HEALTH AND SAFETY WARNING

[Sub MandrelParticipant @submandrel]

If you see a large metal; cylinder poking out of the bottom of a pile of rubbish in your garage and you can't pull it out DO NOT TRY PUSHING IT.

It could be a large CO2 fire extinguisher that goes off in your face and won't stop….

Don't ask how I know…

Neil

(with new swept-back hair style)

Edited By Stub Mandrel on 30/10/2012 20:59:44

[Sub MandrelParticipant @submandrel]

[TerrydParticipant @terryd72465]

Wot no picture…

Regards

Terry

[Jeff DaymanParticipant @jeffdayman43397]

"It could be a large CO2 fire extinguisher that goes off in your face and won't stop….

Don't ask how I know…

Neil"

COOL!

(sorry)

JD

[StovepipeParticipant @stovepipe]

Neil,

Seriously, I hope you didn't come to any actual harm.

Dennis

[blowlampParticipant @blowlamp]

Neil.

I hope you weren't put out by the experience

Martin.

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

Wot a gas……………..

John S.

[SteamshyParticipant @steamshy]

How did that get there Stub ?

Andy

[Robin teslarParticipant @robinteslar]

Not many people realise that CO2 cylinder can be dangerous. I used to help our local village pub down in the cellar and a drayman warned me about CO2 leaks and how you can be silently asphixiated. An exhaust fan should always be fitted in a subterranean cellar.

Another point is that if a valve on a Co2 bottle doesnt seat properly then the gas leaks out and forms an ice lump around. The Co2 inside the valve can sublimate to a solid, making it impossible to close the valve. The only option is to take the cylinder outside and leave depressurise

Never carry a CO2 cylinder inside your car

Always make sure the cylinder is upright before use

Dont place the cylinder near any heat source

Here's some horror stories

**LINK**

[David ColwillParticipant @davidcolwill19261]

I recently ordered some CO2 extinguishers to use as pressure vessels. When they arrived someone (not me I hasten to add) set one off without fitting the horn (Doh) which resulted in it being thrown out of his hand and across the workshop. Forgivable I suppose if you hadn't thought about it but not picking it up and immediately doing it again

[Nigel BennettParticipant @nigelbennett69913]

In a similar vein:

Did you know that those Fray Bentos Steak & Kidney pies assume an almost spherical shape when you shove them into a hot oven, without taking the lid off the pie tin?

[blowlampParticipant @blowlamp]

Posted by Nigel Bennett on 31/10/2012 11:54:45:

In a similar vein:

Did you know that those Fray Bentos Steak & Kidney pies assume an almost spherical shape when you shove them into a hot oven, without taking the lid off the pie tin?

So Neil's not the only one putting his life at steak!

Martin.

[jason udallParticipant @jasonudall57142]

Reminds me of school days..

2l bottle of liquified H2S.. brass valve on top.. Corroded brass valve on top….. brocken corroded brass valve on top,,,

'ere you arn't busy go out side and knock this valve off and let the gas out…

Not wishing to miss the oppotunity of some mayhem off trotts I.

Foot on cylinder, hammer in hand I tee up…WHHHHOOOOSSSEEEEE of goes cylinder not quite achiving flight …nicely propelled across the OH NO! NOT THE CRICKET SQUARE!…leaving a 2 foot wide track of bleached grass in its wake…. Howsatt!

[Trevor WrightParticipant @trevorwright62541]

Another extinguisher story…..

Went to pick the spare up from under a shelf without realising that it was the only thing holding the shelf up……lots of heavy steel off-cuts on the floor and me dancing like John Travolta………

I use the CO2 bottles for my hobby, building fighting robots (RobotWars) – a full bottle fed into a 100mm diameter ram will generate 2 tons of lift, and have had burst discs go on hot days so I have an image of Stub trying to switch it off…….

Trevor

Edited By Trevor Wright on 31/10/2012 12:59:01

[Ian S CParticipant @iansc]

I can rember hearing of an incident at RNZAF Woodbourne, at the northern end of the South Island NZ. A large air cylinder was being taken out of the stores dept (Aircraft starting cylinder), it slipped in its sling and broke the valve off, it took off across the airfield, just missing a Bristol Freighter that was on the runway. Ian S C

[MikeParticipant @mike89748]

Fifty-odd years ago, in the country that was Rhodesia, I saw the result of what happens when one end cracks off a really enormous CO2 cylinder in the local Coca Cola bottling plant. This particular cylinder was horozontally mounted and it became, essentially, a rocket. The force of escaping gas tore it away from some heavy steel mounting brackets, then it travelled across the floor, through two courses of brickwork, and across a roadway. It finished up embedded in another two-course brick wall of a nearby factory. Fortunately it happened during the night, and nobody was hurt.

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

I got gassed at sea once

On the TV you "feel woozy" but this depends on the circumstances

In my own case I went out like a lightbulb and had to be dragged out, so be aware

signed

Ady the Canary

[Robin teslarParticipant @robinteslar]

Posted by jason udall on 31/10/2012 12:50:50:

Reminds me of school days..

2l bottle of liquified H2S.. brass valve on top.. Corroded brass valve on top….. brocken corroded brass valve on top,,,

'ere you arn't busy go out side and knock this valve off and let the gas out…

Not wishing to miss the oppotunity of some mayhem off trotts I.

Foot on cylinder, hammer in hand I tee up…WHHHHOOOOSSSEEEEE of goes cylinder not quite achiving flight …nicely propelled across the OH NO! NOT THE CRICKET SQUARE!…leaving a 2 foot wide track of bleached grass in its wake…. Howsatt!

Oh no. don't start me on H2S. Most of my working life was spent in the petrochem industries. We consider H2S one of the most hazardous and deadly gasses that can be encountered on site (only surpassed by HF which is an incredibly dangerous dangerous gas, and its said that if you can detect the slightest sweet whiff then you are dead meat).

On one site a colleague of mine was 10m in front of me walking alongside a 12ins gas line going to the flare. Lots of noise around, so he didn't hear that a flange in the line had a pin hole leak. So he walked into a cloud of H2S gas, took a normal breath as you do and collapsed immediately, stone dead. We were trained to know this type of fatality and not to ruch up to try and help as instinct would tell you to do. Instead the instruction is to run the opposite way to the nearest breathing app post, to raise the alarm and put on the set. Far too late to save my unfortunate colleague as one lung full is all it takes. I hasten to say this was many years ago before gas detectors became available. These sites are much safer today as detectors are spread all over the site and would have deteced such a leak early on.

Nobody jokes about a sour gas site.

Robin

[jason udallParticipant @jasonudall57142]

Posted by Robin teslar on 31/10/2012 15:11:52:

Posted by jason udall on 31/10/2012 12:50:50:

foot wide track of bleached grass in its wake…. Howsatt!

Oh no. don't start me on H2S. Most of my working life was spent in the petrochem industries. We consider H2S one of the most hazardous and deadly gasses that can be encountered on site (only surpassed by HF which is an incredibly dangerous dangerous gas, and its said that if you can detect the slightest sweet whiff then you are dead meat).

Robin

Accually.. must have been SO3 ( cos liguid under compression and bleach action not rotten eggs)…

HF.. uck get away horrid stuff …infact any thing with F in it must be bad … FOOF anyone?

[Sub MandrelParticipant @submandrel]

I got out of the garage as quick as I could, well aware of the dangers of CO2. I did hold my breath and pop back to check for cats…

At the weekend I'll let my daughter finish discharging it in the open air – I'd like her to have the confidence to use a fire extinguisher, and shes already shown good sense by putting out a tea tray that caught fire with a fire blanket.

H2S is one of the chemicals the human nose is most sensitive to (even more than many other sulphur compounds – methyl mercaptan, the ingredient in stinkbombs).

The good news is that we are so sensitive the smell is unberable at far less than lethal concentrations. The bad news (as with Robin's unfortunate colleague) is that at hgh concentrations, you can't smell it.

Neil

[Ian AbbottParticipant @ianabbott31222]

We used to use CO2 extingushers out "in the field", to shrink internal ring gears for fitting into heated housings. The company that maintained our fire protection stuff could never figure out how we got through so many.

Ian

[Cyril BonnettParticipant @cyrilbonnett24790]

We had a foreman painter that delighted in giving people a squirt from a CO2 extingusher, funny when it was someone else but not so funny when you were working at bottom of the yachts hawser pipe 25ft in the air sitting on a plank.

[JonParticipant @jon]

Used to have an Ergoshield bottle filled with CO2 at a local fire extinguisher place. They only topped it up to 100 to 120bar max else it froze. One reason have to use heaters with mig and proper CO2 bottles.

Co2 comparitevely low in pressure to 232bar oxy actylene or even 300bar air cylinders. Some vids on youtube smashing the valve off, didnt go very far.

[SpringbokParticipant @springbok]

Anyway

How about the smell that the French sent over… or was in someone cooking.

[frank brownParticipant @frankbrown22225]

FWIW:- When I was a broadcast engineer I had to work in CO2 protected areas. the engineering was crude but impressive, loads of big cyclinders 6' high X 18" diam, bronze pulleys, peculiar stranded wire for the interconnections, phosphor bronze?, big weight and a lot of fusible links. Over the entrance doors were three bulbs, red = discharged, orange= switched off, green = OK. . Somewhere there was a switch which, changed the lights over and one hopes put a lock on the system to stop it going off. I was told , that for CO2 to work it needed a concentration 25%, (hence the BIG cylinders) for it to be effective. When it goes off, any ventilation louvres are closed, and the effect is like a small bomb going off. It will burst your eardrums and knock you out, so the chances are you will asphixiated before you are rescued. The change to halogen gas on more modern installations use only 6% concentration, so you will have a bad headache, but survive. the windows still need a "bombproof" film applioed else they blow out.

Frank

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