Posted By CFT
Stuart

Perhaps just me, but I always felt the hose reels were suitable for the brigade to use, not the average fire warden/s in a commercial premises.

Insurance will confirm.

CFT

Posted By David Bannister
I'm with CFT on this.

In days of yore, insurance companies used to offer a 7.5% fire insurance discount for hosereels on top of 5% for extinguishers, hence many businesses put them in. Furthermore, to receive the full discount for sprinklers (could be 65% in some cases) factories & warehouses had to have fire buckets (water or sand complete with ciggie butts), extinguishers or hosereels in specified quantities. There was never any fire insurance requirement to train people to use the things.

Now that things have progressed it makes no sense for most businesses to have hosereels, other than as an additional resource for the Brigade, who would be unlikely to rely on them anyway as they have no way of establishing the reliability of the water supply. A firefighter holding an empty hose is likely to be a casualty! Worse still is an untrained employee or visitor trying to use a hosereel to fight a fire. Works fire brigades are virtually all gone (so has the work in many cases).

It is highly unlikely that an insurer will insist on hosereels being maintained, particularly if the sprinklers are correctly designed, installed, maintained and available.

Posted By Jenny Pettyfer
There is also the issue of legionella where there is a fire hose reel.

Posted By shaun mckeever
Stuart

Just a point of note. Hose reels are not installed in place of sprinklers or vice versa. You have already said it, hose reels are treated as portable firefighting equipment so may be in place of extinguishers. Nevertheless there are very few who would object to their removal so long as portable extinguishers are in place.

The fire service would never rely on something they do not maintain (with the exception of dry or wet rising mains) so would not use hose reels.

Posted By MW64
We are in the process of removing all our hose reels from all our sites as part of our Fire Risk management plan.
We decided on this strategy as a result of carrying out our fire risk assessments.
The rationale behind this, is that we want
anybody who discovers a fire to activate a call point, call the fire service and evacuate the building. What we don't want (however well intentioned) is somebody who is not trained using a hose reel, and becoming trapped in the building, meanwhile nobody has activated the alarm and the fire service has not been called.
In addition, we also save on the servicing costs for the reels.
As a secondary point we have considered the risk of Legionella from water spray (Minimal?). What you do need consider however is making sure that when removing hose-reels, all the pipework is removed back to the rising main to avoid dead legs and potential contamination.

Posted By CFT
Rob

You learn something new every day; I didn't know that! I assume it is to do with fire resistance?

CFT

Posted By pat merchant
Hi
We have had hose reels for many years and have had in the last 12 months have had sprinkler protection fitted. we have decided to remove the hoses for several reasons.

1. Operators should only attempt to put out a fire if it is minor, in other words if it can be put out with an extinguisher and if not they should activate a callpoint and exit the buiding imediately as they are not trained as a firefighter and most fire fighting training does not include the use of hoses but only types of extinguisher. As we now have a sprinkler system fitted, there is no need to risk lives in attempting to extinguish a fire with a hose.

2. Many people use fire hoses such as contractors,cleaners and staff to get water without our knowledge for many reasons.This brings another problem and that is the risk of Legonnela from water lying in the deadlegs of the pipework for what is sometimes many years. You may be aware that Legislation states strict guidelines on Legonella control, but sprinkler systems are accepted as a reasonable risk as they will only be activated under emergency conditions unless they are being worked upon, only then will you have to undertake a Legonnela Risk Assessment. We have communicated both with our insurance company and our Legonella consultants and agreed to remove the hazards of possible risks Legonella and so removed the hoses.
Do not remove them until you have contacted your insurers, but you will proberbly find that they will rather that you leave the fire fighting to the sprinkler system and Fire Brigade than risk the life of a person untrained in fire fighting.
Pat

Posted By Adrian
1. One other problem with hose reels that are close to fire doors is that if they are pulled through the door into another room it defeats the fire loading of the door and could aid the spread of fire.

2. Would this not cause a further problem if there were electrical equipment in the area and therefore if there were portable extinguishers in place there would be more control of personnel and electric shock.

Posted By Colin Reeves
Pat

"1. Operators should only attempt to put out a fire if it is minor, in other words if it can be put out with an extinguisher and if not they should activate a callpoint and exit the buiding imediately as they are not trained as a firefighter and most fire fighting training does not include the use of hoses but only types of extinguisher. As we now have a sprinkler system fitted, there is no need to risk lives in attempting to extinguish a fire with a hose."

This echoes another recent thread on here about fire extinguishers. One argument for use of extinguishers is that a small fire is, potentially, easily put out by a trained person. This then prevents the building burning down and all employees losing their jobs when the business closes.

A similar argument is relevant here. Smoke does NOT activate a sprinkler, heat does. Inherent in most sprinkler systems is that significant heat (and therefore damage) occurs before the extinguishing agent is released. A quick burst with a fire hose or extinguisher by a suitably trained person could prevent this.

Colin