- My initial kind of impetus for creating the device
occurred in 2019.
So for the first eight years of my life,
I lived on the East Coast, in New Jersey.
And when I was on the East Coast,
I didn't really hear much about the wildfire problem.
So, when I came to California in 2012,
I was completely shocked to hear that every single season,
there was this huge disaster,
which burned people's homes
and displaced hundreds of thousands of people each year.
But I still didn't think that the problem
personally affected me until 2019,
when a brush fire actually came so close to my house
that it threatened to evacuate me from my home.
And from that came the motivation to create F.A.C.E.:
Fire Activated Canister Extinguisher,
which is a device which provides a first line of defense
for homes against wildfires
until a firefighter can arrive at the scene
and put out the fire.
I actually have a model right here that I can show you.
So in terms of sizing, it's about one and a half feet long.
This is the smallest version that I plan to make.
I plan to develop larger 5 and 10-gallon models as well.
And the way it works is actually pretty simple.
So on the extinguisher itself,
the real activation mechanism occurs
on this sprinkler head, right here.
And the way the sprinkler head works
is there's a red glycerin bulb chemical element,
which actually bursts
when it reaches 155 degrees Fahrenheit.
So when it reaches 155 degrees Fahrenheit,
that burst is going to let all the fire retardant
stored within the actual body of the device
to flow through and disperse
over a four to five foot radius.
And as these devices get bigger and they scale,
that radius will become larger,
and the amount of retardant stored inside the canister
will grow bigger as well.
So that does kind of two things:
In terms of in front of the canister,
in the fire-prone area where the fire is coming from,
the release of the retardant
is going to snuff out any flame
that's going to be within that vicinity,
and prevent that fuel from reigniting.
And in terms of the fire retardant,
which covers the surface that it's mounted on,
it's going to increase the material's resistance
to combustibility,
which means that you'd need a much higher temperature
to cause that material to burn.
It'd be great if, you know, someone like Elon Musk
or Jeff Bezos could back the project
because they have so many resources behind them.
I really think that investment
from a high-profile individual
with so many connections in the technology space
would be really, really helpful in me pursuing my device.