Taken from a schools competition and modified for our own use by Community Safety member Derek Berryman in 2004, Cleveland Fire Brigade has a Smoke Travel Simulator made simply from an old dolls house. This unit gives an extremely effective demonstration of smoke travel in the home. Consisting of two rooms downstairs, two bedrooms and a staircase, the unit also has life size smoke alarms situated downstairs in the hall and also on the landing. Tiny smoke matches in the kitchen are ignited electrically and when triggered simulate a fire, which then produces smoke which can be seen travelling through the house. 

The house prior to the demonstration, just out of shot is a length of ducting attached to the ceiling of the house, this is used to extract the smoke when the demonstration is complete.

Small smoke matches are then ignited in the kitchen to simulate a small fire, this will result in smoke being produced to simulate smoke spread within a house.

As you can see from the picture all the doors in the house have been left open, this allows smoke to travel from the kitchen to other parts of the house including up the stairs. This makes it more difficult for the occupents of a house to escape safely as not only does the closing of doors delay the spread of fire, but also the deadly smoke which in a fire situation can have devastating consequences.

New smoke matches are then ignited, this time the doors in the house have been closed. This shows the target audience the effectivness and importance of closed doors as this will provide the vital seconds needed to escape a fire. As you can see in the picture the kitchen door is holding the smoke back and any smoke that escapes under the door is quickly detected by the smoke alarm situated at the foot of the stairs.