After all the insanity died down, I finally got a chance to talk to some of the people who participated in the 2001 Fl. Renaissance Festival water war (See the article under the "world/war journal" section).

In speaking to the people who manned (and womanned) the refill station, an interesting factoid was revealed to me. In preparation for the battle, about 50 plastic bottles (Gatorade, 2L soda,gallon milk jugs, etc.) were filled to provide fast refills (and avoid crowding). In addition, two 68 qt. coolers were filled with ice and water (I never claimed to be nice).

It turns out that virtually no one used the plastic bottles to refill as they were "too slow". The preferred method was to simply submerse the soakers in the large coolers. The refill crew wound up using almost all of the bottles to keep the coolers topped off. Go figure.

I was also told that we never even came close to running out of water. The two QFD's on the "Y-adapter" hose worked out well, speeding up the process there. Even though there were two QFD's, only one person was allowed to refill at a time as the station was at the end of 150' of hose. Using both simultaneously caused the (already low) pressure to drop and full refills would take too long. The optimum setup was to have one person refill at position #1, with the next person in line standing by at the #2 QFD. Once full, the person at #1 would disconnect, call "CLEAR" and the person at #2 would immediately begin filling. Another person would then wait at #1. This worked faster than you would think and the refill crew kept things civil. As a result, most of our troops were on the field soaking instead of waiting to refill.

Next year we will increase the number of coolers and possibly add a pressurized tank to supply multiple QFD's (if this comes to fruition, I will supply details). Less bottles to fill is ok by me.

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