Safety Recall TOTAL/FLAMEFAST CO2

[TFEM]

PJ and JSP both deny any problem exists with their valves despite them appearing to be the same ones, stamped 234.
Surely if they are the same valve, the problem exists irrespective of which manufacturer/refurbishers label is on the body of the extinguisher?
John

[AnthonyB]

Yes, if they are from the same batch from the same Chinese factory, but they may well not be as their are dozens of factories there making identical components, it's very difficult to back trace the origin of some stuff.

[Bill J]

Hi all,

It would be good to get an update on this, as the manufacturers/distributors have proven to be pretty cagey about any kind of response.

Our suppliers have been provided with some pretty hefty looking clamp arrangement, which allows them to secure the extinguisher, and I know that so far on "our" sites, we have had approximately 25 extinguishers replaced.

Some of those were supplied by our source, some were inherited as part of take-over maintenance contracts.

Has there been any more information from Tyco/Total/Flamefast?

I only ask as we are not primarily an extinguisher supplier, and this seems to have gone quiet. Has it just gone away?

Bill

[AnthonyB]

It's been quietly buried as most service firms have ignored it (actually that's unfair - most won't even know about it).

A few firms are using the clamps, but it's a lot of faffing & faffing is money wasted, so it's not being followed by many.

Most of the other main manufacturers/importers have now released "ours won't pop" letters.

Unless a few actually go bang in user's premises I doubt we will hear anything again.

[TFEM]

I had one customer (a college) where I had identified 40 of these affected units. Contacted Tyco who were helpful and useless all at the same time.
They wanted US to BUY their specially made tool, remove the extinguishers to a safe place, then,under "danger of death", discharge THEIR faulty units, replace them with the new ones that we would have had to BUY from Tyco and send them back to Tyco at OUR expense. Needless to say when it came to compensation for my engineers time, travel distance etc etc, nothing could be sanctioned. A full credit would have then been issued for the affected units and the clamp if returned promptly.
Then the annual service on the college's extinguishers came. We started to attach "danger, do not touch" labels on the affected units (after the Tyco issue ones failed to materialise) and of course this immediately was picked up. So I took the decision upon myself to physically remove all these units to safe storage, replacing them with temporary loan units whilst discussions with Tyco continued.
In the end, we managed to get Tyco to agree to send an engineer down and sort them out. My engineer joined him on site and relocated the replacement units whilst the units were being clamped and discharged. It transpired that only 18 of the original 40 were actually affected.....the fire rating and kitemark apparently is critical.
No reimbursement of my time (many hours) or my engineers time and travelling.
I understand that this has been a massive problem for Tyco but at the same time feel that they should have thrown many more resources at it from day one and not left the middleman (the extinguisher company) to sort it out, particularly when we didn't supply them in the first place.
What now happens in the future? What happens if I pick up a new service contract where there are perhaps one or two affected units installed? It certainly isn't going to be worth my while contacting Tyco. If I tell the customer to contact Tyco direct, how will that go down? What do I do from my businesses perspective? Condemn it and sell them new? Service exchange it? Replace it free of charge?
What would you do?
John 

[kurnal]

Have the trade associations taken any leadership role in representing their members concerns to Tyco? I would have thought that they would have wielded considerable commercial clout?

[AnthonyB]

One positive about UTC Group is when they had a problem with Gloria extinguishers they sent out the checking tools and newparts free.

TYCO are being the opposite making you pay for their error!

I've not come across any as fortunately there isn't too much TOTAL stuff about. If I did I would condemn it remove it and in a safe place discharge it making sure I'm not stood over it (standard service practice anyway) if they were that dangerous they would be having to do more.

The irony is TYCO don't even use their own extinguishers to supply their end user cusomers! After absorbing Wormald they used Gloria, then Firemark and currently Excelsius!