Elide fire extinguishing ball - thoughts?

[witsd]

Hey folks. Has anyone used or considered using these devices?

https://www.elidefire.com/



We are considering their use specifically in unmanned electrical plant rooms and similar locations. They seem relatively cheap and better than nothing, given that we can't install sprinklers in these areas, but there's a lot of bluster on their website and I'm honestly not sure how effective they are confirmed as being.

I have a suspicion that once used in an open space (i.e. not a cupboard or enclosed cabinet as many of the demonstrations appear to be) they would fail to completely extinguish many fires.

To be clear, I have absolutely no interest in having them used manually, it would only be as a passive, heat-operated device.

[Messy]

I have no knowledge of this product whatsoever but I have seen similar claims of BSI 'certification' for another innovative (fire extinguisher)product, only to dig deeper and find the BS involved related to the manufacture of the cylinder rather than as a complete extinguisher

I am not saying that's the case here but the lack of detail feeds my scepticism

I have tried to use innovative kit before BSI standards have been written (a hypoxic fire prevention system and video smoke detection) and both caused a few issues - especially the VSD

But I did trial P50 extinguishers rather than buy several hundred at the outset, and maybe this is the way to go here? Buy one and have a good look at it first

[witsd]

I have no knowledge of this product whatsoever but I have seen similar claims of BSI 'certification' for another innovative (fire extinguisher)product, only to dig deeper and find the BS involved related to the manufacture of the cylinder rather than as a complete extinguisher

Yes, I've seen similar, hence the scepticism, though usually there are plenty of people calling out the products that have done this, and I'm not seeing any of that yet. Guess I'll have to get digging myself!

[WillPool]

Have only seen them advertised, was thinking of trialing a few on remote sites in Saudi Arabia, but the Client only wants old-fashioned fire extinguishers.

Whatever happened to innovation

Will

[Messy]

Whatever happened to innovation

As I said above, I used innovative video smoke detection on a very difficult building. It had multiple inner rooms that couldn't be fitted with vision panels and the access room was potentially quite smokey

VSD seemed to be the answer. There was no British Standard but I thought we'd give it a punt. It was worse than useless and gave so many false activations that the alarm engineers couldn't cope with

VSD uses standard cctv to view an area. Algorithms are taught what is normal and what isn't so raise the alarm if smoke is 'seen'. Its supposed to be adjustable and smart -

Sudden flashes of light - from brake lights to doors opening into sunny rooms - were totally beyond this useless system. I didnt know, but there's a momentary flash of light when the sun sets. Not enough for you or me to see, but the VSD saw it

We disconnected it from the alarm system and ran it manually- enough to inform security to check it while alarm engineers tried to fix it

In the end we scrapped it and shared the cost with the manufacturers due to contractual reasons. It cost us a lot of cash. Fortunately I had written the risk of it being innovative so possibly not working into the business case that my employer accepted, so I was sort of in the clear

But it did damage my reputation and had left me very sceptical about trying new technologies without a standard to rely on