Startup says sound waves can replace fire sprinklers; experts aren’t so sure
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Sounds great in theory, but I'll let other people test this before I risk getting burned with this system.
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Sounds cool, but after watching the video, I'm not impressed. For a fire that size, if I was in the room, I would turn the burner off and put a lid on the pan and wait until it all cooled down on it's own. If I wasn't in the room, my smoke alarm in the living room would surely go off and get my attention. I wouldn't want fire suppression (water or infrasonic) triggering at that stage of a fire.
Also, if you look at the right side of the video, you can see the drapes flapping around, which makes me wonder what the likelihood of this system tossing something else flammable into the fire, or even worse, blowing the hot oil out of the pan and making the whole thing worse.
Also, if you look at the right side of the video, you can see the drapes flapping around, which makes me wonder what the likelihood of this system tossing something else flammable into the fire, or even worse, blowing the hot oil out of the pan and making the whole thing worse.
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With the cost of retrofitting buildings, I assume most companies if they wanted to test this system would still have sprinklers in place (and could serve as a backup system).
If the ultrasonic system isn't effective, its not like it changes how the sprinklers work.
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I have no idea where you live but at least here in Finland that's not even remotely true. I don't know literally anyone who doesn't have at least one handheld fire extinguisher at home and many people have multiple ones. Some, like my husband and I, also have fireproof covers we can throw on any burning stuff to put fires out.
As for companies? They'd get fined all the way to hell and back if they got caught without fire extinguishers.
Um, to put fires out?
EDIT: I have to comment on the fire-resistant furniture as well: I have never heard of anyone having such, but even if people did have fire-resistant furniture they'd still have PLENTY OF OTHER FLAMMABLE STUFF LIKE CLOTHES, DECORATIVE ITEMS, PLASTICS OF ALL KINDS and so on. There's a ton of stuff people have all around their homes that burns easily and thus there's plenty of good reasons to have an extinguisher at hand!
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Sounds like a good initial line of defence in combination with sprinklers if the fire spreads more.
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FFS, is it important whether the sensor uses AI? I have a feeling that two decades ago, these people would have been offering a blockchain-driven sensor. Got to ride the wave.
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I can answer that: no, it's not. It's important to say it does, though, for all that lucrative investor money. Also, very often these companies use the term "AI" to describe traditional, hardcoded algorithms as well -- it's technically not a lie since there is no hard, legally-binding definition for what is and what isn't "AI", but it sounds far better to investors when you call it "AI."
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Um, no. There is no "THE MAN" for most of American homes, the majority are built by the people who first live in them. Those that aren't are still influenced by the competitive market created by those who do, and there are tradeoffs to building with much more expensive materials. The big obvious one being home size. There are real reasons that the American vs EU home average sizes look like this:
Now, I'm 100% open to arguments along the lines of "I'd rather live in a house half the size that had a 1% of the chance the to fully burn down in a fire", or arguments about historical value and looks etc. But at the same time I think it's very fair to recognize that other people would say "actually I want a bigger home that's easy to hack open the walls on so I can install upgraded networking or whatever later and do renovations on if I feel like it, and I'll take the risk and/or attempt to ameliorate the risk in different ways (active vs passive safety)". Right? There is rarely such a thing as a free lunch. Stick frame buildings are just fundamentally cheaper and more flexible to make and then alter later, and simultaneously are also much more fragile.
In fairness there are reinforcing effects in each market too. The ability to create homes in a given style at a given price also depends on the availability of labor and supply chains to support that, so if you've got much more of one style then another then in turn that will further tip the balance. But that also is what it is. And there are brick, stone, concrete and block buildings aplenty in America, for a given budget someone could certainly do a house that way instead of wood. But that budget would probably not encompass some designs.
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Kitchen hood systems, for example, or hallways in multiple unit dwellings. With a battery backup adequate to power the system, of course, A significant portion of residential fires are due to electrical issues, which often include electrical disruptions that could cut a hard-wired system off at its knees. A sprinkler system under pressure doesn't need power to work.
I value the thought of reducing ancillary water damage, particularly to downstairs units, but first things first.
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On the article directly, it sounds like a case of maybe them having something with a potentially useful niche (at the right price), but trying to over market it. This seems like more of a "first line of defense" thing, if it works well enough then maybe it can be deployed aggressively to try to stop things very early, but if that doesn't work a sprinkler is still needed. I suppose it's also true that there are lots of places that do not and probably will never have sprinklers, too expensive to retrofit. So again at the right price/flexibility/design, maybe infrasound could have a role in a "better then nothing" way. But the fact that it doesn't actually reduce heat isn't something they can get around, and is an extra worry in an age of ever more lithium batteries everywhere. Not everything needs external oxygen, sometimes you just plain need to cool something down.
The question then would be: are they hyping it up just as part of the typical, or is it because they've actually spent enough on R&D that an honest niche isn't enough for them (or their VC or whatever)? If it's the former that's not necessarily a killer, plenty of products that were "we can do so much with this!!" ended up making not-change-the-world money but very decent money in some specific context. But if they're in all-or-nothing mode then sounds like this might crash and burn (harhar).
The question then would be: are they hyping it up just as part of the typical, or is it because they've actually spent enough on R&D that an honest niche isn't enough for them (or their VC or whatever)? If it's the former that's not necessarily a killer, plenty of products that were "we can do so much with this!!" ended up making not-change-the-world money but very decent money in some specific context. But if they're in all-or-nothing mode then sounds like this might crash and burn (harhar).
Right, even if some stone/whatever building was perfectly fireproof and the building itself was fine after a room burned, a room burning, or even "merely" just some furniture or counter area or something, could still be an expensive mess. Or simply a sad mess, lots of us have things that aren't really worth anything on the market but have sentimental value. A fire extinguisher on hand to stop something quick isn't some enormous investment.
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This sounds like an interesting idea. As long as one can tell when a kitchen fire is not the gas burner, one can imagine a kitchen back up which could put out small fires without the mess of a sprinkler system. However, one would have to see proof of efficacy for much larger fires, and edge cases before considering this as a replacement for sprinklers. When I worked in chemistry labs our bigger fire fear was that a fire would trigger the sprinklers and turn a short term crisis into a large mess to clean up. Our biggest fear was the fire brigade would arrive and hose down the lab, at which point work would stop for months, and the water might well start secondary fires with pyrophoric agents being exposed by the power of the water jets, and subsequently igniting. We had a lot of stuff in glass bottles or cans under oil which was never exposed to oxygen or water for good reasons.
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Sadly, my 1970s patent for microprocessor-controlled condoms expired before the arrival of AI-controlled blockchain teledildonics. Maybe gifs and crypto can cause its rearousal.
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Water damage from tire suppression can be a really big deal, so if this works at least as well as sprinklers, great. I'm not reflexively opposed to new tech, but it does need to go through extensive third-party testing first. As an aside, the risk of water damage is one of the reasons that FM200 (or Halon in the past) gas systems are common in datacenter - they add cost, complexity, and maintenance but they dramatically reduce the risk of a small fire resulting in the destruction of many millions of dollars with of equipment.
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California mandated fire retardants in furniture until 2014, when it was discovered the chemicals were killing house dwellers and firemen alike. PBDEs, organophosphate flame retardants (OPFRs), and other toxic chemicals were in the in foam. Exposure is linked to cancer, thyroid disease and a host of other issues.
But to your point - yes, nowadays we have so much plastic and other compounds that hinder firefighting.
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Oh dear. American exceptionalism is bad enough, Euro-exceptionalism is wrong on so many levels.
My house is brick with solid interior walls and I have ABC fire extinguishers in the main rooms.
Does your part of Europe not have lithium batteries or gas stoves?
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I found it a little confusing that they say this is for residential fire suppression. Who has a sprinkler system in their house? I’ve never seen a suburban house with one. They are not required by code at least in the northeast US.
Is this something super rich people have? Are sprinklers required in some areas or contexts? I guess new high rise apartments do.
Is this something super rich people have? Are sprinklers required in some areas or contexts? I guess new high rise apartments do.
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They’re required where I am, at least in MDU buildings. I have an excessive amount where I am now. They’re even in the closets. There’s also one next to every apartment door in the building hallways.
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That looks extremely dangerous to put out the fire but let the highly combustible fuel billow through out the house. That was a small fire. Imagine something slightly larger. The heat is still there and releasing fuel that can potentially reignite with explosive conciquences.
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Two things that are great about sprinklers:
1. Water doesn’t just smother, it cools. It attacks 2 of the 3 elements of the fire triangle, very effectively.
2. Sprinklers don’t need power to keep running. In fact, if lines are severed, they keep dumping water. Less effectively, but it still works for a bit.
Obviously I’m no CAL FIRE expert, but color me skeptical.
1. Water doesn’t just smother, it cools. It attacks 2 of the 3 elements of the fire triangle, very effectively.
2. Sprinklers don’t need power to keep running. In fact, if lines are severed, they keep dumping water. Less effectively, but it still works for a bit.
Obviously I’m no CAL FIRE expert, but color me skeptical.
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I have a CO2 extinguisher in the kitchen and a 20lb CO2 tank hooked up for electrical fires in certain spaces. You need ~35% CO2 in a volume for most fires, those tanks' contents fill either 5 or 6000 liters uncompressed. So like 14x96gal trash bins. Plus you can rotate them for greenhouse use.
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They're increasingly common in new construction or even extensive remodels. Code changes for residential almost always 'grandfather' existing units rather than force everyone to bring their existing dwelling up to the new code standard. In the NE, where much of the housing stock is older, is one of the last places that changes like this will show up.
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That doesn't seem remotely correct to me.
I will buy that acoustic waves can generate too much strain on the combustion zone and that puts it out. Strain extinction is a fundamental phenomena and is why a candle blows out. It's not lack of oxygen (you can do it with compressed air just fine). It's the fact that the fluid that's heated from the reaction is pulled away from the fuel too quickly to reinforce the reaction.
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Unless you're going to wear asbestos fiber, essentially all clothing is flammable. There is a long unfortunate history of chemical treatments to make clothing less flammable, but fun fact: chemicals that are very stable against fire such as PFAS tend to stick around a long time, maybe forever because they are very stable. Assuming you don't want to be full of fluorocarbons, you can use thick, slow burning material like wool, but that is not comfortable all the time. Or at least I'm not wearing wool in hot weather.
That's why we design houses with smoke detectors, fire barriers between living spaces and garages, (depending on home size and location) sprinkler systems, etc.
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I like some elements of this if it works, like lower install costs and ability to deploy much earlier when the fire is still small. I don't think it could replace a sprinkler system unless you can work out fire resistant materials and battery backup.
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In theory, you can deploy this before it's a fire. Any ignition source can be extinguished before it can spread. You could have a white-hot piece of exposed electrical wire touching drapes and all that happens is a small hole smolders away. People might not like that though since they won't be able to light a candle or a cigarette. Also, I doubt their IR vision and acoustic control is that good. But that's how well the idea could work.
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My thought was, did it turn off the stove?
I mean, if the fire started because of grease or overcooking, you HAVE to remove the heat source to keep it from reigniting.
Residential use seems very misplaced, and grotesquely optimistic. People get a fire, and they typically run.
Where I CAN see this being useful is in a commercial setting, since grease fires are going to be attended, and can't always be prevented. But you're going to have to train the AI to not start blasting the food if open flame and flare cooking are common (as they are for a lot of Asian/Eastern style cooking). And that, I can see, is less useful. So a manual activation would make more sense. The whole integration with AI is pretty stupid, and looks like the weakest link in this idea.
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Whisper quiet.
This seems to be using rapid pulses of air, rather than just the infrasonic component.
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I infer from the phrases "wall emitters blast infrasound waves toward the source of the fire" and "point-and-shoot" that AI is used to locate the likely source of the fire and blanket it with the waves. You don't want to waste precious waves where they aren't needed.
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What sprinklers?
Thess circa-1952 subdivisions doesn't have any of them, and while I'd love to have sprinklers at least in the kitchen and garage, that will need to wait for an extensive remodel. If this tech is in a stove hood, or something positioned by it, that would be a no-brainer. It buys time to save the house.
Lots of "Not perfect, so we shouldn't even try it" energy coming from some quotes in the article. In real life, there will be loud annoying alarms and, more likely than not, firefighters being called for any significant activation.
TLDR; I don't understand the opposition.
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Architect here. I think this sets in a different category than sprinkler systems. It is more of an active extinguishing system vs a suppression system like sprinklers. It sits closer to a hood extinguishing system or a fire extinguisher itself rather than a sprinkler system. Without a doubt I can see this end up in higher end, large homes, targeting specific ignition sources. Most homes are built without sprinklers anyway. Certainly the fact that all you need is power to it makes it appealing for easier placement and maintenance.
Another note for the author, you will NOT get any additional certification regarding the NFPA. What the NFPA is saying is that it is up to the local inspector / code whether this system is accepted as an alternative to a sprinkler. Which means it will fight an uphill battle for decades as more and more fire departments become familiar and accept the technology.
Note, I’ll get downvoted here but this is actually one of the problems we have in the US, the lack of a unified building code. Life safety and physics don’t change across a county line. (And yes, building codes are universal and can apply anywhere. You haven’t read a model code if you don’t understand that). It is a huge hidden cost driver.
Another note for the author, you will NOT get any additional certification regarding the NFPA. What the NFPA is saying is that it is up to the local inspector / code whether this system is accepted as an alternative to a sprinkler. Which means it will fight an uphill battle for decades as more and more fire departments become familiar and accept the technology.
Note, I’ll get downvoted here but this is actually one of the problems we have in the US, the lack of a unified building code. Life safety and physics don’t change across a county line. (And yes, building codes are universal and can apply anywhere. You haven’t read a model code if you don’t understand that). It is a huge hidden cost driver.
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Separate tool, also unironically quite old tech at this point (albeit one of those many, many things where "the future is here but it's not evenly distributed"). For my grandmother before she passed away while still living in an apartment I helped set up, must have been (holy crap how time goes by) a good 15 years ago now, we had an automatic cutoff for the electric stove. Pretty straight forward, it was a device linked to a detector above the stove that went between the stove and outlet, simply cut power if it went off. Paid for itself just in terms of insurance, and like many elderly she was losing her sense of smell as she aged and not irregularly burned stuff because she couldn't even smell the initial smoke.
Absolutely, but that's also orthogonal to putting it out. You really want that done no matter what, anyway, and it may well make sense to have that be its own very simple isolated system.
Uh, what? No, if you see a grease fire or something similar absolutely the first thing you try to do is just put it out. If it's just starting then something as simple as dumping a bunch of baking soda on it can be good enough. Or a fire extinguisher of course. I've seen many stoves equipped with hanging dry extinguishing powder that just sits under the hood over the stove, either autorelease or a simple cord that can be pulled.
I'm genuinely pretty confused why you think most residential people would "typically" run. If anything seems like it'd be the opposite problem: people stay trying to stop a fire too long, because it's their own house they're trying to protect and they don't have regular drills/training.
No idea if this system would offer enough ROI in the real world. But in principle I could certainly see it being another layer of the onion? In commercial settings as well sure, albeit for somewhat different math, but no reason it couldn't be worth it in some residential particularly if the bar for retrofitting was lower. Things like candle fires, something getting on a wood stove, other small ignitions, maybe it could buy an extra minute to throw water on the heat source which could make a difference at the right price.
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Built-in fire extinguishers are now required in residential structures, in places were the local building code requires.
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The curtains are shopping around sure, but they’re not being blown. I’m not an expert on sound, but I’d guess the appeal here is the vibration that is shaking the air rather than just blowing it. Shaking results in moving molecules without spreading them.
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A good observation. These devices appear intended for localized fire suppression in high fire probability areas, like the stove top in the kitchen demo video. Note the sound emitter was pointed at the stovetop, similar to other dispensing devices we already see in commercial and restaurant kitchens, by their stovetop or frying area.
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