Fire Protection FAQs

Portable and wheeled fire extinguishers sit under Section 10 of AS 1851-2012, and fire blankets under Section 11. The core routines are six-monthly and yearly inspections covering pressure, weight, condition, hose and horn, seals, signage, mounting and access, plus a five-yearly service. Every result goes on the record, not just a new tag.

It depends on the extinguisher type, and any provider who gives you one blanket answer for every unit on site is guessing. Broadly, stored pressure extinguishers are discharged, internally inspected, refilled and recharged, and cylinders are pressure tested where the type and its service history require it. Extinguishers are also recharged after any use, however brief.

In practice, for smaller units the five-yearly cost can approach replacement cost, so we will tell you honestly when replacing is the better value option rather than servicing for the sake of it.

The common ones are ABE dry chemical, which covers most general risks; CO2 for electrical and electronics; foam for flammable liquids; water for ordinary combustibles; and wet chemical for commercial kitchen cooking oils and fats. Fire blankets belong in kitchens and tea rooms.

Selection and location is governed by AS 2444, and it is a genuine assessment of the hazards in each area, travel distances and the size of unit required. Getting it wrong is common: we regularly find sites with the right number of extinguishers and the wrong types.

No. Routine service under AS 1851-2012 has to be carried out by a competent person, and in Queensland fire protection servicing is licensed work under the QBCC. You or your staff can and should visually check that extinguishers are present, accessible, unobstructed and undamaged between services, and that is worth doing, but it does not replace or count as the AS 1851 routine.

For the overwhelming majority of commercial buildings, yes. What must be installed, where, and of what type comes from the National Construction Code and AS 2444, assessed against the building's classification and the hazards in it. Once installed, they become a prescribed fire safety installation under Queensland's Building Fire Safety Regulation 2008 and must be maintained.

Fire hose reels are Section 9 of AS 1851-2012, with six-monthly and yearly routines. The six-monthly covers access, signage, hose condition, nozzle, and that the reel operates and the valve seals. The yearly adds a flow and pressure check to confirm the reel actually delivers what it should at the nozzle.

Installation is to AS 2441 and the reel itself is manufactured to AS/NZS 1221. Hose that fails the standard's condition criteria gets replaced, and we photograph what we find rather than just noting a fail.

Fire hydrant systems are Section 4 of AS 1851-2012, with monthly, six-monthly, yearly and five-yearly routines. Which of those apply to your site depends on how the system is built: a hydrant system fed by a fire pumpset and on-site water storage carries more frequent routines than a simple town main fed system, because there is more that can fail. Pumpsets are separately covered by Section 3 and water storage tanks by Section 5.

System design is to AS 2419. If you are unsure which routines apply to your building, that is exactly what a compliance survey answers.

Yes. Flow and pressure testing is part of the yearly and five-yearly routines, and it is the only way to prove the system will actually deliver water at the flow and pressure it was designed for. Results are compared against the system's baseline data, so a gradual decline gets caught before it becomes a failure. Booster assemblies are tested as part of this.

The five-yearly is an inspection and overhaul routine, not an automatic parts replacement. Landing valves are stripped, inspected and overhauled, and re-seated or repacked as required. Isolation and non-return valves are proven. Gauges are verified against a calibrated test gauge. Pipework and the booster assembly are inspected, and hydrostatic and flow testing is carried out.

Components are replaced when they fail the standard's criteria, not on schedule. Be wary of any quote that lists wholesale replacement of landing valves and gauges as a standard five-yearly inclusion, because that is a commercial decision being presented as a compliance requirement.

No. Hose reels deliver water and water conducts electricity, so using one on live electrical equipment risks electrocution. Use a CO2 extinguisher on live electrical equipment. This is a large part of why extinguisher selection under AS 2444 matters: the right unit needs to be within reach of the risk it is meant to cover.

Automatic sprinkler systems are Section 2 of AS 1851-2012 and carry the most demanding schedule of any system. Monthly, six-monthly, yearly and five-yearly routines all apply, and depending on the system type and age there are also longer interval routines at ten, twenty and thirty years covering things like sprinkler head sampling and testing, and internal pipework condition.

Design and installation is to AS 2118. If your building has sprinklers, this is the system where a gap in the record is hardest to explain to an insurer.

No, but they are required in a wide range of buildings under the National Construction Code, driven by building classification, height, floor area, occupancy and use. High rise residential and commercial, healthcare, aged care and large retail and warehousing are the usual triggers. Some buildings have them as part of a performance solution, in which case the fire engineer's report sets requirements beyond the standard ones.

The yearly covers alarm valve and flow switch operation, water supply proving, valve monitoring, pressure readings against baseline, and a visual survey of pipework, hangers, heads and spare head stock. Where the system has a pumpset, that gets its own performance test against its design duty point under Section 3.

All of it is measured against your baseline data, so results are an objective pass or fail rather than a technician's opinion on the day.

Heads are inspected for corrosion, paint, physical damage, loading with dust or product, and for obstruction to the spray pattern, which in warehousing is usually stock stacked too high or new racking or ductwork installed under the heads. Damaged, painted or corroded heads are replaced, never cleaned. Correct spare heads and the head spanner must be kept on site.

On longer interval routines, sample heads are removed and tested to confirm the rest of the population is still sound.

Yes, but it has to be managed properly. AS 1851-2012 has impairment requirements: isolation kept as short as practicable, the monitoring service and the building's responsible person notified before and after, the impairment recorded, and additional precautions such as a fire watch where the risk warrants it. The system is restored and proven back in service before we leave.

An isolation that gets forgotten and left in overnight is one of the most serious things that can happen in this trade, which is why it is a documented process and not a verbal arrangement.

Fire pumpsets are Section 3 of AS 1851-2012, with monthly, six-monthly, yearly and five-yearly routines. Monthly is a run test with starting, pressure and alarm checks. Diesel sets add fuel, battery, cooling and exhaust checks. The yearly is a full performance test against the pumpset's design duty point, proving flow and pressure, auto start, changeover and fault signalling.

A pump that starts is not a pump that performs. The annual flow test against baseline is what tells you whether it will still deliver on the day.

Two documents do the work. AS 1851-2012 sets out what gets tested and how often. The Building Fire Safety Regulation 2008 (Qld) makes it law and puts the duty on the occupier, the person or entity in control of the building.

The maintenance standard the regulation points to is the Queensland Development Code Mandatory Part 6.1, commissioning and maintenance of fire safety installations, which applies to Class 1b and Class 2 to 9 buildings including existing ones. In practice that means every prescribed fire safety installation in your building must be maintained by a competent person to the relevant standard, the work must be recorded, and you must be able to prove it.

This is the one most building managers get wrong, because it is not just a form you sign and file.

Under section 55A of the Building Fire Safety Regulation 2008, the occupier must prepare an occupier statement complying with QDC MP 6.1 at the required intervals, keep a copy with the maintenance records for two years, and give the commissioner of the Queensland Fire Department a copy within 10 business days of preparing it. Failing to do any of those carries a penalty.

So the statement has to actually be lodged, not just held on site. We build the statement provisions into our maintenance programs so it is ready to sign and lodge when it falls due.

Under section 55 of the Building Fire Safety Regulation 2008, the record of maintenance for each prescribed fire safety installation must include a description of the installation, the name and licence number of the person who did the work, the date, what was done, whether they considered the installation to be in proper working order, and details of any repairs or corrective action. It must be signed by the person who carried out the maintenance, certifying it is correct.

Records are kept with the occupier statement for two years and produced when asked. Every Safe QLD service produces a digital report that captures all of this, so an audit is a matter of sending a link rather than hunting through a folder.

Baseline data is the record of how your system performed when it was commissioned and known to be right: pump duty point, hydrant flow and pressure, detector counts and addresses, valve positions, water levels. AS 1851-2012 is built around it, because every routine test is a comparison against that baseline rather than a standalone reading.

It is why a pump test result of "started and ran" is not compliance. Without baseline data, nobody can say whether the system is still performing as designed or has quietly degraded over ten years. If your building has no baseline data, establishing it is the first job, and we do that as part of taking a site on.

AS 1851-2012 classifies every defect into one of two buckets. A critical defect stops the system doing its job in a fire, an isolated valve, a dead pump, a failed panel, and must be reported and acted on immediately. A non-critical defect still has to be rectified, but on a managed timeframe.

If your service reports do not classify defects this way, your records are not meeting the standard, and you have no way to tell an urgent problem from a housekeeping note. It is the single most common reporting failure we find on buildings we take over.

Fire protection work in Queensland is licensed work. Technicians who inspect, test or maintain fire protection systems must hold the appropriate QBCC fire protection occupational licence for the class of work, and the contractor must hold a QBCC licence. Safe QLD holds QBCC Licence No. 1143420.

Licensees also carry statutory reporting duties. Where a licensee finds a fire protection installation that does not conform, they must give the owner or occupier written notice of the non-conformance using QBCC Form 71. If it is not rectified in the required timeframe, the licensee must notify the QBCC using Form 72. Those are non-conformance notices, not certificates, and a Form 71 in your inbox is something to act on quickly.

Because emergency lighting sits under AS/NZS 2293.2 rather than AS 1851, it has its own log. Every fitting must be individually identified and its test results recorded, including which fittings failed the discharge test and what was done about them, and the log must be available for inspection.

A report that says "emergency lighting tested, all OK" on a building with 300 fittings is not a compliant record. Ours lists every fitting, its location and its result.