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Fire Hydrant Coverage

Flags building footprints whose farthest boundary vertex lies beyond the coverage radius of the nearest fire hydrant: straight-line distance, per fire-protection review.

Command VDCFIRECOVER · VDC QC tab › Site QC panel
Flags building footprints whose farthest boundary vertex lies beyond the coverage radius of the nearest fire hydrant: straight-line distance, per fire-protection review.
Per building: distance from farthest vertex to nearest hydrant vs. coverage radius. FH FH Coverage radius R = 500 ft BLDG A, COVERED d = 462 ≤ R BLDG B, FLAGGED farthest vertex d = 548 > R worst-covered point → palette zoom
Hydrant block (insertion pt)   Coverage radius R   Building within reach   Building beyond reach (flagged)

What it does, per run

  • Inputs: reads hydrant block insertion points by block name and closed-polyline building footprints on the configured building layers.
  • Per building: finds the farthest boundary vertex, then that vertex's straight-line distance to its nearest hydrant.
  • Test: flags the building if that farthest distance exceeds the coverage radius.
  • Distance is straight-line, it does not follow access roads or driveways, so a building behind a barrier may still read as covered.
  • No hydrants found: reports a single warning to check the block names.

Settings & outputs

  • Coverage radius: max hydrant-to-building distance, default 500 ft, set to your fire code's hydrant-to-building maximum.
  • Settings: VDC_FIRECOVER_SETTINGS, default %APPDATA%\VDC\FireCover\settings.json; schema-tolerant; holds radius, hydrant-block names and building-layer lists.
  • CSV: <drawing> - Fire Coverage.csv next to the drawing.
  • Palette: findings list; double-click to zoom to the worst-covered point.

Dialog

Fire Hydrant Coverage dialog
Fire Hydrant Coverage, VDCFIRECOVER

When to use it

  • Confirming fire-hydrant coverage of building footprints for fire-protection review.

How to run it

  1. Run VDCFIRECOVER; set the coverage radius (default 500 ft) and click OK.
  2. The tool finds hydrant blocks and building footprints on the configured layers.
  3. Review the out-of-coverage findings in the palette; double-click to zoom to the worst point.

Options

  • Coverage radius: the max straight-line distance from a hydrant to any point of a building (default 500 ft).

Watch out for

  • Distance is straight-line - it does not follow access roads, so a hydrant 'behind' a building may not be reachable in practice.
  • Hydrant block names and building layers live in settings.json - if they don't match, nothing is found.
  • The CSV is only written when the drawing is saved to a real path.

Related: Place Hydrants · Parking · QC Status