referencesource/fire-extinguisher-inspection-testing-intervals-by-type

Fire extinguisher inspection, maintenance and hydrostatic test intervals by agent type

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• —Last verified: 2026-08-19
• —Stale after: 2027-08-19 (past this date, prefer the canonical copy — it re-verifies on a cadence this snapshot does not)
• —Records: 34

NFPA 10 sets four separate service obligations for a portable fire extinguisher (monthly visual inspection, annual maintenance, periodic internal examination, and hydrostatic pressure testing) and the interval for two of those four depends on which agent and shell the extinguisher is, in a way that is scattered across several sections and a table rather than stated as one list. A record here is one obligation for one extinguisher type/shell combination, with the interval and the NFPA 10 section it comes from. Answers 'how often does a CO2 extinguisher need hydrostatic testing', 'does a stainless steel dry chemical extinguisher get the same 12-year hydro interval as a standard one', 'how often does a wet chemical K-class extinguisher need internal examination', and 'my dry chemical extinguisher is nonrechargeable, when does it get replaced instead of retested'. The exceptions are where a facility manager gets this wrong: stainless steel dry chemical shells get the 5-year interval that pressurized-water and CO2 units get, not the 12-year interval every other dry chemical extinguisher gets, and nonrechargeable stored-pressure extinguishers skip hydrostatic testing entirely in favor of a hard 12-year removal-from-service date. Two authorities are carried side by side, because a US workplace is answerable to both and they are not word-for-word identical: NFPA 10, as restated for regulated facilities by the Minnesota Department of Health, and OSHA's own general-industry standard at 29 CFR 1910.157, whose Table L-1 sets hydrostatic intervals directly in regulation and names types the NFPA summary does not (foam, AFFF, Halon 1211 and 1301, dry powder, wetting agent). Where the two overlap they agree, and each row says which rulebook it answers to.

Provenance — what every record carries

Every record carries source (the URL the value was read from) and source_quote (a verbatim quote from that page stating it). A value you cannot check against its page is indistinguishable from an invented one; these can all be checked. Each record is also individually addressable on the canonical site at its url.

Licence position

NFPA 10 is a copyrighted, sold standard; the facts (which interval applies to which extinguisher type) are not themselves copyrightable and are already restated by every state health/fire authority that regulates against it. This asset never reproduces the standard's text. The NFPA-derived rows take the interval and its qualifier from a Minnesota Department of Health guidance document that already restates NFPA 10's requirements for its regulated facilities, quote a short verbatim span, and cite the specific NFPA 10 section. The OSHA rows are taken from 29 CFR 1910.157, which is a US government work in the public domain and states its own intervals in Table L-1 rather than incorporating NFPA 10 by reference.

Facts are not copyrightable; what this dataset takes from each source is a fact plus a short attributed quote linking back to the page that states it.

Sources

• —https://www.health.state.mn.us/facilities/regulation/engineering/docs/lscfireext.pdf
• —https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-29/subtitle-B/chapter-XVII/part-1910/subpart-L/section-1910.157

Fields

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