Hopkins County Fire Extinguisher

Just like smoke alarms and CO detectors, fire extinguishers are an essential piece of the safety puzzle in residential, commercial, and industrial spaces. What you may not know is that each of these spaces requires a specific type of fire extinguisher.When outfitting your home, business, or corporate building with a fire extinguisher, it’s important to get at least a basic understanding of the 5 types of fire extinguishers and how they work.

Class A Fire Extinguishers, With their primary fire-fighting chemical being monoammonium phosphate, class A fire extinguishers are ideal for repressing fires involving the following elements:

• Paper
• Wood
• Textiles & Cloth
• Rubber
• Plastics

Class B Fire Extinguishers, contain two active fire-fighting chemicals: monoammonium phosphate and sodium bicarbonate. Similar to class A fire extinguishers, fire extinguishers with a class B rating use  monoammonium phosphate to smother the fire, then use sodium bicarbonate to induce a chemical reaction, thus fully-extinguishing the fire. With these chemical components, class B fire extinguishers are most effective when repressing flammable liquid fires, including:

• Cooking Liquids
• Oils
• Gasoline
• Kerosene
• Paint

Class C Fire Extinguishers, Just like class B fire extinguishers, class C extinguishers also use monoammonium phosphate and sodium bicarbonate. While their chemical composition may be similar, these types of extinguishers are only to be used when repressing fires in “live” electrical equipment. The nonconductive properties in monoammonium phosphate and sodium bicarbonate make class C fire extinguishers highly-effective at putting out fires originating from electrical equipment and appliances, such as space heaters and corded power tools.

Class D Fire Extinguishers, Since class D fire extinguishers are designed to be used on specific types of flammable metals, they are typically only found in certain types of metal factories.

Class K Fire Extinguishers, Class K fire extinguishers are to be used on cooking appliance fires involving vegetable oils, animal oils, and other fats. Generally, these types of extinguishers are found in commercial kitchens (restaurants, cafeterias, catering agencies) but are also safe to use in residential kitchens as well.

Multi-Purpose Fire Extinguishers, Now that we’ve discussed the five types of fire extinguishers, you’re probably wondering where to go from here. Well, for homes, housing complexes, and other areas that may be prone to different types of fires, we suggest investing in a multi-purpose fire extinguisher – specifically, an ABC fire extinguisher. When it comes to fire safety, an ABC fire extinguisher is the safest option because it can repress fires in everything from paper and plastics to cooking oils and electrical equipment.