Customer: West Midlands Fire Service & Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Services
Risk type
- Compartment fires
- Cooking oil fires
- Fires in open spaces
- Gas cooling
- Mixed fuel fires (diesel, wood, rubber)
- Sofa fires
- Tyre fires
With the modernisation and cost cutting in the fire service, many are looking to new suppliers for revolutionary fire fighting technologies. They are under pressure to reduce costs however keeping their teams’ safety at the forefront. 365 products (e.g. products which can be in use all year round) are a priority.
Having spoken with West Midlands Fire Service (WMFS) and Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Services (GMFRS) we decided the best solution was to invite them to our research centre in Poland to carry out 2 days of testing according to various realistic scenarios to establish 3 goals.
- Would FireBug technology work for the fires services?
- If it did work, what form would be most effective?
- Establish our systems maximum fire extinguishing capability.
From these answers we could select the best technology and products. From this experiment it was the decided the BacPac was a suitable product.
After numerous, successful demonstrations across a section of different fires it was established that there is a place for various different forms of our technology to combat different scenarios and problems that the brigades have to deal with. The BacPac product with its diversity and fire fighting capabilities came out tops.
We had 11 fire scenarios, which we carried out to test these products such as:
Pallets dosed with petrol and diesel, tyres ignited with petrol, 20 litres of rapeseed cooking oil ignited, sofa fire with petrol, compartment fire simulated by paper in a crib with 3 pallets and 2 chipboards and was redone 4 times at different temperature ranges and 3 different technologies.
The BacPac – with our patented rotor technology and 50 micron at 15 bars and 7.5L/min was a suitable product for small fire call outs from chip pans, sofa, rubbish, tyres and sheds.
The product has EN3 approval and A,B,C,E and F fires and dielectrically tested up to 34kv but can pass 100kv. We are developing 3 versions of the BacPac
- 1A BacPac that will sit independent o the BA set, the BA set can be fitted over the BacPac harness without interference.
- A BacPac that is a single larger cylinder with more water capacity for places a BA is not required
- A complete BacPac that is built onto the BA set so the BA set and cylinders are one single harness unit.
Solution
Our technology could comfortably achieve every scenario that was asked of it. The attendees seemed comfortable with it without any training. We have since developed and refined the RescueMax and BacPac products and after numerous meetings, customizing these products to further enhance the brigades current equipment we are happy we have met the brief.
We continue to work with many of the UKs leading fire brigades developing our product range to achieve their individual goals and nationwide aim of cost cutting and maximizing product ranges to save time, money and resource.
Customers comments
“A very understated piece of equipment that I’m sure in months to come will become a more focused piece of frontline equipment” Gary Taylor, Technical Officer, Operational Department GMFRS”.