[s_wilwerding]

We've had a few fires around here lately, and I'm not sure if it's just our incompetent local firemen or whether it's generally true, but even if you have a somewhat minor fire, their best answer is to tear your house apart and spray water for a couple hours - it's rare that the damage they do is much better than just having let the house burn to the ground.

So, it got me thinking - if you have any kind of major fire, the only effect of spraying water is to keep the fire from spreading, not to put out the fire (and sometimes it doesn't work to keep it from spreading!). I figured there has to be a better way to extinguish fires, and a lot of comouter data centers use halon.

I expect that halon is expensive, but I was wondering how expensive? Also, is there any maintenance, as in do you have to refill halon every few years, etc.? Would is be feasible in a residential installation? Heck, you'd think releasing a sufficient amount of carbon dioxide should be enough to quell most fires.