A lithium-ion battery fire sustains itself. It generates its own heat, liberates its own oxygen from the metal oxides in the cell, and carries its own combustible electrolyte. Cooling the outside of the pack does not reach any of that.

Lithium Black is a mineral-based agent, not a polymer gel. Natural minerals and dissolved organic and inorganic salts bond ionically to form a three-dimensional structure that is gel-like at rest and thins under pressure, so it pumps and sprays but stays where it lands. It works on three fronts at once: it absorbs heat rapidly and keeps cooling, it lays down a layered mineral coating that excludes oxygen, and it introduces natural antioxidant compounds that quench the free radicals driving the combustion cycle.

The residual coating is doing work after the fire is out. It should not be washed off.

TECHNICAL

Appearance black viscous liquid  ·  Rheology gel at rest, shear-thinning under pressure  ·  Polymer content none  ·  Shelf life minimum 36 months  ·  Storage below 30°C  ·  Standard packaging 6 litre pressurised extinguisher

Most electrical fires start inside something — a distribution board, a switch box, a control panel, a server cabinet. By the time a detector in the ceiling has noticed, the fire has had the run of the enclosure and everything in it.

TITAN is a self-adhesive pad fixed inside that enclosure, next to the thing likely to fail. It has no power supply, no wiring, no sensor and no service interval. The polymer microcapsules in it rupture at around 120°C and release the agent at the seat of the fire, inside the box, before anything outside has reacted.

It is dielectric and non-conductive, so it can be fitted alongside live equipment, and it works in humid or smoke-filled conditions and during a power cut, because it does not depend on anything electrical. Suppression happens capsule by capsule, so a pad is not spent by a single event.

TECHNICAL

Activation approximately 120°C  ·  Electrical dielectric, non-conductive, safe near live equipment  ·  Services required none — no power, sensors, wiring or maintenance  ·  Formats self-adhesive pads in several sizes

ATOM is the same suppression technology as TITAN, supplied loose. The microcapsules come in bulk or as an additive to be mixed into paints and coatings, so the protection goes onto a surface rather than into a box.

That matters where there is no enclosure to protect — the underside of a vehicle, a run of plant, a steel structure, a cable trench, a server room floor. The coating does an ordinary job in ordinary conditions: it is hard, wear resistant, weather and UV resistant, and it protects the substrate from corrosion. It only becomes a fire suppression system at the moment the surface gets hot enough.

It goes on by spray, brush or roller in two or three coats, cures at room temperature and is surface dry within about two hours.

TECHNICAL

Trigger temperature 110°C ±10  ·  Film thickness 50–200 μm  ·  Operating range −40°C to 70°C  ·  Drying surface dry ≤2h, full dry ≤24h, full cure 7 days  ·  Durability salt spray 1,000 hours, water resistance 240 hours, hardness ≥2H  ·  Substrates steel, aluminium, concrete, wood, plastic, glass, ceramics  ·  Shelf life 2 years

In a room fire, soft furnishings are usually what turns a contained incident into a room fully involved. Curtains and upholstery carry flame up and across faster than anything else in the space.

Fabric Shield is a clear, water-based retardant sprayed onto the textile. It dries to an invisible barrier and does not change the colour, texture, drape or feel of the material, which is the practical objection most people have to treating a fabric at all. Treated material carbonises rather than sustaining flame, so the fire stops travelling and the people in the room get their evacuation time back.

It is odourless once dry and safe for indoor use, and protection lasts up to three years in normal conditions before retreatment.

TECHNICAL

Appearance clear liquid, viscosity similar to water  ·  pH 6.5–7.5, neutral  ·  Density approx. 1.0 g/cm³  ·  Flash point none, non-flammable  ·  Durability up to 3 years under normal conditions

A fire-rated wall is only rated until somebody drills through it. Cables, conduits and services are added and moved throughout a building's life, and every hole is a route for fire and smoke into the next compartment. The compartmentation on the drawings and the compartmentation in the building are rarely the same thing.

Mastic is a water-based fire stop coating for sealing those openings — around cable and conduit penetrations, through-wall and floor openings, and construction joints. It goes on by brush, roller or spray, adheres to most common building substrates, and cleans up with water before it cures. It is low VOC and suitable for use indoors.

It is maintenance work rather than a product installation, and it is the cheapest fire safety intervention in most buildings.

TECHNICAL

Appearance white coating  ·  pH approx. 7  ·  Density 1.29–1.32 g/cm³  ·  VOC low, compliant with indoor air quality requirements  ·  Packaging 20 kg sealed containers  ·  Shelf life 12 months unopened at 5–35°C

A farm fire has everything in its favour. The fuel is dry, it is continuous, and it is spread over a distance no fire service can cover quickly. By the time an appliance arrives the fire has usually decided the outcome.

AGRI changes what a water bowser can do. It lowers the surface tension of the water so it penetrates scrub and grass instead of sitting on top of them, and it holds moisture in the vegetation and the soil for longer, so a strip stays protected after the tractor has moved on. That turns a tanker into something that can lay a line rather than chase a front.

It is used on crop fields and forestry edges, around barns, silos and stores, and across grazing land — the places where a farm's year is kept.

TECHNICAL

Action reduces surface tension for penetration into scrub and grass  ·  Retention improves water absorption and retention in vegetation and soil  ·  Application through standard farm bowsers, booms and knapsacks

Fire seasons are getting longer at both ends, and every El Niño turns that dial further. Forecasters predict the next one will be severe, and it will find ground drier than the last.

A firebreak works by taking the fuel away — ploughing it, cutting it, or burning it deliberately before the season. All three cost land, time and a window of dry weather, and a burnt break is itself a fire you have to control.

Fire Break treats the fuel instead of removing it. Applied to a strip ahead of an advancing fire, or laid in advance across the lines you want to hold, it leaves the vegetation standing and unwilling to burn. The fire reaches the treated ground and runs out of anything to do.

It is intended for veld fires in savannah grassland and Mediterranean scrub, for large-scale arable where a fire in standing maize moves faster than machinery, for commercial plantations in the paper and pulp industry, and around timber and wood product yards. Across Africa and Australia, millions of hectares of farmland go every year.

TECHNICAL

Use applied ahead of a fire, or on chosen lines before the season  ·  Environmental biodegradable  ·  Transport no regulations apply; not classified as hazardous  ·  Packaging 5 and 20 litre buckets  ·  Storage dry and cool, below 30°C, out of direct sunlight

A thatched roof is a substantial volume of dry grass sitting directly over the space people live in. It is also, usually, the most valuable thing about the building. Insurers know both facts, which is why thatch is priced the way it is.

THATCH is not a tin you buy and apply yourself. It is a survey followed by an application, done by trained contractors, and the survey matters as much as the spray. The roof is checked first — that the thatch is at least 175 millimetres thick, that rafters are no more than 900 millimetres apart and laths no more than 250, that the layer is properly compacted and the binding is tensioned, and that the structure is sound. A treatment laid over a roof in poor condition is money spent twice.

Application is by airless sprayer, outside first, in dry weather, finishing in good time before the temperature drops so the treatment cures properly. Quantity is calculated from roof area rather than guessed.

TECHNICAL

Delivered by trained contractors, not sold for self-application  ·  Minimum thatch thickness 175 mm  ·  Rafter spacing not more than 900 mm  ·  Lath spacing not more than 250 mm  ·  Coverage approximately 1.2 litres per m² of roof, 1.4 on an older roof  ·  Application airless spray, dry weather only

A pan fire is the most common fire there is, and the usual responses all cost more than the fire does. An extinguisher discharges powder across the whole kitchen. A suppression system over the range trips and shuts the kitchen for the rest of the service. Both are proportionate to a fire that is, at that moment, the size of a saucepan.

NoPanic is a sealed sachet kept in a drawer. Take it out, slide it into the edge of the burning pan, and the fire goes out. There is no residue to clean, no system to reset and no chemical clean-down. The pan is washed and used again.

Shelf life is five years, so it sits in the drawer without becoming another thing to service.

TECHNICAL

Format sealed single-use sachet  ·  Method slide into the edge of the pan  ·  Residue none  ·  Shelf life 5 years  ·  Servicing none

By design. The sachet is never opened and the contents are never handled. It goes into the pan sealed, works in seconds, and leaves nothing to clean up. Nothing to aim, nothing to mix, nothing to reset. Safety data sheets are available for specifiers who need them.