Good Afternoon,
Can someone point me in the direction of guidance for storing paint inside a building.
Its standard water based emulsion and oil based glosses and varnishes as used by a maintenance dept.
thanks in advance.
tony

Tony. Your reference docs is "Safe use and handling of flammable liquids HSG 140" (dated). Waterborne paints can be kept indoors and are not usually a problem at all -in fact need to be kept frost free.
Your glosses and varnishes are probably White spirit based paints & Flash point above 32c .
Paint up to a volume of about 25lt total can be kept in a "flammables cupboard" indoors. In lower risk situations I'd allow a couple of cupboard. Volumes greater than this need to be kept locked outdoors. Just watch out for lots of 5lt cans of White spirits or Turps sloshing arround to clean the brushes!
For more information contact "Britich coatings Federation" web site OR the paint suppliers. Regards Peter

Thank you for all your replies.

I will look up this guidance tomorrow morning.
The desire to store the paint internally, was having to arrange at great expense to remove paint tat was ruined by sub zero conditions sitting in a coshh metal locker stored outside.

I have had a corner of a metal clad/block building partitioned off to create a small lockabe store
High and low level passive vent
Smoke detector onto existing building zone.
Currently lit by an ip rated fitted, but will lookat a atex fitting if required
Its fitted with a 1 hour rated door and partition.
Its mostly for emulsion, but would say there would be more than 25 litres of oil based products.

I too wonder about warehouses etc
Access to the door is via a key on a restricted lock suite, and onlyte painter,who is timed served would be in there.

Water based non flammable paints do no need any special precautions (in relation to fire risks). Smaller (generally up to 50l is considered ok) quantities of spirit based paints and thinners could be stored in a metal cabinet or bin within the workspace. Larger quantities in a dedicated store.

Generally shops can store reasonable quantities of flammables substances for sale (and equally store them in their warehouses). Larger quantities need further precautions, which are detailed in the HSE guidance doc on storage of flammable substances in warehouses.

There is specific industry guidance on storage and display of flammables (including I think better guidance on what is reasonable) but it costs quite a lot of money and I never felt it was worthwhile!

I hate to be pedantic, but CoSHH is a set of regulations requiring risk assessment. I find the term CoSHH locker can be very misleading.

We should create segregation for chemicals with similar hazards - hence the common use of flammable stores. The warehouse guidance document listed above gives a table of hazard groups that can be stored together.

The reason why I stress this is all too often I see a 'CoSHH' locker with lots of flammables, a few acids thrown in as their nowhere else to put them, and right in the middle a nice large bottle with a caustic material with a large oxidising symbol on the side.

What we have effectively done here is made a bomb!

I think original question is already answered. As for B&Q et al, lets not forget all those containers are sealed and limited quantities stored. Also there is limited ignition sources.

Tony. Because of your relatively "small" quantities, and higher flash points, DSEAR /ATEX is NOT an issue for you. Regards Peter

I dont think there is much guidance that states a specific quantity, i cant seem to find any in the guidance that forumusers have posted, please correct meif i am wrong

Still waiting on manufacturers to get back to me.
Tony