Fire Extinguishers ?????

[Clay45]

I've heard if you discharge Halon in an enclosed area you can asphyxiate yourself.

 

[Toyboy]

Yep, hit & run.

 

[Toyboy]

I don't know what anyone else does to remember to "fluff/loosen" the powder in the dry extinguishers, but I do mine when we go on and off DST. Which means today I get my rubber mallet and go on a tapping spree. :thumbsup:

 

[crackerjack222]

I have dry-chems around the house; kitchen, garage and upstairs closet. In my shop I have at least four re-chargeable dry-chems hanging by the doors. When I am welding or torch cutting, I have a couple of "red-neck" extinguishers around (plastic jugs filled with water and with a 1/8" hole drilled in the cap). I have a halon that I had in my plane but it is now buried in the stuff I cleaned out of the hangar. I will have to find it and put it where I can grab it.
Years ago we had a small fire in our co. warehouse. Dry-chems were used to put it out. After that we had to dump a large number of electronic pieces that were corroded by the dry-chem.

 

[drizler]

Good idea to keep the tiny sticks and bush pieces from building up on your engine areas and keep an extinguisher on board. I know a guy whose ford 4000 caught fire from tiny bush buildup on the area below the leaky valve cover gasket. Once it got going he ran and got 2 big extinguishers from a nearby facility and dumped them both with no luck. Burned it right up .

 

[davesl708]

I've heard if you discharge Halon in an enclosed area you can asphyxiate yourself.

Same with CO2. You are displacing the oxygen so not a good idea to hang around after discharging either. You must vent the area before going back in.

 

[drizler]

Good idea to keep the tiny sticks and bush pieces from building up on your engine areas and keep an extinguisher on board. I know a guy whose ford 4000 caught fire from tiny bush buildup on the area below the leaky valve cover gasket. Once it got going he ran and got 2 big water extinguishers from a nearby facility and dumped them both with no luck. Burned it right up .
.
As for halon I always wondered about that stuff in a closed area. We had those rigged in the V100 armored cars while I was in the Army. I guess they planned on you unassing the vehicle rapidly in the event of a fire.

 

[buickanddeere]

I've heard if you discharge Halon in an enclosed area you can asphyxiate yourself.

CO2 will also displace oxygen and drop people .

 

[Argonne]

CO2 will also displace oxygen and drop people .

Halon doesn't displace oxygen like CO2, but it does have a property where it will produce some phosgene gas when it comes in contact with heated material. If I remember correctly, the temperature to start producing phosgene is north of 900 deg f. The phosgene containing plume has a very distinctive odor, so if you are outdoors get out of the plume, and indoors, exit the area until it clears...the fire will not come back indoors anytime soon once Halon is applied, so you don't have to stick around much until the fire department arrives.

Halon is astoundingly effective. When I was a firefighter, we were doing a controlled/training burn on a 2 story frame farmhouse. We trained most of the day by lighting small fires in the house and extinguishing them. Towards the end of the day, it was time to let it burn and drop into its foundation, and I asked everyone if they wanted to risk staying a little longer to see how effective a Halon extinguisher would be on a big fire. They said sure, so we did it.

We started the fire a 3 points on the main floor and let it get rolling. When flash over occurred, there was flame shooting out the top 1/3rd of all of the (tall) windows on the first floor. I approached a central first floor window and applied a sweeping ~8 second shot from a 20# Halon extinguisher into the bottom of the room. The fire went out within about 10 seconds...all of it.

Astounded, we watched as the fire re-established itself fitfully over the next 10 minutes or so. Since I still had 2/3rds of that extinguisher left, I could have kept dosing that fire periodically and kept it suppressed for a long time, perhaps even long enough to let the heat dissipate and totally extinguish it. I did not do so, however, because I had 30 hot sweaty firefighters behind me that were dreaming of that first beer.

That was probably 15 years ago, and I still have that extinguisher, ready to put out another fire.

Nothing comes close to Halon as an extinguishing agent, and that includes it's "replacements". CO2 is good but it has to be very carefully used indoors due to it's oxygen displacement properties, and a CO2 extinguisher ends up being big and heavy if it has usable capacity which makes it problematic to store in vehicles.

 

[oosik]

About locating your extinguisher. A Jeep caught on fire at a 4WD rally I attended. His extinguisher was neatly mounted on the vehicle roll bar. He rapidly exited the vehicle, turned around and realized that there was NO WAY he could possibly go back and retrieve the extinguisher.

The fire started in the engine compartment but very rapidly there was black smoke & flames in the passenger compartment.

Very few will have the where-with-all to grab the extinguisher as they exit a burning vehicle.

Think about this as you decide where to mount your extinguisher.

I GUARANTEE you will not go back inside a burning vehicle to retrieve an extinguisher and it does no good sitting there on your roll bar as the vehicle burns.

I have a little bit different take on fire extinguishers. Generally speaking I don't worry so much if my tractor catches fire and burns - I seriously doubt I would be able to contain the fire anyhow and who wants a half burned tractor. I have insurance.

My concern is if the tractor catches fire it could very easily be the starting point for a wide spread wildfire. Wildfires are a major concern/problem most all of the year in my area - except after snowfall.

To that end and because most of my operations out on the property are single location based - I have a 125# Amerex A,B,C dry chemical extinguisher that I take with me. Its mounted on a hand truck and is about the best I can do to stop the spread from a burning tractor. I purchased it thru a friend and got a good deal on it.