Kidde fire extinguisher recall

[K. L. McReynolds]

Saw this article and checked---I have one. Already went on line and filled out the form, they are shipping a replacement in a couple weeks.

Recall info

[wjt]

Thanks.

Form filled out. Should have a replacement in 2-3 weeks.

Bill

[daddo]

Maybe I shouldn't have made lamps out of the two old ones I had.

[Steve N]

Funny, I saw pretty much the same info from the local Fox affiliates website this morning, they said 38.9 million though. I sent it to work folks, and friends and relatives, was gonna splash it here, it's pre splashed.

Thanks Mac, this is important stuff, if that little gauge says full you assume it will work, what a rotten time to find out you missed a recall.....

Actually if a mod see's this a stickie might be a good idea, give everyone a chance to check. Kidde is a big name in those doods.

[Admiral]

Saw this article and checked---I have one. Already went on line and filled out the form, they are shipping a replacement in a couple weeks.

Recall info

Thanks, I actually had four that were subject to the recall, one in the garage, one near my main electrical panel, one in the kitchen and one near the subpanel in the shop.  Just filled out the form online. I just bought another in the spring (metal handle so no recall) for my cellar door as the original one had the gauge arrow in the red, but that's ok.  Sort of ticked me off that all these years they could have failed to discharge properly.
Tip for others:  the instructions direct you to the bottom right hand side of the label for the model number, first time I looked it was only the serial number which is there, but no model number to compare to their list, but I looked again, as on the older units the model number is located on the bottom LEFT side of the label, so a little misdirection by Kidde to reduce the number of recalls, but I may be a bit paranoid about the dishonesty of corporate America.

[Steve N]

Yeah the date info is wrong too. I have a 20 pounder that is from 2008, and it's right in front below the label. Plus the info was bass ackward for serial # like yours was too. Look close, and use a magnifier if needed.

[Admiral]

Yeah the date info is wrong too. I have a 20 pounder that is from 2008, and it's right in front below the label. Plus the info was bass ackward for serial # like yours was too. Look close, and use a magnifier if needed.

The other thing is that some pre 2007 units have no date stamp, and others had a series of numbers that made no sense in the context of date, i.e., one of mine would have been made in April of 1785, so it clearly wasn't a date stamp but some production number I guess.  When filling out the form I just put 5 zeros in and they accepted the form.  Kidde has some bugs to work out in their form.

[Just_Dave]

Wow almost 40 years later and they still have problems.  
In 1979 I went to work for the areas largest fire protection company.  They did it all, fire extinguishers to fire trucks.  The main fire extinguisher brand was Kidde.  I worked in the alarms department so I do not remember the details but the general gist was one of the techs found a problem an extinguisher when he was servicing it.  This lead to the company looking at all of the Kidde extinguishers and it didn't take long to determine that the problem was wide spread.  They switched to Ansul as I recall and never looked back.  They worked on getting customer extinguishers switched out as they could.  
I think Kidde silently left the service company market and started selling their extinguishers through retail outlets.  I left the company, then I went back and then left in the mid 90's.  I'm still friends with a few of the extinguisher service guys. To this day they prefer not to touch a Kidde extinguisher for service.  They will not touch the ones with the any plastic components.

[Anak]

Found another in the garage.  Looks like I have three of them to get replaced.  The larger ones with the aluminum valves don't seem to be part of the recall.

I am thinking I need to be looking for another brand though.

[Terry W]

Thanks for the notice. I've got three coming my way. On my oldest, it would not accept the proper date code so I just used the date code that worked for another one.  I've got one more to check but it's on the boat.