Fire extinguisher servicing.

[Tom Sutton]

Our service engineer from [omitted] turns up every year to service our extinguishers and whilst his price list states £5 per extinguisher the actual price is much higher by the time he has added the costs for some o rings, washers and other 'things'. Does he really need to change these items? Must be pretty poor quality if it needs replacing every year!!! Or is he just making extra money?

I have some sympathy with the above guy it does seem to be a bit of gilding the lily or maybe he is just a conscious service engineer or the total opposite. Any views.

[SamFIRT]

[quoteI have some sympathy with the above guy... ][/quote]

Which guy do you have sympathy with?

The engineer or the person complaining about him? 

But isn’t that the way of the world. e.g. Call out a washing machine engineer = call out charge and then parts on top.

[John Dragon]

Put some of the parts down to manufacturers servicing instructions - if the maker says they should be changed annually and the engineer fails to do so = possible (however unlikely) liability issues. Our refresher courses stress servicing must be carried out to manufacturers instructions.   Wasn't always this way with the older quality extinguishers years ago!

As a company, we would prefer to include all service parts in our prices but we then lose work as we seem on first glance to be expensive; the customer only sees the "extras" after work has been completed.



Another distasteful one is the Chubb and Gloria frangible safety pins that need to be replaced on every service.

[Tom Sutton]

Sorry Sam I am afraid I didn't have the benefit of an University education consequently my communication skills are quite poor.
But I do fully accept your point about other service engineers.

John an excellent point and you are quite right my experience goes back to leather washers, phials of sulphuric acid and bags of bi carbonate of soda, no problems then, happy days. 

[SamFIRT]

I am afraid I didn't have the benefit of an University education

Ummmmmm.... neither did I .

Unless you count rather late in the day (essential from the point of view of the modern fire service) management diploma courses

[Tom Sutton]

Best I could do was a GSE grade C about five years ago at night school that's of course if I don't count that college of excellence in the Gloucestershire countryside. 

[fireftrm]

£5 per extinguisher then extra for O rings and other parts may be excessive, or not. It really depends on whether there is a call-out charge plus per extinguisher, or just the extinguisher rate. After all it is not a free ride to the premises. Many companies charge a call-out then a per extinguisher rate, sometimes the call-out includes the first couple of services, or such.

If there was a call-out already then £5 is a lot. The O rings are not expensive and neither are those frangible safety pins. I am not going to state prices here, but a straightforward net search will show what I mean, though you need to accept that the service company needs to make a profit!

[TFEM]

We charge a call out fee and a fee per ext. but that fee includes ALL service parts and ALL periodic discharge/pressure testing.....and yes, we do change 'O' rings and hose seals etc. Even then we sometimes sound expensive as other companies claim to charge an AI fee which then goes on to say...."when CO2's need pressure testing, you should throw them away and buy new". Or that the service fee includes "small parts" and then you end up paying for all discharge testing etc etc.
Anyone looking for a quote should ask for a fully inclusive price, how much they charge for used extinguishers and whether they'd be prepared to leave condemned units on site.
John 

[AnthonyB]

For £5 an extinguisher most places include service parts as required by the BS Basic Service (O-rings, tags, etc).

Some will charge separately for everything, even pumping the gauge and putting a new dot on.

In my Opinion if you are carrying out a Basic Service then the fee should include the consumables that must be changed as part of the service. Extras like a new metal pin if the original is missing, recharges, valves, hoses, nozzles, bases are fair game extras.

Because of the Far & Middle East and the Internet the extinguisher industry is becoming deskilled, disposable and hard to make a living in as it is as cheap to buy new extinguishers every few years rather than the workshop actions that used to keep stuff in service for over 20 years.

As for the annoying Chubb, Gloria & Ceo-Deux plastic OK pins, they are no issue for most firms as if intact they will just plastic tag them and change the tag each year (despite the use of the tag being against manufacturers instructions, invalidates the extinguishers EN3 compliance and doesn't follow all the basic service required actions) and if it's broken they will re-use it with the handy plastic tag again!