SANTA BARBARA, Calif. (KEYT) – What if there were a way to put out fire without water, foam, or any other substance? What if it could be done with sound?
While the concept may seem too good to be true, it has been shown to work in a controlled setting.
Now, a new company, lead by a local man fueling it's growth, is refining ways to knock out flames and embers before they can grow – helping protect homes and infrastructure from fire.
"We're on a mission to create a paradigm shift in the fire suppression industry," said Sonic Fire Tech Head of Business Development and Santa Barbara County resident, Remington Hotchkis.
"It sounds like magic," Sonic Fire Tech co-founder and CEO, Geoff Bruder said. "It's just physics."
To show their products in actions, Sonic Fire Tech recently rented a house in the Hope Ranch area here in Santa Barbara. Their home protection system is built into the ducts of a home's gutter system.
"In order for a fire to exist, you need three things. You need heat, fuel and oxygen," Bruder said, then explaining how sound can put fire out. "We're basically just vibrating the oxygen faster than the fuel can use it. And it breaks the chemical reaction. So the fire can't exist."
Bruder set a small tree on fire to demonstrate to Your News Channel just how their home protection system operates. Flames were extinguished in about 30 seconds.
"So what the sonic Fire Tech system is," Bruder said, "is the only autonomous home protection system that works without using water or foam or anything else that is a limited resource."
The acoustic generator box plugs into the wall, with a backup battery in the event of a power outage. The sound wave runs through a ducting system in the gutter, sending out a cone of acoustic energy that disrupts flames detected by a sensor made by a company called Optect, overseen by CEO Alex Hudson.
"We detect it so sensitively," Hudson said. "That even if it's obscured behind bushes or through vegetation, it'll pick that up within half a second."
The sensor sets off a high pitched sound. The acoustic generator has a low rumbling sound to it, but the sound wave itself is at such a low frequency that humans can't hear it. Hotchkis says the 22 Hertz infra- sound is inaudible to land animals as well, with the exception of wolves and elephants. They are marketing the effective range of the sound waves at 30 feet.
Company PG&E is beginning to show interest in this new technology.
"We work with them within the framework of what we call epic projects," said PG&E Senior Manager of Wildfire Risk Operations, Hayk Hovhannisyan. "These are formalized projects where we partner with startups and smaller companies that develop innovative technology."
The power company sees it as a potential way to enhance community resilience to wildfires, and to protect their infrastructure.
"If we have technology like this at the base of our transmission structures and if there's a fire that is approaching our infrastructure we can extinguish this fire pretty quickly and safely," Hovhannisyan said.
The Lake Fire approaching his Santa Ynez Valley ranch home last summer led Hotchkis to the front lines of a fight to protect his community. When the smoke cleared, he started to seek innovative solutions to protect homes and other structures from fire.
"I found myself at MIT in a very competitive entrepreneurship program where I won that program coming out of it with an idea to build a business that leveraged a directed energy system to suppress fires, namely embers," Hotchkis said. "I went to that program a week after the LA fires erupted and burned my former community of Altadena. We lost our family house down there."
Motivated, and educated first hand on fires, Hotchkis found Bruder and his patent on a sonic suppression system.
"After a few conversations we decided to join forces," Hotchkis recounted. "So I joined Sonic Fire Tech as head of business development with the goal of getting this technology out of the lab and into the hands of those who need it."
Hotchkis says they have sold a few dozen units to protect homes in Santa Barbara County, greater Los Angeles and the Lake Tahoe area – although, none have been installed yet. He said they are working with architects on the projects to design each system to fit the style of each home, with installations beginning next year. The cost of one of these systems is between one to two percent of a homes value.
At some point, Hotchkis hopes home insurers will see the value of the technology, bringing insurance companies that have left California back and helping lower monthly premiums.
Hotchkis says the company has sold additional systems to protect a chemical storage facility, aircraft hangers, and a data center.
Sonic Fire Tech is also marketing a mobile pack that weighs about 50 pounds and runs on a battery they say lasts for two hours. It's main purpose would be to put out spot fires with sound waves. PG&E is exploring it's potential value and San Bernardino County firefighters recently tested it.
We reached out to Santa Barbara City and County Fire departments. Having not tested the products, they declined comment.
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