Been reading up, but question for a fireman after what happened to me Wed morning.

Would a dry powder extinguisher have any hope of working if sprayed upwards onto burning rafters?

Had a very unpleasant night on Tue/Wed after Mrs Mc stupidly put not completely dead woodfire ash into the wheelie bin about 4PM. 12 hours later (yes 12 hours), 4AM, up it went. Took out stored timber and plastic plumbing materials, and badly damaged the roof of a car port/covered way. Huge scary thing. I was out at 4AM throwing buckets of water, and badly burning my feet in molten plastic. Perhaps I need to sleep wearing boots in future. House stinks now, nasty mess outside.

Fire service were friendly. Thanks.

So investments are needed. Would squirty powder extinguisher which would work at ground level also work if fired upwards onto (for example) burning rafters above head height? – I’d expect it to all fall off. (-So would it?).

Perhaps foam is the stuff for my imminent purchase.

Don’t those bins say “do not put ash in here”?

Don’t those bins say “do not put ash in here”?

Gate. Horse. Bolted.

Tell you what though, maybe you should mention that to mr and mrs mountaincarrot, I bet they’d love to hear it.

no it rests in top of the fire to stop oxygen reaching the flames
It does not cool the fire so would reignite pretty quickly even if it would put it out in the circumstances you describe
Extinguishers should really be used to get you out safely
Powder makes a terrible mess in a confined space as you cannot see or breathe easily and yet they disperese everywhere outside. Not the best but people have them because you can use them on anything
I would never really want to trust my life on one of them.
I have discharged it in a confined space and i would never ever do this again it did nothing to the fire and meant I could not see or breathe to get out.
I am not a fireman but am a fire marshall and oddly the training manual is right next to me for some unknown reason

Funny you know. Hey guess what I said!

I Also said it numerous times in the past.. but you know how it is when the girls are in a hurry.

Used to be a volunteer firefighter in another life. If I remember correctly, the foam is meant to smother the fire by covering it up, so wouldn’t be very effective upwards.

EDIT: what junkyard said.

Hi Junkyard.
Thanks. I never thought about the dust issue. As if smoke wasn’t enough to deal with. I think that pretty much answers it.

I have my eye on eco-friendly foam. (No nasty chemicals). Outfit called Total make them. Hard to get though. Otherwise I’ll get a couple of water ones.

It was up and down I needed at the time. Bloody great fireball of the wheelie bin, and plastic 100mm soil pipe and stored wood. Then above my head, the plastic Tyvec membrane melted, and dripped down while the rafters all caught fire.
It’s my feet which hurt most though!

hnc why fire above you will just require lots of water – lower thfoam smothers fire so more likely to work and has a good throw [4-6 m ish]as long as you are sure there is no electricity there as they are 95% water. not sure if it would stick upside down but it might I guess.
Even the big extinguishers only discharge for about 60 secs
oh yes test the extingusiher before approaching the fire imagine getting close then finding the thing did not work!!! pin out quick blast approach fire spray

When i was doing my apprenticeship, we had a roof fire in our workshop, so i went up into the roof and srayed a dry powder extinguisher on the rafters,the draught coming through the roof covered me in a blue dust,struggledd own the ladder and met the fire brigade, who where just laughing, seeing a blue hulk ,me.

Water or foam are best as is a decent smoke alarm.

I expected foam to be better than water if there was electricity though. Yes it’s got a lot of water in it – but also a lot of air. It can’t be as conductive as a stream of water can it?

Right Project. I accept powder is rubbish! That seals it then.

I’d actually put out most of the flamy bits with my buckets when the fire service arrived. They spent 45 minutes soakig everything. .

I reckon powder wouldn’t be much good. 🙂

After that I put some trousers on.

I’m now off to a smelly bedroom. Nighty.

You are solving the wrong problem! Fires in rafters small enough to fight with an extinguisher are rather unusual. You have a situation which makes that possible, so remove that possibility.

(1) don’t put hot ash in plastic bin (I guess that lesson is learnt!)
(2) get a metal bin for ash (and if you need to transfer to wheely bin you can do so much later)
(3) don’t store the metal bin near combustibles or under the car port – if that is really not an option then perhaps line the car port above the bin with something fire proof / fire blanket.

If you are still worried about a repeat, get a hose and outside tap.