Fire hose reel inspection: what to check, how often and what to record

01

Fire hose reels: the duty and the standards in Ireland

A fire hose reel is first-aid fire-fighting equipment. The Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage's building guidance describes it as "a length of tubing fitted with a shut-off nozzle and attached to a reel, with a permanent connection to a pressurised water supply". It is not a dry or wet riser, which is for the fire service (see dry riser testing).

No Irish statute uses the words "hose reel inspection". The duty to keep hose reels working comes from three places:

• The Fire Services Acts 1981 and 2003. Section 18 of the Fire Services Act 1981, with subsection (2) substituted by section 29 of the Licensing of Indoor Events Act 2003, puts a duty on "every person having control over premises", including, since 2003, any workplace. That person must "provide reasonable fire safety measures" and "ensure that the fire safety measures and procedures referred to in paragraph (b) are applied at all times". A hose reel that has been provided is one of those measures.
• Workplace law. Regulation 13 of the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work (General Application) Regulations 2007 requires an employer to ensure that non-automatic fire-fighting equipment is "easily accessible and simple to use" and indicated by signs, and that fire-fighting equipment is "inspected and maintained as frequently as necessary to ensure that it is in good working order" and "serviced by a competent person as frequently as necessary". Section 11 of the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005 adds the emergency duties: the necessary measures for fire-fighting, and designated employees whose number, training and equipment are adequate.
• The building's design. Technical Guidance Document B 2024, Fire Safety, Volume 1 (reprinted edition, January 2026) says hose reels should be provided where the floor area exceeds 500 m² in a shop, a shopping centre, or an industrial or storage building, installed to I.S. EN 671-1. It applies to works from 1 May 2025; older buildings were designed to earlier guidance, and hose reels are found in many other buildings too.

Three Irish Standards, published by the National Standards Authority of Ireland, cover the equipment itself: I.S. EN 671-1 for hose reels with semi-rigid hose, I.S. EN 671-2 for hose systems with lay-flat hose, and I.S. EN 671-3 for the maintenance of both. This guide relies on how the Department's guidance applies them rather than quoting the standards themselves.

The Department's Fire Safety Guide for Building Owners and Operators (August 2023), written for persons having control under section 18(2), is the most practical of the official documents. Its section 6.7 says that where hose reel installations are provided they "should be inspected and maintained" in line with its maintenance schedule, and that "damaged extinguishers or hose reels should be repaired or replaced".

02

What a hose reel inspection covers

The Department's maintenance schedule (Table 2 in section 8 of the guide) sets out two layers of work for portable extinguishers and hose reels together. The regular checks can be done by a designated person on the premises; the planned inspection and maintenance should be done by a competent person who can certify the work to the relevant standard.

For the monthly check, the guide asks for three things at each hose reel:

• every point at which a hose reel is usually located is checked, and a missing hose reel is replaced immediately;
• the hose reel is visually inspected;
• in particular, there are no leaks, and the drum assembly is free to rotate on its spindle.

Those are the minimum. The General Application Regulations add access and signs, and TGD B adds signs and emergency lighting so reels can be found. A sensible monthly walk also looks at what a caretaker can see without tools or opening a valve:

• Access: nothing stacked in front of the reel, its cabinet or its stop valve, and a cabinet door that opens freely.
• Signs: the location sign in place and visible from the approach; the regulations require fire-fighting equipment to be indicated by signs, and their safety signs schedule identifies it in red.
• The hose: wound evenly on the drum, not kinked, flattened, cut, perished or painted over.
• The nozzle: present, closed, and not cracked or missing its parts.
• The drum and bracket: turning freely, any swing arm swinging out, the bracket firm on the wall.
• Leaks: no drips at the valve, the hose connection or the nozzle, and no water staining on the floor or wall beneath.

Anything wrong is recorded as a fault against that reel and reported to whoever can get it put right. The Department's guide is plain about the priority: "Faults are a life safety issue – not simply a maintenance issue to be dealt with later; faults should be entered in the fire safety register and corrected promptly."

03

How often: monthly checks, the annual service and the five-year pressure test

The Department's schedule gives the following for fire hose reels. It is guidance, not law, but it is written for persons having control under section 18(2), and it names the standard for each piece of work.

1. Monthly, by a designated person: every hose reel location checked, every reel visually inspected, no leaks, drums free to rotate, missing reels replaced immediately. The guide notes that a risk assessment may recommend more frequent checks.
2. Annually, by a competent person: "All fire Hose Reel equipment shall be maintained in accordance with Clause 6 of I.S. EN 671 Part 3 annually." This is the service a fire protection contractor carries out against the standard, and it goes well beyond the monthly look; the contractor should leave a written report of what was tested, what failed and what was done.
3. Every five years, by a competent person: "all fire hose reels shall be pressurized to maximum working pressure according to EN 671-1 and/or EN 671-2." Ask the contractor when it was last done, and see that it is on the record.

The fire extinguisher checks share the same monthly row of the schedule, so many buildings walk both on one round. After any use of a reel, have it checked and rewound properly rather than left run out across a corridor.

Where a building is closed for a period, note it on the record; a missed check with a reason is better evidence than a blank.

04

Who does what: the person having control, the caretaker and the contractor

The person having control of the premises is responsible for hose reels being kept in working order. The Department's guide says that person "may delegate specific fire safety duties to members of staff" but "should retain overall responsibility for ensuring delegated tasks are carried out". In practice the work is shared out like this:

• The facilities, premises or centre manager usually owns the programme and makes sure faults are fixed.
• A caretaker, facilities operative, security officer or trained staff member does the monthly check, as the designated person the guide describes. They need to know where every reel is and who to tell.
• A fire protection contractor does the annual maintenance to I.S. EN 671-3 and the five-yearly pressure test, and repairs or replaces anything that fails. The guide recommends competent, skilled contractors who are members of a registered contractors' association where there is one for their trade.
• Fire wardens and staff who may use a reel in an emergency need training in when and how to use it, and when not to.

On training, the HSA's guidance on emergency escape and fire fighting says fire-fighting equipment "must be in place for employees to use, without exposing themselves to danger, to extinguish a fire in its early stages", and that "appropriate staff will need training and instruction in its proper use". TGD B puts the same limit on it: occupants use first-aid fire-fighting equipment "with appropriate training and where it is safe to do so".

In a multi-let building the duties are often split. The Department's guide says that where section 18(2) responsibilities are shared, for example between a landlord and tenants or a property manager, the allocation of fire safety management, including the maintenance of active fire safety systems, "should be clear to all parties involved", and that the lease should identify where responsibility lies. Reels in common areas and reels inside a tenant's space may fall to different parties, so write down who checks and services each one. In an apartment scheme the owners' management company usually has control of the common areas, whether or not a managing agent does the day-to-day work.

05

What the record should show, and how it is checked

Hose reel checks belong in the building's fire safety register, the Irish name for the fire log book. The Department's guide says the register should be kept on the premises at all times, be kept up to date and be available for inspection by an authorised officer of the fire authority, and that it should hold "details of routine checks, planned inspections and maintenance carried out on fire protection equipment and systems, with comments on the results of the checks and inspections and actions taken (and by whom) to address defects". The HSA's guidance on emergency escape and fire fighting gives the reason in one line: "A record of the work carried out on such equipment and systems will help to demonstrate compliance with the law."

A hose reel record that stands up has:

1. A list of every reel, each with a reference and a location a stranger could find.
2. A dated entry for each monthly check, with the time it was done, the name of the person, and the result for each reel, not "all hose reels OK" for the building.
3. Faults with an ending: what was wrong, who was told, and the date it was put right. A leaking valve entered in March with nothing after it reads as a leaking valve still.
4. The annual service report, with the date, the engineer and the company, filed with the register or referenced from it.
5. The date of the last five-yearly pressure test, and when the next is due.
6. Reasons for gaps, such as a closure or a floor out of use during works.

The fire authority can ask to see the register. The HSA notes that fire legislation beyond workplace health and safety law is generally enforced by local authority fire officers, and under section 18 as amended a fire authority can give advice, warn that a fire safety notice may be served, and require the person having control to carry out a fire safety assessment and notify the authority. Hose reels are on the Department's list of "equipment and systems which require ongoing management and routine maintenance", so expect them to be asked about.

Read it the way an officer would: does every reel appear every month, do the times look like a walk round the building, are faults closed, and are the annual service and the five-year test in date?

06

Where hose reel records fail, and what SiteClara does about it

Hose reel records fail in ordinary ways. The monthly check is ticked in the register at reception, far from the reels on the third floor, and the same pen fills in three months at once. A reel behind a pallet of stock gets "OK" anyway. The caretaker reports a dripping valve to whoever is passing, it goes nowhere, and the annual service finds it nine months later. And the five-year pressure test is simply never on anyone's list.

SiteClara records the routine checks at the place they are done. A printed QR poster, with an optional NFC tag behind it, goes at a location such as a hose reel point or a stair core that holds both a reel and an extinguisher. The caretaker, facilities operative or security officer doing the monthly round scans the code or taps the tag with their own phone, with no app to install, sees the checks due there, and marks each one done or explains what stopped them, for example that the cabinet was blocked. The named person and the time are recorded as it happens, with a photo when one is asked for, such as the hose wound on the drum. A fault found there, such as a leak or a missing nozzle, goes onto the team's list of jobs until someone closes it, and the supervisor can escalate it to the building manager, who can answer it.

The supervisor sees what was due, done and missed across the building, and records the reason for anything missed. Each day they approve a report that goes to nominated managers or client contacts the next morning: what was reported, completed and still open, and how the scheduled checks went.

07

Questions people ask

What is the difference between a hose reel and a fire hose reel?

A fire hose reel is part of a building's fire safety measures. Technical Guidance Document B 2024, Volume 1 describes a hose reel as "a length of tubing fitted with a shut-off nozzle and attached to a reel, with a permanent connection to a pressurised water supply", provided as first-aid fire-fighting equipment and installed to I.S. EN 671-1. A hose reel kept for washing down a yard is none of those things, and is not maintained to I.S. EN 671-3.

Is a fire hose reel always under pressure?

It is meant to be ready without anyone connecting it to anything: Technical Guidance Document B 2024, Volume 1 describes a hose reel as having "a permanent connection to a pressurised water supply". That is why the Department's monthly check looks for leaks, and why its five-yearly test pressurises every fire hose reel to maximum working pressure.

When to use a fire hose reel?

Only on a fire in its early stages, and only where it is safe. Technical Guidance Document B 2024, Volume 1 says first-aid fire-fighting equipment is for the occupants to use "with appropriate training and where it is safe to do so, in the early stages in the development of a fire", and the HSA's guidance on emergency escape and fire fighting says it is for employees to use "without exposing themselves to danger". The HSA also asks whether the use of fire-fighting equipment is included in the emergency plan.

Can fire hose reels be used by anyone?

Anyone can reach one, but they are meant for people who have been trained. The HSA's guidance on emergency escape and fire fighting says "appropriate staff will need training and instruction in its proper use", and Technical Guidance Document B 2024, Volume 1 expects occupants to use it "with appropriate training". In a workplace that usually means the designated employees and fire wardens named in the emergency plan.

08

Further reading, and a list to take away

The Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage's Fire Safety Guide for Building Owners and Operators is the place to start: section 6.7 on first-aid fire-fighting equipment including hose reels, section 5.6 on the fire safety register and section 8 for the maintenance schedule. Technical Guidance Document B 2024, Volume 1 covers where hose reels are provided in new buildings (paragraph 1.9.15). I.S. EN 671-1, I.S. EN 671-2 and I.S. EN 671-3 are published by the National Standards Authority of Ireland. Your local authority fire service can advise on a particular building.

Check that:

• every hose reel in the building is on a list, with a reference and a location someone new could find;
• someone is named to check every reel each month, and knows what to look for and who to tell;
• each monthly check records the time, the name and the result for each reel, at the reel;
• access to every reel is clear and its sign is in place and visible;
• every fault has a date it was reported and a date it was put right;
• the annual service to I.S. EN 671-3 is in date, with the contractor's report kept with the register;
• the last five-yearly pressure test is recorded, with the next one planned;
• the people who may use a reel have been trained, and the emergency plan says when not to;
• in a shared building, it is written down who looks after which reels.