Service Fire Extinguishers to BS 5306 On A Bike! Is it Possible?
Sounds Crazy? Read On
I watched “No Impact Man” on Netflix the other week. For those of you who haven’t seen this film it is about a family who decide to leave their high consumption 5th Avenue lifestyle behind and try to live a year while making no environmental impact.
This got me thinking. What could I do to help the environment?
So I decided to leave the vehicle on its drive and plan a day of how I could help the environment.
How did I go about doing this?
The Problem
I needed to have some fire extinguishers delivered and serviced plus I needed to do visit some new customers on the way too and visit some clients without using a vehicle or public transport.
The round trip was about 24 miles all within the Birmingham area – Too far to walk
So I decided to use my trusted steed, my mountain bike.
However I still had the problem of getting fire extinguishers to my customers.
Obviously there were way too many to carry, besides one 6 ltr foam extinguisher can weigh up to 10 kg, way too much to carry on my bike.
So I called my supplier who said it would only cost me £10 to get my order delivered.
Great, problem solved.
Equipment
Here is a list of equipment needed to fuel my body service fire extinguishers to BS 5306:
- Ruck sack
- Tools for servicing : Adjustable spanner, gauge tester, tamper tags, scales, service labels, rag
- Puncture repair kit
- First aid kit
- Multitool for my bike
- 2 litres of water
- Nuts for energy and protein
The journey
Now came the difficult bit as I wasn’t using a vehicle I had to get from A to B without using any motorways or dual carriage ways. I didn’t really fancy using the Birmingham canal paths as I wanted to be clean and presentable looking when I arrived at my customers.
So I used the google maps app on my phone set it for bike journeys only and planned my route. I also made sure I had enough charge on my phone otherwise I could easily get lost should my battery die on me.
By plugging an ear piece into my phone I could hear the directions rather than trying to watch them as I would in a van or car, this worked surprisingly well, I only got lost once or twice for about 5-10 mins at a time.
When I arrived at one of my customers, which is a doctor’s surgery. The senior partner was quite shocked to see me on my bike especially when I told him that I had done about 14 miles up to that point.
I serviced the fire extinguishers that had been delivered and placed them in the appropriate positions as defined by BS 5306 pt 8 2012. Got back on my bike and carried on visiting my other customers.
The whole day I visited 3 customers and 3 potential customers all done on my bike which resulted in helping the environment . I did around 24 miles and burnt around 1800 calories.
Would I do it again?
Most definitely, I felt an enormous amount of happiness that I was doing my bit for the environment. Although it was only me making a difference for one day, this got me thinking again, what if I did it for a week, a month or even a year?. Not only would I be helping the environment I would also be helping my health too.
May be we should all decide for one day a week to leave the car or whatever vehicle you drive on the drive/road/garage and do our business/work by pedal power.
What kind of difference would that make?
What would you do to help?