Fire extinguisher inspection checklist: monthly, annual, 6-year, and 12-year
What a fire extinguisher inspection involves at each NFPA 10 interval: the monthly visual check your own staff can do, the annual maintenance a certified technician must do, the 6-year internal exam, and hydrostatic testing. With a printable monthly checklist.
By Hovermarks team
Quick answer. NFPA 10 sets four service intervals for portable fire extinguishers. A monthly visual inspection, which your own staff can perform without certification. Annual maintenance, which requires a certified technician. A 6-year internal examination for stored-pressure extinguishers. And hydrostatic testing of the cylinder, every 12 years for common dry chemical units and every 5 years for water, foam, CO2, and wet chemical types. OSHA enforces the monthly and annual duties directly through 29 CFR 1910.157.
Search for "fire extinguisher inspection" and most of what comes back is either a sales page or a copy of the standard. What a facilities team actually needs is simpler: what has to happen, at what interval, done by whom, and what to write down. That is this page.
The four intervals at a glance
- Monthly: visual inspection. In-house, no certification required.
- Annual: maintenance examination. Certified extinguisher technician.
- 6-year: internal examination. Stored-pressure extinguishers are emptied, opened, examined internally, and recharged. Certified service company.
- 5-year or 12-year: hydrostatic test. The cylinder itself is pressure tested. 12 years for stored-pressure dry chemical extinguishers, 5 years for water, AFFF foam, CO2, and wet chemical types.
The monthly check is where compliance is won or lost. The annual, 6-year, and hydro services are contractor events that mostly run on schedule; the monthly check is an in-house habit, and the first thing an inspector or insurer looks for is whether the last twelve of them actually happened.
The monthly visual inspection checklist
NFPA 10 expects each extinguisher checked at roughly 30-day intervals. Per unit, the check is about thirty seconds:
- In its designated place, visible or signed, and not blocked by stock, doors, or equipment.
- Access unobstructed and the extinguisher within reach.
- Pressure gauge needle in the operable (green) range. For CO2 units with no gauge, confirm by weight or heft per the service label.
- Pin in place and tamper seal unbroken.
- No visible damage: dents, corrosion, leakage, or a clogged nozzle; hose attached and intact.
- Operating instructions legible and facing outward.
- Service tag present and current, showing the last annual maintenance date.
Anything failing gets the unit swapped or serviced, not noted for later. Record the check: date, initials, and any defect found, per unit. A tag on the extinguisher satisfies the minimum; an electronic record per asset is what actually survives an audit, because paper tags leave with the extinguisher when it goes for service.
Annual maintenance: what the technician does
Once a year, every extinguisher gets a maintenance examination by a certified technician: a thorough check of the mechanical parts, the extinguishing agent, the expelling means, and the physical condition of the cylinder, plus replacement of the tamper seal and an updated service tag. This is also when the technician flags units coming due for their 6-year or hydrostatic service. OSHA's 29 CFR 1910.157(e) makes both the monthly visual check and the annual maintenance explicit employer duties, so a missed year is a citable gap, not a technicality.
The 6-year internal examination
Stored-pressure extinguishers requiring a 12-year hydro test get an internal examination at the 6-year midpoint: the unit is discharged, opened, examined inside for corrosion and agent caking, refilled, and resealed with a verification-of-service collar around the neck. If your dry chemical units have no collar and no 6-year record, they are overdue regardless of what the tag says.
Hydrostatic testing: 5 years or 12
The cylinder itself is periodically pressure tested to verify integrity:
- 12 years: stored-pressure dry chemical, the most common commercial type.
- 5 years: water, AFFF and FFFP foam, CO2, and wet chemical extinguishers.
The interval belongs to the cylinder type, not the building, so a mixed estate carries mixed due dates. This is exactly the kind of long-interval, per-asset date that a spreadsheet loses and an asset register with per-unit scheduling does not.
The records that make it defensible
For each extinguisher, an auditor wants to see: the twelve monthly checks, the current annual maintenance, the last 6-year exam where applicable, the last hydro date, and the defect history with what was done. Held per asset and retrievable in seconds. The same record structure NFPA 25 expects for sprinkler systems applies here; we cover that side in NFPA 25 quarterly vs annual sampling.
Where Hovermarks fits
Hovermarks gives each extinguisher a QR-tagged identity: the monthly check runs from a phone against that tag in under a minute, the annual, 6-year, and hydro dates schedule themselves per unit, and the complete service history answers an inspector by scan. The fire safety solution page shows the workflow.