EP2271409A1 - Firefighting unit - Google Patents

Abstract

In its broadest aspect, the invention provides a firefighting unit (as defined herein) characterised by the following combination of features: The hose reel (15) is housed within a cabinet (11) to which the operator must gain access in order to operate the unit; A pump (22) for generating a pressurised water supply, and a power unit (23) to drive the pump, are also housed within the cabinet; The water-issuing nozzle region (19) of the hose is adapted to be held and directed, in use, by the operator and carries an operator-controlled water releasing and water cut-off mechanism (16); The nozzle delivers the water in the form of a fine mist or fog of water droplets.

Description

FIREFIGHTING UNIT

Field of the Invention

The invention relates to firefighting units.

For the purposes of this specification a firefighting unit is defined as a unit in which water issues under pressure from a reel-mounted hose to be directed by an operator towards the source of the fire.

The invention is especially applicable with advantage to relatively compact wall-mountable units adapted to be fitted, in use, to an inside wall of an institutional building such as a prison or a school. But it is not limited to such uses and its scope is defined in the numbered claims which form part of this specification.

Review of Art Known to the Applicant

Firefighting units in the form of mobile self-propelled vehicular appliances are well known. The invention is not concerned with such appliances, but rather with the common problem of effectively fighting fires inside buildings.

Conventionally this problem is approached by mounting a succession of reeled hoses on the inside walls of the building, all fed from a common high pressure water supply already plumbed into the building; and each designed, when unreeled, to direct towards the source of the fire a similarly conventional high-pressure jet of water in a concentrated stream relying on the hose operator to play in an arc in order to obtain any reasonable degree of coverage.

Such a conventional installation does not serve the needs of such institutional buildings as prisons, schools, canteens and the like. Here the requirement is often for a wide coverage of water so as effectively to blanket a confined area - a prison cell, for example, or a school classroom - within which a relatively localised fire has just started. In prison cells, in particular, there is a need for such coverage combined with the ability rapidly to extinguish the fire, without initially allowing the cell inmate to escape from the cell (i.e. without first being able to open the cell door before the fire is attacked) and to ensure the fire is attacked quickly enough and efficiently enough for the cell to be opened, and the inmate dragged out, before he has been overcome with smoke inhalation.

None of this is adequately provided for by conventional in-building-mounted hose reel installations.

Summary of the Invention

In its broadest aspect, the invention provides a firefighting unit characterised by the following combination of features:

• The hose reel is housed within a cabinet to which the operator must gain access in order to operate the unit;

• A pump for generating a pressurised water supply, and a power unit to drive the pump, are also housed within the cabinet;

• The water-issuing nozzle region of the hose is adapted to be held and directed, in use, by the operator and carries an operator-controlled water releasing and water cut-off mechanism; and

• The nozzle delivers the water in the form of a fine mist or fog of water droplets.

Such a unit has advantages, especially in the exemplary case just outlined, which will become appreciated when the following description is read in conjunction with the accompanying drawings. Brief Description of the Drawings

Figure 1 shows in perspective a unit embodying the invention and with its door opened; and

Figure 2 drawn to an enlarged scale in comparison with Figure 1 shows one form the nozzle of the unit might take in practical embodiments.

Description of the Preferred Embodiment

The unit illustrated consists of a welded steel wall-mountable cabinet 11 incorporating an openable and closable hinged lid 12. A latch 13 on the lid engages a lock 14 when the lid is fully shut. Both latch and lock can be of conventional construction suited to the specific need of the unit in service. For example, a straightforward push lock may suffice for general usage in such institutional buildings as schools, care homes, etc whereas in prison usage the prison service will normally prefer to supply and fit individual locks of their own choosing.

The lid 12 of the cabinet illustrated takes the form of a free swinging door hinged about a vertical (in use) axis and openable, in this particular unit, through a fulll180° arc from its fully shut position. A hose reel 15 is mounted on the inside of the door and, once the hose is unreeled, the reel can be pulled in any relative position and will follow the door hinge swinging arc under the control of an operator. The hose itself ends in a trigger unit 16, holstered within a clip 17 on the hose reel mounting bracket 18 which retains the reel 15 inside the door 12. The extremity of the hose ends in a preformed angled nozzle 19.

Figure 2 shows one practical form the nozzle head might take. Here there are five water outlets, one in the centre of the head, four more spaced at the same radial distance from the central nozzle outlet and each equally circumferentially spaced about the head. These nozzle outlets are so constructed as to cause the water, when the unit is in operation, to issue from them simultaneously in the form of a fine mist or fog of water droplets.

Thus, whilst the hose nozzle 19 will have its water supplied to it at relatively high pressure, the emergent fine mist or fog will not strike a relatively narrow area at similarly high pressure but will be a correspondingly reduced-pressure issuance. And the use of (in this embodiment) five spaced nozzle outlets, the outer four of which are each angled away from the otherwise flat plane of the nozzle head end, causes the mist or fog to emerge in a generally conical wide-area blanket rather than as a single concentrated jet.

A so-called "doughnut" 21 is built into the hose end forward of the trigger region 16 as shown in Figure 1. This doughnut is a generally toroidal rubber or plastics component. It is so spaced from the trigger unit 16 that, as shown in Figure 1, when the hose end unit is holstered in the clip 17, the doughnut 21 abuts one edge of the hose reel mounting bracket 18.

The purpose of this doughnut 21 will be explained shortly.

A pump 22 for generating the pressurised water supply to the hose, and a power unit in the form of an electric motor 23 to drive the pump 22, are also housed within the cabinet 11 and when the door 12 is shut and locked, neither the pump nor the motor (nor of course the hose reel 15) can be accessed by a would-be operator or by anyone else. Pump 22 and motor 23 can be selected from suitable alternatives by the intended skilled addressee of this specification and the necessary power supply to them can also be appropriately determined once the site of installation is known and appraised. The water supply inlet 24 which in this embodiment protrudes from the top of the cabinet 11 may dictate the position of the cabinet adjacent a suitable internal water supply existing within the building.

The unit illustrated is particularly advantageously usable in prisons. The cell door of an individual prison cell incorporates what is known as an inundation point. This is a through- hole formed in the door and sealed off normally by a locking plug. In the event of a fire within the cell, a prison officer will rip the locking plug from its place, thereby exposing the inundation point without opening the door. With the firefighting unit mounted adjacent the cell door, the door 12 of the unit opened, and the hose end unholstered from the reel, the officer can thrust the nozzle end region 19 of the hose through the opened inundation point until the doughnut 21 jams against the edges of the inundation point (which, obviously, it is bigger than). This has two advantages. First, it seals the door again, simultaneously stopping any through-draft which could fan the fire within whilst giving the issuing mist or fog of water droplets a similarly draft-free blanketing effect within the cell. Second, it prevents any attempt on the part of the cell inmate to pull the hose end through into the cell and thereby wrench it out of the control of the operating officer.

The operator then uses the trigger 16 and its one-way valve actions to release and/or cut off the water supply issuing from the nozzle 19 until he judges he has sprayed the cell interior enough. He can then pull the hose end away from the cell door inundation point, open the door, enter the cell and either attend to the fire, pull out the cell inmate, or both. Throughout the operation of the hose, the misting blanket issues at fairly high velocity but not excessive pressure; the coverage, and the misting or fogging action, is the key to its effectiveness.

in the illustrated embodiment, the arrangement of major components within the cabinet, including the mounting and size of the hose reel 15, is designed to minimise the depth D of the cabinet. As stated above, the specification of the various components can be chosen to suit specific need by the skilled addressee, but by way of example only, the unit illustrated could comprise a single phase power supply feeding a single pump and with a maximum working pressure of approximately 100 bar, a flow of some 6.35 litres per minute designed operating parameter, a hose inlet size of nominally one half of one inch BSP, and with a motor size of 2.4 Kilowatt 230 volt 50 hertz, 3.2 horsepower single phase supply. The whole unit could weight literally as little as 95 kilograms if the cabinet were to have a nominal size of 700mm length, 300mm depth, and 700m height.

Whilst the unit illustrated is wall-mounted, units of the kind embodying the invention could be constructed as a hand-wheeled mobile unit although this is not presently preferred.

Spray nozzles of the kind suitable for use with a unit embodying the invention are shown in published UK patent application GB2436538 (Watermist Limited) although if such nozzles were to be applied to a unit of the kind now in question, their blow-off caps would not be used. The several previously published patent specifications cited against application GB2436538 show other forms of spray mist or fogging nozzles and the ways in which these might or might not be adapted for use with the present invention will occur to those reading this current text.

Claims

Claims

1. A firefighting unit characterised by the following combination of features:

• The hose reel is housed within a cabinet to which the operator must gain access in order to operate the unit;

• A pump for generating a pressurised water supply, and a power unit to drive the pump, are also housed within the cabinet;

• The water-issuing nozzle region of the hose is adapted to be held and directed, in use, by the operator and carries an operator-controlled water releasing and water cut-off mechanism; and

• The nozzle delivers the water in the form of a fine mist or fog of water droplets.

2. A wall-mounted firefighting unit substantially as described herein with reference to and as illustrated in any appropriate combination of the accompanying text and/or drawings.