UNSW engineers, led by professor Guan Yeoh, create FSA FIRECOAT to protect homes against bushfires

Protecting homes against bushfires has been made easier after leading Sydney university engineers created a new fire-retardant paint – the first to pass stringent Australian testing.

UNSW Professor Guan Yeoh and his team spent five years perfecting a the FSA FIRECOAT fire-retardant paint, which is the first in Australia to pass the stringent BAL-40 test. Photo: UNSW

Protecting homes against bushfires has been made easier after leading Sydney university engineers created a new fire-retardant paint – the first to pass stringent Australian testing.

UNSW professor Guan Yeoh from the School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering led a team of engineers to create FSA FIRECOAT in partnership with Flame Security International, after receiving a $3m Australian government grant in 2018.

It’s now available at Bunnings Warehouse after years of exploring and testing which ingredients would best suit the paint.

Mr Yeoh, commonly known as the “fire expert”, said it wasn’t until 2021 when the group had their “eureka moment” and found the best formulation which they felt would “actually work”.

Once the paint is applied, “it can transform itself to form a carbon layer” which Mr Yeoh said would protect the underlying structure “for at least an hour”.

The fire-retardant paint works by creating a large layer of char which offers an insulating barrier to the substrate of a building and helps to deflect heat away. Photo: UNSW

According to the Australian Government website, bushfires generally pass an area in two to five minutes.

Once the paint went to testing, it achieved the Bushfire Attack Level (BAL) 40 standard – which assesses the resistance of buildings and construction materials.

While protecting the building’s structure is a key benefit, Mr Yeoh said lives could be saved as it buys more time for people to evacuate.

He highlighted testing which proved that even after 30 minutes of burning, the structure with the paint, was still standing.

Mr Yeoh said the paint also aimed at minimising the “spreading of flames from one house to another”, particularly in bushfire prone areas.

And the paint can be used on any surface.

FSA FIRECOAT paint was developed at UNSW in partnership with Flame Security International and partially funded via a $3m Cooperative Research Centres Projects grant from the Australian government. Photo: UNSW

“It can be painted on timber … concrete … every bit of metals, and basically it’s an undercoat,” he said.

Despite it only coming in grey, Mr Yeoh said it can easily be painted over and it will still have the same effect.

“What happens is the top layer will be burned off and then the undercoat comes into effect and it does its magical transformation,” he said.

“It gives a sort of additional fire protection … acting as an insulation … deflecting the heat … so hopefully the walls will still be standing and that’s what we were hoping for.”

In setting themselves out from the rest of the market, Mr Yeoh said his team were able to identify specific ingredients which were absent in other formulations which helped achieve the second highest bushfire rating possible – BAL-40.

“People say [I’m] like Colonel Sanders with the KFC secret recipe, and I say, ‘yeah I can’t reveal that’, but it works,” he said.

Mr Yeoh’s hope now is for governments to start endorsing the paint as well as insurance companies to consider implementing it as a way to protect homes.

“It will just benefit the homeowner at the end of the day,” he said.