Fire Extinguishing Ball

[Ricardo]

Just spotted this interesting article, anyone ever heard about the fire extinguishing ball? It is a new type of portable fire extinguisher.  You just throw or roll the ball at a fire and after a few seconds "hey presto" the ball bursts and the fire is extinguished.  The company is called  Asia Iras Holdings Sdn Bhd based in Malasia. There are some short demo clips for your pleasure at www.asiairas.com

[kurnal]

knowing my luck I'd chuck it at the fire and miss- then have to crawl past the fire to retrieve it.
Pity they didnt have a couple handy at Bunsfield though.
Wonder if the inventor has thought about making them more effective by filling them with Carbon Tetrachloride

[Ricardo]

I suppose you could always add a piece of non combustible string to the ball, so if you miss with your aim, you can pull the ball back and try again. But maybe that would render the warrenty void.

[AnthonyB]

Ah yes, I've seen these. Brings back memories of the Red Comet & Harden Star, brine & CTC.....

Detonated aerosol particle extinguishers do have some specialised industrial applications, but this is a bit gimmicky - I'd rather have an Antifyre Pistole! I understand the fire has to be going some to cause the ball to detonate, which is fine for out doors demonstrations where it's a 55 gall upright drum on fire but not indoor fires or spills. If you catch a fire in it's incipient stages you have to wait for it to grow before attacking!

[Mr. P]

Seems to me, once you've let go, you have no control over it.  Any small or otherwise pressure wave from it 'exploding' could spread the fire and then you are stuffed, unlike run of the mill extinguisher which can be controlled and re-directed.
On a bigger scale could large units be dropped from aircraft, such as on wildfires where our colonial brothers and sisters have hard times?

[wallace317]

Interesting indeed, but it looks like it would spread a flammable liquid fire. Better off sticking with listed and labelled equipment rather than gimmicks-wonder how the pressure is maintaining in this thing?

[Clevelandfire]

Just a load of balls by the sounds of it

[Chris Houston]

I'm sure I saw something like this in a museum somewhere, maybe Kent Fire & Resuce.

Completely inferior to a fire extinguisher - you might miss!

[Midland Retty]

Yes these were around Donkey's years ago and as far as Im aware dissapeared into oblivion until now.

Can't say I like the idea at all.

The chances are you'd lob your little ball way past the fire or miss it completely or only get part of it.

Whatever next - a huge ball launched from a catapult device on a specially adapted fire engine??? "ready...aim.....fire......whoops....missed...... can we have our ball back please mister"

If I recall correctly an old factory on our patch had a large bank of the substance contained in those balls mounted above a paint store. I'm sure there was a type of temp rated bulb connected to it (bit like the type in a sprinkler head) The substance was dumped / released when the bulb was compromised by heat.

[Psuedonym]

You wanna try playing rugby when one of these buggers has bounced back out of the bloody fire! Talk about "quick hands!!". Almost as good as pass the parcel in Belfast. Oh what fun!

[Fishy]

I'm sure I saw something like this in a museum somewhere, maybe Kent Fire & Resuce.

Completely inferior to a fire extinguisher - you might miss!

In a similar vein there's an ancient 'chuck the tube in the fire' device on display in the foyer on the new LFB HQ in Southwark.

[AM]

There was this product as well: the extinguishing grenade:

http://www.pyrogen.co.uk/products/index.html

[Tom Sutton]

Try http://www.firesafe.org.uk/assets/images/Grenade-Bottles-new.jpg for Antique Fire Grenade Bottles