Your outboard catches fire. What would you do?

[Bigmuz7]

I just discovered my kitchen one is a Halon 1211 1.5 kg bottle,... why is this stuff so good then ?

[PeterM]

Originally Posted by Bigmuz7

I just discovered my kitchen one is a Halon 1211 1.5 kg bottle,... why is this stuff so good then ?

Doesn't the Halon kill you before the fire can ? It means you dont even know about the fire !

[Bigmuz7]

Ah... bloody global warming again

http://www.fireprotectiononline.co.u...nguishers.html

ofcourse thered be less warming if these were still in use cos they can put out so many fires as I see

[codprawn]

Originally Posted by Blackroady

Doesn't the Halon kill you before the fire can ? It means you dont even know about the fire !

A very common misconception.

It will kill you - through suffocation in a confined space - but so would CO2 or smoke.

I still think a burning car or boat would do far more harm to the environment than Halon!!!

Still allowed on aircraft or in military vehicles then???

[Bigmuz7]

Originally Posted by codprawn

Still allowed on aircraft or in military vehicles then???

And in the channel tunnel,.. so ze frogz can keep telling you it eez ze safest wai to get to ze France

[quaoar]

Originally Posted by codprawn

Even when a petrol station goes up they use just plain old water.

A fire in an oil refeinery - again no foam.

I just want to comment on those two...
The first one, they are using a high pressure nozzle which creates an enormous spray of microscopic water particles. The effects are a protective wall against the heat/flames, cools down whatever is burning and the area around the fire, deprives the fire of oxygen and actually blows out the flames.
Sure, if you have such a thing installed on your RIB, use it for what it's worth. But don't start splashing water on a (petrol/chemical) fire, either with a bottle, bucket or your hands.

The refeinery, there it reads in the description of the video, that water is used (in large amounts) to cool down any overheated metal until someone managed to turn off the flow of the burning liquid. So the goal here, for the firefighters are just to pour water on the area till someone manages to take away the reason for the fire. And if the fire expands those people still have places to run. A luxury you don't have if the fire is at the rear of your boat.

As for large fires in refineries you can see the firefighters use immense amount of water, but not to take out the fire, just to cool down the areas around the fire until someone can blow out the fire using explosives - you can find many videoes of this on the net.
And as a side note... I worked on a smelting plant where someone had once turned a water hose on a fire. That didn't work our too well, with several injured as the "water" exploded when hitting some melted metal (the water separates into oxygen and hydrogen on contact with melted metal, which is something you really shouldn't add to a fire...).

[Poly]

Originally Posted by codprawn

I still think a burning car or boat would do far more harm to the environment than Halon!!!

but that argument is flawed for a number of reasons:

• it assumes that the fire continues unstopped even without Halon (i.e. other extinguishants are completely innefective - which is not true).
• it ignores the fact that most Halon 1301 was not released into the atmosphere when actually used for putting out fires but rather from faults/leaks/reprocessing/refilling/manufacture.
• halon has both detrimental effects on the ozone layer and global warming, with very long lifetimes. 1 kg of halon has about the same global warming effect as 7000 tonnes of CO2, and 10x as bad an effect on the ozone layer as typical CFC refrigerants.
• you assume that the halon manufacturing industry wouldn't have presented scientifically supported arguments like this if it was even remotely true?

Still allowed on aircraft or in military vehicles then???

Yes - but the rational is quite simple. There needs to be no dilema that by hitting the fire extinguisher button that you risk making a minor situation worse, In the vast majority of marine or land transport applications that is not actually the issue - alternative extinguishants are effective just may result in material damage to hardware, since you aren't going to fall out the sky or get shot at its not a critical application.

[m chappelow]

i used to work for a company that had a computer room which had an halon gas system fitted , if the alarm bell went you had 10 seconds to get out before the door closed and gas came in and suffocated you, we was told that it was most effective and left no residue after a fire ,its looking that the best thing for an outboard fire is a wet coat or blanket then have a hole or removeble grommet that can be removed to squirt the extinguisher through, the normal fire code is not really practible in a small boat ....get out ..stay out.. dial 999. regards mart

[TangoTango]

Originally Posted by m chappelow

i used to work for a company that had a computer room which had an halon gas system fitted , if the alarm bell went you had 10 seconds to get out before the door closed and gas came in and suffocated you .....

Imagine the howls of anguish from the Health & Safety boys about that one!

[m chappelow]

Originally Posted by TangoTango

Imagine the howls of anguish from the Health & Safety boys about that one!

yeah we often wondered what the boss got up to on a weekend ,,,,,, goodbye mr bond

[jyasaki]

Originally Posted by quaoar

As for large fires in refineries you can see the firefighters use immense amount of water, but not to take out the fire, just to cool down the areas around the fire until someone can blow out the fire using explosives - you can find many videoes of this on the net.

Umm, I think you're confusing "refinery" with "drill head".

Drill heads are a pressurized delivery point source, so the idea is to use the explosion to blast the burning section of sprayed fuel away from the source such that it cools enough to not ignite as it comes out. Oxygen starvation probably plays a part as well.

Refineries will have large standing sources; not something you'd want to use explosives on (though, I suppose, a ruptured pipeline or broken valve or plug could be combatted in that manner.)

jky

[yorfuoj]

My idea afterreading this interesting discussion :


Most of the risk should come from electric wiring under the cover - then from the fuel pump on the present injected engines.
A short-circuit between wires or wire-to-motor ground will raise the temperature and start to ignite if the engine is not dead-stopped.
A gas leak (broken hose, loosened connection) could have the same effect if there is a spark somewhere.

By chance, on-board, we have most of what is necessary to start building a safe and cheap fire extinguisher : air pressure, 200 to 300mBars available into the pontoon !

It should be easy to drill the cover to add a garden connecting nipple, male for instance, going to a hard plastic - or better copper - tube, 6mm for instance, glued to the top of the cover all around the cover.
This tube is drilled every 5cm with 1mm holes, downward.

A female garden connector is prepared, with a T-connector to create a gravity-sprayer with a bottle of water above.

If fire occurs, just connect a valve-to-nipple hose with the right connector intended to actuate the valve opening, and connect the bottle - not empty !

The air pressure will spray the water everywhere under the cover and stop the fire .

[JSP]

Would one of these be any good? Could bring myself to cut a hole in the cowl though http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/FIRE-PORT-MUST...3A1|240%3A1318