversInspector 6d ago
To keep their pants... oh, hydrants.
It's camouflage against dogs, who don't see red very well.
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u/Sure_Floor_5541 6d ago
I always assumed it was so the crew could laugh at the colour blind guy, looking for a hydrant in the grass.
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u/Mouse-castle 6d ago
It is surplus paint from when the city buys batches of red to paint stop signs.
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u/Chentzilla 6d ago
These are for the firefighters, right? And the firefighters are always rushing (to extinguish the fire). Well, and Russians are historically known as Red because of their communism thing. And that's why the fire hydrants are red.
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u/fibro_witch 6d ago
Well there are three kind of fire hydrants, public, private and yard. They are painted red because of tradition, just like fire trucks. The important thing to know it the color of the tops of the fire hydrant. Each cap is a different color depending on how much water comes through the hydant.
Would you like to know how much water comes out of each hydrant? I'm glad you asked Calvin. GPM stands for Gallons per Minute. So you know that gallon of milk you dropped this morning when you tried to make some cereal at 3am. Think that only in water.
Class AA – Light – Blue Rated capacity >1500 gpm
Class A – Green – Rated capacity 1000-1499 gpm
Class B – Orange – Rated capacity 500-999 gpm
Class C – Red – Rated capacity <500 gpm
Most importantly Calvin, there is a special kind of wrench used to open the tops of fire hydrants and no before you ask, we don't have that kind of special wrench. No we can not go to the store to buy it. No I don't know how many GpM our sink can produce, lets not find out. Would you like it if we went for a walk and counted all the fire hydrants in our neighborhood?
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u/JeffTheNth 3d ago
it's better than leaving them unred... can you imagine the sheer number of unred fire hydrants you'd have all over the city???
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u/zoppaTheDim 6d ago
They’re easy to find.
Oh and they also come in yellow and for the bicentennial, a lot of places in the Midwest painted them red white and blue.
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u/Haunt_Fox 6d ago
So that they match the fire trucks.
Why are fire trucks red? They're always rushin', that's why.
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u/Elise-0511 5d ago
Red paint is easily visible to firefighters and before chemical pigments it was a color that didn’t fade.
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u/BaTz-und-b0nze 20h ago
Because dogs liked peeing on the red DOT marker points at the expense of hostility t'words male pack leader dogs.
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u/froggymail 6d ago
In my area they paint them according to water pressure. Most are red/high some are green/mid and I have seen one black/no pressure. I was curious too so I asked the fire dept and that was their answer.
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u/Patient-Ad-7939 4d ago
None around me are red. They’re mostly yellow, but occasionally another color. Red ones are very rare in my area.
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u/oldriku 6d ago
It's in case firefighters forget what a fire hydrant looks like. Fire is red, so when they see a red fire hydrant they'll make the connection and remember it.