Best Fire Extinguisher for the Garden

Best Fire Extinguisher for the Garden?

So your garden incinerator, Chiminea or fire pit is in full flow and a worst case scenario arises...it causes something else to catch light. This could be because you have set it too close to something flammable, or it could have been knocked over or a spark has ignited something close by.

We strongly recommend that you keep some kind of fire extinguisher around the house and it's good practice to have one outside to cover the garden, shed or garage for example.

So what type of extinguisher is best for the garden? Well to understand that you need to know what types of fires there are. Fires are general broken down into six (6) type which are described alphabetically:

• Class A Fires – fires involving solid materials like wood, fabric, plastic, paper including most different types of rubbish. These are the ordinary combustible materials routinely found around the house. This type of fire is relatively common.
• Class B Fires – Fires involving flammable liquids like petrol, oil, diesel and paraffin. At home these types of liquid are often found in outside buildings.
• Class C Fires – Fires involving (flammable) gases. Here we are commonly talking about fires caused by methane, butane, propane etc. If you have a gas barbecue it’s a great idea to keep an extinguishers handy
• Class D- Fires involving metals. Would be a much less common fire to encounter at home.
• Electrical Fires (E) – There isn't really a class E but we have called that here for ease of reference. So this is fires involving electrical equipment.
• Class F- Fires involving cooking oils and fats; so a deep fat fryer fire would fall into this class.

Now we know what types of fires there are we can start to address what type of extinguisher is suitable. 

By looking at the below image we can see that a Dry Powder extinguisher can be safely applied to Class A, B, C and E which we feel would cover almost all the fires likely to be encountered in the garden i.e. solid material (wooden fences/sheds,wood stores/piles, garden furniture), flammable liquids (petrol, oil. paraffin), flammable gases used in BBQs/fire pits and outside heater and electrical fires.

Do note that dry powder extinguishers are not recommended for use in enclosed/indoor spaces as the powder can affect the respiratory system

See here for  Our Recommended Dry Powder Extinguishers

The best way to deal with a fire in and around the garden is to avoid them firstly...Always be safe around fire and if any doubt dont tackle it yourself but call the emergency services.

The above graphic has been taken from Marsden Fire Safety and all copyright and intellectual property remains theirs. The original article can be found here- Marsden Fire Safety- Fire Extinguishers| Fire Safety Equipment and Fire Safety Consultancy