Compare the potential cost savings – for a typical office installation

Installation

Here we have a real-life example of a small to medium commercial building of a ground floor and first floor. In fact, it is Fire Safety Stick HQ. There is a small kitchen area on both floors with offices upstairs and a warehouse and loading bay downstairs. A typical fire risk assessment would have suggested four pairs of both water (6 litre) and dry powder (6kg) traditional extinguishers and two fire blankets.

Traditional pressurised extinguishers only have an expected life of five years, provided they have been serviced every year, whereas the Fire Safety Stick has a life of at least fifteen years without needing servicing. Having written our fire safety strategy around using the Fire Safety Sticks as a means to aid escape from the building, it was found that the traditional extinguishers could be safely replaced with seven Fire Safety Sticks instead. The Fire Safety Sticks are certified for kitchen fires, they are also able to replace the fire blankets as a safer-to-use alternative.

Once installed by being securely mounted to the walls in key locations, we added the photo-luminescent signs indicating the location, the model of Fire Safety Stick installed as well the classifications of fires it has been certified for and basic instructions on how to use. We have even included QR codes directing users on how to use the sticks in case of an emergency. Additional requirements for the installation include a tamper tag securing the bottom striker cap in place, a sticker indicating the installation date as well as space to indicate maintenance dates. Finally, a logbook to record the maintenance inspections.

Maintenance & Servicing

Although the Fire Safety Sticks need to be inspected and maintained like traditional extinguishers, they don’t need to be serviced by fire safety engineers. The inspections can be carried out by the responsible person for the building and so save the expense of employing an external fire safety company to attend each year.
Even with annual servicing, traditional extinguishers only have a life-cycle of 5 years whereas the Fire Safety Sticks have a life-cycle of 15 years. Therefore to truly do the price comparison, we will look at the anticipated costs over that 15-year period. For more information on the suggested maintenance checks  – click here

So we need to compare the initial installation costs for both options, plus the replacement costs of the traditional extinguisher option at years 5 and 10. Plus the annual servicing costs. The costs shown are based upon an actual quotation from a fire safety company.

The overall cost saving for the business is £3,260 plus VAT over the 15-year period.

That figure doesn’t even factor in the clear-up costs if the extinguishers ever need to be deployed. Typically traditional extinguishers can cause more damage than that of the fire itself. Since installation, we have been visited by the local fire brigade to inspect our building and ensure that our fire safety measures are all correct and that there are no breaches. Needless to say, they were very impressed with the Fire Safety Stick solution and the building passed with flying colours.