Maintaining The Fire Extinguishers In Your Home
Protecting your home from a fire will be an important responsibility, but you may not realize that a fire extinguisher will have to be recharged to keep it in working condition. Otherwise, it may not be ready for situations where a fire starts, and you need to be able to react quickly.
If A Fire Extinguisher Needs To Be Recharged, Does It Mean It Needs To Be Replaced?
A person may assume that a fire extinguisher will only lose pressure if it has suffered damage or other problems that will require it to be replaced. However, it is normal for the pressure in a fire extinguisher to gradually decrease over the course of time. Luckily, this process will be slow, and it should take a year or longer before the fire extinguisher loses enough pressure for it to cause noticeable performance problems. Due to this, individuals should have the fire extinguishers inspected and charged each year to ensure their home is kept as safe as possible.
What Happens If A Fire Extinguisher Is Not Recharged?
If you fail to have the fire extinguisher recharged, you may find that it is no longer able to project the fire suppression foam with enough force to reach the flames. This could potentially be disastrous, as it may deprive you of the only option available to rapidly extinguish the flames. In addition to this potential risk, fire extinguisher recharging services will also be capable of conducting an evaluation of this tool to make sure that it is free of other problems that could potentially lead to it failing when you are needing to use it. In extreme cases, the pressure may have gotten low enough to prevent any fire suppression spray from exiting this device.
Will You Have To Transport The Fire Extinguishers To Have Them Recharged?
One reason for failing to have the fire extinguishers in your home recharged is due to the assumption that you will have to transport these devices to a recharge facility. For individuals that only have one or two of these devices, this may not be a difficult task. However, if you have many fire extinguishers on your property, transporting all of them without causing damage can be a challenge. Fortunately, this is unlikely to be necessary, as there are many fire extinguisher recharging services that will be able to visit your property to conduct this evaluation and to repressurize the fire extinguishers so that you will not have to take time out of your busy schedule for this essential fire prevention and mitigation step.
For more information about fire extinguisher services and recharging, contact a local professional.