From the Capitol Square to the far edge of Dane County, Madison runs on kitchens, labs, clinics, and shops that all need somebody reliable handling their fire equipment. We have been that somebody since 1975.
Fire & Safety Equipment III LLC works throughout Madison and Dane County with technicians based in Wisconsin — the shop is in Platteville, but the truck that shows up at your door is usually not coming from there. We handle extinguisher inspection and service, kitchen suppression, hood cleaning, paint booth systems, CO₂ refills, and hands-on training — for restaurants on State Street, labs and clinics near the university, manufacturers on the east side, and businesses out in Middleton, Fitchburg, Verona, and the villages ringing the lakes.
A City Built Around Two Lakes and a Lot of Kitchens
Madison is an isthmus city, and that geography shapes the work. Downtown is dense — the Capitol Square, State Street, the Overture Center, Monona Terrace, the Memorial Union Terrace on Lake Mendota. Buildings are old, tightly packed, and full of restaurants operating out of spaces that were not designed as restaurants. Hood systems get shoehorned into rooms with low ceilings and awkward duct runs. That is exactly where a careless inspection costs somebody.
Then there is the university. UW–Madison brings labs, research buildings, dining halls, Camp Randall, and thousands of students living in buildings that need current extinguishers on every floor. Around it, the hospital and clinic system, Olbrich Botanical Gardens, the Henry Vilas Zoo, the Dane County Farmers’ Market spilling around the Square every Saturday morning.
Out from the center, the east side along East Washington has been rebuilding for a decade — breweries, food halls, light manufacturing, offices in converted industrial shells. The west side runs toward Hilldale and out to Middleton. South you hit Fitchburg and the industrial parks, and southwest is Verona, where the Epic Systems campus turned a small village into a serious employment center.
All of it needs the same things: extinguishers that actually work, kitchen systems that pass, and somebody who shows up when they say they will.
Dane County, Not Just the City
Madison is the center of gravity, but the ring of communities around it is where a lot of our work happens, and none of them are a special trip for us.
Middleton calls itself the Good Neighbor City, and between Greenway Station, the restaurants along Century Avenue, and the light industrial along Deming Way, it keeps a technician busy. Fitchburg has serious industrial and lab space along with a growing restaurant scene around Agora. Verona is dominated by Epic but also has a real downtown, schools, and shops.
Monona sits right on the lake, effectively a neighborhood of Madison with its own school district, businesses, and community center. Sun Prairie has been one of the fastest-growing communities in Wisconsin for years — new restaurants, new schools, new commercial buildings, all needing initial installs and then annual service. Waunakee, north of the city, has grown the same way, along with the industrial park off Highway 113.
South of Madison, Oregon and McFarland are villages with their own downtowns, school districts, and small manufacturers. We service both on the same runs that take us to Fitchburg and Monona.
Restaurants, Hoods, and UL 300
If you run a kitchen in Madison — downtown, in Middleton, out in Sun Prairie, anywhere — your suppression system is on a six-month clock under NFPA 17A, and your hood, ducts, and fan are on their own cleaning schedule under NFPA 96.
On every suppression visit we replace and test fusible links, verify the manual pull station is reachable from the egress path and not blocked by a rack, confirm the gas valve or electric shunt actually drops on actuation, check cylinder weight and hydrostatic date, and clear and re-cap every nozzle. Then the system gets tagged and you get a written report.
The UL 300 question comes up constantly in a city with this much old building stock. If your hood still has a pre-1998 dry chemical system, it is functionally obsolete. Vegetable oil burns hotter than the animal fats those systems were designed for, and dry chemical cannot reliably keep the oil below its reignition point. We will tell you where you stand and quote a wet chemical replacement if that is what it needs. Full detail is on our kitchen fire suppression page.
Hood cleaning is the other half. Grease travels up the hood, through the duct, and out the fan, and it burns all at once if something upstream lights. We clean to bare metal, photograph before and after, and leave a certificate and a sticker with the date. See commercial hood cleaning.
Labs, Clinics, Offices, and Server Rooms
Madison has an unusual concentration of research and clinical space for a city its size, and those buildings have hazards a generic ABC extinguisher does not cover well.
Server rooms and electrical closets often want CO₂ or clean agent rather than dry chemical, because monoammonium phosphate residue is mildly corrosive and gets into everything. Labs may need Class D units for combustible metals. Clinics and care facilities need units placed for staff who will be moving patients, not fighting a fire.
We sort all of that out during the walk-through: right agent, right rating, right travel distance under NFPA 10, mounted at the right height and visible from across the room. Our inspection and service pages cover what happens to each unit.
Shops, Booths, and Industrial Work
The manufacturing and trades side of Dane County runs from the east side of Madison out through Sun Prairie, Waunakee, Fitchburg, and Verona. Body shops, fabricators, powder coaters, equipment dealers, and printers all have hazards beyond the ordinary.
Spray booths fall under NFPA 33 and need semiannual service: 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, pumps, and the exhaust and makeup air fans. We test the interlocks rather than assuming them. Details on the paint booth suppression page.
Welding and cutting operations need the right rating within the right travel distance, and flammable liquid storage needs its own coverage. We flag all of it in the written report rather than quietly re-tagging what is already on the wall.
CO₂ Extinguishers for Labs, Server Rooms, and Clinics
Between the university, the research park, the hospital systems and the offices downtown and in Middleton, Dane County has more labs, server rooms and electrical rooms per square mile than anywhere else in our territory — all 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 Madison 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 Your Staff
We run hands-on extinguisher training at your site with a propane fire prop and our own dry chemical extinguishers. Everybody in the class puts out a live fire with an extinguisher in their own hands, which is a very different thing from watching a video.
Madison customers use this for restaurant crews, lab staff, clinic teams, school districts, and manufacturers, and we schedule around shifts. If your building has a kitchen system, we also show the managers where the pull station is and what happens after they pull it — the single most useful ten minutes in the class. See fire extinguisher training.
Fire Codes and Inspections in Madison
Every commercial building in Madison 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.
Madison’s fire department runs its own fire prevention program, and its inspectors see a lot of restaurants, labs and campus buildings. Businesses in Fitchburg, Middleton, Sun Prairie, Verona and the rest of Dane County answer to their own departments, all enforcing the same state code. The inspector who walks in is the City of Madison 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 Madison 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.
- City of Madison 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
Closer Than the Address Suggests
Our mailing address says Platteville. Our technicians live and work across Wisconsin, Iowa and northern Illinois, so being an hour from the shop does not mean you are an hour from the nearest truck — it usually means a technician is a few minutes away. We have been doing it since 1975, we run our own trucks, and Dane County is on a regular route rather than an occasional detour.
We are distributors for Amerex, ANSUL, Pyro-Chem, CaptiveAire, and Lehavot, so parts are genuine and our technicians are trained on the equipment they service. We do not sub the work out, we do not auto-bill, and we do not lock anyone into a multi-year agreement. If that is what you want from a fire protection company, call us.
Everything We Do for Madison Businesses
One company, one invoice — across Madison, Middleton, Fitchburg, Verona, Monona, Sun Prairie, Waunakee, Oregon, and McFarland.
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.
Dane County Communities We Cover
These are the communities on our Madison route. Multiple buildings get grouped into a single visit so you are not paying for extra trips.
- Madison
- Middleton
- Fitchburg
- Verona
- Monona
- Sun Prairie
- Waunakee
- Oregon
- McFarland
Questions We Get From Madison Businesses
Do you actually service Madison regularly, or only on request?
Regularly. Dane County is a standing route for us, not a special trip. Scheduled work is usually within a week or two, and emergencies after a discharge get same-week attention.
Do you cover Middleton, Fitchburg, Verona, and Sun Prairie?
Yes, along with Monona, Waunakee, Oregon, and McFarland. They are on the same route and there is no separate trip charge for the surrounding communities.
My restaurant is downtown with a tight kitchen. Can a modern system even fit?
Almost always. Wet chemical systems are designed around the appliance line and the duct, not around having spare room. We measure the enclosure and the duct run and design to the manufacturer’s listing. Awkward downtown kitchens are most of what we see in Madison.
How often does a Madison kitchen hood need cleaning?
It depends on volume and what you cook. High-volume and wok or fryer-heavy kitchens often need quarterly; moderate-volume kitchens typically semiannual. We will look at your actual grease loading and tell you honestly rather than selling you a schedule.
We have a lab with combustible metals. Can you handle that?
Yes. Class D units and the right agent for the specific metal, placed to NFPA 10 travel distances. We will walk the space with your safety officer and put together a plan rather than hanging generic ABC units.
Do you fill beverage CO₂ in Madison?
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.
Do you install new systems or only service existing ones?
Both. We design and install kitchen suppression, paint booth systems, and full extinguisher programs for new buildings and remodels, and we handle the acceptance test with the inspector present.
We have several Madison-area locations. Can you do them together?
That is how we prefer it. Multi-site accounts get grouped onto one visit or one day, with a single consolidated report and invoice.
Other Areas We Serve
Madison 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