Wildfire season is here, and you need to start thinking about how you’re going to protect your home from fire. How will you ensure that your home will be safe and you’ll be able to get out safely? You’ll need to put together an evacuation plan, and know what to do to set up your home if wildfires happen in your area.
One of the best things you can do is create a defensible space around your home, to lessen the possibility of fires spreading to the home itself.
Here’s what you need to do to create and maintain that space.
What is a Defensible Space?
The defensible space around your home is the perimeter you make, in order to reduce the chance of fire spreading. It’s a buffer than ensures that your home won’t catch fire, either thanks to the flames or the radiant heat.
To create a good defensible space, you’ll need to divide it into two zones. Zone 1 extends 30 feet from your home itself, including your decks and other structures. Zone 2 extends outwards from Zone 1, to 100 feet away from your property.
Creating Zone 1
Let’s look at how you’ll create Zone 1 of your defensible space first. This is the area directly outside of your home, so it needs to be clear of anything that could be flammable.
You’ll mostly be focusing on the plant life in this area. What can be trimmed back or removed? For example, all dead plants, trees and grass should be cleared away, as they’re highly flammable. Also, take a look at any vegetation that’s sitting around or under decks. If it’s flammable, it needs to be removed.
Take a look at the gutters on your home. Dead vegetation, especially leaves, have a habit of collecting in them when they’re blown off trees. These cause problems like blocked gutters, but they’re also highly flammable. Regularly clear out your gutters to remove this risk.
If there are trees near your home, you’ll need to regularly trim them. It’s best to trim the branches so they are at least 10 feet away from other trees or your home. Also, any branches that are overhanging your roof need to be cut away, to ensure they can’t drop leaves or spread fire to the home.
There will be items in your yard that could catch fire should a wildfire come through. This includes trees, shrubs and furniture. Create a separation between all of them so if one does catch fire, it can’t spread the fire to the rest of the yard.
Using Fire Resistant Plants
Something that you can do when planning your yard is look into fire resistant plants. There are plants out there that resist fire. If you’re looking into these plants, you’ll still need to space them appropriately to ensure that they can’t spread fire.
There are lots of beautiful plants that are fire resistant, such as French Lavender, sage, and yellow ice plant. You won’t need to sacrifice the look of your yard to make it safe. As a bonus, these plants need less water than others so you’ll save on water bills, too.
Creating Zone 2
Now you can focus on creating a buffer in Zone 2. You’ll mostly be focusing on plant life in this area, to ensure that fire can’t spread between different plants.
All annual grass in this area should be cut down to a length of four inches. Also, look to remove any fallen vegetation. That includes cones, leaves, needles, twigs, bark and so on. Depending on where you are, you may be permitted to leave this to a depth of up to three inches, so check before you leave the debris.
Spacing Plants in Zone 2
Something to focus on here is creating vertical space. What this means is creating space between branches and the ground, as fire can very easily climb your trees like a ladder. Every tree in this zone should have at least 6 feet of clearance, so remove any branches that are below the 6 feet mark.
If there are shrubs or bushes near the trees in this zone, you’ll need to allow extra space for that clearance. To work this out, measure your shrub and triple the measurement. This will be how high you’ll need to go when clearing branches. For example, if you have a 5 foot tall bush, you’ll need to clear branches up to a height of 15 feet.
As well as vertical spacing, you’ll need to consider horizontal spacing too. This is is the space between plants in your yard. How much space you need will depend on a couple of factors, such as the slope of the ground or the height of the plants themselves.
On mostly flat ground, you need to leave at least 10 feet between the trees in the yard. When it comes to shrubs, you need to leave twice the height of the shrub between them. For example, if the shrub is 5 feet high, there needs to be 10 feet between them.
The steeper the slope, the more space you need to leave between your plants. On a 20% – 40% slope, you need 20 feet between trees and 4x the height of shrubs between them. On a greater than 40% slope, you need 30 feet between trees and a 6x shrub height between them.
If you haven’t reconsidered your landscaping yet, now is the time to do it. Moving plants so they’re spaced out, and removing branches to create vertical space is essential to keeping your home safe during a fire. With this, a wildfire shouldn’t be able to spread into Zone 2 of your defensible space.
The Importance of a Defensible Space
Creating a defensible space is the best way to slow the spread of wildfire and contain it. Look closely at your landscaping and space plants out to reduce risk. Clear dead material away, and you’ll see that your home is much safer if a wildfire does occur.
