Episode 329: Precision Over Volume: Rethinking the Fire Nozzle with Jason Floyd of HEN Technologies

Episode notes

For decades the fire service has answered bigger fires with one move: more water. Bigger lines, bigger turrets, bigger flows. Modern fires have outgrown that equation.

In wind driven wildfires, traditional fog streams erode before they reach the flame front. Crews end up battling the nozzle instead of the fire.

Hello Smart Firefighting Community!

Welcome to another episode of covering real world innovations via interviews with fire service and technology industry experts that empower YOU to develop your very own Smart Firefighting strategy.

Jason Floyd spent 25 years in the fire service. Now he works with HEN Technologies , the company behind the adjustable smoothbore nozzle.

The design started when the founder's wife evacuated her family alone from a California wildfire and challenged him to solve the problem. He was an industry outsider, so he broke the fire stream down to its science.

The result merges the best of smoothbore and fog: large wind resistant droplets with an adjustable pattern. The company is now growing from nozzles into a connected system of telemetry, hydraulics, and AI informed command.

Topics covered:

The origin story: a wildfire evacuation and an industry outsider

Superior fluidics in plain language

Merging 60 years of smoothbore and fog into one nozzle

Pre-distributed water: laser beam versus paintbrush

Large space fires and master stream limitations

Rethinking brush fire turrets for mega fires

The Maui study and wind resistant streams

UL research: put water in the right place

Nozzle reaction, fatigue, and one firefighter hand lines

From HEN Nozzles to HEN Technologies: telemetry, AI, and command

So take a listen to hear what he has to share.

Head to www.smartfirefighting.com to discover how SFF accelerates innovation for emergency responders, to find out when our next event is, or review our curated resources.

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Chapters

1. 0:00 Kevin's intro: precision over volume
2. 1:01 HEN's origin: a wildfire evacuation and an industry outsider
3. 2:35 From wildland to structural fires
4. 3:09 Fluidics in plain language
5. 4:52 Fog vs. smoothbore: what crews love and hate
6. 7:09 Laser beam vs. paintbrush: pre-distributed water
7. 9:29 Large space fires and master stream limits
8. 11:44 Rethinking brush fire turrets for mega fires
9. 12:14 The Maui study and wind-resistant streams
10. 14:39 GPM claims and UL research: put water in the right place
11. 16:42 Ergonomics and nozzle reaction for the operator
12. 18:32 From HEN nozzles to HEN Technologies: siloed fireground data
13. 21:08 Starting at the end user: telemetry, hydraulics, and AI
14. 23:16 The next three to five years
15. 25:56 Working with partners like Darley
16. 27:30 Words to live by: ask why

Questions answered in this episode

How did HEN Technologies start rethinking the fire nozzle?

Jason Floyd says the founder's wife was forced to evacuate alone during California wildfires and told her husband to solve the problem. As an industry outsider, he broke down the science of water streams and found a sweet spot between smoothbore and fog nozzles, merging large droplets needed for modern fires with the adjustability firefighters liked about fog streams.

Hear it at 1:25

What are fluidics and how does HEN improve them?

Jason Floyd explains that fluidics refers to what happens inside the nozzle device. HEN wanted adjustability of pattern, the right velocity, and superior droplet size. When departments test HEN against their existing systems, they find lower nozzle reaction force so a single firefighter can operate hand lines independently, large droplets that coat surfaces effectively, and the ability to adjust the stream pattern from tight to wide.

Hear it at 3:30

How does HEN's stream differ from a smoothbore stream?

A smoothbore creates a laser beam narrow stream that doesn't disperse until it hits a surface, so firefighters must wave it side to side to map water on surfaces. Jason Floyd says HEN's stream is pre distributed water right out of the tip, already on a trajectory to make a wide brush stroke, so firefighters just do paint strokes without having to overlap as much.

Hear it at 7:14

What advantage does HEN offer in large space fires?

Jason Floyd says traditional master stream devices use smoothbore stacks that create small focused streams, only coating small surfaces and possibly just hitting the back wall. HEN's bladed pattern can go horizontal or vertical to coat lots of surfaces, protect structural members like girders, and reduce ceiling temperatures, causing more gas contraction with smaller amounts of water.

Hear it at 10:08

How does HEN help in wildland firefighting?

Traditional fog sprays get eroded by wind and pre evaporate. Jason Floyd says HEN promotes a bigger droplet resistant to thermal currents and wind, allowing longer fire attacks with less water so wildland crews can complete their wet line assignments without having to refill as often, which is critical since time is everything in wildland environments.

Hear it at 12:22

Transcript

Machine transcript of the published audio. Names may be misspelled and some sections are missing.

[0:01] Kevin Sofen: Hello, and welcome everyone. On the surface today, yes, we may be talking about nozzles touching somewhat into this old debate between smooth bore and combination nozzles something you hear about lines, bigger turrets, bigger flows. But today between mega fires on the wildland side and complex incidents on the structural side, that just throw more water mindset is starting to kind of hit its limit. And HEN Technologies is one of those companies pushing back on the old equation and driving this narrative of precision over volume. So I'm really grateful to be sitting here alongside Jason Floyd. And we're just gonna kind of start off hot here of like this whole insight that led HEN to say, we're gonna rethink the nozzle from the ground up and build nozzles for the fires of today and tomorrow

[1:25] Jason Floyd: She was being impacted by wildfire in California and being forced to evacuate her family alone. And she had enough of this. And she told her husband, like, you need to solve this problem. And he was a complete industry outsider. It took this emotional path to come into the fire service and he started just breaking down. The science of our streams and it that's where it became non-emotional. It was evidence-based and he quickly realized the two factions of and he found a sweet spot in between where he embraced the large droplets that are needed for modern fires and they impacted by winds as readily, and then the things that we liked about the fog streamer, the adjustability, so he merged what each group loves about their nozzles and brought and that's exactly how it started. He wanted to actually help us solve our problem and what he was realizing early on by watching the news clips is like our stream and wind impacted wildland environments are were ineffective at fighting fire it was it looked like we were just spraying water for the optics of it and so he started breaking down what we needed to truly make a better impact in the wildland space, which translated to an amazing tool for the structural environment as well.

[3:09] Kevin Sofen: So let's get into that tool and some of the superior, and excuse, I'm probably gonna mispronounce this word, fluidics, is that it? Fluidics, superior fluidics, could you, what is superior fluidics in plain language and how has HEN sort of taken that, at what existed and taking it from great to excellent.

[3:30] Jason Floyd: Right, so fluidics, like I like to demonstrate this a lot, especially when I go do demos for fire departments [inaudible 3:36] stream what can occur within that device is important with the fog nozzles. There's a lot that goes on. It hits deflector plates. There's a compensation that retains a nice stream reach with incomplete flows or incomplete pressures. And so then you can look at the smoothbore side and it truly is a valve. It's just a tapered orifice and depending on the orifice dimensions, you're going to get different gallons per minute. So the fluidics for HEN, what we wanted to embrace, was the adjustability of the pattern and to make sure that we had the right velocity coming out and our droplet size was superior. And so the fluidics with HEN are demonstrated with amazing detail when we go out to fire departments, because what I like to do is say, you know, take your existing fire attack system, put that down on the ground, let's pump it. And I asked the attendees like, what are your challenges with this? And most of the time it's the nozzle reaction force, that pressure that the firefighter feels is too much. They're battling the nozzle, not the fire. And so if I can reduce that, I know I can land in that situation. And then we talk about the stream pattern and its reach. And when I'm in a department that has the fog nozzle, they love the ability to take it from a straight stream 30 degree power cone, and they like that. And so then I'll move over to the HEN and I'll tell them we've embraced all the things that you love or we've been able to solve those challenges that you're currently existing and when they put the HEN nozzle in their hand they quickly realize that the nozzle reaction is low single firefighter can operate our hand lines independent of assistance, then they see the copious amounts of a water flowing and the large droplets that are And if I can put an interior environment where they can see that coating of surfaces and how it rains down and how effective we are at treating large volume spaces. And then I have that ability to say, you know what, now bring their, stream back to that tight pattern. Maybe it needs to fit a window opening, or it needs to have a little bit more reach down a hallway. We can embrace all the things that they've loved about their nozzles and show them in one technology, how the fluidics, because of the way we've designed our nozzles, has changed that and embraced science to make it just a better water stream.

[6:25] Kevin Sofen: fluidics, I might need to get that tattooed in my arm or something, so I don't forget it. But within everything you just talked about, it seemed like there's this perfect balance of trade-offs and I know one of the challenges working with any industry, particularly public safety is we wanted to weigh nothing and we wanted to do everything and I also wanted to cost $10. And obviously balancing all these things, especially within the nozzle of speed and precision and reach and flow and weight, It's very hard, you already mentioned this a little bit, but speak to me about taking the best of everything and finding this perfect middle ground of all these trade-offs to create this highly dynamic, usable, ergonomic, functional nozzle.

[7:14] Jason Floyd: Right. So one of the things when you look at the streams that we create by the two mainstays in firefighting, we've had the smoothbore since really the inception of the fire service And then the FOG stream came around about 60 years ago, and we haven't seen any measurable performance changes. There hasn't been any new designs in this world. So when our owner looked at, like, trying to embrace all the great things that popped out to us immediately, like, we have to have a large water droplet and the only stream that can create that is the smooth bore but the problem with the smoothbore stream is it's a it's a laser beam narrow focused stream and it doesn't do dispersion until it collides with a surface so a firefighter crawling-crawling in to that stream side to side or up and down to map out water on those surfaces. Whereas our stream right out of the gate, the second it leaves the end of our tip, it's already on a trajectory to make it a wide brush stroke. And so what the big game changer with the HEN nozzle is that it's pre distributed water. so when they go into an environment they are really just doing paint-strokes and then it's very efficient like the name says of our company, Whereas they just have to paint surfaces with it, and they don't have to overlap it as much, whereas the smoothbore or the straight stream fog stream, they really have to manipulate that nozzle to ensure that they have proper coverage coating off surfaces, whereas ours is just using a very broad paint brush stroke. And so that's where we've harnessed that adjustability by allowing it to be a large format water stream coming out, but then it's a smoothbore. There's nothing going on other than an open waterway. We've just have been able to harness the power of water, make it linear, and allow those droplets to spread out on surfaces earlier.

[9:29] Kevin Sofen: So Jason, you've got 25 years of experience working in the fire service, and I want to now apply this to, what does this mean from an operational perspective in both kind of an urban setting and a wildfire setting, but from like a large space fire, a building of sorts, let's say. and you talk about this expanded workspace fires, can you walk me through a scenario where HEN's technology just allowed you to do your job better, or hypothetically, or a case study of where the HEN technology from a... large space fire was enabling more efficiency in a way that couldn't be done with nozzles that were from technology over the last 60 years.

[10:08] Jason Floyd: Great question. So traditionally in like a large space fire, let's say that the fire department was outpaced by the conditions, it just, it happens, and they were forced to go to more of a defensive strategy where they're gonna employ the large master stream devices. Those devices are usually have connected to them, a smoothbore, stack tips of smoothbore, And a lot of times that's a very focused stream. So small streams that go, they don't have the big coverage out of the gate like this hand does that stream is going to go into these big superheated boxes and it's going to only coat a small amount of surfaces. And it's going to require the constantly manipulate the stream to actually provide coverage. And it may just be raining against the back wall We're not impacting the superheated ceiling, we're not protecting the girders that are heating up, which could impact the performance of the structure. Whereas the HEN bladed pattern and its ability to go from a horizontal position to a vertical, we can get up into large space fires like that, coat, lots of surfaces, protect structural members, reduce the surface temperatures of ceilings, which then to impact the pre-heating of other items in that building, and we just find ourselves in a more impactful situation because the efficiency of our stream is cooling more, it's causing more gas contraction, and we're just seeing a substantial change in the performance of smaller amounts of water under similar conditions with a larger master stream device that far outperforms it.

[11:52] Kevin Sofen: So just to continue this for another use case, I saw one of the articles on HEN, it was talking about rethinking brush fire turrets in the age of these mega

[12:22] Jason Floyd: at that environment initially, we have to outperform certainly the environmental conditions that were impacting streams. We have a great study out of Maui where, you know, in the aftermath of their catastrophic fire, they knew that their, the equipment that their firefighters had to protect their communities was inferior. And a lot of it was because that stream quality wasn't resistant to the thermal currents coming off the fire and the wind conditions and so HEN wanted to promote a bigger droplet in the wildland space and get a far deviation from the traditional fog spray not used out there which get eroded by wind pre-evap they're just not as effective and so we've taken that technology into the wildland space they're using less attacks because time is everything in the wildland-land environment when they have to go refill their brush truck and they did not perform the end of their assignment by completing their wet line on a fire. Whereas that fire now may escape the boundaries that they had created. Whereas our stream allows them to, it promotes a better, longer fire attack, so now you have a higher GPM setting, you have a really nice, precise ability to control that stream, and then you have the format of that bladed pattern working through an in a motorized vehicle, that precision and the ability for us to use less water is going to be a significant impact to the wildland service in the years to come.

[14:15] Kevin Sofen: Two things I want to that you mentioned was this whole gallons per minute GPM. It's a metric that many people are familiar with, even a non-fire service members. And then also kind of human factor, the human ergonomics and maybe starting with the GPM side of like, I know that's a big claim. It's something that a lot a lot of companies talk about. But what's kind of the data saying from kind of actually decisions of a pump operator to how they're actually using nozzle and just kind of from a GPM perspective, what kind of claims are you seeing or getting in regards to how the technology is performing compared to other nozzles of the past?

[14:55] Jason Floyd: So Gallons per minute theme here is usually, you know, the large, like you indicated earlier, and [inaudible 15:55] to prolong the ability to

[16:55] Kevin Sofen: I mean, what does that actually mean? I mean, it's less physical strain. It's allowing me to do your job better, and I'm speaking at kind of a high level, but truly what does that mean as an operator from your perspective?

[17:07] Jason Floyd: Sure. I spent my entire rank of firefighter in my career with a hundred pound per square inch nozzle, automatic fog nozzle, and I constantly was battling that nozzle. I was unable to properly map out and train and train the water and the areas that it wanted to go. I was just for dear life, a lot of times holding on to it. Now you get into where research tells us we need to go is like the firefighter maintain control of that nozzle, place the water where it needs to go and then finish their job at the end of that stretch or that advance. I mean, that's what the community really will benefit from a change in equipment that allows that in-provider of the service to do the better job.

[18:14] Kevin Sofen: It's awesome. And thank you for the context and the innovation that you and the company continue to do. And we've talked a lot so far on just nozzles. And when I first saw HEN, it was HEN Nozzles that was kind of catching my attention all over. And now I've seen there's been this evolution from HEN Nozzles to HEN Technologies. What is the evolution? What does that mean from going from just Nozzles to HEN Technologies? And tell me a little bit more about that.

[18:40] Jason Floyd: Right, so part of this path of understanding of the fire service from our ownership's perspective started to realize how things were kind of incomplete. We had a lot of data that's available to us and we're not using it. Our decision making for different areas kind of occurs in silos where we have, you know, we have the end user, the firefighter making their own decisions. A lot of times they have equipment in their hand they may not be fed with the accurate amount of water from the pump, because of errors in pump calculations, just the layout of their piping on their apparatus. It could be water supply challenges, and it could just be an incomplete knowledge base of the fundamentals of hydraulics that they failed to embrace. And then you go back to the decision making that the incident commander may have to make under a compressed time frame, incomplete information, very stressful. All of this is occurring without. A lot of connections, and so we know that if we can harness data and we can have a clearinghouse and an interpretation device and an ability to easily feed that to each of the stages of the fire ground that we'll have a higher performing fire ground that'll probably use less water, save more lives, and preserve more property. Our ownership knows that is the space that we need to occupy next. It's vulnerable, it needs to be solved, and the communities really are gonna depend on us being incredibly accurate with our fire ground techniques and tactics in the future. It has to be more informed.

[20:26] Kevin Sofen: And I know there may be some stuff you can't tell me as I'm about to ask you this question, but as you're looking ahead and envisioning this, a system of data and sensors and software as HENs integrating with stuff that they're making themselves or the other third party manufacturers of apparatus, command software. I mean, how is this, where do you see HENs role as it's, we're becoming more of a data-driven fire service and there's all these different systems of systems and where is HEN now And where do you see HEN continue to be from both a hardware perspective, software perspective, and overall integration perspective to other players in the market?

[21:09] Jason Floyd: Yeah, so this market has a few players out there. I think what's different about HEN is we've started at the end user level, the firefighter that has a nozzle in their hand, which I truly appreciate. We are trying to solve that technical part of it right now through a superior device, but you're right, that device will have the ability to have telemetry and give [inaudible 21:31] network look like? Do we have automation and triggers for that incident commander to make based on, you know, changing dynamics? It could be weather, or it could be, you know, the conditions of the building or outperforming the tactics. We'll just be more informed. We see this being AI driven machine learning. We can take, you know, we do a lot of exhaustive work in the fire service, interpreting what we just saw at fires through after-action reviews or post-incident analysis. Those are forms of data that we can use, we can put back in our system, it's our Rolod, you know, it's recognized prime decision-making on steroids where we can actually have this warehouse of solutions that are informed through data. It's not emotional anymore. It allowed that incident commander because I always look at like what it must have been like for the first battalion chief at the Palisades fire in Los Angeles to show up where they were just outgunned on arrival and had some terrible conditions and that person was relying on their gut and their instincts and probably a radio to make most of their decisions. What if they had the ability through AI and machine learning data-driven services that were at their disposal to take away the emotion and just make really good decisions that are informed? I mean I'd like to think that we're continuing to learn from some of these past times where we've had these tragedies and never letting a crisis go to waste.

[23:27] Kevin Sofen: And I guess I'm kind of now transitioning this, curious into right now we're filming this, recording this, it's February 2026. What are you most excited about with where HEN is today? But particularly where do you see the HEN technology solution in three to five years and its role within helping those first on-command, you know, first on-scene units and the commanders, How do you hope and envision to continue to empower them with the best tools and data to know that they can continue to do their job as best as possible?

[24:04] Jason Floyd: Right. Well, I was a perfect fit to come to HEN because I spent most of my fire service career asking the why and, you know, trying to understand why we were making decisions in my organization. And then a lot of times you realize it was not very well informed and there wasn't evidence that backed it up. And so I appreciate being a part of HEN whose path is strictly scientific. It's evidence-based, it's harnessing what works best, and it's thinking about the end user always, I mean, we are very connected to the firefighter rank, we want them to perform at their highest and give them the finest tools, so I see us becoming a suite of solutions eventually for fire services or regions or federal entities that can use. They have the data and they just need a way of harnessing it and streamlining its interpretation and allowing it to be easily accessible in the field under these dynamic conditions and that those interpretations solve problems immediately and quickly because, you know, the future, especially in the is not looking good as we continue to see horrible conditions and old fire seasons growing longer and longer and actually just becoming year after year. They're the ones I think that will benefit the most from the entire end to end technology from that firefighter on the end of a really good nozzle to somebody in a command and control facility making an excellent informed decision as to where to place that theater of that event.

[25:46] Kevin Sofen: I hope and I'm excited for that vision. And think that you are a key part of where we're going with that. So thank you and on top of that is, you know, why we're having this conversation today. It's part two to kind of see how companies like Darley are working with HEN and continue to bring this to market. In any sort of open-ended question, how is HEN working with partners like Darley kind of from a from a partnership perspective, distribution perspective. You can touch on a relationship about how HEN is working with Darley and how you. HEN and Darley strategically working together to continue to bring these solutions to the hands of firefighters.

[26:27] Jason Floyd: Darley is going to be a huge. Impact for HEN in terms of connecting that person that wants to build the best piece of equipment or have the best piece of equipment to protect their community, to align them with the best solutions. And then, you know, a lot of this is in the specking process. They will have unique problems that their community faces, and we'll match it up with a solution that's going to be the most effective for their community, their workforce, and try to be as cost effective as possible. And if we, like, the build of a new piece of apparatus, early on, if that customer is looking to make that fire equipment those problems, and they start looking at our suite of solutions, whether it be a turret monitor, the Titan deck gun on the top, or they outfit all their hand lines with our nozzles, you know, it's early on that they make these decisions, and we build a superior piece of equipment that goes out and serves their community for decades.

[27:29] Kevin Sofen: Yep, well we'll say Jason, the final sort of monkey wrench towards you, this is coming out of left field, but is there any words of wisdom or quote that you live by, whether it's you know it's not necessarily leaning into everything that HEN has as it relates to all things precision over volume, but maybe something that Jason Floyd lives by, any sort of quote or word of wisdom that is something you could leave us with here today?

[27:59] Jason Floyd: I think I've already said it and it's asked the why. I mean, everyone should do it. The communities that want to know more about their fire services, ask why they do certain things, firefighters that are new in an organization, and they want to know why they have a certain tool in their hand. They should ask these questions that you should be informed as to why you're doing certain things. And HEN has been that partner in the fire service because they came in as, like I said, an industry outsider asking the why, and they dissect, and they stripped away sometimes some of the hard traditions that we cling to, and they went right down to scientific, empirical facts on better ways to solve problems. And so if you constantly do that in your own life, I think you shed a lot of the skin off of the distraction into actually what works.

[28:53] Kevin Sofen: Jason, it's been a pleasure talking with you and learning more about all things, the evolution of HEN nozzles, the HEN technologies, and I'm fired up and excited about where you and the company are headed. So thanks for everything you're doing and look forward to crossing paths soon.

[29:07] Jason Floyd: Absolutely,