There are so many choices available to you today when it comes to flammable storage cabinets. They come in all different types of shapes, sizes, and materials so it’s hard to know which one is ultimately the best. You should always base your decision on which cabinet is suited better to your workplace or personal needs. Since most common material choices are wood and metal, today we’ll compare the two and have the ultimate standoff.
Which chemical/flammable storage cabinet is better, wood or metal?
All of these types of cabinets have benefits and downfalls when an emergency might strike. The end goal is always the same, no matter which cabinet you choose both will give you extra time to evacuate a situation before it turns fatal. Some may swear by the traditional steel safety storage cabinets while others may swear by the newer wooden flammable storage cabinets. You really have to compare how both of these cabinets would hold out in fires. Now I’m not telling you to purchase one and set in on fire, that would be ridiculous.
Rest assure that every workplace health and safety piece of equipment has been tested rigorously and is made to stand up to the job, there are also numerous laws and strict guidelines that have been put in place to ensure that the use and storage of these cabinets are maintained correctly. You can always ask your local fire department for the local laws regarding flammable storage cabinets and you should always research which chemicals may be dangerous to put together inside safety storage cabinets as they may react badly when put too close to each other.
Now let’s see how these two flammable storage cabinets would compare with each other in a fire. Some of you may be thinking that it is a terrible idea to install a wooden cabinet since it does in fact burn when exposed to a fire. Why on earth would anyone choose a wooden one, right? No, not really. Wooden cabinet is made from a special type of plywood that meets all the requirements it needs to as a chemical storage cabinet. The wooden cabinet is just as safe as a metal cabinet and it will burn the same amount of time as a metal cabinet.
Of course, it is a well known fact that metal storage cabinets do not burn. They just don’t which is why stainless steel is used as a casing for a flammable storage cabinet. While they don’t burn, they can bend and distort in fires so they can come open somewhere quite easily after a while whereas wooden flammable cabinets do not bend. The only time a fire can get inside one of these is once it has burned all the way through, which takes a long time. We all know metal is also a heat conductor and can reach extremely high temperatures in a fire which can also affect the content inside the cabinet.
Glass bottles can shatter which can let out chemicals and fumes and metal containers have been known to come open because of these high temperatures. A fact that most may not know, is that wood is actually an insulator and the outside temperature of the fire will have little to no impact on the temperature inside, so your contents won’t come open and cause more devastation.
