Having access to a fire extinguisher in a fire emergency is critical. You simply can’t afford to be without one, or without knowing how to mount it properly in your house. In this post, we discuss fire extinguisher mounting requirements for your facility.
The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) provides guidelines for mounting fire extinguishers. Specifically, NFPA 10 – Standard for Portable Fire Extinguishers sets the maximum distance a person should travel to reach a fire extinguisher.
This applies to commercial and residential buildings, such as offices or warehouses, and is meant to make fire extinguishers accessible to a person walking through the building. According to the NFPA 1 Fire Code, fire extinguishers are not required to be mounted in 1 or 2 family houses or dwellings.
Walls are considered distance separators and the travel distance around them must be included. Rooms and hallways must have doorways that a person can walk through to access a fire extinguisher.
This table provides more information:
| Class Of Fire Extinguisher | Max Foot Travel Distance | NFPA 10 Section Coverage |
| A | 75 ft. | Table 6.2.1.1 |
| B | 5 B – 30 ft 10 B Light – 50 ft. 10 B Ordinary – 30 ft. 20 B Ordinary – 50 ft. 40 B Extra – 30 ft. 80 B Extra – 50 ft. | Table 6.3.1.1 |
| C | N/A | 6.4.3 |
| D | 75 ft. | 6.5.2 |
| K | 30 ft. | 6.6.2 |
A person should not be further away than 75 feet in either direction to the nearest fire extinguisher on a floor with a maximum floor area of 11,250 ft 2 . However, this does not mean that each fire extinguisher should be no further than 150 feet away from another extinguisher within the same room.
Fire extinguishers within the same room must be within 75 feet radius without any spaces between them. So, inside a single room, a person will be closer than 75 feet to each fire extinguisher due to overlapping radius. This means that the maximum distance between fire extinguishers within a single, open (no walls) rectangular room is 106 ft.
Outside of the room, a person must travel on foot a maximum distance of 75 ft. into the room to access a fire extinguisher. A person carrying a fire extinguisher should therefore only have to travel a maximum of 150 ft. to extinguish a fire.
Buildings with many walls or other obstructing features will add complexity to measuring the travel distance to the nearest fire extinguisher.
Fire hazard occupancy is the level of fire hazard that exists within a certain location due to the quantity of combustibles present.
Fire hazard occupancies are set as the following:
