In one of the most comprehensive test suites ever run on a mist product at the BRE, Plumis Ltd. carried out a series of fire tests to verify the effectiveness of Automist in a series of fire scenarios. These tests were run by the Building Research Establishment in Watford UK and simulated both furniture and kitchen fires. The test was based on the setup of the sprinkler standard and the criteria of Scandinavian SRSA/DSB “Easily installed automatic extinguishing systems” with the critical addition of FED measurements and control tests for a complete and objective assessment. The simulated furniture test setup used is equivalent to the simulated furniture setups used in traditional sprinkler and draft watermist standards.

The Automist system displayed an improvement in the room heat and asphyxiant gas conditions, and a reduction in fire damage in all the tests conducted in which an unsuppressed equivalent scenario was compared. The tests therefore demonstrated the benefits of having the Automist for improving both survivability and damage limitation.

Product standards exist when there is a well established methodology to achieve functionality for a product. Commercial traditional sprinklers have clear guidelines on the maximum nozzle spacing and layout, required flow and even activation temperatures to ensure that a qualified person is able to replicate the setup successfully. Unfortunately, this information is not directly transferable to another product class.

While there are sprinkler systems standards (BS EN 12845 2004 Fixed fire fighting systems: Automatic sprinkler systems: Design, installation and maintenance, and BS 9251:2005 Sprinkler systems for residential and domestic occupancies, Code of practice) and a draft watermist system systems standard (DD 8458-1: Watermist fire suppression systems for residential and domestic occupancies – Part 1: Code of practice for design and installation), there are no British or European standards applicable to Automist. This is because Automist belongs to a much younger class of product which falls between a fixed automatic fire extinguisher and high pressure watermist sprinkler. These may sometimes be called mobile or retrofittable fire suppression systems.

Within Automist's product class, the Scandinavians are on the forefront of research. The Swedish Rescue Services Authority (Räddnings Verket) and the Directorate for Civil Protection and Emergency Planning (DSB, Norway) has developed in 2007 an “Easily installed automatic extinguishing systems” standard which has therefore been incorporated into our testing procedure. This standard was recommended to us by the International Water Mist Association.

To avoid reliance on a single (non-pan-European) standard and to truly evaluate Automist’s performance with the best available fire safety engineering tool, we have used Fractional Effective Dosage (FED). This method predicts how long it would take a person to lose consciousness, suffer burns, pain and ultimately die, due to oxygen deprivation, inhalation of toxic gases, and/or exposure to high temperatures.

The video below shows how Automist can protect inhabitants from a very serious furniture fire even in quite a large room of 8 by 4 metres with two open doors. According to FED measurements, a person in the unprotected room would most likely have died in under two and a half minutes, while with Automist the fire was suppressed and a trapped person would be expected to remain alive and conscious throughout.