Talk:Fire extinguisher/Archive 1

message: 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.
**# 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.
**# 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)
thread_title:  Two things 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Request for images ? 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Carbon Dioxide 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Dry Powder 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Licenses and miscellaneous 

message: "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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Wet potassium salts statement 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Recharging 

message: 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)
replies: text: Actually, the references are there, since there are even links to the applicable standards. IMHO, the template should be removed.--UbUb 14:51, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  References, general tone 

message: 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)
thread_title:  How to put out a fire 

message: 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)
thread_title:  HAND-HELD 

message: The UK also recognises the recently developed graphite powder extinguisher designed to fight metal fires (class G), due to the inherant problems of using water based extinguishers (water, foam) and the inability of ABC powder and CO2 extinguishers to extinguish this class
Stui 10:34, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Graphite extinguisher

message: Well, all I wrote on this article comes from my personal experience as a technical manager in a company producing fire extinguisher. Shall I cite myself?--UbUb 20:44, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: No. Unfortunately you cannot cite yourself, and Wikipedia is not the place for original research. My suggestion would be to use your experience to find suitable sources to cite. Eg manufacturer's specifications, Safety Standards, etc. --Zaf(t) 06:27, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Mmmm, I intended it as a sort of a joke... anyway, it seems that nobody really read the article - at least, nobody of those claiming lack of sources. Are EN and ISO standard (cited) not a reliable source?--UbUb 14:55, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: A proper citation gives full bibliographic details about sources. The people who know what EN, ISO, and NFPA are and how to obtain their standards probably don't need to read the article. See WP:CITE for details about how to cite sources. (By the way, you claim that ISO standards are cited, but the characters "ISO" do not appear in the article. Maybe "everybody knows" that one of the other standards mentioned in the text comes from the ISO, but the article is written for people who don't know about fire extingushers, not those who already do.) --Gerry Ashton 16:26, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Citations 

message: The tone of the Maintenance section is very oriented towards industry or buildings where there is some professional maintenance crew.  What about homeowners? Norm Donovan 23:23, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Maintenance section - what about homeowners? 

message: While I am aware that each extinguisher should be checked for correct pressure and general good health every 30 days I have heard that the powder in dry chemical extinguishers tends to solidify over time.  Is this correct?  If so does simply shaking the extinguisher free this?  Should dry chemical extinguishers be replaced periodically?  I assume it is cheaper and easier to replace these than get professional maintenance, at least for home units. Norm Donovan 23:23, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: When I bought some extinguishers for my home from a dealer who also sells them for commercial buildings and fire departments, I was told to bring it in for a recharge after 6 years, and to invert it periodically (30 days would be good). If it has a plastic valve assembly, you're probably right about replacing it rather than having it recharged, because the ones with plastic valve assemblies often leak when they are recharged. --Gerry Ashton 18:06, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Does dry chemical solidify over time? 

message: It is a common idiom in Finnish to say that someone is "as tall as a fire extinguisher", meaning they are still in their infancy, from post-birth to preschool age. Can this be incorporated in the article? JIP | Talk 20:38, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Finnish idiom 

message: I propose the page on class D fire extinguishers be merged with this page.Theseeker4 (talk) 17:57, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: No objections, Merge completed Gigs (talk) 22:26, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Propose merge [[Class D fire extinguisher]] to this page 

message: Comparing consecutive edits for the History of this article seems to show that 90% of edits this year have been vandalism from annonymous IP addresses...is it worth considering semi-protecting this article?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wdcf (talk • contribs) 13:10, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Add semi-protection 

message: I restored a lot of information removed without comment by 12.69.99.26.  I'll assume good faith, but it was a lot of brand-specific information, which makes me wonder about the intentions behind the edits. Gigs (talk) 17:51, 22 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  12.69.99.26 

message: An anonymous user just changed the first patent for a fire extinguisher from French C. Hopffer to Ambrose Godfrey.  Godfrey's article doesn't mention it.  These bits of trivia are always hard because it's not always clear what actually constitutes a fire extinguisher.  Even worse, I see people citing the Hopffer trivia on this article on other sites.  If anyone has the resources to sort this out, it would be appreciated. Gigs (talk) 04:08, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  First Patent 

message: When I was a Sophomore in High School, a teacher told us that spraying the foam on a human body is deadly, but you always see it done in movies, so I'm wondering what the deal is here? Could somebody please address this Hollywood deal, because I've been confused about this for quite some time... 129.107.81.12 (talk) 20:13, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Talk pages are for discussion of the article, not the subject of the article.  But, for special effects and movies, they use CO2 extinguishers, which are OK to use on a burning person.  You should not spray a person with a normal ABC dry chemical if you can help it.    I would still rather be sprayed with dry chemical than burn, if there were no other choice. Gigs (talk) 18:07, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

text: The main article mentions a few different kinds of foam extinguishers. One of them, AFFF, contains fluorinated surfactants with unspecified or unknown affects on human health. The other foams also do not seem to be acutely toxic. If I'm on fire, spray me with the foam! In the movies, I would guess that they use a safe foam such as shaving cream (or a professional foam prop material); it avoids most toxicity issues and is easy to clean up with water and rags for subsequent takes.AdderUser (talk) 06:42, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Human Body Effects