During the MCFP Virtual Conference series, Greg Lyons, National Key Account Manager at Xtralis, talks about advanced detection and VESDA products.
Video Transcript:
By being here. I'm going to spend a little bit of time talking to you about VESDA but just kind of a little bit of history, a little bit of background. Essentially what we're, what we're showing here is a progression of technology up to the point that we're at today and we're going to keep moving. We're going to keep pushing on the technology front, but really this is just showing kind of the history of smoke detection. You know, it was looking at ion detectors and photoelectric smoke detectors that Lee mentioned. Then we also look at multi-criteria detectors such as the detector, such as the detector you see right there, which that detector actually has a photo electric sensing cell also has a thermal infrared imager built into the product.
Also has carbon monoxide detection and heat detection thermistor actually built in. So actually four different technologies built into that one detectors we're looking to you know, deal with issues where we might have nuisance alarms. We want to make sure that we're actually detecting some sort of smoke as opposed to some sort of foreign contaminant. So we're looking for multiple traces of fire. And then eventually we were going to go ahead and and move on and talk about the VESDA air sampling product, but also adding gas detection into that as well. So we actually can also implement a plethora of gases into the system and into the pipe network to actually detect for gas as well. But this here just kind of illustrates a little bit of the history of Xtralis, Xtralis has been around for 30 some odd years now really kind of develop the air sampling technology out in Australia and then D you know, developed it and introduce it to the, to the rest of the world, but really where VESDA really got its main start in terms of how we refer to it today, or look at it today is really in the data center and telecommunication arena.
So very low levels of particulate, very clean environments and VESDA does Excel in that type of an environment. But as you can see, as we've continued to develop the product over the past 30 years, we now are going into just about every single type of application you can imagine from not only the very clean, like I just mentioned, but also the very dirty including tunnels and mining applications, airports heavy industrial type applications because we can do very unique and beneficial things with our detection in order to circumvent and kind of overcome some of those obstacles that you may be experiencing you know, out there in the field. You know, a little just a little history of me, I've actually been you know, with the organization for almost 13 years. But I've been focusing on the air sampling piece now for about seven or so of that time.
And actually I did have a bit of time with our fast air sampling product before moving to the focus on the VESDA portfolio. But really they, they in essence operate pretty much the same, at least on the same, the same basic principle. And that is you have a main smoke detector. So the VESDA unit is a smoke detector is a UL268, a listed smoke detector. Nothing more, nothing less really in terms of, of you know, smoke detection. But it is one centralized smoke detector that displaces multiple spot type detectors you may have in the field. And typically with traditional systems, we have an orange or CPVC pipe network that is deployed out into the space. And we drill holes into that pipe network where we would normally have spot type detectors. And there's a lot of benefit to that.
And one of the biggest benefits is that when it's time for annual inspection, we don't have to get up to the ceiling or to where those smoke detectors might be located because we go to where the VESDA devices located. And we usually suggest installing that somewhere where it's easy to access, easy to gain access, to, easy to test and inspect and whatnot. So all your, your testing inspection is done from one centralized location. And some of our detectors can displace 50, 60, you know, up to 80 individual spot type detectors. So if you know, large warehouse, for example, we may have a lot of spot type detectors at the ceiling level or a gymnasium. Think about a high school gymnasium, for example, where you have spot type detectors at the ceiling. That means you have to bring in scissor lifts and you have to worry about damaging the wood floor.
And you also have to worry about, you know, kids trying to throw you know, volleyballs and soccer balls and whatnot, trying to knock the smoke detector off the ceiling. So we use this pipe network because it's much more know much more convenient in terms of the installation, much easier to maintain. The, the one thing though, when, when you're drilling all these multiple holes into a pipe network, the one thing that we can't provide there is the actual addressability of the individual hole. So if we're displacing 40 individual spot type detectors, one of the nice things about spot type detectors that tells you it's me right here, it's this one individual spot type detector. And we can't really do that with a traditional visit system because we're just drilling multiple holes into a pipe network and pulling that common air back to the detector for evaluation.
But with our newer newer technology, we actually do have that capacity. So we actually have our VEA, which is back in the, the, on the demo table back there. And that VEA actually can displace 40 individual spot type detectors with 40 individual tubes. And those tubes are all home run back to the VEA. And we'll talk about that a little bit more as, as we as we move on in the back in fact, how actually that operates and how we actually obtain that addressability and transition and transfer that information to the fire alarm panel. But this, this slide right here is kind of similar to to one that, that Lee was showing in terms of the progression of a fire. So we have time and we have you know, the increase of smoke and heat as time moves on. And of course the longer, the longer time that you spend you know or allow the fire to progress, obviously the, the higher heat, eventually we get to intense heat and that's where our fire sprinklers and heat detectors are actually going to start picking up the the smoke and actually give the signal.
But, but what we're actually doing with VESDA, again, remember very early smoke detection is we're trying to get that, that captured those lower levels of smoke. The idea is that we don't want to have to evacuate as much as we love our first responders. We much prefer they just stay in the firehouse or stay at the station as opposed to having to respond because we have technology now that allows us to detect smoke at such a low level, that we can bring somebody from the local area. Somebody, you know, maybe in this, in this hotel, for example, we have an engineer, we can send the engineer to the location and he can actually, he or she can actually investigate, figure out what's going on. And most likely, it's still at such a low level that they're able to mitigate and handle everything there locally without actually having to get to a point where the fire alarm system is actually generating a full-blown alarm, you know actually you know, evacuating everybody from, from the location and, and bringing the fire department here.
So, you know, really typically when you, when you think about a regular spot type detector, they typically are, you're going to go into an alarm around 2% obscuration per foot. And what this slide shows here is visibility at 50 feet, 2% obscuration you can see there is absolutely zero visibility. So that is actually the point where a traditional fire alarm system is going to go into an alarm and people are going to have to evacuate. So there's going to be a level of smoke. You know, hopefully the smoke is maybe up a little bit higher. We can stay low and maybe be able to crawl out at that point. But the story here is that, why do we have to wait for 2%? Obscuration we don't, we don't have to wait for 2% obscuration again, because we have technology that can actually pick up at a much, much earlier level.
And in fact, in telecommunication facilities, believe it or not, there's actually a requirement and an FPA 76 telecommunication facilities, like at and T Verizon you know, century link, places like that. They actually have to have a pre alert at two tenths of a percent. Obscuration two tenths of a percent obscuration. This is the alert that we have to give to the local you know, the local facility. So they can have somebody actually respond to the location and mitigate vent that telecommunication facility from going down. Obviously a lot of what we do these days is very dependent, very dependent on telecommunication facilities being up and operational. The biggest probably that I can think of is our ability to call nine one one, and somebody else pick up on the other line. So those facilities actually do require a hundred percent uptime. So with the biz, the VA, this is the industry's first address, air sampling smoke detector reliability with end-to-end system integrity monitoring.
We're going to kind of go through through the the entire the entire product but really what it does of using that Microboard, or that, that large bore CPVC system, that those you might be familiar with Vesta. What that means is that we have three quarter and CPVC, it has to be glued together. We have to drill out the holes, all the different connectors. We have to glue together with the VEA, the Microboard tube. And I would encourage you to check it out in the back. It's a Microboard tube about the size of say cat five cable. It's pretty much fold and, and and secured relatively the same way. But in terms of the installation it's very easy because there is no gluing. There is no drilling. It literally is just a push fit connection right into the sample point itself.
So it makes it very, very easy in terms of, of installation. One of the other things is the unique centralized testing. So with traditional VESDA systems, wonder air sampling systems, one of the things that we have to test, there's actually two things we have to test every single year. We have to verify the integrity of the chamber. So we have to make sure the chamber is detecting smoke. And the other thing we have to verify is that the amount of time it takes for that sample to get from the furthest point on that pipe network, back to the detector does not exceed a certain period of time. And depending on the requirement or depending on the facility, that could be 60 seconds in the case of the telecommunication facilities, 90 seconds in terms of data center environments, and 120 seconds for pretty much everything else.
So maximum 120 seconds of transport time. And that's a, it's a very simple test. But what it does require is that the technician go to the furthest point or to a test point. That's beyond that for this point. So I, in other words, I don't want to install this technology and still have to get to the ceiling. So I'm not going to stop my pipe run at the end of this ceiling. I'm going to continue it down to that far wall, down to the floor, have a test port. And now I can introduce smoke at a test port from the floor. The S the test smoke will go up, traverse through the pipe, back down to the best of unit. And now I can see within that 120 seconds that the system is, is recognizing smoke particulate. So that took care of the two things, the transport time test, and the test for a smoke in the chamber with a VEA.
However, because of the technology, we don't have to do that transport time test. So this literally is a one man or one person test. And the test is actually effected right here on the side of the unit. Those are smoke entry points. So we're able to, to to test much quicker, and I'll kind of explain, you know, how we're able to do that as well. We also have some unique connectivity options in terms of notification. So we recognize that you know, there are other ways to communicate as opposed to just through the fire alarm panel, the fire alarm panels code requirement. That's our, obviously our primary means of communication, but we can also send emails and text messages. We also have a nice IVs, the app that you can add to your phone or to your tablet.
And then you can actually see all the units you know, in your facility through wifi connection or, or either net connection that that the units have themselves another big, you know, another big thing, the last thing on this slide, but you know, a smaller footprint aesthetics are a big thing. We do a lot of high-end residential applications where the whole discerning homeowner doesn't want to see a smoke detector or a carbon monoxide detector on the ceiling. So we can actually hide that very, very effectively and very efficiently. And at the same time provide the same or better coverage that they would have had with their regular spot type detector and also museums and you know, new airports and things anywhere where architecture may be a consideration and, and know that spot type detector may just kind of mess with the flow.
The other really nice things about air sampling detection is actually active monitoring. It's not a, we referred to a spot type detector as a passive detector. That passive spot type detector is sitting on the ceiling and waiting for the natural air currents and the thermal lift of whatever is burning to bring that smoke right up to the chamber and hold it in that chamber long enough at a high enough concentration for that detector to actually recognize smoke. And that can be difficult in high ceiling environments where you may have stratification of smoke. The smoke only goes up so high and then kind of stops, or you have a high air flow environment where the smoke does start to rise, but then the airflow kind of takes it and moves it you know, to a different location. But with an active system, we're constantly pulling air in constantly pulling that air con constantly sampling of the environment.
And again, because we're, we're only needing to see at the early stages, very low levels of smoke. So we can drive somebody to that space. That means we don't have to have copious amounts of smoke at the ceiling. We just need to start seeing some of that little level particulate. That's kind of turning around and beginning to, to build up. And that's what gives us that, that ability to drive somebody to that location at an earlier onset. The other nice thing is that these these sample points are all in and tubes are all fully supervised. So we're ensuring that the, the, the total system is operational and functional 100% of the time. And that means if somebody were to plug or to block the sample point or a Dustin debris were to block a block. That sample point, we would actually get a trouble condition, because again, we're an active system monitoring that air flow.
So if we have to breathe harder, it takes us more power, more energy to continue that, that same air flow, we recognize that we're having to work harder, which means that we're having some issues with the way that our system was designed and commission. So we raised that, that trouble condition. Another big one here is just this little yellow cover you see right here, orange cover, this was a shipping cover. Some people also referred to it as a dust cover a lot of people during construction, like to put those dust covers on the smoke detectors to keep smoke or, or, or debris contaminants from getting into the chamber. But the, the, the, I guess the bad thing here is that the system has no idea that the smoke detector is being messed with. There's nothing that the smoke detector has to be able to tell the panel that it's not gonna be able to detect smoke, because I promise you with that orange cover on there, your smoke detection strategy is being compromised, but your, your, your panel, your system doesn't know with an active system, if somebody were to cover up that sample point, we would get that indication and be able to send to the location, figure out who's messing with that sample point, or, or why it's, it's plugged up.
And or, or in this case, you know, maybe it's gotten to the point where, where it's contaminated. And speaking of contamination, one of the, another nice benefit of the Bea is it's a self-cleaning product. So we actually can program that unit to self-clean itself on a, on a, on a given schedule, depending on the, depending on the environment that it might be in, for example. So we put the VEA into correctional facilities as semi harsh environment, but we, we recommend, you know, cleaning those sample points about every two weeks or so, and the system does it itself. And I'll kind of touch on that here in a little bit as well. In terms of the sampling port placement and coverage, as I mentioned this is when you're designing the system or we're actually drilling the holes into the orange CPVC or we're actually placing the sample point.
The VEA is going to be at about the same spot as where we would normally have our spot type smoke detector. So NFPA recognizes a sampling point of an air sampling system as a smoke detector, and therefore it must be tested and, and installed you know, in the same way let's see here you know, one big thing. So in the absence of performance based design criteria, which I will talk a little bit about performance-based design as well. But you can see here 30 feet spacing is, is going to be consistent unless there's some, some performance-based approach that that would suggest otherwise. So what happens is, you know, with this VEA and we can have up to 40 tubes, so up to 40 individual smoke detectors can be displaced. Each sampling point covers 900 square feet, just like a regular spot type detector, 40 points.
So technically this unit, this one smoke detector could cover a 36,000 square foot facility. It's spacing at 900 square feet. And that means that there's only one detector in that facility of 40 smoke detectors that needs to be tested and maintained every year. And it's, again, a very simple process because it's centralized testing inspection. But so what happens is, as the VEA is constantly pulling air constantly monitoring 24 hours a day, seven days a week once it reaches or detect smoke, it actually raises a global alarm. And when fire one is reached, it then actually begins a an investigation process and start scanning the tubes. So the way the VA works, there's actually two smoke detection chambers inside of the VTA. Each chamber is responsible for 20 of those individual tubes. So you kind of have to look at it, kind of like a big funnel until we recognize smoke. And then we start doing individual tube identification
The remote, our centralized performance testing method. You can see here this gentlemen is, is effectively testing about 120 individual spot smoke detectors. And you know, probably in about 10 minutes and you can see it based on the area that he's in, and he probably didn't need a whole, a whole lot of help in terms of actually being able to gain access to that. You know, if this were a jail or prison, for example, he wouldn't need to get into the actual cell pod to actually do any of the testing because those smoke detectors or sampling points are most likely in the plumbing chase in the air return out of the sight of the, of the inmates. So they can't, can't see it don't know there's something there to, to to mess with. But a very quick process, again, just entering the smoke on the side of the unit to verify the integrity of the chamber.
The system itself is verifying the integrity of the tube and the sampling points once a day. So we already know that that's happening. So again, very quick. So this is just a, an internal shot of, of the VEA. You see, we have our micro Microboard tubing coming in from the right hand side, going into a rotary valve that, that pump down there, it's actually a vacuum pump what we use in this product as opposed to an aspirator or a fan which we use in, in the bulk of, of of our detectors, but there's also filtering. So all visit detectors have filtering built in we're going to filter every bit of, of of air that we actually sample. The other nice thing that Vesta does is after we clean that air, after we filter it out, we take a small portion of that clean air, and we redirect it into the optics are right at the optics within the chamber itself. So we're doing it as effectively keeping the inside of the chamber clean at the same time without having to do anything, or actually have to get into the unit to change, to clean the chamber. All of that's done 24 seven.
So you know how it works, as I mentioned, where we're kind of sampling continuously sampling once once smoke is detected, the rotary valve begins to move and recognizes or identifies and locates the tube that is carrying the smoke and raises the alarm and sends that signal up to the the fire alarm panel the system, you know, once the smoke clears and once everything is reset, the system goes back to normal condition. The next, the other one, the other things is the supervision or how the supervision works. And I talked about the, the clogging or the blocking of of an individual tube. Again, we're, we're constantly monitoring. But if something actually does does clog up and then what happens is, again, the rotary valve begins to to operate, starts to move and starts to investigate, to figure out which exactly which tube is being blocked or having the issue.
And I say blocked, but it could also be an open. It could also be a situation where a tube is cut, for example. So same thing. We're going to recognize that as a higher flow, now I'm having to work too easy to keep pulling that same on air. So same thing, we're going to raise a trouble condition. And again, that information will be sent to the panel. And when the blockage is cleared and the system is reset, it restores and goes back to normal condition. And then the self cleaning, I mentioned that this system self cleans, I, I use the example of of the the jail or the prison environment. But so basically what happens is periodically, and again, according to a schedule and we can set that schedule up the, the actually focuses most of its power at each individual tubes. So we're doing is pulling additional air flow through that tube and through that sample point. So any particulate that may beginning to build up on these sampling points, we're actually going to pull that through again, we're filtering you know, filtering the, the the air flow as it's coming through. So we're not concerned about any contaminant actually coming into the, actually coming into the VEA unit.
And you know pretty much the same thing here, but in terms of the centralized test and maintenance, again, everything remains consistent. We're constantly pulling air through all, all 40 tubes. But it, when it's time to actually do the, the the testing right in the side of the unit, we have that centralized test port where smoke is introduced and that there generates the alarm and we can send that signal to the fire alarm panel as well.
So in terms of NFPA72 requirements, I, you know, I did mention that the NFP 72 recognizes a sampling point of an air sampling system as a, as a spot type detector. And this is just talking about in terms of the the requirements for testing and you can see here in chapter 17, where the actual requirement is for air sampling within NFPA72. But it does actually, you know spell out testing the end of the sampling point on each pipe run and verifying the air flow through all of the reports or points with this, with this first point, we actually handle that, you know, with that constant supervision of the we're doing that every single day. So basically what NFPA says is you have to do this once a year, and we're saying, we're already accomplishing that.
We're doing it once a day. So that handles and takes care of, of the actual air flow within the actual system. So we know that our air flow remains consistent. The only other thing we on the test, and you have to worry about the transport time, but if our air flow remains consistent, we're verifying that every single day. We know for a fact that our pipe network is fine, because if it wasn't, we'd be getting those, those trouble conditions. So again, the only other thing that we have to do is verify the integrity of the chamber. And we do that with the smoke entry on the side of the, of the unit in terms of you know again compliance with, with testing and, and inspection maintenance and whatnot. You know, again, we're, excuse me, again, we're continuously monitoring this air flow and, and one thing here that, that we show is the automated testing.
This is found in chapter 14 of NSPA just basically means that if there's another way of testing that provides the equivalent or an equivalency in terms of what code requires, then it's okay, so we do the same or better than what code requires. Then obviously we're meeting the intent of the code. And this basically is, is is, is the reference within an FK 72 that allows for that to occur and allows for us to take advantage of that. So this is the, the VA product portfolio. We have two main units, the, again, they both cover or take the place of 40 individual sample points. One has a three and a half inch display. So it would actually give you the information in terms of which tube and that can be, that can be named. So if you have a hospital, for example, and you have a row of surgical suites or a row of MRI rooms, or you know, what have all those areas that are very, very vital to the operation of a healthcare facility.
And it's unfortunate that a lot of times we have to shut those areas down in order to set up smoke detector until now, right? Because now we have a VEA, the VEA can go into those individuals surgical suites can go into those MRI rooms and we can do all the testing inspection without actually having to get in to that area, interfere with the staff, interfere with the patients that, that that are in the hospital itself. So this, this display here, you would be able to actually put in their surgical suite for B for example, but that information is also gonna pass straight to the fire alarm panel. So any remote enunciating stations that you might have on premise, that'll also you know, they also can show the you know, just in, in plain English or plain language exactly where the location is, as opposed to just some random, random point that now you have to figure out what that point means.
So there, there's also some these are the sample points over here. You can see, we have both white and black. Now, these sample points are unique to the VA and they're a little bit different. And so what makes them different is they actually have a check valve. They only allow air to be pulled in and they don't allow air to be pushed back out. So I mentioned, remember when I talked about cleaning the cleaning, the system, what we're doing is we're actually pulling more air in, right? We're directing more of the power to that individual, too, pulling additional area and trying to, you know, move anything that might beginning to build up. The reason we have that check valve is because of the supervision. So in order to supervise and verify the integrity of the tube, what the system does once a day, is it reverses course and pushes air back through each individual tube to verify that back pressure, if there's a deviation of that back pressure, then that's what gives us our trouble condition.
And, and we send somebody to the location to figure out why we're having that, that trouble condition. So these sample points do have that check belt built in, there's not a to use the sample points, but if you don't use the sample points, that would mean that you would have to do a trial port time tests on every single one of those tubes. So we do have some of those scenarios and, you know, some, some high-end residentials where they have certain areas, they don't want even one that small little, you know, that small little sample point, even on the on the ceiling, they just want to have that little pinpoint hole. So what that means is we just have to do it a test on that those specific points every, every year. Again, I mentioned that we use this Microboard tube.
It is about the size of like a cat five. I just marked with a serial number and Mark by the foot, actually every three feet it's marked. So we can identify the tube at the beginning of the, of the point, and we can recognize the tube when we get back to the, to the VA in terms of where it's going we also have this, this the HLI or high level interface, and that's us to connect multiple really allows us to connect multiple vessel units together, but have that one high level interface that takes all that information from the entire vessel net and transfers it to the fire alarm panel. So we'll talk a little bit more about the connectivity options here in just a second. And the last little last little piece up here is this is this relay the relay stacks.
And this is a a unit that literally will just sit on the top of the VEA connected with a ribbon cable. And so what this, what this relay stack does is it provides an output for each of those individual tubes because they're on, on the unit, on the VEA itself, there's actually seven things, seven relays altogether. No, I'm sorry. It's, it's five, five relays altogether. So you have to, you actually have to monitor all those five with an individual you know, monitor module, for example, to get a global alarm, but then to get your second signal, you'd actually need to have that relay stack as one option. And this is, this is kind of getting to the connectivity options in terms of in terms of options. So traditionally we would see all these monitor modules connected to the SLC loop and back to the panel.
But we do have some additional options again, with the, the high level interface on from a gateway solution perspective with some of the, some of the fire alarm panels, we actually delivering all that information from all our vessel units through the high level interface and onto the gateway, similarly here with an SLC input module as well. So essentially what that means is that for these units, where, where I was mentioned, you'd have to put an additional stack unit on top of it that that kind of goes away because everything now is going to be monitored through that high-level interface and not through individual monitor modules. So this is an example here. You're moving through a, a fight control panel and then out to our high level interface. And you can see here, we have multiple VESDA devices all connected on their own dedicated loop, but what this means is that all these individual devices don't have to have an individual connection to the, to that fight panel, right?
So we're, we're taking all the information through that high level interface for all the devices and pushing it you know, pushing it forward. And then one step further to that. And this is some of our newest technology and some of the technology that we actually took from fast. But this is the ability for the best units to reside directly on the SLC or the signal line circuit and talks in native language. So in the case of, of you know, all these devices here, it actually takes five addresses on the, on the panel with the exception of the VEA, that's going to take an additional 40 and that's for those additional 40 points, the system is going to give a general alarm, it's going to investigate figure out it's two, three, and then it's going to send a signal that it's address three on that device VA segments and applications.
This, this continues to expand sometimes feels to me like almost on a daily basis in terms of where we're actually seeing a lot of really good success with the VA. Just, you know, some examples I mentioned you know, hospitals, healthcare educational, we're actually doing some work now with stools, with the VA, because one of the other nice things about that tubing is that it's plenum rated and plenum listed. That means it doesn't have to be housed in conduit. And a lot of school boards require that the SLC loop also be encased in conduit. And there's other plenty of other locations that would be that same way, healthcare possibly jails and prisons, probably almost definitely. But so what we're talking about is actually removing conduit from the equation. There's a significant cost benefit to removing conduit. And then utilizing this, this tube, it's easy to you know, easy to install, you know, casinos retail, electrical cabinets you know, electrical cabinets is huge because now you're getting addressability of exactly which cabinet am I having the issue and not just the early warning, but exactly pinpoint, you know, where do I need to you know, do I need to focus correctional applications kind of near and dear to my heart.
I spent about 20 months in in a County jail down in Sarasota. They let me go home every night though, I was working there. Everybody's looking at me going, wait a minute. This guy's looking kind of weird, but no. So I actually, my first job out of high school was working for the Sheriff's office and did that for for many years. But the first 20 months of my, of my experience, I was involved in a correctional, no, the, in the correctional environment and anything that can be done to prevent anybody from having to go into a facility or anything that can be done to prevent disrupting the day-to-day activity. Because every time we have to go into a cell block, that means we either need to lock everybody down, or we need to move everybody out. And if that happens, somebody is missing doctor visits, somebody's missing visitation, somebody missing time outside there's, you know, and that, that just causes bigger issues, you know, for the facility.
So really huge benefit here because all the testing inspection is done outside. We're not having to get inside of that cell block healthcare. I mean, I look at a lot of the same, the same benefits you know, those, those areas I mentioned before, those are areas that we don't necessarily want to have to be in too often. We, you know, we wanna, we want to get in there, test inspect as quickly as we can and, and move back out. Historical buildings you know, homes. I mentioned the discrete detail action. So that's a knock-down ceiling right there. And that's the sample point. That's actually a circle there that's rarely coming down about an eighth of an inch that knocked down sling, probably coming about an eighth of an inch off the ceiling. So that's still in this size. If you looked up, you'd never be able, you'd never be able to see at all.
So discrete sampling, educational applications you know, biggest thing for me is that early that early warning, the ability to know something's happening, get somebody that knows what to do, get them there as quickly as possible to mitigate these days in schools. We don't need any more, you know, fire alarms going off or you know, panic types scenarios. Cause that's, that's just begging for for, you know, injury in and of itself. But the last thing I want to mention is performance-based design and going to start seeing more and more performance-based design approaches to fire alarm as, as we move forward. And that's really where we're VEA. And just as the early warning, you know, smoke detection in general can be extremely beneficial because we can actually pick up these threats sooner, which means that we can increase tenability.
So here you go, here's your fire alarm system actually making you money because we can actually prove that with early warning smoke detection system, we can affect evacuation much quicker than with traditional sprinkler systems. That means that we can show that we can we can evacuate a larger number of people more quickly and more efficiently. That means that you know, we can actually utilize the benefits of our technology and our fire alarm system to actually allow us more revenue, because we can put more people into a facility. It could also mean removing construction requirements like fire stopping or exit stairwells, believe it or not. We've actually had exit stairwells removed from projects because of our ability to detect smoke at such an early level. And with that this is you know, pretty much the end, but, you know, assured detection, flexible and fast installation, reduced maintenance and total cost of ownership, effective and efficient response and interruption free operation. And that pretty much spells VEA to me. So a lot of, a lot of benefits there, and I'd love to talk to you more because I could just stand up here for hours and keep going.
