Fire Extinguisher Safety Regulations

Video Transcript

"There are different regulations for commercial fire extinguishers and residential fire extinguishers. If you are going to have a fire extinguisher in your home then you are completely responsible for maintenance, care, all of that is going to be totally up to you. It is also going to be your responsibility of where you store it. We don't recommend that you store them within a child's reach even though lots of places that we recommend that you put them are going to be where children can get to them we want to make sure that children aren't playing with fire extinguishers because they are, they do have a chemical powder in them. It is nontoxic but we don't want them going off if there is not really a fire there. One it's a huge mess to clean up, two it doesn't really smell the best. So you do want to make sure that your fire extinguishers are located in places near exits. If you go through commercial buildings you'll notice that code requires that they actually put them near exits and the reason for this is we want you to go to your exit and make sure that it is a fire that you can put out. If it is not then you have your exit right there that you can go ahead out and if it is then you can make your way back to the fire to try and put it out. We never recommend that you cross the path of a fire to get to a fire extinguisher. If the fire extinguisher is somewhere that you can't get to without going past it we recommend that you just go ahead and exit the building. The reason for this is these fire extinguishers, depending on the size of them may not completely put your fire out and we don't ever want you to be trapped. The small fire extinguishers that people find in their home are going to put out a fire the size of a small trash can that you don't really realize how big your fire is and how fast it will grow when you go to get your fire extinguisher. Now we recommend again that you store them near exit ways. We find that lots of times people put them under the sink in the kitchen but what you find if you put them under the sink in the kitchen is you are storing also other highly flammable products under your sink and you usually don't use your fire extinguisher on a daily basis though it is usually pushed further back there under the sink so we recommend instead that you put them near your exit ways. If you have a garage in your home we recommend that you have fire extinguisher in your garage. We also recommend that you put one on each level of the home so a two story home again you want a fire extinguisher on each level of the home. If you have outside work areas or work shops or that sort of storage we recommend that you have a fire extinguisher there. The reason for this is your fire is going to grow so fast that if you just have one in the house and you have to run to get it and have to look for it then your fire has probably doubled or tripled its size by the time you get back and your fire extinguisher probably is not going to be big enough to put your fire out at that point. If there is ever a doubt as to whether or not you can use the fire extinguisher or whether you just need to get out, you should always get out. Maintenance on fire extinguishers, fire extinguishers that are in your home that are owned privately don't have to have as much maintenance as fire extinguishers that are in commercial buildings. We do recommend that you take your fire extinguisher down once a month and turn it upside down a few times and the reason for this is we actually have a compressed, you have compressed air and your powder in there and the longer your fire extinguisher sits the powder is going to start to settle to the bottom so just take it a few times, turn it upside down and we recommend that you check the gage to make sure that it still says that you are in the green and then you usually don't want to keep a fire extinguisher in your home more than seven to ten years, that is generally the life span of a fire extinguisher is seven to ten years before you need to go ahead and have it replaced."