Fire extinguisher recommendation for a home shop

[patriarch]

The Home Depot ad in today's paper featured a couple of fire extinguishers, which got me to thinking.

What should I have in the way of a fire extinguisher for my shop?

It's a two car garage, where no vehicles have been parked for two years now. I have more power tools than my wife knows about, including most of the larger ones. The chip & dust collection is marginal, but on the radar for upgrade this fall. The Critter is the only spray equipment I use, and then only outside, and only for waterbased, so far.

There's a half of a Gorilla rack full of oils, varnishes, lacquers, shellac and solvents for the aforementioned. And a metal cabinet out in the back shed that should be relocated to the shop to store all of these. (Also a this fall project.)

The BORG ad is for a Kidde Class A, B, C product, $20 or so. One size fits all. (They are also selling a $300 table saw that's supposed to make you Norm, Part 2, in the same flyer.) How big an extinguisher do I need?

And, while on the subject, has anyone done anything with a remote sensing smoke detector? Where the sensor is in one place, such as the garage/shop, but the alarm also sounds another, like inside the house?)

Evidently, October is National Fire Safety Month.

Patriarch

[DJ Delorie]

They sell a "kitchen size" model, get the next bigger size. If you don't have one in your kitchen, get one of those too. Yes, I've used mine, and there's no such thing as overkill when it comes to extinguishers - you want that little can to just keep spraying until your nerves calm down ;-)

The A/B/C class should be fine for woodworking. Kitchens have the same types of fires - electrical and oil.

Hardwired alarms are designed to be wired together (they use 14/3 and the red conductor is the sense wire) so that they all go off if any one sounds. You should be able to tie new alarms into your existing ones if you use this system.

Worst case, just buy two such alarms and connect them together, so that the second one sounds when the first does.

[leonard]

a 10 pound ABC unit should be the minimum you should use.(I used to be in the business)

Len "patriarch [e-mail]" The Home Depot ad in today's paper featured a couple of fire

[Greg]

You should have the biggest dry powder extinguisher you can afford to fight a fire in your flammable liquids but I also have an old pressurized water extinguisher in case I simply have a paper/wood/sawdust fire. The advantage is they are free to refill, you don't lose the whole thing the first time you pull the handle and they actually perform better on an A fire with less cleanup.

[Dave Hinz]

...and keep in mind, a 10 pound extinguisher gives you just about exactly 10 seconds before it's empty. Bigger is better, folks.

[Richard Clements]

[Woodchuck]

bigger is better and have more than one. I have 3 10lb in my basement and 2

20lb in the outside garage/shop.

"patriarch [e-mail]" The Home Depot ad in today's paper featured a couple of fire

[Searcher]

I have three 10 lb extinguishers around my shop, one at each window and one at the door, I figure if the fires too much I'm goin out the window! Thats what I got insurance for. I Used to own a restaraunt and the 10 lb'ers we're required throughout, so needless to say I have many. Incedently, I popped an extinguisher about a month ago due to an errant spark hitting my staining table. Of course I just happen to have left a pan of still moist stain rag out. The A B C extinguisher really makes a mess and it only took a 1 second burst to put out the fire. But I was cleaning up the whole shop of that fine Sodium.

Searcher1

[patrick conroy]

"patriarch [e-mail]"

I have the Home Depot "Kidde" brands in my gara^H^H^H^Hshop. But get ready for anyone with an expertise in fire fighting to weigh in on the quality of these extinguishers.

By my informal data gathering metrics, almost all Professionals tell you to get hooked up with a firm that sells and services quality devices.

One thing they all advocated was periodically shaking the dry chem ones to loosen up the powder. Evidently it can get packed down.

garage/shop,

Nope - but I wouldn't want one. My shop smoke detector goes off more frequently than I had anticipated when I do some sanding. Seeing as how my shop time is early am and late evening, that wouldn't work for me.

[Ken Yee]

"Searcher" wrote in news:aUH4d.12073$464.11453@trnddc01:

Halon extinguishers are best for stuff you care about... :-)

ken

[DJ Delorie]

That depends on how long you can hold your breath.

[Nova]

We had the halon extinguishers at work and the fire inspector made us get rid of them. Apparently a number of people have died from suffocation while using halon extinguishers.

-- Jack Novak Buffalo, NY - USA (Remove "SPAM" from email address to reply)

[J. Clarke]

Know anybody who will sell you one?

[J. Clarke]

Huh? Halon is nontoxic. If there's enough of it to displace most of the air in a space it can smother you but that's about it. And you're not likely to manage that with a handheld extinguisher in any space with enough airflow to be able to use flammable solvents.

[J. Clarke]

If it was a permanently installed system then it was likely a halon-flood system that aims at replacing all the air in a room with halon. CO2 will kill you by the same mechanism. So will nitrogen-flood.

[Bob G.]

============================= Try the Fire Company that serves your neighborhood...

Mine is a Volunteer unit and they "did" their thing and I followed their suggestions...

Bob Griffiths

[Lew Hodgett]

Not only that but it is a MAJOR ozone layer problem.

Some industries, which have not yet found an alternative, such as the like North Slope oil well platforms, still use them, but they have little choice; however, if they ever have to use them, the fine will be in the $1,000,000.00 range.

Lew

[Greg]

Halon has a higher CFC "tax" on it than R12, I imagine it is $100 a pound if you could actually find it. This stuff wasn't cheap when it was thought of as being harmless. A typical computer room "dump" was $30,000 or more. I saw one once, a sight to behold ... and it didn't kill us. Flying debris was more dangerous than the gas and nobody stayed in there long enough to breathe much of it. The claxon horn ran most folks off. ;-)

[Mark and Kim Smith]

Is Purple K still being used??

[Mark and Kim Smith]

When you get your extinguisher, do yourself a favor and read the directions before you have to use the thing. Too many times folks crack that thing, rush into the fire and blow the whole thing right past the fire! If the extinguisher says "Spray from 10 feet" then spray it from

10 feet, not 2 feet! Besides, there is no reason to go and make your eyebrows crispy!