Summary: When a primer fails on a rural fire scene, you can still establish draft by using the burp drafting method. By fully opening both your tank-to-pump and tank-fill valves and recirculating water at a high rate, you create negative pressure at the impeller, allowing atmospheric pressure to push water into the pump. It’s a simple, mechanical workaround that can save your operation when modern systems fail.
There’s nothing quite like the gut punch of a dead primer during a rural fire. No hydrants. No help. Just you, a dry pump, and a growing fire. If you’ve been there, you know the stress. But there’s a time-tested move that might save your tail: burp drafting.
Burp drafting is a manual method of creating suction when your primer system fails. It uses your apparatus’s own onboard tank and pump recirculation system to generate the vacuum needed to establish draft. The key? Let the water flow hard and fast.
Start by fully opening both your tank-to-pump and tank-fill valves. This sets up a loop from your booster tank, through the pump, and right back into the tank.
Now throttle up. By spinning the pump’s impeller faster, you’re ejecting more water out of the pump and into the tank fill line. This creates a low-pressure zone—basically a vacuum—at the eye of the impeller.
As water leaves the impeller, something has to replace it. The system naturally pulls in more water from the booster tank, and as this recirculation intensifies, it helps “burp” any air out of the lines, encouraging water to be drawn in from your draft source.
This isn’t magic. It’s just hydraulics and basic physics. Faster impeller = faster water ejection = greater vacuum = more suction at the intake. When you’ve got no primer, this is your Hail Mary—and it works because it’s built into every pumper with a tank-to-pump and tank-fill loop.
This technique won’t replace a functioning primer long term, but when you’re stuck on a country lane with no hydrants, it could be the difference between flowing water and falling short. Burp drafting is old-school, mechanical, and brutally effective.
Train on it. Teach it. Because when the primer dies, burp drafting might be what keeps your crew in the fight.