Can house/garden design help prevent bush fires spreading?

Question

Too hard to chose a best answer, thank you excellent answers again from everybody.

I have learned a lot from your answers everyone. In summary we need to look at all sorts of issues, including how our houses actually contribute to Global Warming so we need to redesign them, we need to have better forest management to prevent forest fires spreading. How digging a moat, or planting appropriate fire resistant plants can prevent fire, or how some plants may even contribute to the risk. How DIY solutions for damping down roofs can help the spread.Thank you for your informative answers, three of them are best answers as far as I am concerned, bella

Answer 1

Yes, you most certainly can. In Idaho, we had the biggest fires this year (in the U.S.) and they were all around where I live. (The California fires are probably going to top Idaho now)

Keeping 30-50 feet of well watered lawn, gravel, rock garden, or juicy native plants (like cactus) will REALLY cut down on the danger to your home.

Do not build at the top of a hill covered with trees. When the trees go, there will be no saving your house, since all the heat and embers will rise.

Put an appropriate roof on your house and barns. Metal, or the tile roofs. Tile is very expensive, metal roofs are quiet affordable.

Concider the siding on your house. We have steel and brick. Our next home will be stuco. All are fairly fire resistant.

We were actually very worried this year. We have a new neighbor to the west of us. They moved here from Florida, the land of swamps and rampent growth. I'm in Idaho, high mountain desert. They didn't water with their built in sprinkler system. Their grass is totally dead, although mowed, it's just waiting for a spark. They have large wood porches, front and back, along with wood siding. Their house would go up in an instant.

Keep bushes back from your house. Install covered sofits (the exposed wood under the eves of your house). Ours are covered in steel.

Be aware, and alert, when working with tools that throw sparks. Have a hose right there, already turned on, with a nozzle on the end, so you can turn it on in an instant. If a spark hits the dry grass, and there is a breeze, you don't have time to run and turn on the hose. You quiet litteraly have only 2-5 seconds to get the flames under control with wind and dry conditions.

Don't put up solid wood fences. Gravel around your propane tank, NO plantings against it.

Find out about a plant, before you plant it on your property. Some are very fire resistant. Others have explosive fireball sap in them.

Around here, it's often the farmers who stop the fires. You will see 6-12 HUGE tractors, blowing smoke out their stacks as they drag HUGE plows deep into the earth. When the farmers get together, they can plow up 1/2 mile wide stretches of land in minutes. Even in the wind, it's hard for the embers to survive accross a 1/2 mile of bare dirt.

Be reasonable. If the fire is coming for your house, and someone wants to plow up your field, or yard as a fire break, LET THEM, even if it destroys thousands of dollars worth of landscaping.

Keep weeds cut back, or grazed off (goats do that better than any other critter), and keep dead brush from acumulating.

Do not allow too many pine needles to pile up under your evergreen trees. Be agressive about trimming dead branches.

If you have a smoker in your family, designate certain areas ONLY outside they can smoke....while standing on the gravel of a driveway is a good spot. If they are anywhere else with a lit cigarette assume they are on fire, and put them out with a hose, or fire extinguisher. Having barns, horses, and hay, I am deadly serrious about that one, and have had some very shocked people when I have "put them out" in the barn. I do NOT stand for flames or embers of any kind in my barns.

If you live in a fire area, keep a fire extinguisher in your car at all times. Cars cause a lot of fires, and sometimes very small roadside fires can be put out with a fire extinguisher, before it gets totally out of hand.

The exterior of your house should have little, to no exposed wood. That goes for the doors for people and garage as well.

In fire prone CA there are companies that specialize in designing landscaping and houses with fire prevention in mind. Take advantage of such resources.

~Garnet
Homesteading/Farming over 20 years

Answer 2

Responsible house and garden design are critical in even avoiding bush fire intensity.

Sustainability is the word used around the world which means doing today and not impacting future generations. All the laws are there but opinions varied because the information couldn't be qualified.

Homes are designed with temperature and warnings about solar radiation. Go to http://www.thermoguy.com/globalwarming-heatgain.html and see the solar impact outside the calculators used for that design. Buildings are generating extreme heat just short of boiling temperature and we are treating the symptoms with ozone depletion, gigawatts of wasted electrical generation , massive GHG emissions while not addressing the heat.

It may not seem like a big deal but look at California today, drier, hydrological changes and the place is burning. Today, California buildings are being impacted by UV and solar gain. The buildings are generating heat atmospherically and building towards the next problem.

Go to the link above and see what humbled me as a professional. Gardens and functional landscaping eliminated the solar impact on buildings substantially. Proper landscaping alone can eliminate any need for air conditioning with zero emissions.

Air conditioning is a nice name for sales, it is refrigeration. During heat waves, using air conditioning is the same application as leaving the fridge door open. You don't need air conditioning you need the home and garden areas to be the compliment they were meant to be.

The home and the garden are a very scientific compliment to each area, we just couldn't see it.

Answer 3

House and garden design may be used to build a protective fire break around your home but it will in no way affect the frequency of brush fires which are determined by prevailiing weather conditions. You can't stop drought or lightning by building a firebreak around your property.

Better forest management is needed to prevent forest fires spreading, i.e. fire breaks, access roads, proper fire risk assessment and having the necessary equipment available to suppress the fires before they get out of hand. Begging for fire bombers when the fire is already established and destroying vast amounts of property is a sign of bad management. Awnold isn't doing a very good job it seems.

Answer 4

I lived in southern California in the early 90's and went through one of these fires. I was spared, but the current descriptions coming out of there don't do it justice. The smells of burning asphalt, cattle, and shrubgrass will stay with me forever.

After that fire, there was much publicity about using your landscaping to give you an edge in the next fire. I'm placing a link covering some fire resistant plants below. There were, of course, other logical items such as clearing brush, tree limbs, etc.

From the videos I've seen of the fire, it appears that no one has learned from past mistakes. Brush, pine tress, conifer shrubs, are all pretty, but make good kindling!

Answer 5

Absolutely! My in-laws lost their house in the Laguna Beach fires of 93, along with all their neighbors. Except for one. Most houses in Laguna at the time were old and mostly wood, but this one house was stucco with a tile roof. This homeowner had, also, surrounded his house with ice-plant and kept the dry brush cut back as much as possible. The firefighters said it was this combination that spared his home even though all his neighbors lost theirs. The fire up in Stevenson Ranch seriously threatened home there, but the builders had made sure the area around the tract had a green belt and fire breaks. The same with Foothill Ranch. None of the homes there burned, even though the fires were dangerously close.

Answer 6

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Answer 7

I celebrate Pasta Heat-Pad Friday. Is that okay? I will be leaving a steaming pile of pasta on people's doorsteps in order to spread the word.

Answer 8

you can plow fire breaks around your garden and have a wide border of fire proof plants such as Agapanthis,if you add a moat ,you may be safe.

Don`t forget a lot of the fire is passed by the wind in the air so each will have to be quit wide.

Answer 9

all of these are very good suggestions. most of them we used in florida. plus we drilled a well with a small engine for power. we ran a pipe up the to the side of the house to the roof,along the full length of the roof we ran a 1/2" with holes drill in it. it came in handy 1997 when we had all those fires along the northern east coast. the fire came near the house,we turn on the water just enough to cover the roof with a steady stream of water.

Answer 10

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