Plumis wants to spearhead the innovation of the next generation of fire safety systems that provide more value than just operating in an emergency, like outdated fire sprinklers. Using usually dormant temperature sensors to capture patterns of potentially dangerous behaviour, such as an elderly resident frequently forgetting to turn off the hob after cooking, alerting the social landlords of vulnerable individuals who might need to be referred to social care and allowing them to intervene before a fire occurs. This also means we can provide smart thermostats' functionality, translating into carbon footprint reduction, and make building management services available to landlords, without the need for an additional capital investment. This is aligned to the environmental agenda and the government's strategy on housing. Our objective is the extended deployment of technology we already master for these objectives to be met in a smarter and more cost effective way.

Plumis' 15-month experimental development project to develop a reliable, self-testing, water efficient, “smart” fire suppression device is motivated by a market opportunity to bring innovative and affordable fire suppression to domestic properties, a technological challenge to radically improve current sprinkler technology. Basic and unreliable sprinkler systems form the current standard in fire suppression. More than 40 million sprinkler heads are installed each year worldwide, but they fail to perform 1 in 9 times and are used more in industry rather than homes because of mandated regulations, low value proposition for domestic consumers and perceptions of their collateral effects. Plumis will significantly improve upon the current state of the art by developing “Smartscan”, a new fire suppression capability building on its Automist system which was funded with the aid of a 2013 Innovate UK Smart development of prototype grant. Automist won the Red Dot Design Award and the Queen’s Award for Enterprise in Innovation in 2016. Smartscan will improve on the current state of the art in domestic and industrial fire supression by being the first water mist-based system offering whole house protection, targeted and intelligent detection and suppression, and connected autonomous self-testing without the need to spray water in properties. Public funding would allow Plumis both the time and resources to focus fully on the project and to proceed at top speed towards commercialisation in the UK and US, developing a step-change innovation in the fire suppression industry with strong long-term benefits for the public good in a timely fashion.

Plumis wishes to develop a next-generation fire suppression system to compete with conventional sprinklers and overcome several factors that have slowed sprinklers' market penetration in domestic use. Presently Plumis produces Automist, a domestic fire suppression device which is used as an alternative to sprinklers for certain niche applications. To meet its growth objectives, Plumis wishes to develop a new product that learns from Automist but has much wider application around the world. This system is referred to in this application as a UFPS (Universal Fire Protection System) because it is economically applicable to a wide range of applications. Like Automist, the UFPS will be used in England and Wales to enable open plan layouts either under the building regulations, or the Housing Act 2004 and RRFSO 2005; however whereas Automist is designed for operation in a single room of 32 square metres or less, the UFPS will also be a full substitute for sprinklers throughout a premises, and as a result will enable a wider range of property types and locations. Like Automist, the UFPS will address several problems associated with conventional sprinklers: the consumer’s fear of water damage, space required, water consumption, lead time to get a fitted system, retrofit suitability, and the inflexibility and lack of transparency of the specification process. This project will aim to produce a Bench prototype UFPS which will retain Automist’s advantages in retrofit but will use valve control to improve value in larger new build projects. Smart detection and novel spray design will be optimised and the project will UL list the resulting design to a known international standard. This will enable much greater growth globally.