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Fire Extinguisher ball


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I wonder if the engine compartment may get just a tad too hot for it though.
The only issue to be aware of when using Powder extinguishers and especially one in the engine room, is that unless you have a really good filter aircleaner, you can pretty much wave goodbye to the engine if it was running at the time and if it wasn't and you need to start it afterwards, you need a fairly major cleanup in the engine room/compartment before you can safely start it. That powder is so fine it almost floats and clogs everything instantly. It works by chocking the Fire from oxygen. In a cabin, it makes the most horrid mess, gets into every place you can't imagine and is a nightmare to clean up.
Co2 is a far more friendlier firefighter.

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I agree, we have both but in the event of a small fire I would use the CO2 as the dry powder makes one hell of mess and is best used as a last resort. Only thing with CO2 in a boat is be careful not to asphyxiate yourself !

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You can get foam extinguishers with automatic activation for engine rooms. But better still I believe would be the non flammable gas flood types such as helium, CO2 etc. They will stop an engine dead in its tracks as no O2 to combust the fuel with, but the gas types will not do any damage per say. They are, in an enclosed space, a very effective solution. The foam types would potentially get into the air intakes and suck foam through the engine. I am not sure if this would result in actual damage or just a pain in the arse situation to clean up after. Foam hoses off effectively but I don't see many sticking a hose up the air intake on their engines. 

 

I have not really thought of putting an automatically activated fire extinguisher in the yacht, but a flooding gas type would be very effective, and, once you had remedied the cause of the fire, you could tootle on your merry  way with no real dramas. Engine fires are almost always due to a fuel leak or electrical, both generally not too hard to fix.

 

In any situation, be it a dry powder ball exploding or an automatically activated solution, it would be far better than a fire that took hold. The engine would be the least of your worries in that situation!. 

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