Fire Hydrant Hide And Seek

I'd like to know how many fire hydrants there are in my Naglee Park neighborhood, which is a residential neighborhood in downtown San Jose, near San Jose State University. Click here to find the location of Naglee Park on Google Maps.

Fire hydrants are generally not something you notice unless you need one and I can't say I've noticed many in Naglee Park. I found a website called Hazardhub where you can type in an address and it tells you the distance to the nearest fire hydrant. Note you can lookup up to five addresses for free.

I typed in my home address and HazardHub told me it was less than 250 ft away, which is correct. But where are the rest of the fire hydrants in Naglee Park? I know their hiding in plain view, so time to play hide and seek!

Nagell Park covers a 7 x7 block area, so I drove all the streets to get an idea of how many fire hydrants are in the neighborhood. I counted 34. Most of them were located on the corners but a few (less than 5) were placed mid-block.

Prior to 2020, the Fire Department required a fire hydrant to be located within 300 ft of a proposed ADU. For my neighborhood that posed a problem since many of the homes did not meet this requirement, especially if a detached ADU was the plan.

The lots in Naglee Park are typically 50 to 60 ft wide by 120 to 130 ft deep (6500 sq ft.) so you can see that 300 ft gets reduce by 100 ft by the time you get to the sidewalk, at least if you're building a detached ADU in your rear yard.

However, beginning January 1, 2020, the City increased the requirement to 600 ft. But even with that footage increase, it's not a sure thing that a neighborhood home meets the fire requirement for an ADU.

If a proposed ADU doesn't meet this 600 ft requirement, the fire variance will require a fire sprinkler system to be installed. The cost to install a fire sprinkler system is around $3 per sq ft. plus the design cost, the inspection cost, and overall general hassle.

So go play hide and seek, find your nearest fire hydrant and hope it's within 600 ft of where you plan to build your ADU.