Posted By Owen Needles
Can anyone assist? I'm trying to find a legal distance or even a best practice for the distance that paint should be stored away from the main factory. Obviously it is time consuming moving paint between factory and paint stores. I want to ensure that if moved, it is legal.

Thanks in advance.

Posted By Andrew Brown
Owen

What type of paint is it, flammable or highly flammable? Its not just the separation distance, your store could be in the same building with adequate fire separation

Assuming your major concern is the fire risk then the Guidance i used to work to pre DSEAR was:

HSE Guidance, HSG 51 'Storage of flammable liquirds in containers' gives guidance on fire separation distances of stores from production areas, boundaries and occupied buildings

and HSG 140 'Safe use and handling of flammable liquids' is also relevant for mixing and decanting operations.

DSEAR did change a few things and whilst i believe the above guidance is still current and useful some of the DSEAR guidance is probably relevant also.

This HSE link lists all relevant guidance
http://www.hse.gov.uk/fi...xplosion/information.htm

You may also want to think about how you store production quantities inside the factory and your response to spillages. A well known paint manufacturer lost their entire warehouse after a spill of less than 5 litres of HFL. Needless to say after that they considered a spill of more than a litre of HFL to be a major incident, with specially trained spill teams, etc.

Hope that helps