FSA FIRECOAT

Summer ushers in the potential catastrophic bushfire season but thanks to a modest Australian professor and his team, we have a real shot at ensuring the safety of our homes. Enter FSA Firecoat – the fully accredited fire-retardant paint that protects both on the outside and the inside of our dwellings. It’s quite simply a game changer, saving lives, property and those treasures we hold dear.

Since 2018, the award-winning Professor Guan Yeoh and his team of engineers at the University of New South Wales, have worked hard on solving the scourge of bush fires with a product that is accessible to all home-owners through Bunnings. Now the world is taking notice of this Australian-made invention.

Using specialist polymer technology, FSA Firecoat can be applied as an undercoat to both internal and external structures, and works on a range of materials including brick, timber, aluminium, steel, concrete and plasterboard. Once flames hit these structures – a dense char layer is formed, which sticks to the wall and ensures flames go no further.

“It’s a carbon layer that acts as a fire barrier and gives you additional protection,” Professor Yeoh tells Australian Life. “Following a fire event, homeowners then scrape off the carbon layer, clean and prep the affected surface area, and simply re-apply the paint, which is available in shades of grey and white. However, Aussies can also apply a topcoat of any paint to achieve any colour they want,” he says.

This extraordinary Australian breakthrough has already been exported to the USA where it was rigorously tested at the University of California, Berkeley.

Professor Yeoh, who has notched up one award from NASA, in 1992, reveals it will now be sold in the USA, plus there’s now a plan to take FSA Firecoat to Europe.

In the meantime, in an Australian Life exclusive, Professor Yeoh reveals that he and his team are working on another fire-retardant product that could be sprayed on jackets for the Rural Fire Service to protect them.

”The Rural Fire Service only have one layer of cotton in their jackets,” explains Professor Yeoh, “while in the urban areas they have several layers to protect against falling debris.”

He believes that eventually the spray would also be available to citizens to coat their clothes to ensure they can get out of their homes safely in a fire event.

“It’s all organic, green materials, so if you spray it on textiles, while it might stick, it will wash off again afterwards,” he says.

Once it has gone through rigorous testing, he hopes to have it on the market as soon as possible.

Professor Guan Yeoh and his team are quite simply miracle workers who are helping to remove the fear from an Australian summer. Give this man, at the very least, an Order Of Australia.