The fact of the matter is that industrial breathing apparatus is subjected to conditions that testing facilities could never orchestrate. From heating elements to chemical exposure to physical wear and tear and how often it’s used, all impact whether that manufactured 15 years comes to fruition or if you’ll be shopping for replacements at 7.
What Expiries First?
Here’s what most facilities don’t anticipate, the backframe and harness system generally lasts longer than anything else. Why? Because it’s built to last. If it wasn’t, then it would fall apart in use since everything else is connected to it. Unless there’s extensive physical damage or extreme chemical exposure, those components can last the 15-year life of the apparatus; yet everything else connected to it has a much shorter expected period.
The regulator bears the brunt of SCBA wear. It’s doing the hard work – internal components moving all about, creating seals to keep the flow open until someone needs air. Facilities with SCBA on a weekly basis for confined space entry (or emergency response teams) see regulators needing rebuilt or replaced by 5 or 7 years, after proper maintenance. Without annual attention, they’ll face failures before the five-year mark.
Cylinders see an easier life. Composite cylinders, the lighter option that all users prefer – have a service life of 15 years but need hydrostatic testing every 3 years for refilling and re-certification or every 5 years for retirement (the latter option at least allows for replacement of a cylinder longer).
Nonetheless, every test occurs at a cost, and every test has the potential to discover damage, ending that cylinder’s life sooner than anticipated. Steel and aluminum may boast longer service lives (30+years) but they’re heavier and not as practical for generalized use.
What Usage Provides a Reality Check?
An SCBA unit that lives in an emergency cabinet, only pulled out once or twice per year, is obviously going to last longer than one whose used weekly for confined space entries. But here’s the kicker no one expects, that which isn’t used, also fails sooner.
Seals dry up. Lubricants lose their luster. Moisture develops in the cylinder of units not cycled regularly. Some of the most expensive failures occur for those SCBA units that look pristine because they were never used. They’ve been fine up until the moment someone needs one for an emergency, only to have seals fail or valves stick.
There seems to be a healthy balance of use, enough to exercise without excessive wear. Teams who utilize their units for training once a month, perhaps for operational use a few times per quarter, experience small failures before they become big issues. Equipment remains “in shape” without excessive exposure.
Environmental Factors That No One Tells You About During Sales Pitches
More than anything else, temperature extremes expedite the deterioration of SCBA components. For example, Gulf Coast facilities where equipment stays in outdoor lockers reaching 130°F in summer? Those units fail a lot faster. Cold storage units where SCBA units hang at sub-zero temps? Different type of failure but just as important since they fail faster.
Chemical exposure is the other silent killer. All it takes is being housed in corrosive atmospheres over time (not necessarily actively working through any chemical leak). Refineries and chemical plants and similar facilities see this day in and day out. Equipment looks great on the outside but when cylinders go for hydrostatic testing or regulators get opened for annual servicing, internal damage tells a different tale.
Moisture and humidity work against you. Coastal facilities and humid environments experience corrosion that dry climates do not see; thus, O-rings fail faster with seals. Metal components pit away, too. The certification could say 15 years, but the environment suggests 10.
Maintenance Makes or Breaks Your Investment
The difference between something lasting 8 years versus something lasting 15 comes down to maintenance discipline. Annual servicing is not a suggestion; it’s a base-level push in order to avoid small issues becoming expensive problems. Facilities that simply want to check off an annoying compliance item find themselves in deep trouble upon discovering needing major repairs or new units entirely.
Quality makes an impact as well, units like the msa g1 is made with serviceability in mind so that components can be adjusted or replaced without needing to toss out the entire unit. This detail matters more than one realizes when assessing a 10-or-15-year life cycle.
Outside of annual servicing, daily or weekly checks catch obvious things, damaged harnesses, cracked lenses, loose connections, but best practices come when someone knows what they’re looking at. A technician who’s worked on hundreds of SCBA units sees early warning signs that an average person performing a cursory visual inspection cannot note.
Cylinders get special treatment. Keeping them clean and free from moisture, keeping them stored at capacity, ensuring safe travel – none of these tasks are complex but they make an immediate impact at whether these cylinders make it through their service life or fail testing early.
What Happens When Usage Patterns Change Everything?
Emergency response teams who drill with SCBA extensively subject them to different types of wear patterns than where SCBA is treated purely as a backup option. High frequency means budgeting for regulator rebuilds or replacements at the halfway point of the life cycle of the apparatus since they’re doing heavy air work unless there was an accident involved. Conversely low frequency means time will beat calendar age for deterioration meaning any issues will arise prior to wearable failures.
Some facilities rotate their SCBA units in order to distribute wear equally among all units while some designate certain units for training and other units strictly for emergency use; both possess their own merits but ultimately require tracking and note-taking to get a sense of which units have how much life left on them.
The training versus emergency use question is a little convoluted where training puts physical demand on SCBA equipment but ensures they are exercised efficiently; alternatively, equipment not utilized except for emergency use may put wear and tear on it at worst possible time with time excluding the possibility of operational failures.
The Reality of Budgeting
A 15-year life cycle sounds good until one factors in cylinder testing every 3-5 years (per cube), annual servicing per unit/office/request if needed, replacement parts for various upgrades along the way (facepieces every few years), replacement parts (harness), there is a pricing structure associated with all of this that people forget about when they bank on a singular purchase price.
Facilities who expect additional costs from the get-go are well poised; they know that year 7 means it’s now time for significant servicing where multiple components will necessitate care all in one shot (most likely because someone budgeted this deal). They understand cylinder testing cycles so they’ll have money ready for swapping need in year 15 as they know the inevitable will occur due to facetime cycles and consistent usage it’s that time.
Facilities who fall into traps are those who treat SCBA like a lifetime buy and get upset when servicing costs start overwhelming them; just because something says it can last for 15 years doesn’t mean it can last 15 years without investment.
What’s The Best Way to Get It to Last?
What keeps industrial SCBA running long into their life cycle comes down to storage away from elements, consistent maintenance based on what’s been suggested by manufacturers, follow-up documentation that proves these meetings occurred, training people to treat it right and finally using common sense determining if certain parts are useless before someone ruins them by trying to overuse them past their service life.
Ultimately the life cycle of 15 years isn’t out of the realm of possibility – but it’s also not guaranteed either. The real-world elements beat it down with usage patterns, maintenance awareness and sometimes just plain luck whether or not breathing apparatus fulfills its expected promise. Those who procure industrial SCBA who understand this from the beginning will get their money’s worth, and then some.
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