I'm initially going to discuss a little bit about fire extinguisher types and their colour coding system. This directly comes into account when your fire extinguishers need servicing, but a good solutions is to have your extinguishers fully serviced each year. This is actually a legal requirement if you are a business in the UK.

Five groups of classified from fires.

Group 1 is Class A: This particular class involves materials that are organic such as, wood, paper, clothing, and textiles.

Group 2 is Class B: This class includes all flammable liquids like gasoline.

Group 3 is Class C: All flammable gases are covered in this class including hydrogen, acetylene and all other gases.

Group 4 is Class D: Covering all fire from metals that are flammable.

Group 5 is Class F: This is a new class which covers a fire from cooking greases and similar liquids.

That covers the basics of how fire extinguisher classes work and are setup, this should give you a bit more understanding into why servicing your fire extinguishers yearly. It is a requirement to do this yearly and by servicing your fire extinguishers you will have peace of mind you can be confident they will work correctly if it came to an emergency.

There is many different causes of fires which need certain equipment, what is discussed above should give you more of an insight into how hard it is to fight a fire. Maintaining regular fire extinguisher servicing ensures you can keep fires at bay until fire wardens arrive.

So how does the colour coding work then?

Red signal with a red label are water based extinguishers and cover a class A fire only.

You're regular extinguisher is foam and covers class A and B fires. These extinguishers are red and have a cream coloured panel just above the operating instructions. Another extinguisher is dry powder based, these are for class A, B and C type fires. You can signify this type of fire extinguisher by it being red with a blue panel above the operating instructions. A Carbon Dioxide fire extinguisher are usable for class A and limited class B fires, it is standard red with a black panel above the area where you find the operating instructions.

There used to be a Halon fire extinguisher available but these are now illegal and no longer usable in the UK. If you think you still have one of these extinguishers you must plan for an immediate disposal. Any wet chemical extinguishers are usable on class A fires but really apply to a class F fire. These can be found with a red base and a yellow panel above the operating instructions. A red with french blue panel extinguisher is used for class D fires which contain special powders.