Davenport & the Iowa Quad Cities · Since 1975
The Mississippi runs east and west here, not north and south, and the metro spreads across two states. On the Iowa side that means Davenport, Bettendorf, and a string of river towns that all need somebody dependable handling their fire equipment.
Fire & Safety Equipment III LLC has serviced the Iowa Quad Cities since 1975 — extinguisher inspection, service and recharge, kitchen suppression, hood cleaning, paint booth systems, CO₂ refills, and hands-on training. We cover Davenport and Bettendorf along with Eldridge, Le Claire, Blue Grass, Buffalo, and Walcott.
A River Metro With Industrial Bones
Davenport is the largest of the Quad Cities and the only one that never built a floodwall, which tells you something about how the city relates to the river. The Village of East Davenport, the downtown along the riverfront, Modern Woodmen Park where the River Bandits play, the Figge Art Museum, the Adler Theatre — the older commercial core is full of buildings that have been repurposed several times over.
Underneath the riverfront is a serious industrial and logistics economy. Manufacturing, food processing, agricultural equipment, and a distribution corridor along I-80 and I-280 that reaches all the way out to Walcott. That mix produces the full range of fire protection work: kitchen hoods downtown, paint booths in the shops, special hazards in the plants, and extinguisher programs in warehouses where travel distance is the whole design problem.
We have been running this route since 1975. Businesses change hands here the way they do anywhere, and we are often the ones who still have the record of what was installed and when.
The Iowa Side, Town by Town
Bettendorf sits directly upriver from Davenport and functions as its own city — the TBK Bank Sports Complex, the riverfront hotels and casino, the Isle of Capri, medical offices, restaurants, and a solid industrial base. It is a significant share of our Scott County work.
Le Claire is further up the river, small but busy, with a main street of shops and restaurants that draws steady visitors and a riverboat landing. Kitchens there are on the same six-month clock as anything in downtown Davenport.
North on Highway 61, Eldridge has grown into a substantial community with schools, a downtown, and light industrial. Downriver, Buffalo and Blue Grass are smaller but have their own commercial buildings, schools, and grain operations. West on I-80, Walcott is known for the truck stop but is also a working town with businesses that need annual inspections like everyone else.
All of these are on the same route. None of them costs you a separate trip.
Kitchens Along the River and Beyond
Between downtown Davenport, the Village of East Davenport, the Bettendorf riverfront, and the main street in Le Claire, there is no shortage of commercial kitchens here. Add the school districts, care facilities, hospitals, and church halls in Eldridge, Blue Grass, Buffalo, and Walcott, and it adds up to a lot of hoods.
Every one of them is on a six-month suppression cycle under NFPA 17A. We replace and test the fusible links, verify the manual pull station is reachable and unobstructed, confirm the gas valve or electric shunt drops on actuation, check cylinder weight and hydro date, and clear and re-cap the nozzles. Tag and written report.
If your hood still has a pre-UL 300 dry chemical system — and in older Davenport buildings we still find them — it is functionally obsolete for modern vegetable oil cooking and will not pass in most jurisdictions. We will tell you honestly and quote the replacement.
Plants, Warehouses, and Distribution
The I-80 and I-280 corridor through Scott County is dense with warehousing and distribution, and those buildings have a specific profile: forklift charging areas, battery rooms, packaging operations, and travel distances long enough that extinguisher placement is the entire design question.
NFPA 10 measures travel distance the way a person actually walks — around racking, not through it. We map the building, flag units that are too far from what they are supposed to cover, and put it in writing rather than quietly re-tagging what is already hanging.
Manufacturing and food processing bring their own hazards: hot work, flammable liquid storage, and in some cases combustible dust. We handle the portable equipment and special hazard side and tell you plainly where our scope ends.
Body Shops and Spray Booths
Davenport and Bettendorf have a deep bench of collision shops, equipment refinishers, and manufacturers who spray in-house, and every booth falls under NFPA 33.
Semiannual service means agent tank weight and hydrostatic date, cartridge, fusible links in the airstream, nozzle caps, cable and pull station function, and the interlocks that shut down spray equipment, paint pumps, and the exhaust and makeup air fans. A system that fires while the fan runs is blowing agent out the stack, so we function-test the interlocks every visit.
The mix room, gun-cleaning station, and solvent storage around the booth are Class B hazards with tighter travel distances than the shop floor, and we cover those in the same visit.
CO₂ Extinguishers for Shops, Offices, and Server Rooms
CO₂ extinguishers go where dry chemical residue would cost more than the fire: server closets in the downtown offices, electrical rooms in the plants along the river, control panels in the machine shops and warehouses out toward Eldridge and Walcott. We fill CO₂ fire extinguishers by weight in our Platteville shop, track the five-year hydrostatic date, and swap a tested unit onto your wall so the room is never uncovered.
Beverage and industrial cylinders are a different animal, and we are not set up to fill them in the Quad Cities yet — that service is currently limited to the Dubuque–Platteville area while we bring more equipment online. If you have them, call and ask rather than assuming either way. Details on CO₂ refill.
Training at Your Site
We bring the propane fire prop and our own dry chemical extinguishers to your lot or dock. Everyone in the class puts out a live fire with an extinguisher in their own hands, which is the only version of this training that changes behavior.
Quad Cities manufacturers, distribution centers, care facilities, and school districts use us for this, and we run early and late sessions so shift workers are not asked to come in on their own time.
Fire Codes and Inspections in Davenport
Commercial buildings in Davenport answer to three layers of rules, and knowing them takes the mystery out of an inspection. Iowa’s fire code rules, Iowa Admin. Code 481—Chapter 280, Fire Control Administration, adopt the 2024 edition of the International Fire Code with Iowa amendments. The IFC requires portable extinguishers to be selected, installed and maintained under NFPA 10, requires commercial kitchen hoods to be inspected and cleaned at the intervals in NFPA 96 with records kept on the premises, requires a UL 300-listed suppression system over grease-producing cooking equipment serviced at the NFPA 17A interval, and requires spray booths to be protected under NFPA 33. The Iowa State Fire Marshal Division enforces the state code, and local fire departments enforce it building by building. For any employer, OSHA 29 CFR 1910.157 applies on top — monthly extinguisher checks, annual maintenance, and annual extinguisher education for staff — and Iowa’s own OSHA program adopts those federal standards for public and private workplaces alike.
The Quad Cities straddle two states, and it matters: Davenport and Bettendorf are under Iowa’s fire code rules, while Rock Island and Moline are under Illinois’ locally adopted codes. The NFPA standards underneath are identical, so one service visit and one set of records works on both banks of the river. What the inspector looks for is consistent: a current tag on every extinguisher, a semiannual tag on the kitchen suppression system, a cleaning label on the hood and the cleaning records that go with it, a current tag on the booth system in a body shop, extinguishers of the right class within travel distance, and records they can put their hands on. Those are exactly the things our technicians leave behind, which is why customers in Davenport tend to call us before the inspection rather than after.
If an inspection has already produced a correction notice, send it to us. Most extinguisher, hood and suppression items on an Iowa fire inspection report can be corrected on a single visit, and we document the correction so you can close it out without a second trip from the department.
- Davenport Fire Department, Fire Prevention — official city website
- Iowa Admin. Code 481—Chapter 280, Fire Control Administration — Iowa Legislature
- Iowa State Fire Marshal Division — Iowa Department of Public Safety
- NFPA 96, Standard for Ventilation Control and Fire Protection of Commercial Cooking Operations — National Fire Protection Association
Fifty Years on This River
Fire & Safety Equipment III LLC has been headquartered in Platteville, Wisconsin since 1975, with technicians based across Wisconsin, Iowa and northern Illinois, running our own trucks along the Mississippi corridor through eastern Iowa, southwest Wisconsin, and northern Illinois. We are distributors for Amerex, ANSUL, Pyro-Chem, CaptiveAire, and Lehavot.
We do not sub the work out, we do not auto-bill, and we do not hold anyone to a multi-year contract. Ask us for a reference in Scott County and we will give you one.
Everything We Do for Quad Cities Businesses
One company, one invoice — across Davenport, Bettendorf, Eldridge, Le Claire, Blue Grass, Buffalo, and Walcott.
Fire Extinguisher Inspection
Annual NFPA 10 inspection with every unit weighed, handled, and tagged — plus training for your staff on the monthly check.
Fire Extinguisher Service
Six-year internal maintenance, valve rebuilds, twelve-year hydrostatic testing, and honest replacement advice when a shell is done.
Fire Extinguisher Recharge
Refill, repressurize, and re-tag after any discharge. Tested, tagged swap units go on the wall so you are never uncovered.
CO₂ Refill
CO₂ fire extinguishers filled by weight and tested, with valve service and current hydrostatic dates.
Kitchen Fire Suppression Systems
Semiannual NFPA 17A inspections, fusible links, wet chemical recharges, and new UL 300 ANSUL installations.
Paint Booth Fire Suppression
Design, install, and semiannual service for spray booth and spray area systems under NFPA 33.
Commercial Hood Cleaning
Hoods, ducts, fans, and filters cleaned to bare metal on the same six-month cycle as your suppression system.
Fire Extinguisher Training
Hands-on training at your site. Everyone puts out a live fire with a real extinguisher in their hands.
Iowa Quad Cities Communities We Cover
These are the communities on our Quad Cities route. Multiple buildings get grouped into a single visit so you are not paying for extra trips.
- Davenport
- Bettendorf
- Eldridge
- Le Claire
- Blue Grass
- Buffalo
- Walcott
Questions We Get From Quad Cities Businesses
Do you cover the Illinois side too?
We are licensed and working in Illinois, and we cover the Iowa Quad Cities as a standing route. Call with your address and we will tell you straight whether you are in range rather than guessing.
Do you service Bettendorf, Eldridge, and Le Claire?
Yes, along with Blue Grass, Buffalo, and Walcott. Same route, no separate trip charge for the smaller communities.
Our warehouse is huge. How do you decide where extinguishers go?
By NFPA 10 travel distance, measured the way somebody actually walks — around racking, not through it. Class A hazards cap at 75 feet, Class B at 30 or 50 depending on level. We map the building and flag anything out of range.
We inherited a building and do not know what fire equipment is in it.
Common call. We inventory every unit and system by location, type, size, condition, manufacture date, and next hydro date, then give you a written report showing what is current, what needs service, and what has to be replaced.
How often does a Davenport restaurant hood need cleaning?
Depends on volume and cooking type. High-volume fryer or wok kitchens often need quarterly; moderate kitchens are typically semiannual. We look at your actual grease loading and tell you honestly.
Can you handle a paint booth that has discharged?
Yes, and it is a priority job because you are shut down until it is back in service. We recharge, replace every fusible link, clear and re-cap the nozzles, reset the control head, and re-verify the interlocks before you spray again.
Do you fill beverage CO₂ in the Quad Cities?
Not yet. Beverage-cylinder fills are currently a Dubuque–Platteville area service while we bring more equipment online. We do fill and service CO₂ fire extinguishers here; if you have beverage or industrial cylinders, call and ask rather than assuming either way.
We have several buildings across the Quad Cities. One visit?
Yes, and we prefer it. Multi-site accounts get grouped onto one visit or day with a single consolidated report and invoice.
Other Areas We Serve
The Quad Cities is one stop on a route through eastern Iowa, southwest Wisconsin, and northern Illinois. Here is the rest of it.
Iowa
Wisconsin
Tell us what you have and where you are.
Extinguishers, a kitchen system, a hood, a booth — one visit, one invoice. We reply the same business day.
5675 Southwest Rd, Platteville, WI 53818 · Mon–Thu 8:00–4:30, Fri 8:00–2:00