Every portable fire extinguisher in a commercial building in Illinois has to be inspected and maintained on a schedule, and it has to carry a dated tag showing when. We do that work on site, tag every unit, and leave you with documentation you can hand straight to a fire inspector, a landlord or an insurance underwriter.
An annual maintenance check under NFPA 10 is a hands-on examination of the whole unit, not a glance at the gauge. Each extinguisher comes off the bracket and gets checked for the things that stop it working when somebody pulls the pin.
An extinguisher that has been discharged at all needs to be recharged, and that includes a unit somebody let off for two seconds to knock down a small flare-up. Once the seal is broken the pressure bleeds away, and the unit will be empty when it is next needed.
The same applies after a fire drill, after training, and after any incident where a unit was picked up and squeezed. If the tamper seal is broken, treat it as discharged. We recharge on site where the unit and the agent allow it, and swap in a loaner where a cylinder has to come back to the shop.
This is the requirement that catches Chicago businesses out most often. A stored-pressure dry chemical extinguisher needs a full internal examination every six years — the unit is emptied, the valve pulled, the inside of the shell inspected, and the extinguisher recharged and resealed. It is separate from the annual check and separate again from hydrostatic testing.
A unit can carry a current annual tag and still be out of compliance because its six-year internal is overdue. When we take on a property we log the manufacture date and the last internal for every unit, so the ones coming due are known in advance rather than discovered by an inspector.
NFPA 10 and OSHA 1910.157 both put a monthly visual inspection on the property owner or employer, not on the service company. It takes about thirty seconds per unit: is it there, is it visible and unobstructed, is the pin and seal intact, is the gauge in the green, is the tag current.
It also has to be recorded. We set up the monthly log when we do the annual service and walk whoever is responsible through what they are looking at, because an OSHA inspector asking for twelve months of monthly records is a much more common problem than a failed extinguisher.
The intervals below come from NFPA 10 and OSHA 1910.157. They are what a Chicago fire inspector is checking your tags against.
| Interval | What happens | Who does it |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly | Visual inspection | Property owner or employer — recorded on a log |
| Annually | Maintenance check, service and new tag | Trained service company |
| Every 6 years | Internal examination — stored-pressure dry chemical | Trained service company |
| Every 5 years | Hydrostatic test — CO₂, water, wet chemical (Class K) | Licensed test facility |
| Every 12 years | Hydrostatic test — stored-pressure dry chemical | Licensed test facility |
| After any discharge | Recharge, reseal and re-tag | Trained service company |
Two different intervals apply. You or your staff must visually inspect every extinguisher monthly and keep a written record. A trained service company must carry out a full maintenance check annually and fit a new dated tag. On top of that, stored-pressure dry chemical units need an internal examination every six years, and hydrostatic testing every twelve.
An expired tag is one of the most commonly written fire code violations, because it is the easiest thing for an inspector to see from across a room. It can also give an insurer grounds to question a claim after a fire. If your tags have lapsed, call us — bringing a property back into compliance is routine work and is usually done in a single visit.
Most commercial extinguishers are designed to be recharged many times over and it is far cheaper than replacement. A unit is only replaced when the shell fails inspection or hydrostatic testing, when the valve is damaged beyond repair, or when it is a disposable model that was never rechargeable. We tell you which category a unit falls into before doing any work.
Extinguishers in the common areas of an apartment or condo building — hallways, laundry rooms, boiler rooms, parking garages — are treated as commercial equipment and need the same annual service and tagging. Units inside individual private residences are not covered by the same requirement, though the same monthly check is still worth doing.
For a typical restaurant, office or small commercial floor with under twenty units, expect us to be on site for around an hour. Larger properties are scheduled to suit you — we can work through a building floor by floor so nothing is disrupted, and we work Monday to Friday 9AM to 4PM and Saturday mornings.
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Call 312-877-2355 during business hours, or send the details and we'll come back with a quote and a service window.
1840 N Clybourn Ave · Chicago, IL 60614
