How to get back at graffiti vandals - with water

Feb 22, 2007, 12:45 GMT


Wellington - Graffiti vandals or self-appointed wall artists who use spray cans of paint to leave their mark on buildings, have met their match in the New-Zealand inventor of a protection system that sprays them with water.

'It is simplicity itself,' said Barry Lucinsky, chief executive of the Keep New Zealand Beautiful organisation which is sponsoring trials on six buildings in different parts of the country, including its headquarters at Waikanae, north of Wellington.

'It is really like a urinal and in our case has successfully deterred taggers,' he said.

Inventor Antony Bicknell's Wet Wall System features infra-red motion sensors which set off a flow of water from high pressure nozzles down the wall and onto the vandal when he gets close to the surface.

It washes off the paint before it hits the surface and wets the vandal in the process. 'In many cases, the water mist actually stops the spray can working completely,' Bicknell said.

At the same time, floodlights are triggered as an added deterrent to vandals who usually like to work in darkness.

'They usually tag and run, so they leave quickly when they get wet because they are frustrated,' he said.

Bicknell said water is sprayed about half a metre out from the wall, but is more of a mist than a flood at that stage and does not soak passers-by who tend not to walk that close to a building anyway.

He said the automatic system does surprise dogs when they are inclined to lift a leg against a wall, but that is perhaps appropriate.

'The graffiti tagger is almost like a dog marking its ground,' he said.

The system is intended mainly for large, vulnerable buildings in industrial areas which are usually not well lit at night and are a magnet for graffiti vandals.

Although there are many other anti-graffiti systems, Bicknell said his was the only one that actually stopped paint getting on the building targeted.

'Everything else is designed to prevent the paint adhering permanently or to remove it more easily, but still requires people to wash it off,' he said.

Bicknell said the cost of installing his system - about 200 US dollars a metre - is economic compared with the cost of chemicals to remove graffiti and repainting frequently targeted buildings.

He said one customer had spent 10,000 New Zealand dollars in a year repainting a building but had no further problems after his company, Graffiti Security Systems (GSS), had installed a 10 metre- system for 2,800 New Zealand dollars.

GSS has protected its Wet Wall System with an international patent covering 126 countries for 30 months which would allow it to be developed on a larger commercial scale.

Bicknell sees big potential for the system in the United States where he said dealing with graffiti was estimated to cost 8 billion US dollars a year.