Fire Extinguisher Maintenance

*Fire Extinguisher Maintenance*

No Sense in Having Them if They Don’t Work

By Jaden

04 October 2003

Considering the stove fire last night, I said I’d do an article on maintaining fire extinguishers. So here it is.

Add this to your monthly checklist along with batteries, smoke alarms, etc.

There are different types of fire extinguishers. This one is a Dry Chemical or ABC extinguisher.

Check to make sure that the gauge reads FULL.
Check to make sure the pin is inserted.
Check the overall condition of the cylinder
Check the nozzle to ensure that nothing is obstructing it.
Check the hose to ensure it’s not cracked.

Now, there’s one more thing that is probably overlooked. The dry chem. is a powder and will settle and pack together. So to help prevent this do 1 simple step-

Get a rubber mallet or something of the sort. I used the back of this brush.

Invert the extinguisher and strike it a few times with the object. Don’t beat the snot out of it, just thump it a few times.

Just incase the powder did cake, this will break it loose.

I recommend this for all dry chem’ers.

Other Extinguishers-

Some dry chems (typically kitchen models) have a green button on the top. To check it, just push the green button down and it should pop back out. If it doesn’t, the extinguisher is bad.

For CO2 types, the only way to tell is by weight. You need to know how much the weight is supposed to be and then weigh it.

For H2O types, they typically have gauges.

CHECK THEM!!! It really suck to have a fire and have a faulty extinguisher.

Jaden

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