Fire Extinguisher Types

How To Determine The Correct Fire Extinguisher For Your Home

Did you know that there actually are three various types of fire extinguishers which are specially made for three different kinds of fires? Are you sure that you are equipped with the right fire extinguisher in your home that would be able to handle fire that would spark from some faulty wiring? How about if the engine of your car caught on fire, would you be prepared to put it out properly and effectively? Would you be able to know which extinguisher type to use for any situation you come across?

If you are unable to answer these questions with certainty then you are probably not adequately informed as you need to be about fire extinguishers, their types and the proper way to use them. However, here are some essential information that would be useful.

You would first need to make sure that you would be getting the correct type of fire extinguisher for a specific location that you would be using it for. This would be of utmost importance because if you make the mistake of using a fire extinguisher that is not made to put out a certain kind of fire, you might just make the blaze even worse and even harder to control, possibly putting you and your family’s life in danger.

For instance, let us take the example of water. You might think that water can easily put out fire. It actually works well on fire that results from burning wood as well as other wood products. However, for those kinds of fires that are burning oil or grease, or those fires caused by electricity, water used for extinguishing could be a rather bad idea. It can intensify grease and oil fires and could result in you getting nasty and almost fatal jolts from electrical fires.

The three types of fires would be the Class A fires, Class B fires and the Class C fires. Class A fires are fires which arise when common household products are ignited. This would include fires which result from burning paper, wood, rubber, fabric or plastics. Class B fires would be liquid fires. And lastly, Class C fires would be those which either burn solids or liquids and are ignited by an electricity source.

To be able to put out these fires, there are three methods commonly used. The first one sprays a mixture of some chemical dust and the other two spray gas to the fire. Fire extinguishers which are dust-based have the disadvantage of coating everything that they spray with a fine glaze of chemical residue. This makes it quite hard to clean and could ruin consumer electronics items. The first fire extinguisher type is made using carbon dioxide gas and basically smothers the fire. The second one would be carbon dioxide fire extinguishers have a tendency of getting cold at the nozzle, and so, keep in mind that you should never touch the nozzle. The last one is halon, which has actually been linked to a couple of health problems.

The common fire extinguisher types would include: water extinguishers that are suitable for class A fires; dry chemical extinguishers that are suitable for class A,B and C fires; and carbon dioxide fire extinguishers which are best for class B and C fires.