Pre-Purchase Inspections
April 2010 - Fire Fighting System

There are a variety of systems aboard a cruising vessel that are active, working behind the scenes to afford the user protection from problems or emergencies when they arise. Perhaps the best known among these are smoke alarms. Unless there's a fire they remain dormant, on watch so to speak, offering you and your crew unmatched protection. Other "protection" systems that are not often thought of include the high coolant and exhaust temperature alarms (you have a high exhaust temperature alarm, right?) as well as alarms to indicate low oil pressure, all of which should be present and functioning on both propulsion engines and generators. It's worth pointing out that while these alarms are typically designed to shut a generator down in the event of an overheat or low oil pressure, they are intentionally designed to not do the same for propulsion engines. Propulsion engines are deemed critical and as such, depending upon the scenario it may be better to suffer damage from an overheat or low oil pressure than lose power unexpectedly and be run down by, or collide with, another vessel as a result of an automatically shut down engine.

There's one emergency event, however, where propulsion engines must be shut down in order to minimize potentially life threatening consequences and that's an engine room fire. Vessels equipped with a fixed fire extinguishing system, an invaluable accessory, give the user a leg up on fire fighting. Nearly all such systems are designed to discharge automatically, typically when the nozzle of the bottle reaches 175°F. Many bottles are also capable of being discharged manually, using a trigger handle located outside the engine room.

The key to successful use of these systems is rapid shutdown of engines, generators and ventilation systems. If this gear is not immediately shutdown upon the fire extinguishing agent being discharged, it's likely it will be expelled from the engine room before it can extinguish the fire.

In this month's ad photo, an electrical connection between a fixed fire extinguisher bottle and the vessels automatic engine/generator/ventilation shut down system has been intentionally separated. Upon doing so, it simulates a system discharge, whereupon all connected equipment should shutdown. In this case, none of the engine room equipment shutdown. It's likely the system was never properly installed and this vessel has been operating without this protection since it left the factory.

If you're interested in finding out more about Pre-Purchase Inspections like the one described above, system inspections, vessel selection assist, the Captains' Club (simply click on these words to be taken to the relevant sections of this website) or other services offered by Steve D'Antonio Marine Consulting, email or call 804-776-0219.