FireNet Community

FIRE SERVICE AND GENERAL FIRE SAFETY TOPICS => Technical Advice => Topic started by: billthefire on February 06, 2007, 04:39:29 PM

Title: fighting fires involving newly sheared sheeps wool
Post by: billthefire on February 06, 2007, 04:39:29 PM

what is the best media to fight fires involving newly sheared sheeps wool?

Title: fighting fires involving newly sheared sheeps wool
Post by: kurnal on February 06, 2007, 04:53:54 PM

This a trick question Bill?

Baa humbug.

I should try water. If you wanted to ensure maximum wetting/ cooling  against the natural oils in the fleece you could induce some synthetic foam concentrate into the water stream or a similar surfactant based fire fighting additive, if environmental issues allow.

Title: fighting fires involving newly sheared sheeps wool
Post by: Thebeardedyorkshireman on February 09, 2007, 01:04:26 PM

When it comes to these matters us techies listen to the Kurnal as the font of all knowledge on these subjects. I grew up in Bradford and started my fire apprenticeship on the fire alarms in Woolcombers mills. Great places! The steam hung like low cloud from October to Easter and down in the wool bins the rats were bigger than dogs..Happy Days!!
Just a bit of info for you that I picked up on my travels...
After you have soaked a wool bale with water you have to remove it from the building and allow it to dry slowly away from other bales. There is allways a chance that it will spontaneously combust due to friction heat generation from the fibres during the drying process. The old guys called it 'fire damp' This is probably the biggest load of old rubbish since lucky got hold of a keyboard but I think it is factually correct.
Dave

Title: fighting fires involving newly sheared sheeps wool
Post by: AnthonyB on February 09, 2007, 03:44:46 PM

do you mean a first aid attack? If so you want water with additive extinguishers - the problem of dealing with certain Class A materials that plain water jets couldn't penetrate was recognised decades ago when Nu Swift brought out Wet Water charges for their RN water extinguishers. The addtive breaks the surface tension making the water 'wetter' and better at penetrating.

Thats why water additive extinguishers get higher ratings for less content. As this is a risk for where special considerations are required ignore the higher ratings and smaller sizes and go for the larger 6 and 9 litre water additive models to give you high capacity.