Startup says sound waves can replace fire sprinklers; experts aren’t so sure

Acoustic fire suppression goes commercial.

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[xoa]

In America, the people in power decided to do everything cheap so they could make more profit.

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.

 

[xoa]

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).

What is the reason to have fire extinguisher in a house ?

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!

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.

 

[xoa]

My thought was, did it turn off the stove?

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.

I mean, if the fire started because of grease or overcooking, you HAVE to remove the heat source to keep it from reigniting.

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.

Residential use seems very misplaced, and grotesquely optimistic. People get a fire, and they typically run.

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.

 

[xoa]

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)

How do universal codes deal with wildly different local "practical physics" a building is subjected to that clearly absolutely do change across a "county line"? Ie, much of the US simply does not have earthquakes, tornadoes or hurricanes or snow/ice storms or the like in the way other areas do. How does a universal code account for the needs of California on a fault vs coastal Florida vs inland Maine vs Minnesota or wherever? Or are you thinking some sort of baseline with local additions? Does it take it into account relative material abundance or skillsets? I mean, certainly I can see the value in more standards for stuff that is shared, lots of infrastructure bits of homes, egress rules and so on are indeed pretty universal. But other aspects of construction and design seem pretty inherently local.

 

[xoa]

The question with residential use is whether this high tech solution degrades over time? A business can accept replacing the tech every 5 years as a cost of doing business — so long as the benefits/reduced risk pencil out. Homeowners aren’t going to do that.

Well, depends on the price and difficulty of replacing it doesn't it? Homeowners replace plenty of stuff or have maintenance performed on a fairly regular schedule, from water treatment to things like smoke alarms themselves (batteries first, then the device less often). If you can just unplug a thing and plug in a new thing and the cost of that part is low 5 years would be no big deal. Might be something that insurers would be interested in encouraging as well as part of their renewals. If it's expensive/challenging then sure, wouldn't pencil out.

 

[xoa]

People panic. I would not trust a significant percentage to act rational in an emergency.

OK? But how does that track with not trying to put it out? Like, you literally then go on to write for your anecdote:

Anecdata: I know someone who got extensive arm burns and nearly burned down the house because they tried carrying the grease fire outside.

Right, so their move was to try to stop the fire, not just flee. They did so in a poorly chosen manner sure, but I don't see how this supports the contention that typically people would just immediately abandon their house? Would they have been better or worse off or the same if some infrasound system had immediately started suppressing the flame?

 

[xoa]

He did not stop the fire.

He tried to stop the fire though, not flee.

DO NOT DO THIS is drilled over and over again for fire safety. People still try to get the fire outside. People still throw water on it. People freezing up and doing nothing. People not having either a lid or baking soda close at hand. Youtube is filled with videos of cooking fires gone wrong.

All of which is completely irrelevant to my response to Fatesrider.

Immediate fire suppression would be much better. Don't understand what you are trying to ask there.

You don't understand because you got lost in what you were replying to. Fatesrider asserted that "Residential use seems very misplaced, and grotesquely optimistic. People get a fire, and they typically run." I responded that no, I don't think people typically run, people try to stop the fire. Often in ways that aren't correct because of panic or they don't know better, but most people want to save their houses very, very much. Therefore a system which is incrementally better could have an application if it doesn't cost too much, interfere with something else, or have other downsides. It doesn't have to be a full substitute.

If you don't disagree with that then again I think you just lost the thread a little here.

 

[xoa]

Again, you haven’t read model codes.

No shit asshole. Neither have most of the people here. Hence why I asked you, the supposed expert, about how it works. Since I have a relative who I know is an architect though I'm just going to ask their opinion when I see them tomorrow.

Codes are incredibly balkanized but they shouldn’t be. The approach is the same. The rigor should be evenly applied to all situations. Not because a local permitting authority likes his own version.

From this response I'm getting very strong Chesterton’s Fence vibes, where you've got one perspective on a very complex system and are just assuming everything that doesn't conform with your vision is stupid and wrong. I'm sure there is stuff which could be further standardized, but you've made no case for it being everything.