A kid moved away from his friends and the familiarity of New Jersey to California, then immediately grabbed a local problem by the scruff of the neck with a brilliant invention.
Along with potentially winning himself a career in advertisement television with an excellent reveal video and excitable timbre, an 11th grade San Francisco student has invented a fire-activated extinguisher to protect the property of those he loves now that he lives in a state that has a wildfire “season.”
A single device is capable of protecting fire-risk areas in one’s house, while multiple can form a defensive perimeter around one’s entire property against low to moderate intensity fires.
“Over the past three years, there have been almost 7,500,000 acres of wildfire in California alone, destroying nearly 50,000 structures,” describes Arul Mathur, inventor of the Fire-Activated-Canister-Extinguisher, or F.A.C.E.
When a sensor on the device heats up to a certain temperature, a glycerin element bursts within, releasing an eco-friendly fire-retardant spray 5-6 feet in all directions with the aid of a sprinkler. The retardant can be re-filled quite easily, and the only other human-controlled aspect is the initial introduction of air-pressure into the canister which can be done manually through a valve at the top.
MORE: After Massive Wildfires, DroneSeed is Replanting Forests 6x Faster By Using Special Drones
Mathur planned to introduce the device via Kickstarter, which saw his goal of $10,000 reached in less than a day, and came with an offer of $99 for F.A.C.E, that will now go up on retail for $120 when production begins.
The only existing market alternative for F.A.C.E is a manual extinguisher, or an automatic sprinkler system, which unless it can be installed during construction of the house, will normally cost between $1 to $3 dollars per square foot, amounting to many thousands for a family home.
Mathur wrote in his Kickstarter that every penny of profit will go to providing F.A.C.E. donations to fire risk areas. Indeed 5-6 feet of spray isn’t enough to stop large fires, but if enough are placed in strategic areas, neighborhoods or rural communities can work together to prevent brush fires from becoming wildfires, or living room fires from becoming house fires.
RELATED: This Non-Profit is Hard at Work Designing New Forests to Cure California’s Wildfire Curse
At the very least it could help delay a fire until firefighters arrive with more powerful equipment.
Watch the device in action on Mather’s Kickstarter page.
Editors note: This story has been changed to correct the spelling of Mr. Mathur’s name.
SHARE This Brilliant Innovation With Friends…