Automist^® home fire protection system is an innovative alternatives to fire sprinklers, designed to help homes comply with regulations: most commonly the fire section of the building regulations, often in open plan layouts. Fitting Automist® fire protection system allows you to create a more attractive, practical and valuable home. Alternatives to sprinklers like Automist^® are permitted under Building Regulations as long as they have been tested and shown to be fit for purpose. A similar set of requirements exists for the Fire Safety Order and the Housing Act, which are laws that apply to landlords. Automist’s^® most recent testing was conducted by Exova Warringtonfire. Test reports directly comparing Automist^® to residential sprinkler standards are publicly available.

Automist^® home fire protection system is triggered by an industry standard 57°C heat alarm. Heat alarms can either be mains or battery powered and must have a relay output either via a wireless or wired connection. The relay should include Normally Open, Normally Closed and Common terminals (a relay without Normally Closed can be accommodated with a modification by Mist Fire. Example heat alarms can be found here. Alarm panels may be used provided that they offer a suitable relay output.

A correctly installed heat alarm will reliably trigger Automist^® and should supplement household existing smoke alarms which can provide an additional warning of fire. Heat alarms give an audible warning when the temperature at the alarm reaches 57°C and, unlike conventional smoke alarms, will not be triggered by burning the toast, steam from cooking, or a car’s exhaust fumes.

When water is driven through a specialised nozzle at very high pressures (in Automist’s^® case around 80 bar), the water is atomised to produce a fine mist or fog. Water mist removes heat from the fire and displaces oxygen from the fire zone, resulting in fire control, suppression or extinguishment. The intention is to reduce the oxygen concentration around the flame, lower the temperature and lessen the radiative heat to such an extent that combustion can no longer be maintained, thus reducing damage and maintaining survivable conditions.

High-pressure water mist has proven itself highly effective in protecting deep fat fryers for many years, and is regarded as a very clean way to address the problem. Traditional thinking says that you do not use water to extinguish an oil fire, because bulk water sinks below the oil and boils, ejecting burning oil into the room. The very fine droplets produced by Automist^® are small enough to be carried by thermal air currents, however. Rather than sinking below the oil, they are drawn into the flame where they suppress the fire.

In the event of a fire, Automist Smartscan^® first locates the fire, takes aim, then activates its high-pressure pump; whereas Automist^® home protection system activates immediately. Once an alarm condition lasts longer than 12s, both systems are programmed to run continuously for 30 minutes or while the alarm input remains active, whichever is the longer. This prevents interruption of mist operation if the room temperature drops below 57°C while a fire is still present. For installations where Automist^® will be controlled by a fire panel, Automist^® may be set to operate only while its alarm input remains active. Automist^® uses approximately 10% of the water of a traditional sprinkler system, running at approximately 5.5 lpm, and therefore minimises consequential water damage and runoff. The system can be stopped at any time by pressing a button on the control unit.

Automist^® home fire protection system exists primarily to allow projects to go ahead with the layouts that customers want. Acceptance is ultimately determined by the authority that has jurisdiction over your project, for example your building control officer or approved inspector. In the case of LACoRS guide compliance you may need to consult your local authority housing officer or in some cases, Fire and Rescue. Automist^® exists primarily to allow projects to go ahead with the layouts that customers want. Acceptance is ultimately determined by the authority that has jurisdiction over your project, for example your building control officer or approved inspector. In the case of LACoRS guide compliance you may need to consult your local authority housing officer or in some cases, Fire and Rescue.
For building control purposes, both Automist^® and Automist Smartscan^® are covered by LABC Registered Details, allowing building control officers to approve compliant properties without a long and detailed investigation. For Automist^®, RD EW171 covers open plan layouts in loft converted houses, while Automist Smartscan;s^® RD EW534 gives easy approval as a straight replacement for almost any non-highrise domestic sprinkler application.
You can consult our Before You Buy guide to determine general suitability for your project. The guide explains how some projects are more easily approved than others and outlines some of the key options. Automist^® may not be the best option for every project and some layouts are not approvable even with a full sprinkler system throughout the property. If it’s not clear that your project can be easily approved, it will sometimes be possible to move forward with a custom fire engineered solution designed specifically for your project; it may also benefit you to make sure (before you start building) that you have selected a building control service that has the relevant specialist expertise in fire.
An Automist^® Accredited Installer serving your area can help you to work up a specific proposal for Building Control; please have layout plans ready if you have them.
Does Automist Smartscan^® have a permanent blue light behind the “letterbox” of the spray head?
No. The light only illuminates when the head is activated or when the head needs to re-park itself flush with the faceplate.

Automist^® home fire protection system should be commissioned annually by an Accredited Installer. Commissioning is a simple programmed procedure which allows Automist^® to be tested, during which the pump runs for approximately a minute and the output pressure is monitored. The installer will use equipment to direct the resulting spray into the sink or a bucket.

In the UK alone there are 300,000 dwelling fires each year: 60% of these start in the kitchen. Little real impact has been made in reducing domestic fire property losses despite public and private sector fire safety campaigns. Student housing, care homes for the elderly, sheltered accommodation and flats with shared BS 8489-7:201 are all high risk categories. UK Government research suggests that socially deprived households are 31 times more likely to suffer fires than households in general.

* Relative costs are based on retrofit and depend on the specific products used, economies of scale, and project complexity. The cost to install Automist^® depends mostly on how much of your property you need to cover, the floor area and room shapes.

Automist^® tends to be most cost-effective when installed in a single rectangular room of less than about 8.5 x 4.5 metres, where it will often work out significantly less expensive than retrofitting conventional sprinklers. When used in larger projects where multiple rooms need to be protected, sprinklers can be a cheaper solution, but Automist^® offers much less disruption, takes less space, has less potential for property damage, and has little or no impact on period features (e.g. ceiling mouldings). Automist^® also does not require an external pump or tank.

Automist^® must be installed by one of our Accredited Installers.

Technically, Automist^® home fire protection system  can be interconnected with many existing alarm systems, however some caution is required. To avoid mistakes, it’s preferable that Automist^® activation and domestic smoke detection be kept completely separate. Where a fire alarm panel is used, Automist^® can be driven from a volt-free relay output provided that the panel provides suitable zoning / cause-and-effect options. With Automist Smartscan^®(as of 2016), it’s critical that the system not be activated by manual call points or smoke alarms.

Landlords have duties to assess and manage fire risks under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 and the Housing Act 2004. It is a criminal offence not to comply with this legislation, punishable by large fines or prison sentences.

The risk assessment process introduced by the legislation is designed to highlight issues with the property such as poor escape routes or likely factors around residents such as the inability to self-rescue or early-stage dementia. The legislation requires that reasonable measures be taken to mitigate such risks and bans certain layouts such as inner bedrooms above first floor. Automist^® can be used to reduce the scale of the fire, slow its development and to give residents time to escape or to be helped to escape.

Designed for ease of retrofit, Automist^® can be installed without major disruption. When installed in the course of a major refurbishment project, the advantage is twofold: disruption is minimised, and volume pricing offers exceptional value.

Automist^® PPS offers a solution for organisations that need to solve a fire safety problem for a particular property or resident immediately, where the plumbing or dedicated electrical circuit for Automist^® is not present or the where need is temporary.

Automist^® is WRAS Approved. It has been examined, tested and found, when correctly installed, to comply with the requirements of the United Kingdom Water Supply (Water Fittings) Regulations/Scottish Water Byelaws.

The Automist^® Tap Head has been designed to be compatible with the vast majority of monobloc taps (45-60 mm diameter base) that fit into a standard 35 mm sink or work surface hole. Monobloc taps are affixed to the worktop using a stud bar, which may be at the front or rear of the tap dependent on the tap model: a) Front stud configuration (Automist^® with 2 nozzles, front facing stud) b) Rear stud configuration (Automist^® with 2 nozzles, back facing stud) Automist^® is compatible with either configuration. Monobloc taps which have two studs, instead of one, at either the front or the back can also be used with either configuration. Automist^® can also be installed on a flat work surface without a monobloc tap using a blanking plate.

The Automist^® Fixed Wall Head was tested by Exova Warringtonfire in an area 8 x 4 x 2.5 m with fire hazards up to 5m away. The spray head should therefore be within 5m of and in the approximate line of sight of any possible fire hazard. The protected room must be less than 32m2 per pump.

Automist Smartscan^® was tested by Exova Warringtonfire for with fire hazards up to 6m away with no formal area limit “per pump”. Additional systems may be required if line of sight cannot be guaranteed and approval may be less straightforward for rooms over 80m2.

The Automist^® home fire protection system range has been extensively tested against a variety of test and simulated real life scenarios. Automist Smartscan^® has met the fire performance standards outlined in BS 9252 and BS 8458. Automist^® Fixed Wall Head was also tested against a series of BS 8458 fire loads. For more details on the testing download our technical data and watch our videos to see the product in action.

Automist^®‘s installation guidelines ensure that these parameters are set up to be consistent with or better than those used in our third-party testing. These guidelines were extensively reviewed during the creation of our LABC Registered Details.

Innovative fire suppression systems are permitted for use by the English/Welsh and Scottish building regulations (e.g. section 0.18 ADB Dwellinghouses). In general, innovative products can only be certified by a third party if the pre-existing standards are broad enough in scope to capture them. This requires a standard that is strongly performance based (such as UL2167) as opposed to prescriptive (such as BS 9251). An alternative route to demonstrate equivalence is to third party test to the performance requirements to demonstrate that the intended performance is achieved despite the use of an alternative method.

The Fixed Wall Head was extensively tested by Exova Warringtonfire and is an LABC Registered Solution (EW171) for loft conversions. Automist Smartscan^® was also extensively tested by Exova Warringtonfire (BSi Verification Certificate – VC 656504) and is LABC Registered (EW534) to be used in any application where a BS 8458:2015 compliant watermist system is deemed to be acceptable as a code-compliant automatic water fire suppression system, for example in accordance with the recommendations of BS 9991:2015.

Automist^® home fire protection system is installed only by installers accredited by Plumis, and Plumis requests layouts and installation data from all installations and thus monitors installation quality. The accredited installer provides a certificate of commissioning to the customer which verifies that key guidelines have been followed.

Automist^® requires 1-10 bar pressure and an available flow of at least 6l/min to operate correctly. This flow is less than the Eco-Shower specification for modern homes. UK government data (Low cost Sprinkler Report 2007, FPA/DLCG) shows that 99.7% of UK homes have at least 1.5 bar in the daytime and 1.05 bar at night, assuming a 30% pressure reduction measure overnight.

The pump measures 365 mm (height) by 240 mm (depth) by 178 mm (width) and weighs 7.0 kg. It must be installed with a 100 mm gap without obstruction at both the front and back. The unit must be housed in a volume of at least 0.124 cubic metres and must not be covered with any products or materials.

The nozzles include a filter mesh to capture solids. In our tests we verified that there is no detectable change in nozzle performance over multiple hours of use, in a far more aggressive usage pattern than a real system would encounter. In addition, units are now supplied with a filter kit as standard.

LABC Registered Details are a type approval scheme for building regulations. They allow rapid approval of certain solutions that are not explicitly listed in the Building Regulations guidance but which have been deemed to be a suitable equivalent to the more standard solution. For more details of Automist’s^® Registered Details, visit the suitability page.

Automist^® home fire protection system works in conjunction with the (separate) smoke detection in your property to keep you safe from a variety of types of fire. Where the escape route can be compromised by fire because it’s not fully separated from living areas, people in the property will be warned of fires by smoke detection. Where these are small and slow-growing, detection should be adequate to get you out in time. Faster growing fires pose a larger challenge however, and smoke detection isn’t enough: such situations require a suppression system like Automist^® to “buy time” for people escaping from the property. Approved Document B recommends that in three storey houses that don’t have an enclosed staircase, the fire door between ground and first will help keep the first floor landing free from smoke so that the first floor escape windows remain usable, whether the fire is small or large.

Removing this fire door cannot be done casually, but in some projects, removal can be justified with a fire engineering approach, provided that other measures are put in place to compensate. Some fire engineers argue that the fire door in question will usually be propped open, as was found in NHBC Foundation Report NF19. If so, it will be largely ineffective and will not block smoke until it is manually closed. In this eventuality, a property that followed the standard layout could have been rendered much safer with earlier detection, achieved by installing interlinked smoke detectors in all habitable areas rather than just corridors. These engineers will therefore often make the argument that enahnced detection is a suitable alternative to this fire door in many projects. However such arguments must be made on a case by case basis, perhaps supported by a fire engineering policy decision within your building control organisation, or by a formal fire engineer’s report.

Automist^® Spray Heads must not be obstructed and are labelled as such. In addition, service engineers are trained to monitor for obstructions that may have been introduced over time and make the importance of this issue clear to the customer.

To avoid the risk of mis-targeting, additional precautions were introduced with Automist Smartscan^®. The Smartscan spray head will normally only be installed in “preferred positions” where obstruction in front of or to one side of the head by high furniture items like bookcases is highly unlikely. Where a preferred position can’t be found, extra spray heads (and therefore extra pumps) should be used to ensure that the installation is robust to future obstructions.