Fire Extinguishers; The Good, Bad & the Ugly

Greg said:

I played around with a Halon fire extinguisher years ago and it was impressive how well it worked and did not leave any messy residue. I believe it displaces the oxygen and doesn't allow a fire to breath, thereby smothering it.

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@bobn needs to jump in on this conversation. He worked with fire extinguishers for 30+ years. I believe one of my extinguishers in the garage is an old Halon one he filled decades ago. I have an ABC one in the kitchen and in each car.

I've only ever had the pleasure of using an extinguisher twice. Once in our high school autoshop when we tried to burn it down while welding up an RTI ramp. And in my kitchen on a grease fire while the skin was melting off my hand at the same time. Both were ABC and worked as designed!

spaggyroe said:

Cool vid of the blazecut system in action.

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$400 for one of these. Any other reviews? How do these compare with the automated systems @N-Smooth was talking about? Something under the hood that doesn't need to wait for me to notice the fire, stop the truck, pop the hood, run around back to where the extinguisher is mounted, run back up front and open a potentially blazing hot hood and then see if the fire extinguisher works, is attractive to me.

Any thoughts of fire blankets compared to extinguishers?

I have three of these around the house. Do I have any reason to believe that they need any maintenance or inspection? They are 30 years old.

I lost my Jeep and wake boat in a storage unit fire 2 years ago and it is something I never want to experience again. I think prevention should be a top priority as I get back in to it. I think I should mount one of these up.

I run these units in every rig, this one is mounted in my Jeep via an aluminum quick release bracket that is attached to the window molle in my cargo area. Easy to access even when the cargo area is packed full of gear.
I’ve put out multiple random vehicle fires over the years, preventing total loss of the vehicles. I’ve also rolled up on a few that were beyond saving, which was sad.
To reduce/prevent the potential of failure due to caking of the extinguishing media, at every vehicle oil change interval, I inspect the fire extinguisher and also invert it and tap on the canister with a rubber mallet to dislodge the media.

I have two 10lb extinguishers mounted in the garage and a smaller ABC unit mounted to the cabinet door under the kitchen sink. I also have a quick deploy fire blanket in the kitchen pantry and another in the garage.

bobdog said:

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I have three of these around the house. Do I have any reason to believe that they need any maintenance or inspection? They are 30 years old.

I lost my Jeep and wake boat in a storage unit fire 2 years ago and it is something I never want to experience again. I think prevention should be a top priority as I get back in to it. I think I should mount one of these up.

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According to @bobn who worked on fire equipment for 30+ years:
"Yes, it’s a liquid and as long as the o-ring doesn’t fail and you lose pressure you're good. It’s been illegal to service or recharge 1211 for a couple of decades. So hang on to it."

Stephen said:

According to @bobn who worked on fire equipment for 30+ years:
"Yes, it’s a liquid and as long as the o-ring doesn’t fail and you lose pressure you're good. It’s been illegal to service or recharge 1211 for a couple of decades. So hang on to it."

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Thanks. that is what I figured.

I did not know it was illegal to service it, I thought you just could not produce it. I was planning on having the automatic fire system on my boat changed over to Halon from chemical using the product from my extinguishers.