Fireguard Project

Designing and building a customised fireguard.

Members of the community called upon Engineers Without Borders to assist in the design of a safe fireguard for individuals with disabilities causing impaired balance. This project involves designing a fireguard to surround open fireplaces to protect elderly or disabled people from the risk of falling and obtaining injury. This is an important design problem, which once solved could assist a number of families.

Project Team

The team is being lead by Kaiying Chin, an engineering student from the University of Singapore currently working at Beca AMEC. The project mentor for the team is Richard Lin, Senior Lecturer at the University of Auckland's Mechanical Engineering Department. The other team members are engineering students Kan Zhang, Sarah Neill and Supun Perera.

Background

Existing fireguard's available on the marketplace are designed to protect children from open fires but are not strong enough or tall enough to support a falling adult. There is a need to design and
manufacturer a fireguard that is capable of supporting a falling adult in order to protect them from the fireplace. This need was identified by a relative of a Parkinson's patient who has stability problems and
has fallen near the fireplace before and suffered injury, including concussion.

Project details

The Fireguard Project team has conducted intensive research on safe fireguard designs in liaison with the community. After detailed analyses of fireguard designs currently available on the market and having identified the key design requirements of the disabled community, the fireguard team is moving into thedesign phase.

The team aims to partner with existing fireguard manufacturers and have the prototype out before next winter. In addition, the team is also exploring additional services support for those whose disabilities cause impaired balance.

The team would like to make a special mention and thank Eileen Lindop, our key community contact for her support and advice.