P50 Fire extinguishers

[Lee M R]

I have also been discussing the P50 recently, even today actually. This is my view:
There is a periodic investigation to determine if the extinguisher has been used or not rather than a full inspection, but this is carried out by a user/owner and not a qualified fire extinguisher engineer. There is a difference and the engineer will inspect many other things rather than simply check that the gauge still works and it feels heavy-ish when you pick it up.

The point is that all we hear these days are 'competency, competency, competency' and here we are willing to put an extinguisher in place for 10 years at the hands and competency of a user or owner of a building. It doesn't make sense.

I serviced a school last year and the caretaker had re-tagged an half empty fire extinguisher. He didn't think he had done anything wrong, it still had water in it after all and the gauge was only just in the red! And this wasn't the only one.
Fire alarms suffer from exactly the same, according to the log book, one particular shop that we service do test a different call point every month. But without a key because they hadn't got one!

On both of these occasions our annual or 6 monthly visits highlighted and corrected these problems, so what happens if we leave them un-serviced for 10 whole years.

I believe the standards now state that engineers should carry out a basic service on plastic / non-metal types of extinguishers such as the P50, but the market place and end users don't seem to realise this.

[AnthonyB]

If sold into the proper environment with the correct training given the principle works fine - I've several large companies that have invested properly in the P50 with the correct checks and annual inspection, with used equipment correctly identified and a defective item identified and replaced free under warranty.

Most people servicing extinguishers don't do it properly and I have little confidence anymore in the industry - it was bad enough with the odd rogue extinguisher company but now lots of FM companies, fire alarm and intruder engineers and others have added it to their services and pay lip service to a proper job. Almost every site visit reveals shoddy work.

BS5306 does allow plastic bodied extinguishers (it would have ended up in an expensive loosing court case if not) but suggests the same service regime - note the standard committee has a lot of the trade on it and so find more and more changes to increase extinguisher numbers - fortunately it's not law and in line with the risk based nature of current legislation an alternative approach can be used as long as it's justified in line with the risks

[lancsfirepro]

Most people servicing extinguishers don't do it properly and I have little confidence anymore in the industry - it was bad enough with the odd rogue extinguisher company but now lots of FM companies, fire alarm and intruder engineers and others have added it to their services and pay lip service to a proper job. Almost every site visit reveals shoddy work.

Shall we throw the baby out with the bath water or shall we just appoint a service company that knows what they are doing?  Be assured that there are companies out there that do a proper job to British Standards.  Maybe you should survey some sites in our neck of the woods. 

BS5306 does allow plastic bodied extinguishers (it would have ended up in an expensive loosing court case if not) but suggests the same service regime - note the standard committee has a lot of the trade on it and so find more and more changes to increase extinguisher numbers - fortunately it's not law and in line with the risk based nature of current legislation an alternative approach can be used as long as it's justified in line with the risks

Yes, as I mentioned further up in this thread back in 2017; the 2017 version of BS5306-3 now makes allowance for non-metal bodied extinguisher, which is all well and good, but the requirement for service engineers to be able to check the body of the extinguisher remains unchanged; and you can't do that with these extinguishers due to the cover.  Therefore, anyone servicing to BS5306-3 cannot rightly issue certification to the fact.  Don't get me started on the 10 year extended service dates on these extinguishers; that's for primary sealed powders only, so thats not to BS5306-3 either.  Yes, British Standards are not law; the law states that your fire fighting equipment must be maintained to a 'suitable system of maintenance' only.  The accepted 'suitable system of maintenance' here in the UK are the British Standards; would you be happy to say to a client that its fine to ignore certain parts of the standard because it suits?  Shall we now recommend that fire alarm systems are fine to be serviced every 2 years because the British Standards are not legal documents?  Where do you draw the line?  Be aware that in the absence of any other 'suitable systems of maintenance' insurance companies will cling to British Standards; so beware those that are not adhering to them.

[AnthonyB]

Funny bringing up fire alarms - plenty of places including nationals only service once a year and seem to get away with it and as we all know Sainsburys only do monthly call point tests.

Unless there's a massive court case they loose the P50 is here to stay as there are now significant numbers in service with large organisations and several fire services sell them via trading arms.

The number of firms correctly servicing extinguishers (including yours) seems to drop every year as more and more organisations start offering servicing and not doing it properly - but there is no sanction so it won't change soon, it would be great for standards to be pulled up across the board.