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Do fire extinguishers need to be installed in each hot-work bay.
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Hi,
I currently work as a Health and Safety Advisor for a manafacturing company and need some guidance.
Currently we have 4 hot-work bays (2 welders per bay) on site. We have fire extingushers located at the entrances of the hot-works area but I have learnt that this is for the "Building" only and not to be used for hot-works.
Is it good practice to have each bay with their own fire extingusher for an emergency or is it sufficent enough to use the "Building" fire extinguishers? Any comments on this would be highly appreciatble. PBR
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Rank: New forum user
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Hiya,
Not particulalry a subject matter expert but I would have thought this would be subject to risk assessment to support your decision making. From an employees perspective Fire Extinguishers are more to prevent harm to you or allow you and others the safety to exit a building than they truly are to protect the fabric of the building or machinery. You might want to consider based on the evidence what is the likelihood of harm associated with the work and what do past or other incident reports tell of the likey impact. I rather suspect that the cost of 8 serviced extingusihers with contracts in place would be significantly less than the cost of 1 claim or the loss of knowledge / service / amenity of the staff member affected so specifying their presence seems a straighforward matter to me.
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Rank: Forum user 
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PBR, It is not a requirement and is not common. Hot work areas should be designed to prevent the spread of fire, should a fire be initiated. If they are provided, you must train people to use them if you expect them to use them simply to extinguish a small fire. The main purpose for the provision of fire extinguishers is to assist in escape in the event of fire and persons being 'trapped' by flames. Hope it helps, Tony.
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 1 user thanked antbruce001 for this useful post.
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Rank: Super forum user 
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If they are maintained and operated as Hot Work bays there should be little combustible material about, and in the unlikely event something did manage to catch the spread would be limited by incombustible construction. In this scenario fire extinguishers become redundant. This would be different to the requirements of fire watching as part of a hot works permitted activity being undertaken elsewhere on site. Your focus should be in preventing the operators drifting in to bad habits allowing combustibles such as cardboard boxes etc. to enter the area and more importantly not starting hot works until the area is cleared.
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8 users thanked Roundtuit for this useful post.
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Rank: Super forum user
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If they are maintained and operated as Hot Work bays there should be little combustible material about, and in the unlikely event something did manage to catch the spread would be limited by incombustible construction. In this scenario fire extinguishers become redundant. This would be different to the requirements of fire watching as part of a hot works permitted activity being undertaken elsewhere on site. Your focus should be in preventing the operators drifting in to bad habits allowing combustibles such as cardboard boxes etc. to enter the area and more importantly not starting hot works until the area is cleared.
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8 users thanked Roundtuit for this useful post.
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Rank: New forum user
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Thank you all for your comments.
I really appreciate for taking the time to answer my question.
Kind Regards
PBR
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Do fire extinguishers need to be installed in each hot-work bay.
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