Janesville, Wisconsin · Serving Rock County Since 1975
Janesville reinvented itself after the assembly plant closed, and what came back is a broader mix — distribution, food production, healthcare, and a downtown along the Rock River that keeps adding places to eat. All of it needs fire equipment somebody actually maintains.
Fire & Safety Equipment III LLC has covered Rock County since 1975 — extinguisher inspection, service and recharge, kitchen suppression, hood cleaning, paint booth systems, CO₂ refills, and hands-on training. We work in Janesville and out through Milton, Edgerton, Evansville, Footville, Orfordville, and Stoughton.
A City That Rebuilt Its Economy
For most of a century Janesville was a General Motors town. When that ended, what replaced it was more varied and, from a fire protection standpoint, more interesting: distribution and logistics along the interstate, food production, plastics and metal fabrication, a large healthcare presence, and a downtown that has been steadily rebuilding along the Rock River.
The riverfront work — the Town Square, the ARISE project, the restaurants and taprooms that followed — created a cluster of new kitchens in old buildings. Meanwhile the Milton Avenue corridor and the areas around I-39/90 filled with warehouses, light manufacturing, and commercial buildings, all of which need extinguisher programs built around actual travel distances rather than convenience.
We have been servicing buildings here since 1975, through the plant years and everything after. Ownership changes constantly in a town like this, and we are often the only ones who still have the record of what was installed and when.
Rock County and the Towns Around It
Milton sits just northeast of Janesville with its own school district, downtown, and industrial base along Highway 26, plus Milton College’s historic campus. Edgerton, further north, was built on tobacco and now runs on a mix of manufacturing and agriculture with a genuine main street. Evansville, west on Highway 14, has one of the best-preserved historic downtowns in southern Wisconsin — which also means a lot of old commercial buildings with kitchens tucked into spaces that were never designed for them.
Footville and Orfordville are smaller villages west and southwest, with schools, churches, taverns, and grain operations that need the same annual inspections as anyone.
North into Dane County, Stoughton has a substantial downtown, a hospital, schools, and a manufacturing base along the Yahara River. It sits naturally on this run between Janesville and Madison.
All of these are on the same route. None of them costs you a separate trip charge.
Warehouses, Plants, and Travel Distance
The distribution buildings along the interstate corridor are where extinguisher placement stops being a formality and becomes the whole design problem. NFPA 10 caps Class A travel distance at 75 feet and Class B at 30 or 50 depending on hazard level, and those distances are measured the way a person actually walks — around racking, not through it.
We map the building, flag any unit that is too far from what it is supposed to cover, and put it in the written report. Forklift charging areas, battery rooms, packaging lines, and flammable liquid storage each get their own treatment rather than a generic ABC unit on every column.
On the manufacturing side — fabrication, plastics, food production — hot work, dust, and process hazards drive the equipment choices. See our inspection and service pages for what happens to every unit on a visit.
Downtown Kitchens and School Cafeterias
Between the riverfront restaurants, the Milton Avenue corridor, the hospital and care facility kitchens, and the school districts in Milton, Edgerton, Evansville, Orfordville, and Stoughton, Rock County has plenty of hoods on the six-month NFPA 17A cycle.
Each visit: fusible links replaced and tested, manual pull station verified reachable from the egress path, gas valve or electric shunt confirmed to drop on actuation, cylinder weight and hydrostatic date checked, nozzles cleared and re-capped. Tag and written report.
In the older downtown buildings in Janesville and Evansville we still find pre-UL 300 dry chemical systems. Those are functionally obsolete for modern vegetable oil cooking and will not pass in most jurisdictions. We will tell you where you stand and quote a wet chemical replacement. See kitchen fire suppression and commercial hood cleaning.
Body Shops and Spray Booths
Janesville has a deep trades base, and spray booths turn up in collision shops, equipment refinishers, cabinet and millwork operations, and manufacturers who finish in-house. Every one falls under NFPA 33.
Semiannual service means agent tank weight and hydro 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 on actuation. We function-test the interlocks rather than assuming them. See paint booth fire suppression.
Around the booth, the mix room, gun-cleaning station, and solvent storage are Class B hazards with tighter travel distances than the shop floor. Same visit, same report.
CO₂ Extinguishers for Plants and Shops
Control panels, electrical rooms, server closets, CNC cells — Rock County’s plants and shops are full of places where dry chemical residue would cost more than the fire. 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 Janesville 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 Facility
We bring a 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 — and we teach the harder lesson too, which is when to pull the alarm and leave instead.
Rock County manufacturers, distribution centers, care facilities, and school districts use us for this, with sessions scheduled around shifts. See fire extinguisher training.
Fire Codes and Inspections in Janesville
Every commercial building in Janesville answers to the same three layers of rules, and knowing them takes the mystery out of an inspection. At the top is Wisconsin’s Fire Prevention Code, Wis. Admin. Code ch. SPS 314, which adopts NFPA 1, the Fire Code, for every public building and place of employment in the state. NFPA 1 in turn requires portable extinguishers to be maintained under NFPA 10, commercial kitchen hoods and suppression systems to comply with NFPA 96 and NFPA 17A, and spray booths to comply with NFPA 33. Underneath that, Wis. Stat. § 101.14(2) makes the local fire chief the state’s deputy and requires the fire department to inspect every public building and place of employment at least once each non-overlapping six-month period, unless the department has adopted one of the alternative schedules the statute allows. And for any employer, OSHA 29 CFR 1910.157 applies on top — monthly extinguisher checks, annual maintenance, and annual extinguisher education for staff.
The Janesville Fire Department’s fire prevention bureau, supervised by a fire marshal, schedules general inspections once a year for businesses and for apartment buildings with three or more units — one of the alternative schedules Wisconsin law allows. That annual visit is when an out-of-date extinguisher tag or an overdue hood system gets noticed. The inspector who walks in is the Janesville Fire Department, and what they look for is consistent: a current tag on every extinguisher, a semiannual tag on the kitchen suppression system, a cleaning label on the hood, 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 Janesville tend to call us before the inspection rather than after.
If an inspection has already produced a correction order, send it to us. Most extinguisher, hood and suppression items on a Wisconsin fire inspection report can be corrected on a single visit, and we document the correction so you can close the order without a second trip from the department.
- Janesville Fire Department — official city website
- Wis. Admin. Code ch. SPS 314, Fire Prevention — Wisconsin Legislature
- Wis. Stat. § 101.14, Fire inspections, prevention, detection and suppression — Wisconsin Legislature
- NFPA 10, Standard for Portable Fire Extinguishers — National Fire Protection Association
Fifty Years, Same Company
Fire & Safety Equipment III LLC has been based in Platteville, Wisconsin since 1975, with technicians located across southwest Wisconsin, eastern Iowa, and northern Illinois with our own trucks. We are distributors for Amerex, ANSUL, Pyro-Chem, CaptiveAire, and Lehavot.
No subcontractors, no auto-billing, no multi-year agreements. Ask us for a reference in Rock County and we will give you one.
Everything We Do for Janesville Businesses
One company, one invoice — across Janesville, Milton, Edgerton, Evansville, Footville, Orfordville, and Stoughton.
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.
Rock County Communities We Cover
These are the communities on our Janesville route. Multiple buildings get grouped into a single visit so you are not paying for extra trips.
- Janesville
- Milton
- Edgerton
- Evansville
- Footville
- Orfordville
- Stoughton
Questions We Get From Janesville Businesses
Do you service Janesville regularly?
Yes. Rock County is a standing route, not an occasional trip. Scheduled work is usually within a week or two, and a discharged system that has you shut down gets same-week attention.
Do you cover Milton, Edgerton, and Evansville?
Yes, along with Footville, Orfordville, and Stoughton. Same route, no separate trip charge for the smaller communities.
We run a distribution center. How do you decide extinguisher placement?
By NFPA 10 travel distance, measured the way somebody actually walks — around racking, not through it. We map the building, flag units that are out of range, and tell you where new ones belong.
Our downtown building has an old dry chemical hood system. Is it still legal?
Almost certainly not. Pre-UL 300 dry chemical is functionally obsolete for modern vegetable oil cooking and will not pass inspection in most jurisdictions. We will look at it and quote the replacement honestly.
How often do paint booth fusible links get replaced?
Annually in a spray environment. Overspray coats a link and changes how it responds at its rated temperature, so we replace on schedule rather than on appearance.
Can you handle a whole school district at once?
Yes. Multiple buildings get scheduled as a block with one consolidated report and invoice, and we can put staff through extinguisher training on the same visit.
Do you fill beverage CO₂ in Janesville?
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.
What does an annual inspection actually include?
Every unit comes off the wall, gets weighed against its nameplate, inverted if it is dry chemical, and inspected shell to nozzle. Then a new tag and a written report listing every unit by location, type, size, condition, and next hydro date.
Other Areas We Serve
Janesville is one stop on a route through southwest Wisconsin, eastern Iowa, 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