Fire extinguisher

[maxi77]

Interesting that several fire accounts here the fire was finally killed by good old fashioned water. Having trained with water, CO2, Powder and foam, I personally do not rate powder very highly, though its the most common. Not only the mess it leaves which can be as bad as if not worse than that left by a small fire, but the 'white out' effect others mention. You cant see the seat of the fire, so you cant get the extinguishant to it. Its worse than useless just spraying the stuff around, unless you can get it on to the flames. You really do not want to breath the stuff either! A fundamental requirement of fire fighting is to getb the extinguishing material directoly to the seat of the fire - where it is actually burning. Just spraying vaguely at the flames will do no good - you have to get it on to the actual point where it is burning. In a powder white-out, you cant do that.

CO2 is good in a boat as you can get a good build up in a confined space, thus eliminating all the oxygen. However, there is a chance you will eliminate yourself as well unless you are careful, in a confined space like a boat cabin. Best if you can pump the boat full of CO2 from outside. Noisy - yes very. The blast can have the same effect on burning liquids as water thrown in a burning chip pan - simply scattering burning liquid all over. Not helpful.

Water - which is in plentiful supply round a boat, if you can reach it quickly seems almost as effective as anything on anything but a pool of burning liquid (e.g fuel, oil etc), and the accounts above tend to confirm that.

My preference as a general extinguishant is foam. not as messy as powder, and does not white out, so the operator can still see exactly what is happening. It doesnt risk blasting burning material away from the seat of the fire, and is effective

Final comment, how many extinguishers do you carry? The average Office extinguisher will last around 30 seconds. That's not long and is unlikely to put out a fire with flames more than 30cms high. That's roughly equivalent to a burning wastepaper basket. What do you do after 30 seconds if you only carry one extinguisher? MY fire safety people suggested carrying a minimum of 4kg of dry powder on a boat in at least two extinguishers, in case one fails. I often see one little 1kg dry powder as the sole means of fire fighting on boats. Its not enough! There is not enough powder or time in one of these for anything but the very smallest fire. As they say, in the boat there is no chance of 9 tons of fire engine turning up to rescue you before it gets out of control.

+1

I changed to mainly foam, and would have gone fully foam in time. When in the RN CO2 was reserved for electrical cabinets only with voltages above 100V. The only exception for this was CO2 flooding in SSNs in dock but this was replaced with foam flooding later as being more effective

 

[PCUK]

I use AFFF extinguishers as they remove heat, blanket fuel fires and can also be used on mains power. I have seen demonstrations of them being used on railway 750 volt third rail (current ON) as the water does not carry the current back to the user as each molecule of foam is separate. The reason they are not recommended for mains fires is that if the nozzle is damaged or removed the water will not be properly turned to foam. For every other use they are the best choice apart from auto engine room of course where Halon replacements are the ideal medium.

 

[FishyInverness]

Is there a Forum discount available

You'd have to be quick, as I'm leaving Gaelforce at the end of the week!!

 

[sailorman]

You'd have to be quick, as I'm leaving Gaelforce at the end of the week!!

nation wide fire extinguishers are the best price £ 34.80 for 2 x 2Ltr delivered

 

[charles_reed]

One of the advantages, on a boat, is that you have unlimited quantities of water to hand. Dry powder does take a long time to act, makes an awful mess (use a vacuum cleaner to pick up the scraps), but does work on most classes of fire - CO2 in my limited experience has been well-nigh useless.
Most fires aboard are to do with cooking and a blanket is just great at smothering a cooking oil fire.
For me dry powder and a blanket - forget the rest. I've yet to find foam extinguishers with a reasonable life expectancy and an affordable price tag.

 

[FishyInverness]

nation wide fire extinguishers are the best price £ 34.80 for 2 x 2Ltr delivered

Surely 2kg as oppose 2l? Co2 is measured in Kg IIRC....and if that's £34.80 for 2 x 2kg inc. delivery and VAT, have their hand off!!!!!

 

[sailorman]

Surely 2kg as oppose 2l? Co2 is measured in Kg IIRC....and if that's £34.80 for 2 x 2kg inc. delivery and VAT, have their hand off!!!!!

i have ordered 2 x 2 ltr AFFF

http://www.nationwidefireextinguishers.co.uk/c44047/foam-fire-extinguishers.html

 

[[70521]]

I've always understood that powder covers more classes of fire:

Class A: SOLIDS such as paper, wood, plastic etc
Class B: FLAMMABLE LIQUIDS such as paraffin, petrol, oil etc
Class C: FLAMMABLE GASES such as propane, butane, methane etc
Class D: METALS such as aluminium, magnesium, titanium etc
Class E: Fires involving ELECTRICAL APPARATUS
Class F: Cooking OIL & FAT etc

CO2 – This fire extinguisher is ideal for fires involving electrical apparatus and Class B liquid fires. It does not cool and is not suitable for solids.

Dry powder – This fire extinguisher is a multi-purpose fire extinguisher that can be used on Classes A, B and C fires. The fire extinguisher works by ‘knocking down’ the flames and is very effective in putting out fires.

Having spent a day with the local fire service, free uniform for the day, using all sorts of fire extinguishers dry powder does make a mess but works well. I'd like to see a CO2 extinguisher put out a fire in the sail locker or where you store your charts, NO CHANCE.

 

[prv]

Having spent a day with the local fire service, free uniform for the day, using all sorts of fire extinguishers dry powder does make a mess but works well.

Were you doing this outside, though?

The powder white-out (9:50 in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aL_VdzjM-24 , as mentioned upthread) has put me right off using this kind of extinguisher in a boat cabin. I'm going with foam for general purpose, and halon-replacement for the engine bay.

Trawling one of the sites, I found "anti arson mailboxes", which as well as being fireproof steel boxes, also contain a plastic tube of halon-replacement gas under pressure. The tube melts in a fire and releases the gas. I contemplated the idea of obtaining a couple of these tubes, to mount in the battery locker and the back of the electrical panel. Shorts and overloading/overheating of electrical connections are probably a greater cause of fire than engine trouble in boats, so why have an auto extinguisher in the engine bay and not the electrics? But I couldn't find a decent source of smallish tubes, only large Firetrace systems for protecting whole racks of electronic equipment.

Pete

 

[FishyInverness]

Having spent a day with the local fire service, free uniform for the day, using all sorts of fire extinguishers dry powder does make a mess but works well. I'd like to see a CO2 extinguisher put out a fire in the sail locker or where you store your charts, NO CHANCE.

If Dry Powder won you over, take a look at the Dry Water Mist extinguishers! Very.....

 

[[70521]]

Were you doing this outside, though?

Inside and out! We were using their "hot house" - even did the chip pan fire wet tea towel thing (that scared the **** out of me).

Yes, powder is messy even with a full fire fighting clothing on it got to skin level had to be washed off in the shower.

While electrical connections are the greatest cause of fire I don't consider that as the problem! Its the material that is inside the boat that is the problem! Having spent the winter re-wiring my boat I am amazed that most of the wires run beside wood or fabric and in reality that is the problem CO2 won't touch that as it will just smoulder and re-lignite.

 

[sailorman]

If Dry Powder won you over, take a look at the Dry Water Mist extinguishers! Very.....

http://www.nationwidefireextinguishers.co.uk/c75500/dry-water-mist-fire-extinguishers.html

 

[[70521]]

If Dry Powder won you over, take a look at the Dry Water Mist extinguishers! Very.....

Looks good and worth considering. Thanks for the Info Fishy good luck in the new job.

 

[prv]

Yes, powder is messy even with a full fire fighting clothing on it got to skin level had to be washed off in the shower.

Messy I don't care about (well, I do a bit, but it's not the point here). If you've had a fire you have some cleaning up to do anyway. What worries me with powder is the completely opaque choking cloud of dust that means you can't see if the fire's out, can't see where you are, and in the video drove everybody rapidly up the companionway leaving the small fire to actually be extinguished by a fireman in breathing apparatus. A distinct shortage of them on yachts in the real world.

While electrical connections are the greatest cause of fire I don't consider that as the problem!

That's an odd statement. The "greatest cause of fire" is not a problem?

Its the material that is inside the boat that is the problem! Having spent the winter re-wiring my boat I am amazed that most of the wires run beside wood or fabric and in reality that is the problem CO2 won't touch that as it will just smoulder and re-lignite.

There's not really a lot you can do about interior lighting circuits etc running throughout the boat. That's what the portable extinguishers are for. But most connections are in one of three places - the battery locker, the engine bay, or the breaker panel. The engine bay is already protected, so the next logical step (if you wanted to continue to improve protection, at a cost) must be auto extinguishers in the battery locker and the panel. The spaces are typically a bit small for an actual extinguisher bottle, hence the appeal of the rupturing tubes. And they don't contain CO2, they are FE36 which chemically disrupts the fire rather than just blanketing. Firetrace advertise the same stuff, in much longer lengths, for protecting bookshelves in library archives, so they're presumably effective against classic wood/paper fires.

This is all theoretical, of course - in practice I'm happy to rely on handhelds for electrical spaces.

Pete

 

[Ripster]

My two-penneth.... I have a 2kg CO2 in the cabin and about 6 1kg powders all around the boat. A fire blanket in the galley. Auto in the engine bay - 2kg gas. Auto in the Bow Thruster box - 1kg gas. Smoke, CO and gas detectors. With the family on board and so much electrical kit around, I took the view that in cost terms its better to be OTT than skimp.

 

[Seajet]

May I just point out that I am one of very few here that have actually been at sea on a boat with a fire on board.

It was a cold September day, blowing about SE 6, we were in my newly bought ( secondhand ) Carter 30, about 5 miles South of Eddystone heading West. We had an inflatable dinghy and the usual safety kit but no liferaft.

When I went below to check the chart position I put on the kettle, looked at chart, looked back and there was a serious jet of flame coming up behind the stove; the flexible hose to the gymballed cooker had split, undetectable as it was 'armoured' hose ( I think illegal now, certainly inadvisable, I should have changed the hose on buying the boat and now change the hose in my Anderson every winter ).

The second word I yelled to my chum in the cockpit was ' fire ! ', he knew to go for the valve on the gas bottle near him, and I was already going for an extinguisher mounted nearby which I let go with vigour.

It was a relatively small fire and extinguisher, but I never had any problem with visibility - yes I've seen the YM test video but I think the visibility side is possibly being taken too seriously, I might be more worried about breathing it in !

The point is if the fire had taken hold it would very likely have been curtains for myself & crew, and anything which puts the fire out quickly and effectively is just fine by me.

I did undertake live fire fighting training when with British Aerospace, it gets tricky when dealing with valuable aircraft so if possible one chooses a non-corrosive extinguishant; CO2 also has its' place like engine bays, but dry powder seems an excellent all rounder on boats to me.

 

[prv]

anything which puts the fire out quickly and effectively is just fine by me.

Can't argue with that

but dry powder seems an excellent all rounder on boats to me.

Don't get me wrong, I'd much rather have powder than nothing. But it's not clear to me that it's better than foam in any relevant way. It used to be that it was much cheaper, which is a perfectly good reason to choose it, but one of the suppliers linked in this thread now has 2litre foam at £14 inc vat. At that price, for a general purpose cabin extinguisher why pick anything else?

Pete

 

[sailorman]

Can't argue with that



Don't get me wrong, I'd much rather have powder than nothing. But it's not clear to me that it's better than foam in any relevant way. It used to be that it was much cheaper, which is a perfectly good reason to choose it, but one of the suppliers linked in this thread now has 2litre foam at £14 inc vat. At that price, for a general purpose cabin extinguisher why pick anything else?

Pete

I have ordered 2 today, they are cheaper than ebay & amazon at £34.80 delivered

 

[Seajet]

Pete,

I'd agree with all that; as you may imagine, since my little fire experience I am an extinguisher salesmans' dream, already have a handheld foam extinguisher for petrol fires in the bridgedeck locker ( strikes me as optimistic but worth a go ) as well as auto actually in the fuel locker, fire blanket at galley and 4 other large powder jobs throughout the boat, including in the forepeak where there's nothing very inflammable but an extinguisher may be handy in an ' Alamo ' effect to allow legging it out of the forehatch...

I'm keeping my boat ashore this summer for personal health reasons, but aim to carry out a refit inc things like extinguishers so if foam has become reasonable, great.

 

[[70521]]

That's an odd statement. The "greatest cause of fire" is not a problem?

I don't think it is odd, but you need to read the whole sentence! The electrical connection is the cause of the problem, but with all that flammable material around that is going to catch fire, you can discharge a CO2 extinguisher into the fire BUT you will still have a fire, that is your problem.