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For its groundbreaking IdealGuard™ secure letter/mail box products PowerPrize Limited has been shortlisted a finalist for the prestigious Fire Excellence Awards 2011 Best Passive Protection Product category at International Firex 2011 at NEC, Birmingham.

International Firex is one of the largest dedicated fire safety events in the world. The Fire Excellence Awards celebrates the best products, services and individuals in the fire safety industry.

PowerPrize Limited started as a new products R&D company. It is managed by Dr Efim Rabinovitch, a scientist and author of many granted patents. He received his PhD from St. Petersburg Electrotechnical University 'LETI'. Before that he got an MSc from Moscow Power Engineering Institute (Technical University) and BSc from Tbilisi State University.

Dr Rabinovitch was inspired to start working on the lifesaving secure letter box by an arson attack through a letter box reported in the Evening Standard that killed four generations of one family.

Background

Further research showed that this was not an isolated accident. Deliberate fire setting is a national problem in the UK. London fire Brigade reported that in 2009 across London, over 13,000 fires were started deliberately. In 2010/2011 they had already attended 6000 deliberate fires by June 2011.

Police service reports that 95% of deliberate fire offences in dwellings involve accelerants introduced through the letterplate. Easily obtainable liquid inflammables, like petrol, are often used. Fire started in this area effectively cuts off main route of escape.

Arson is a growing problem for businesses too. Each year there are over 3,100 arson attacks on shops, cafes and small businesses. Arson claims cost over half (51%) of all insurance claims for businesses made in the last quarter of 2006 and the number of cases was further up by nearly 19% in the first half of 2007.

Also, there is evidence of an increasing trend in keys being used to steal cars. Between 1998 and 2001 85% of stolen cars registered after 1997 were stolen with the car keys and the most common methods of obtaining keys were through burglary in a dwelling, which includes 'fishing' of car keys through the letter box.

The current and the emerging situations are reasons enough for concern to the public, the fire security and police sectors. ACPO Crime Prevention Initiatives arranged a meeting in 2007 in order to discuss the situation with letter box related crime attacks on a property and to consider separate provision for the depositing of mail. The letter box crime shocking statistics make it obvious that the currently used letterplate products are unfit for protection of a property and the occupants against crime and vandalism.

Marketplace Situation

There are a lot of products on the market attempting to solve the problem with letterplate security and words like 'security' and 'fire protection' are used in abundance in the advertisements. However, these products cannot prevent introduction of flammable liquids through the letterplate and cannot fit at low level. Also, often there is little or no substance behind these claims and some of them are simply absurd or untrue.

Some of these bags belong to the category of active 'anti-arson' fireproof letter boxes with the inbuilt fire extinguisher. This category includes metal 'anti-arson' letter boxes too and these products are  designed to firstly contain any flammable liquid poured through the letterbox. After the problem, such as fire, had started, it is supposed to be automatically extinguished by a heat sensitive automatic fire extinguishing system fitted inside.

With the concept of containment you will have to deal with the contained stuff when you open such 'anti-arson' letter box. While the containment of solid hazards is unavoidable, the concept of containment of liquids is outdated now. After all, you do not want to find your letter box full of urine!

The concept of fitting a fire extinguisher into a private letter box seems bizarre and has many disadvantages. According to the manufacturers, the 'anti-arson' letter boxes are supplied with 'a special ALF sealed for life extinguishers, which do not require annual pressure testing'. In fact, ALF is a small fire extinguishing tube 6mm or 8mm diameter made from flexible plastic material and filled with liquid extinguishing gas. It is called Pyroflex and works by discharging a small volume of the extinguishing gas directly from the burst hole in the tube located close to the point of fire. The fire extinguishing action may begin only after the fire has started and around 15s after it gave rise to the temperature above a certain point. The sealed tube was originally designed to act against a minor fire caused by an electric fault in electronic circuits such as a short circuit or overheating of a component.

For protecting against small fires the sealed tube filled with its extingushant may well offer adequate protection. Now fitted inside the letter box, the tubes of this size may cope with a piece of burning paper (this is what they like to demonstrate in 'anti-arson' mail box product adverts), but are too small and useless against the real world threat when litres of petrol are poured in.

Also, the tube would be too late to stop the explosion from a flammable vapour, such as petrol vapour (takes only 100msec), and cannot protect against noxious substances that do not give rise to temperature. Once the tube had burst there is no protection against further arson attempts.

Portable ALF (Pyroflex) fire extinguishers with plastic body are regulated by the Standard BS 5306-3:2009 relating to the commissioning and maintenance of portable fire extinguishers. It requires that all extinguishers for which the standard provides no maintenance schedule, such as Portable Fire Extinguishers with plastic body shell and Extinguishers manufactured after 2002, which do not carry a CE mark (excluding refurbished extinguishers), should be condemned. 

Further, ALF extinguishers come with a 5 year manufacturer's guarantee. However, when used in the 'anti-arson' letter box the delicate plastic material of the Pyroflex tube can be easily damaged by the mail items or by criminals. Therefore, when used these extinguishers cannot be relied upon without periodic basic service that will include external examination for signs of dents, splits, gauges or other damage. The Standard BS 5306-3:2009 requires that fire extinguishers that are found to be defective while conducting the external examination should be condemned.

It is obvious that the secure letter boxes products that rely on the inbuilt fire extinguisher for fire protection, which is not periodically maintained and replaced, simply do not deliver the security they promise.

Furthermore, each time the fire extinguisher is replaced, it will add over 30% extra to the product's initial price.  

Some products on the market offer protection at the cost of disruption to mail delivery. For example, the product for simply locking the letterplate defeats the purpose of the letter box. Why would you need a letterplate if you keep it locked all the time? If it is not locked sometimes, then how you are supposed to juggle with locking/unlocking in order to keep the protection and to be able to receive random mail deliveries still? Simply locking the letterplate will disrupt the mail delivery - that is for sure, so it is not an option.

Then you may come across 'fire rated fire proof letter boxes' with intumescent lining in the door slot, which expands with the rise of temperature. This can protect only the door slot when the letterplate is closed, but not the property and the occupants since the letterplate can be opened by anyone.

Some mail box sellers are advocating for replacing of the traditional letter box with a letterplate by the external mail boxes, which they provide. However, clearly it is much more convenient and safe to have your mail delivered through the front door letter box rather than having to walk out into the cold and rain to retrieve your mail from the outdoors fitted mail box. Plus you would be letting warm air out through the open door and the mail box is a well-known target for vandalism and mail theft with a new spiralling problem of metal theft emerging recently.

Add to that the nuisance of the locks and keys that tend to get lost. Besides, it is a legal requirement and a tradition in the UK since 19th century that the mail "must go through" the door and there are millions of domestic and non-domestic properties with a letterplate that needs protection.

It appears that the situation on the market with letter box security is very confusing and misleading and before PowerPrize Limited solution became available there was not a single product on the market that would fully satisfy customer needs.

The Challenge

Creating a letter box solution that would meet the new needs of the 21st century was a major technical challenge. The main challenge was to make it super secure with expulsion of liquids out, rather than liquids containment, and maintenance-free without a fire extinguisher. Expulsion of liquids out is vital since they are often used in letter box arson attacks and inflammable liquid accelerants are more dangerous than solid ones: they give out twice as much heat from the same mass and burn twice as fast.

Further, the new letter box had to be suitable for non-invasive fitting to most doors and door materials at any level (to mid-rail that spans the middle of the door and bottom-rail that spans the bottom of the door) and work in conjunction with a traditional letterplate, so door appearance would remain traditional.

And furthermore, improving security of the letter box (and of the external door where it is fitted) as a stand-alone security solution without increasing energy efficiency would not be good enough. Under the Climate Change Act 2008, there is a legal duty to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in 2050 by 80% from the 1990 level. Loss of house heat through the letter box is a big challenge facing the energy efficiency of a property today. We aimed the security solution to be eco-friendly and economically viable for the customers even if an accident, such as letter box arson or letter box vandalism, would never happen at their home or business property. So, it had to be an integrated all-in-one solution, allowing high security linked with energy-efficiency by stopping the loss of house heat through the letter box, even when the letterplate flap it is open.

PowerPrize Solution

PowerPrize Limited has completed research, conceptual design and development stages of a revolutionary new concept for letter/mail box design and engineering. A portfolio of key patents was secured.

Samples of a new brand IdealGuard™ secure letter/mail box products were developed, manufactured, tested and demonstrated to a number of trades. They were also exhibited at the International FireExpo2007 in NEC Birmingham.

IdealGuard™ secure letter/mail box products are groundbreaking. Not only all of the above challenges were met by the products, but they exceeded the best expectations for a secure letter box by far.

Secure by design and maintenance-free, they generated evident buzz in the industry, received remarkably good testimonials from professionals and were awarded with a number of publications in professional media.

Later IdealGuard™ cutting edge concept was translated into the commercial arena with more advanced multifunctional (multi-purpose) IdealGuard™ secure letter box products. The unparalleled maintenance-free security is provided along with a number of further hugely beneficial integral features. This is why the products are multi-purpose. But being multi-purpose does not mean complicated. Simple is beautiful. So are IdealGuard™ products.

For its groundbreaking IdealGuard™ secure letter/mail box products PowerPrize Limited has been shortlisted a finalist for the prestigious Fire Excellence Awards 2011 Best Passive Protection Product category at International Firex 2011.