[AU] Buying Carbon Dioxide fire extinguishers... who knew it would be difficult?

[SeanB]

What about making your own automatic extinguisher activated only at night or when there is nobody at home, using a CO² extinguisher directed to the server with lever actuated by a weight and an electronic control ?

Doing that a small CO2 cylinder will be not effective, you would want a large pressure cylinder with a high pressure control valve on it, and then steel pipes leading to a set of discharge nozzles so that when the smoke or fire alarm trips there is, after a 30 second delay, to warn with a siren that discharge is to occur, and allow a stop if the room is attended, to discharge the cylinder and flood the room to displace all the air in it. Replacing agent can be CO2 or even dry nitrogen, as you just have to drop oxygen concentration below around 10% to stop most fires from burning. Doing so is what the most common automatic data centres use for fire protection, using big cylinders of high pressure gas, nitrogen, Co2, Argon or other inert gas mixes for the quench gas. Some will even have a SF6 fill, guaranteed to put out even burning magnesium fires quickly and safely. Only thing it will not put out is oxygen fluoride fires, but if you have that stuff around your best bet in all cases is a good pair of running shoes, permanently on your feet.

[oldway]

What about making your own automatic extinguisher activated only at night or when there is nobody at home, using a CO² extinguisher directed to the server with lever actuated by a weight and an electronic control ?

Doing that a small CO2 cylinder will be not effective, you would want a large pressure cylinder with a high pressure control valve on it, and then steel pipes leading to a set of discharge nozzles so that when the smoke or fire alarm trips there is, after a 30 second delay, to warn with a siren that discharge is to occur, and allow a stop if the room is attended, to discharge the cylinder and flood the room to displace all the air in it. Replacing agent can be CO2 or even dry nitrogen, as you just have to drop oxygen concentration below around 10% to stop most fires from burning. Doing so is what the most common automatic data centres use for fire protection, using big cylinders of high pressure gas, nitrogen, Co2, Argon or other inert gas mixes for the quench gas. Some will even have a SF6 fill, guaranteed to put out even burning magnesium fires quickly and safely. Only thing it will not put out is oxygen fluoride fires, but if you have that stuff around your best bet in all cases is a good pair of running shoes, permanently on your feet.

All this for a single home server in a half-height rack?
It is not full of nitrocellulose, only electronic stuff that does not catch fire that easy...

You must suffer from fire phobia, paranoia or a real sense of humor ... You are kidding for sure, it can only be a joke ... 

A simple mobile cart with a 5Kg CO² fire extinguisher placed in front of the server, with diffuser directed towards the front of the server and preconized automatic control, and it is solved.

There is no danger of emptying the fire extinguisher in the room that is not usually occupied .... At most it is necessary to provide a small delay of 15 seconds sufficient to confirm the signal of the smoke detector.

As I said, the automatic control is only connected at night and when there is no one in the house.

In the event of a false alarm, one loses a 5 kg refilling of co², it does not cost a fortune.

In case of actuating of the fire extinguisher, it should also been recomended to power off the whole server rack.

[Cerebus]

A simple mobile cart with a 5Kg CO² fire extinguisher placed in front of the server ...

You're not thinking this through. Many people can attest from personal experience that a 5kg CO₂ fire extinguisher will propel a 70kg man in a wheeled office chair - the same impulse applied to a relatively unloaded cart will go flying. 

[oldway]

The mobile carts generally have a lock on the 4 wheels.

With the weight of the fire extinguisher plus the weight necessary to activate the lever + the weight of the cart, I doubt that it would flies .... It will not move even one centimeter.

[Halcyon]

You are all over-thinking this waaaaay too much.

As 'oldway' said, this is just for a home server room/lab. I'm not paying for an automated system. A simple 5KG hand-held extinguisher is plenty. If I'm not home and there is a fire, unlucky. That's what the fire brigade is for.

Inside the server rack, not much is combustible and if something did fail in a catastrophic way, it's likely it would be contained inside it's own chassis. Sure there will be a bit of smoke but this is why I chose CO2 over ABE powder. Lets say a switch goes up in flames, I want to put the switch out, not spray powder all through the NAS servers and Hypervisors which are running perfectly fine.

[JohnMc]

Got several CO2 extinguishers for free several years ago. Ontario or Canada changed to rules that you had to have dry powder ABC. If dry powder is the recommended type by whatever government body in Australia. The big box stores maybe just doing some CYA and only selling that type. 

[Halcyon]

Got several CO2 extinguishers for free several years ago. Ontario or Canada changed to rules that you had to have dry powder ABC. If dry powder is the recommended type by whatever government body in Australia. The big box stores maybe just doing some CYA and only selling that type.

As far as I know it's not mandated anywhere. As I mentioned before, most businesses and large office buildings here have CO2 (if not both CO2 and ABE) in most areas. There is nothing to say I can't use one at home, it's just not the "done thing". It's a bit like not being able to walk into a retail store and buy enterprise computing hardware off the shelf. There are companies which will sell CO2 to private buyers but they usually charge something stupid like $100/kg.

I really don't see why it is the way it is. CO2 is a great general purpose extinguisher that is suitable for almost all types of fires. If it's good enough for me to use at work, it's good enough for my home.