P50 Fire Extinguishers

[Brett Day SP]

Hello

Has anyone had experience of P50 fire extinguishers? I'm involved in a long, linear construction site with emergency stations along it's length.

We are looking at the P50 as the blurb says no annual inspection (they are provided by the PC, but the f/x service company are like cats and don't like getting their feet wet, let alone dirty so quite a few have been missed), they are claimed to be more robust and suitable for the rigours of moving them around site to the working areas.

I was wondering does the kit live up to the hype?

Thanks

[Messy]

In my last role, I wanted to roll P50s out across the estate but was a bit concerned about using innovative fire safety equipment that turns out not as advertised after a bruising reputational encounter I experienced. I recommended the installation of an expensive video smoke detection system which it turned out was totally useless. It cost my employers a lot of money as we never fully commissioned it. Oops!

Our Head Office alone had around 900 extinguishers, and to get it wrong and install maybe 500 units at £80,000 + installation and staff training* - only to find P50s were rubbish, would probably cost me my job.

*(Lets not forget the huge training issue associated with replacing CO2 extinguishers (for electrical fires) with P50 water spray when you have > 1000 fire wardens to train across the business)


I needed to trial P50s, but where? Then I had an opportunity as we had remote, largely unmanned sites in the UK that had regular maintenance visits. Some were so small they only had one fire point (6l foam and 2kg CO2) to protect service engineers when they were on site.

To get a extinguisher service engineer to these remote sites and someone to look after him/her for 20 mins was getting silly expensive. I heard through the grapevine that to keep costs down, extinguishers were taken by our staff from Head Office in cars to exchange during routine visits. It was not ideal or safe for the driver to have unrestrained extinguishers in the car and impossible to track assets that were being moved unofficially.

I can't recall the numbers of extinguishers - around 25/30 - that were installed for the trial and a limited number of staff were trained. It was three years before I moved on to pastures new and by then the trial was a success. Don't forget they are 'service free', but still need regular inspections. One part of the inspection is to check the pressure needle is accurately positioned by using a magnet . So someone will have to get there feet wet, even with P50s!!!

During the trial we had an issue procuring fire extinguishers (and service staff) to a good standard in some third world countries where we were based. In fact we had a 'near miss' at one location. The solution was to fly P50s out. They aren't very heavy when empty and we knew they would be disposed of and not reconditioned in 10 years which went against the firms environmental policy. But we went ahead and sent a very limited amounts out to get us out of a tricky place.


So I am a huge supporter of P50s as long as their use is not seen as a money saving dump-and-ignore situation as that is wrong. They must be inspected regularly and this can be done by unskilled staff as long as records are kept

Good luck


For others here who havent got a clue what P50s are, follow the link here
https://www.safelincs.co.uk/britannia-p50-water-mist/

[Brett Day SP]

Thanks Messy

We have bitten the bullet and bought P50 for site, we did hit a slight hiccup with the foam ones, we asked for the foam with the anti freeze additive as they are going to be out on site in all weathers, however, the supplier has told us that that the foam with anti freeze is being withdrawn and only the 'standard' foam will be available.

I think they may be missing a trick here with the constuction industry, but powder will do what we need it to.

As for your point about not being dump and forget, our supplier will do a quick familierisation session for our fire marsals and will give us some spare 'test' magnets for checks.

Once again, thanks for your input!!

[Messy]

I am glad you have gone for them. But I am disappointed about the lack of anti freeze

[Brett Day SP]

Same here, I would have thought that it would be a big selling point to the constuction industry.