PSA -- Buy a Fire Extinguisher

[Dartful Dodger]

The fire alarm goes off in my building at least once a year, twice the first month I moved in, so I became numb to it.  When the fire alarm goes off everyone in the building needs to go to the parking lot.  So last night the alarm goes off at 1 am ( it never goes off when I'm awake), I got out of bed, put on a shirt pair a pants shoes and a hat, went to the fridge, got a can of coke, and a something to eat while I'm waiting for the fire department to give us the all clear.  I open up the hall door and black smoke pours into my condo.  My next door neighbor is on the phone in the hallway telling the fire department her kitchen is on fire, her husband tells me his extinguisher isn't working and asks if I  have one, I have one, but it

[lokki]

How long do extinguishers last?
I bought 3 when I bought my house (two are kept on the kitchen and one is kept on the master bedroom). But that was 5 years ago. do they go bad if you don't use them?

Thanks

[Dartful Dodger]

How long do extinguishers last?
do they go bad if you don't use them?

Sorry, I know nothing about this.

Tonight I'm going to buy a large one that'll put out an electrical and/or grease fire.

If anyone has some useful information on this subject, please let us know.

Thanks

[Shape D.]

5 years

buy ones with the abc powder inside.

don't inhale fumes intentionally.

and dont hit your friends in the face with them eaither.

[Stingray]

How long do extinguishers last?
I bought 3 when I bought my house (two are kept on the kitchen and one is kept on the master bedroom). But that was 5 years ago. do they go bad if you don't use them?

Thanks

You're supposed to recharge them every year I think, but I had a fire last June and my extinguisher worked fine. It had last been charged in 1996.

-S

[Shape D.]

you don't have to charge them youre just supposed to check the pressure on them every year.

[Stingray]

I stand corrected. In any case I cas certainly grateful that the thing held a charge for 8 years.

-S

[menace]

wasn't this on one of those foxnews fearmongering stories?  How did you not know this?

[Dartful Dodger]

Another thing I did this morning, which was something I've been meaning to do for three years, was to program the local fire department into my cell phone.

[Shape D.]

dude its 911. the only time you will need to call your local fire dept. without having time to look it up is in an emergency. plus if the firetruck from your closest station is out doing something else the dispatchers at the 911 call center will send out the next closest vehicle.

[Dartful Dodger]

wasn't this on one of those foxnews fearmongering stories?

[Shape D.]

The call the one closest to the tower your closest to.

p.s. if you have an old cell phone without service anymore you can still call 911 on it.

[Tailgunner]

Dry chemical extinguishers should be thumped every six months to stir up the powder inside. To do so you invert the extinguisher and tap the bottom with a rubber mallet. If the extinguisher has a flex hose on it, remove it and blow through it to make sure nothing has nested inside and clogged the hose.

I learned the hard way to keep an extinguisher in my truck. Last year while transporting several games home I set a moving blanket on fire and burned all the laminate and T molding off of my Pac cocktail.

[Zakk]

I'm actually a fan of keeping the proper extinguisher in each area.  There are ones for electrical fires, ones for grease fires, etc etc.  You do need to thump them every year, and only get the ones with good gauges on them.  Follow the directions, and either discard or recharge according to the schedule that comes with each one.  The gauges can always fail you know.

(and dammit Drew, that not OCD talking, that's common sense!!)

[OSCAR]

Dartful Dodger - I'm glad you are okay and everyone was safe.


I also have fire extinguishers all around the house & garage.  I'm deathly afraid of house fires, probably because when I was very young (maybe 8 or 9), our neighbor's house burned to the ground.  All that was left was the concrete block crawlspace.  I remember my parents taking boxes of clothes over to them so the kids would have something to wear to school.

Where I grew up in a very rural northern Michigan, there are just volunteer fire departments and you really can't count on them to save your house if it catches fire.  If the FD was lucky, they could save their truck and most of the hose....

Even now, whenever we leave for even just a weekend, I turn off *everything*.  I flip off the main breaker, turn off the hot water heater, the furnace, everything...  Probably overkill, but it makes me feel a lot better when we are away.

[shmokes]

This was a life/death test, and I failed it.

Wait.....you're dead?

[cholin]

I always wanted to talk to a dead person!  Can you see how my grandpa's doing?

[Tailgunner]

Where I grew up in a very rural northern Michigan, there are just volunteer fire departments and you really can't count on them to save your house if it catches fire.  If the FD was lucky, they could save their truck and most of the hose....

Heh, when I was growing up our local volunteer fire department's station house burned to the ground with all their equipment inside.

[HaRuMaN]

*heads to lam-wart to buy a fire extinguisher*

[Dartful Dodger]

I bought two last night.

[missioncontrol]

glad to hear no one was hurt.....

I replace my kitchen one every 5 yrs.....

 

[shmokes]

No, luckily for me, God loves his stupid children.

Do you mean to say that God doesn't love the people he lets die?  You need to be careful with inferences like that.  God is fickle, like many women.  She often will read into what you say even when you didn't mean it that way.  And then you will suffer.  Eternally.

[DrewKaree]

buy ones with the abc powder inside.

And tell your wife, for the love of pete, DON'T use these for putting out fires inside the oven from the cheese that dripped off the pizza.  The powder somehow seems to go literally EVERYWHERE...even in places you haven't pointed it at 

and dont hit your friends in the face with them eaither.

I have a mental image of this that is CRACKING ME UP!


My cel phones require a sim card (I believe most these days use 'em) and will dial 911 even without a card.  Something about government requiring it, but I dunno about your provider.  Check the manual if you haven't already thrown it away.  Although if you're in an emergency and your cell phone provider is Nextel, the three times I've dialed 911 it was easier to hang up after minutes of the phone ringing, call one of several law-enforcement friends, and have them call it in for me.


Zakk, do you thump them 12 times, like the directions say, or do you go "the extra mile" and do it 48 times, because that's just the right thing to do?

[Dartful Dodger]

and dont hit your friends in the face with them eaither.

I have a mental image of this that is CRACKING ME UP!

When I told my brother I bought a Fire extinguisher, he said "The day after that thing expires you and your friends are going to go into the woods and shoot each other with it.

[Tailgunner]

When I told my brother I bought a Fire extinguisher, he said "The day after that thing expires you and your friends are going to go into the woods and shoot each other with it.