June 2007

NFPA Committee Recommends Retiring Fire Hose After 10 Years

By Lyn Bixby

A National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) committee is suggesting that all fire hose be retired after 10 years of use, a proposal that should attract the attention of fire departments across the country because many of them are using hose older than that.

The recommendation is one of a package of proposals that have received affirmative votes from the committee, which is revising NFPA 1962, the national standard for inspection, care and use of fire hose, couplings and nozzles. The revisions are expected to take effect in January 2008.

The measure addressing the service life of hose is proposed to be added to NFPA 1962 as an annex, meaning it would be offered as guidance, not as a required part of the standard.

Risk Of Failure
“Limited testing of in-service fire hose by the Fire Equipment Manufacturers Association indicated an increased risk of failure after a 10-year time period,” says the proposed annex. “While all users should establish their own retirement schedule, fire departments should give careful consideration to a 10-year maximum service life under normal operating conditions.”

The Fire Equipment Manufacturers Association (FEMA) is a trade group representing about 20 companies that make hose, portable extinguishers and pre-engineered fire suppressions systems. The tests were conducted by the group in the late 1990s, according to Duane Leonhardt, the vice president of engineering technologies at Mercedes Textiles, a hose manufacturer in Quebec, Canada.

People Are Talking
Leonhardt represents FEMA as a member of the NFPA Technical Committee on Fire Hose, which is revising the NFPA 1962 standard.

“What we’re saying as manufacturers is these problems are there, they tend to be relative to age and environment and we’ve got to address them,” he said in an interview. “I think we’re doing that. We’re getting guys to think about it. People are talking.”

He said the members of his trade group regard the service life of fire hose as a safety issue. “We do not condone using old equipment when we all can see the degradation of the product,” he said. “So at what point do you say, ‘Yeah, it’s holding water, but it doesn’t have the safety factors on it that it had once before.”

One of those factors is separation of the liner from the jacket of the hose.

Leonhardt submitted 10 proposals on behalf of FEMA for revisions of NFPA 1962, one of which was a test for liner adhesion to be conducted in addition to required pressure testing of hose. In submitting “substantiation” for the proposal, he wrote, “Liner delamination and degradation, as fire hose ages, is an acknowledged problem. Delaminated liners can cause plugged nozzles or cut off water supply to pumps.”

An adhesion test, he said, “will not only reveal the actual integrity of the lining to the jacket, but also can reveal the condition of the liner material itself.”

However, the proposal was rejected by the committee in a 15-1 vote. The committee’s “Report on Proposals” contains a brief explanation of its position, saying, “More data is needed to determine whether adhesion testing is required for in-service hose.”

No Injuries Or Deaths
While hose delamination and degradation are cast by Leonhardt and FEMA as safety issues, the committee was not presented with any reports of injuries or deaths of firefighters due to hose failure.
Laurence Stewart, an NFPA fire service specialist and the staff liaison to the Technical Committee on Fire Hose, said there are reported cases of hose liner separation where the liner was sucked into the intake grate on a pump, causing a blockage.

“We’ve seen that during pumper operations in several cases this has happened, but I’m not aware of anything that compromised the health or safety of any firefighters,” Stewart said. “Obviously the firefighters were in a situation where they weren’t in harms direct way when their water supply was cut short.”

Old Hose In Use
He said the committee members, who represent hose manufacturers, hose testing companies and fire departments, agreed many departments around the country are using fire hose older than 10 years.

“We’ve seen it,” Leonhardt said. “You walk through a department and you look and you see old cotton hose and some of it, you just know, you can just look at it and say that should be pulled from service.”

He said he imagines the use of old hose is more prevalent in rural volunteer fire departments “because they just don’t have the budgets.”

Paul Albinger, a former fire chief who works for the Elkhart Brass Manufacturing Company and is Leonhardt’s alternate member on the hose committee, said nobody knows how much old fire hose is in service, but he is certain that it is a significant percentage.

“I know exactly what happens because of the work I’ve done throughout the nation, and [the use of old hose] is pretty well universal,” he said. “However, that being said, it’s less and less, especially in the municipal industry.”

He said hose failures are due to many factors, “not just wear and tear, but lack of maintenance, lack of proper drying, lack of exercise, lack of testing.”

Both Albinger and Leonhardt declined to speculate on the probability that fire departments will follow the committee’s guidance and retire hose after 10 years of service life.

But the issue is expected to be raised again during the next scheduled revision cycle of NFPA 1962.

Leonhardt said the committee received one proposal that all fire hose be retired after 15 years of service, regardless of whether it can pass pressure or other kinds of tests. But he said the proposal, which came from a representative of a testing company, was submitted too late to be considered by the committee.

“We discussed it quite a bit,” he said, “but all we can do is hold it for the next revision.”