Talk:Fire extinguisher

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To-do list for Fire extinguisher: edit · history · watch · refresh
  • Distinguish between stored pressure and generated pressure types
  • Distinguish between handheld and cart mounted types
  • Add a history section
  • Add notes on inspection and maintenance
  • Add notes on operation and approximate capabilities
  • Fix 'Class's mess
  • Expand on UK/US 'Class C' types

Stirlingda added this text, which Anome deleted.

Premier Extinguisher: Cold fire® is an extinguisher solution manufactured by [Fire Freeze Worldwide, inc.] that has been demonstrated to effectively put out fires of all types. It is non-toxic and biodegradable. It is a plant-based substance that works by pulling the heat out of a fire via an endothermic reaction. It also encapusulates the fuel, which has the effect of also separating the fuel from oxygen. One or two 2 1/2-gallon extinguishers with 10% Cold Fire® solution with water can quench a fully-engulfed car, including tires burning, in less than two minutes. (See also Cold fire.)

I'm guessing that Stirling's contribution looked as much like an advertisement to the Anome, as it does to me. Perhaps we could revise the text above so it reads less like a press release and more like an encyclopedia entry.

I'm intrigued by the concept of "pulling the heat out of a fire". Please try again, Stirling. --Uncle Ed 14:12, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I had a look at the manufacturer's website. It was indeed rather annoying with the excess of advertising buzzwords and lack of technical information. However, one solid tidbit is that UL classifies it simply as a wetting agent. And indeed, it is supposed to be used as an aqueous solution (as low as 1% concentration for some types of fires), and most of its properties are actually pretty similar to water (including "pulling the heat out of a fire"). The main exception being the claim that it is suitable "for fires of all types" which I frankly do not believe for an agent consisting of 90 - 99% water - electrical fires, anybody? (Incidentally their own MSDS does not support the claim that it is nontoxic; the LCt50 for juvenile rainbow trout is 105 ppm & times; 96 hours, which is not severely toxic but hardly harmless.)
Wetting agents can increase the effectiveness of water in fighting fires, and the article probably should indicate this - but I think it is more important to add some information on foams, and expand the information on dry powders. I'll tack it onto my todo list... In any case I don't think there's any need to mention particular brands. Securiger 09:11, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

There's a descrepency between the articles for Halon and for fire extinguishers. In the fire extinguisher article it states:

"Halon is the universal extinguisher. It will extinguish any type of fire and is highly effective. It works by breaking the chemical reaction of the fire. Halon is a chlorofluorocarbon and is being phased out for more environmentally-friendly alternatives. Halon fire extinguishers may cost upwards of 800 USD due to production and import restrictions."

and on the article for Halon:

"Halons are very effective on Class A (organic solids), B (flammable liquids and gases) and C (electrical) fires, but they are totally unsuitable for Class D (metal) fires, as they will not only produce toxic gas and fail to halt the fire, but in some cases pose a risk of explosion."

This seems like an important detail.

This article is wrong; they mean "any type of fire (except class D)". I will make the correction, and expand the class D material to explain why. Securiger 09:11, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

OK, I not only made the correction, but also a heap of expansion. Plenty to do though, so I added a ToDo list! Securiger 12:48, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The article states that Halon is effective primarily due to its chilling effect (removing heat) with a minor effect due to its interuption of the chemical process. Other articles and sources state that Halon is effective *only* due to its interuption of the chemical process. With consideration that Halon is already a gas when it reaches a fire, it seems that the chemical interuption method is the primary means of extinguishing the fire. 30 Jul 2006

Contents

[edit] Two things

Two things..

  • Due to America using a diffrent set of classes than the rest of the world, the intire article is a strange mix of the two diffrent and overlapping classes, confusing american class C and UK/Australian Class C would be a potentually fatial thing. Is there some way to resolve this consistantly without resorting to the exclusion of a class system?
    • We probably should make a side-by-side comparison to make it simpler for folks. By and large, it isn't that hard actually: classes A, B and D are identical in both systems; flammable gases (UK/Aus class C) doesn't really apply to hand held consumer extinguishers; the new class, Fats in Kitchens (F in UK/Aus, K in US) is quite easy to remember; so the only confusing part is electrical fires. -- Securiger
  • Theres seems little mention of what sort of systems are used to supress UK/Australian Class C(Flammable gas) fires apart from mention of the way Halon works. Maybe someone in the know could expand on that?
    • You can't really do them with hand held extinguishers. Basically, a body of flammable gas fully mixed with air will burn at the speed of sound, so it is already too late to try to fight. Thus flammable gas fire fighting breaks into two categories: preventing ignition in high risk areas, and gas fires fed by a continuous fuel supply.
      1. The objective in fighting a continuously fed gas fire is to shut off the supply of fuel. Extinguishing the flame without shutting off the supply will result in a volume of gas/air mixture which can cause an explosion. Thus the flame itself is only attacked when it prevents access to the fuel supply. In that case these fires are attacked by using water mist to suppress the flame front enough that an operator in a fire proximity suit can approach and shut off the fuel supply. This may be accompanied by water cooling to prevent overheating of bottles or adjacent pipes. This is not something that can be done with an extinguisher, it requires a large volume of water.
      2. Preventing ignition in high risk areas depends on whether the volume will also be occupied by human beings. If not, then displacing oxygen with carbon dioxide or nitrogen is inexpensive and quite sufficient. If human beings will also occupy the dangerous space, then the air must be preloaded with halon 1301 or some other low toxicity flame suppression agent, possibly even high density, low droplet size water mist. Research continues apace for halon replacements for this application and HFCs are now widely in use but there are some applications (e.g. some confined spaces on oil rigs) where at least as recently as 2002 no suitable replacement had been found and it was thought that halon would be likely to continue in use for some time. -- Securiger 09:15, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

--ElectraFlarefire 16:09, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Request for images ?

I will be attending a fire extinguisher handling course on the 20th of September; being the proud owner of a digital camera, I was wondering whether someone here could think of something in particular which I could try to photograph to be useful here ? There is a limited film capability on the camera as well. Cheers ! Rama 16:42, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Carbon Dioxide

I have found more than one location where it states in this article that carbon dixodies is "quite toxic". There is nothing toxic about it. Carbon dioxide is an asphyxiant, this is, it is dangerous because it displaces oxygen, but in an of itself CO2 will not poison you.

I haven't watched this article in a while, so I only just noticed your comment, probably too late to be useful. However, your claim that CO2 is not toxic and is purely an asphyxiant is quite wrong. In some persons (with naturally weak respiration) it can produce respiratory paralysis at concentrations as low as 3%, while concentrations of 10% will cause collapse in minutes, and death shortly afterward, even in very healthy people. This is much lower than the concentration required for simple asphyxiation with a nonrespirable nontoxic gas such as nitrogen or argon. In fact, a mixture of 90% oxygen/10% CO2 will kill you, when 90% oxygen/10% nitrogen would actually assist respiration! There is no mystery to this; we know pretty clearly how CO2 poisons you. It shifts the bicarbonate buffer equilibrium in blood, which upsets a whole bunch of other metabolic reactions all over the body. This process has been thoroughly studied (see hypercapnia; an extreme form of acute respiratory acidosis). -- Securiger

The use of CO2 in an extinguisher is not going to displace so much oxygen to cause this problem. In some automatic fire suppression systems (like sprinkler systems) which use CO2 and require total flooding, it will be a concern.

With flooding systems, it is definitely a concern because the minimum effective concentration of CO2 for firefighting (~34% for unheated liquid fuels, much higher for hot, porous organic materials) is more than triple the lethal concentration. In other words, if it puts out fires throughout the flooded area, it will kill. With a handheld extinguisher, it depends on the the size of the extinguisher, the volume of air into which it is discharged, plus of course the concentration of CO2 already present from the fire. In air currently free of CO2, a 9kg extinguisher will raise the concentration to 3% in an enclosed volume of 164 m3; say, a room with a typical 3 m ceiling, and a floor area of 55 m2 (588 ft2). That's about the size of a typical living room! Or to put it another way, the Boeing 707, 727, 737 and 757 all have the same fuselage diamter, 3.76 m. In a half-tube of that diameter, 164m3 occupies a 30 m length... -- Securiger

I have also found several problems on the section on Halon. It is not completely known how Halon works, but it is believed to be by disruption of the chemical chain reaction.

We used to explain this in more detail at halon, but someone didn't like the article and turned it into a redirect. Some (but not all) of the material got merged into Haloalkane#Fire extinguishing. To find the rest, you would need to look through the history of the "halon" article. By the way, while it is no doubt true that there are aspects we do not fully grasp, I think you underestimate how well we understand the mechanism. In fact, if one studies the free radical chain reactions by which gaseous flame fronts propagate, it's almost kind of obvious how halon works. (But still quite neat!) -- Securiger 07:43, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Halon is also a poor Class A extinguisher (a heavy Halon extinguisher can put out only a very small Class A fire). Also, carbon tetrachloride is a type of halon. I can't do it now, but I will do an extensive rewrite on parts of this article. Rt66lt 18:19, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure what your criterion for "poor" is here. In a flooding application, to extinguish a flaring class A fire with halon 1301 requires about 1/4 the mass of extinguishing agent that would be required with CO2. However, it is not particularly good at extinguising smouldering cinders or burning charcoal, which is why halon flood systems have a long hold time for cooling off. (Comparing to dry powder, for class A fires halon requires about 3 x the mass of ABC powder.) Additionally, carbon tetrachloride is not a halon. The term is reserved for those haloalkanes which include bromine and at least one other halogen. Carbon tet extinguishes fire by smothering and cooling, so far as I know there is no evidence of it doing any free radical quenching and since it contains no bromine it isn;t likely to. Plus, it is far more toxic than halons. -- Securiger 07:43, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dry Powder

In the US, "dry powder" is the term used for agents used on (US) Class D fires, and "dry chemical" is used for (US) A, B, and C fires. Is this different in Europe? This distinction needs to be made in the article, and I'll leave it for now. I train firefighters in the US, and there is an important distinction between the two terms in the US. If I don't have a response within a week, I'm going to change this in the article. Rt66lt 00:12, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Licenses and miscellaneous

I have added the chapter "construction", translated from my article in it.wiki. (BTW, there are other images which may be of use, all in commons). This is EN-prone, of course, so maybe the ISO regulations (which I do not know in full detail) may require something different (for example, the hose, which seems not to be as compulsory as for EN3).

BTW, I have asked to CEN the authorization to use the pictograms for classes A, B, C, but to no avail. Does anybody know where to download them in a GNUproof way? UbUb 14:48, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wet potassium salts statement

"The saponification only works on animal fats and vegetable oils, so class F extinguishers cannot be used for class B fires." Is the article referring to class B fires in Europe, the United States or both? If it is referring to Europe, is it also true for the U.S.? Thanks, Kjkolb 09:06, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

The definition of class B is the same, or pretty nearly so, for both systems, i.e. flammable liquids other than cooking oil/fat. You cannot use a wet chemical extinguisher on such fires because the wet chemical only saponifies animal fats and vegetable oils (well, technically there are a few other esters it might work on, but unless you are an organic chemist it will be safer to assume not). Thus on other flammable liquids, it will not generate any soap, and hence will not generate any foam, so it will be just like spraying a plain water mist: it might cool the flame front, but is unlikely to extinguish the fire and could easily spread it if directed straight at the liquid. -- Securiger 07:56, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Recharging

Does anyone have a link to information on how to recharge a fire extinguisher? for those who dont live in countrys with the proper authorities?--Whywhywhy 13:32, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] References, general tone

The lack of references here stands out, as does the generally prescriptive tone. I'll see about working on this, but I'm not great at digging up refs. Chris Cunningham 11:22, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] How to put out a fire

This article, and wikipedia in general, offers a lot of technical info about fire extinguishers -- and no basic practical info! I've added a USAGE section to begin to fix the problem. The fire extinguisher article should have plenty of practical info about when to use them and how to use them. But if we don't want to load down the article with too much general info, we need another more general How to put out a fire article, and prominent links to it. 69.87.202.12 22:58, 9 October 2006 (UTC)


Hi! I ran through the Usage section and rewrote it. I think it sounds more encyclopedic now, but I tried to keep as much of your original information in there as possible. Feel free to make any changes you see fit. On a rather humourous note, I hope no one actually spends the time to check How to put out a fire during an actual emergency.

Also, the final section of this page relating to the local fire codes seems a little out-of-place. Anyone have any ideas on how to rewrite it? 24.92.224.252 04:10, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] HAND-HELD

Sorry for the CAPS. But this article isn't about Fire Extinguishers, it's about Hand-held fire extinguishers - a fire reel is a fixed fire extinguisher or fixed fire fighting equipment. I'm here because of the copy-edit tag but the article name is the first thing that seems wrong to me!Garrie 02:18, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] SPAM

Such an extensive list of vendors is considered spam. I am moving the list to here... By consensus only one notable vendor should be selected, or none should be listed. It is not too difficult to search google to find reputable vendors within any given juristriction.

Garrie 02:29, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Manufacturers & Suppliers

Please discuss and move a selection back to the article. I have moved the museum site back to External Links.
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