Comparative analysis on maintennace and repair cost of different types of shipboard fixed fire extinguishing system

Abstract

Merchant ships could, by requirement, be fitted with any two of three different types of fixed fire extinguishing system (FFES); CO2 based, water based and foam based. Each system is quite unique and so as the maintenance and repair cost. Maintenance cost of FFES depends on ship size and type and the major cost categories are labor and material. Maintenance budget to sustain maintenance and repair work on FFES is always given lump sum to the ship’s master and hence it is helpful if the master is provided with indication on how to apportion the budget by FFES type, by system’s category and by system’s components. This research intends to establish these ratios based on data collected from 31,980 DWT chemical tankers with GRT 22,116. Maintenance and repair cost data are split into categories and later further breakdown into components representing the types of works performed on the FFES systems. Probability of occurrence of their average annual values are also estimated using simple Gaussian Method. The result show that for FFES comprising of CO2 and water based system, the CO2 based system will take 7% of the lump sum budget, its labor cost will take 91% and SA CO2 Fixed Fire Sys Cylinder Test Certificate component will take 47.4% of the budgeted sum. For a CO2 and foam system, the CO2 based system will take 6% of the lump sum budget, its labor component will take 93% and PUC0611-Test Fire Pump 12M component will take 25.7%. For water and foam FFES system, water will take 4% of the budgeted sum, labor will take 100% and SA-Foam Analysis component will take 47.6%.