Fire Access Port to engine room in Taiwan Trawler

[catalinajack]

It may be everything you say but I am certainly not going to remove my existing halon system. As for a fire port, I wouldn't bother. If I have an engine room fire, regardless of whether I had a halon automatic system, my first action is to get my ditch bag and laptop, deploy the dinghy (takes 5 minutes on my boat), call a mayday, and get off the boat. Let the damn thing burn to the water line. No way am I going risk my life or anyone else's in a vain attempt to put out an engine room fire.

[You may want to do more research about halon it has been determined to be dangerous to the environment more so than a danger to the occupants of the boat. They are not sold due to re environmental issue but have never to my knowledge and research been outlawed due to the risk factor. They will put out the fire long before they remove enough oxygen to kill you. I have never seen or heard of people dying from the extinguisher only the fire. QUOTE=Tangler;869249]My boat had a small extinguisher mounted to the firewall when I got it...it was full of halon... very dangerous so I got rid of it. The extinguisher had one of those heat sensitive star wheels on it so in case of fire iT would go off automatically...I have not replaced it but that’s what I’d look for if I do...

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[psneeld]

Abandoning a mothership is part of a plan that includess the severity of survival in alternate means of floatation.

 

[rgano]

I come from a culture that understands and adheres to the dictum "Don't Give Up The Ship." Why invest a significant amount of money into something you plan to abandon at the first sign of trouble. Rather, you equip and prepare to save the danged thing and all the other stuff left behind, excepting that valuable laptop, of course. Installed automatic fire suppression systems with Halon or a derivative are safe and practical, period. You threw the baby out with the bath water.

 

[FF]

AT least the Defender fire hole has a plastic clear section to view the fire before opening.

Would be much un good to open a hole to add oxygen to a raging fire.

"Tell the surveyor to pound sand."

Sounds like he read a home study tome for wannabe surveyors, or the boat was so good he had to dig & dig to create a flaw.

 

[obthomas]

I am a fire protection engineer and a boat owner. The OP's surveyor was right. A recommendation to either install a fire protection system in the engine room or provide fire port comes right out of the salient codes.

To set the record straight about old halons, they are all used in the 7% range, not healthy to humans but not deadly either. They were the best at extinguishing fire, still are. They are still legal to use in the U.S. but are not made anymore because of a thing called the Montreal Protocol. New replacements called clean agents are available. Most common is the FM200, (FE-227)version. It is expensive to most people to install a new clean agent system with all its engine shut down electrics, So the fire protection codes like NFPA 303 say as a minimum install fire extinguisher ports. The port allows one to discharge a fire extinguisher into the engine room without opening up the fire to the rest of the boat.

PS If you want to go back to the 60'S and earlier before Halon there were deadly Carbontetracloride fire extinguishers and Clorobromomethane (CBM)
fire extinguishers. But that is another story. I'm giving away my age.
Hope this helps.