California Wildfires Spark Interest In DIY Home Protection (reuters.com) 91
As California struggles through a wildfire season that has forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee and burned hundreds of homes, researchers are seeking ways to protect buildings including by wrapping them in "fire blankets." Reuters reports: Last month, Fumiaki Takahashi, a professor at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, published the findings of 10 years of research on the potential for sheets of fire-resistant material to preserve homes. The blankets work but only in certain conditions, he said. "Each fire is different and each house is different," he noted. The blankets can withstand intensive fire exposure for little more than 10 minutes and take hours or days to apply.
Dan Hirning, CEO of California-based FireZat Inc, which supplies fire "shields" made from one of the materials tested by Takahashi, said people could wrap their homes in the blankets independent of fire officials. Applying a fire blanket to an average home would take four to five hours, with four people working on it, he noted. One reusable roll of FireZat's material can cover 1,500 square feet (about 140 square meters) and costs close to $900. The shields are made of a flexible aluminum sheet and a fiberglass backing held together by an acrylic adhesive to form a fire barrier built to withstand heat of up to 550 degrees Celsius (1,022 degrees Fahrenheit). The National Fire Protection Association's "Firewise" program can also help communities by helping people stop fire from spreading to their homes by encouraging them to clear flammable materials from around the structure. Unfortunately, it's really only effective when an entire neighborhood participates.
Dan Hirning, CEO of California-based FireZat Inc, which supplies fire "shields" made from one of the materials tested by Takahashi, said people could wrap their homes in the blankets independent of fire officials. Applying a fire blanket to an average home would take four to five hours, with four people working on it, he noted. One reusable roll of FireZat's material can cover 1,500 square feet (about 140 square meters) and costs close to $900. The shields are made of a flexible aluminum sheet and a fiberglass backing held together by an acrylic adhesive to form a fire barrier built to withstand heat of up to 550 degrees Celsius (1,022 degrees Fahrenheit). The National Fire Protection Association's "Firewise" program can also help communities by helping people stop fire from spreading to their homes by encouraging them to clear flammable materials from around the structure. Unfortunately, it's really only effective when an entire neighborhood participates.
May I suggest tinfoil? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you keep voting for governors who flat out refuse to do proper forest management, controlled burns, and brush removal, tinfoil remains the most viable option.
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Yes, we should get rid of the person responsible for most of the land without proper forest management: The President [almost all of the forest land affected by fires is Federal land].
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CA does not allow proper forest management irrespective of who's land it is, and it hasn't for decades. It's now also politically more advantageous to blame the fires on "climate change" (which they have nothing to do with whatsoever), so you can count on forest management not happening in the future as well. https://www.forbes.com/sites/c... [forbes.com]
Re:May I suggest tinfoil? (Score:5, Informative)
CA does not allow proper forest management irrespective of who's land it is, and it hasn't for decades
CA has only limited control over forest management in BLM lands, and none in national parks. They're not allowed to do anything that interferes with grazing or resource extraction in BLM lands. Most of California north of Lake county is under the BLM. Most of the acres of forest burned are on federal lands.
It's now also politically more advantageous to blame the fires on "climate change" (which they have nothing to do with whatsoever),
Climate change exacerbates conditions. Firefighters are now seeing behavior from fires they've never seen before, like more severe uberschlag, and fire tornadoes.
And this one (Score:1)
I'm literally getting karma faster than you're getting modpoints right now. Unless of course you're an editor, in which case... learn to edit, your work game is pathetic
This one too (Score:2)
I just got some more upvotes since posting this comment, and can think of no better way to spend the resulting karma. Though I do wish funny mods would grant karma. Then my karma would be effectively unlimited.
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I think it's more like having more fuel (from not following best practices) makes fires much more intense than what would be otherwise.
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I think it's more like having more fuel (from not following best practices) makes fires much more intense than what would be otherwise.
What causes you to imagine that these things are mutually exclusive?
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That article is about "harvesting", not brush clearing. Almost all the fire prevention due to lumber is due to the cleared roads and parking areas, the "harvested" areas are actually a good deal more flammable.
Re:May I suggest tinfoil? (Score:5, Interesting)
News flash: harvesting prevents the trees from dying en masse due to insufficient water in the underlying waterbed, and removes flammable material from the forest. And California Air Resources Board can prevent controlled burns (the main method of large scale forest management) from taking place even on federal lands.
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But the main problem is that harvested areas become MORE flammable in a year or two after harvesting. They get covered in easily flammable high grasses and bushes or young trees.
The proper way would involve going through woods and removing dead trees. But this is expensive because dead trees usually are not good lumber sources.
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Yes, insufficient water. An acre of land with a particular waterbed can support N trees per acre. Now don't cut the trees down and don't burn them, so there are N * M trees per acre. The trees don't have enough water and die. When they die and dry out, they burn. You don't need to be an Einstein to get this, I'd think. But I'm aware that stupidity is the only truly infinite resource.
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100 gallons/ day X 500 million (Score:3)
Let's do some quick arithmetic to get an idea.
A large tree takes about 100 gallons per day, or 36,500 gallons per year. There are very roughly 500 million trees in California, so that's 18,250,000,000,000 gallons. (18 trillion).
That's about 56 million acre-feet. All of the cities in California use about 9 million acre feet. So the trees use up about six times as much water as the homes and businesses do.
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Those are rough numbers, so I probably should have said trees use about 3X-12X as much water as homes and businesses do in California.
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This belies the fact that trees "use" water by taking it up and releasing it out into the atmosphere locally. Turns out that trees are the major carrier of water from oceans inward. So, if you have more trees, you actually have a wetter climate--they create their own environment if not broken up things like logging.
Check out Peter Wohlleben's work.
What you should really be saying is that trees supply 3-12x as much water as the homes and businesses in CA consume.
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A large tree takes about 100 gallons per day,
That seems like a lot.
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They can only supply it if something else already put it in the water-table. Once that water-table is gone, or out of reach...
You could equally be saying, trees drain the water table 3-12 x as much as the homes and businesses consume and just let it all blow away.
Thats a little bit disingenuous though, as the water may rain back out and end up back in the same water table. YMMV.
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Yeah, they "supply" it right into the atmosphere until they run out of water and die. Then they don't "supply" anything.
It'll screw up your foundation (Score:2)
It IS a lot. If your house is built on soil that expands and contracts with moisture (clay), you better water your trees or they'll have that part of the soil dry while the other side the house rises during the wet season.
You know you have that type of soil if your yard gets cracks when it's very dry.
Wind is Westerly at 12m/s (Score:2)
Yes, during the hot part of the day, California's trees take water from the ground and release it into the atmosphere. Being heated by the warm ground, the moisture-laden air rises to above the gradient height of around 2,000 feet. The prevailing winds take it east at about 12 m/s. After sunset temperatures drop and it may rain. In Nevada.
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"California Air Resources Board can prevent controlled burns"
Only on a day to day basis depending on current conditions. The ARB cannot completely block controlled burns nor does it aim to.To wit: "However, when alternatives to burning are not feasible — due to excessive costs, technical inability, ecological needs or the potential to cause adverse environmental impacts — burning may be the only option." https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/our-wor... [ca.gov]
Re: May I suggest tinfoil? (Score:2)
Proper forest management is just letting it burn at this point. Defensibility close to the homes the only solution.
Maybe once the forest is restored to what it was 100 years ago controlled burns have a hope of staying controlled. For now small ad hoc firebreaks can get jumped way too easily.
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All good things, but I'd add a couple more. Seal up or cover with fine metal screens all openings in soffits and vents to prevent blowing embers from entering the attic. Beware of wooden fences and decks attached to house.
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Replying to my own post -- more like eaves instead of soffits.
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Also, fire sprinklers in attic areas are generally a good idea, for when those other approaches fail.
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Yes, we should get rid of the person responsible for most of the land without proper forest management: The President [almost all of the forest land affected by fires is Federal land].
Somehow California is able to ignore other federal laws like illegal immigration by setting up sancutary cities, but when it comes to controlled burns on federal lands to prevent fires, that federal law California chose to follow? And the President already said California needs to do more "burns and cut fire stoppers", [latimes.com] so it seems the President is completely onboard with California doing whatever they need to do wherever they need to do it.
I assume you're referring to Gov Brown's veto (Score:2)
Is that true? Not sure, since I don't know CA politics well enough to say, but it did give his opponents a convenient line of attack ("jetting around the world spouting climate change propaganda as fires burn") and to be blunt it's exactly the kind of clever politicking I would expect from the California GOP. These are the guys that kept Schwarzenegger getting elected even as the damage f
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No. You don't know California politics. Arnold was the "fuck you!" candidate we chose to say "fuck you!" to the mafia like political class at the time after we booted the previous moron out of office. Exactly which policies do you think Arnold had that hurt the state? You don't know. You just know he ran as R and therefore bad. Did you know his policies and his personal politics are generally very D and left? No. You just know he had an R and therefore bad.
Well said. His slightly more fiscally conservative approach (classically conservative, not neo-con) made him arguably one of the better governors we've had.
Now then, back to the topic of this thread. 10 minutes of fire protection is fucking stupid. These fires burn for days or weeks and destroy fucking everything in their path. The cinders fly ahead a mile or sometimes many miles ahead in a good wind to keep the fire spreading.
Not really. Those cinders don't stay hot very long. So if you can keep them from starting a fire, you've gone a long way towards keeping the firefighting to a single front instead of lots of extra pockets. And although fires do burn for days or weeks, they don't typically burn for days or weeks immediately adjacent to your house. I agree that ten mi
Re: I assume you're referring to Gov Brown's veto (Score:1)
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I don't think that's really true. Brush clearing costs anywhere from $10 an acre (for controlled burns) to $2,000 an acre (for mechanical thinning). If we assume acre-sized plots with power running down one side (this is typically the smallest parcel you'll see outside of an urban zone), the
Aluminum seems to be a bad idea to me (Score:4, Insightful)
While having a reflective metal foil seems to be a good idea - reflect a lot of the heat, I question the choice of aluminum as the metal. Aluminum has a lower melting point than steel, for example, plus can be pyrophoric(it'll burn) in the right circumstances. That's likely why it can only withstand "intense" fire for 10 minutes.
Assuming that you've cleared your land like you're supposed to, you're probably left with your neighbor's stuff burning, which as we discovered with Paradise, California, can be "intense" for far longer than 10 minutes.
Honestly enough, going back to another sadly fatal fire - Grenfell Tower, it would have only cost 293k pounds more to have used the proper fireproof panels.
So, rather than spending $900 on a temporary barrier, it might be better to spend the money building a properly fireproof house. And yes, that's more complicated than it sounds, especially when it also needs to be earthquake resistant, as the two standards conflict some.
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We build ships out of Aluminum.
https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
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Just go down to a fishing wharf sometime and you'll see aluminum boats. They're extraordinarily easy to tell because they're ugly beasts - it's basically just raw metal.
They don't have to be - steel is painted to not only protect it from rusting (especially in saltwater), but also to keep below the waterline growth manageable (it'll still grow, but it won't generally stick so you can wash them off easily).
So you get a boat that's just aluminum on the outside.
But there are regular boats made of aluminum as w
Re: Aluminum seems to be a bad idea to me (Score:2)
That's exactly the idea, one giant tarp across the entire house. Maybe you could put weights on it and launch it across with pressure guns to do it in minutes instead of a day.
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The approach that would probably work best that comes to mind for me is establishing building codes that require use of non-flammable roofing materials. Additionally the roof surface should not be directly attached to flammable building materials. So a sheet metal roof shouldn't be nailed directly to wooden roof sheathing or rafters/trusses. Instead the sheeting should be mounted to metal brackets which attach to the wooden structure. The whole thing should be a cold roof in that air should be able to circu
The "Firewise" program (Score:3)
Does that include FireWire cables too?
Generator, water tank, sprinkler on the roof (Score:4, Insightful)
You can build a stand for a sprinkler to sit on the peak of a roof out of pipe pieces. If you have water pressure (which you can arrange to have, if you're motivated) you can keep your roof damp, and put out cinders that fall on it.
Flammable roofing ought to be illegal in California. Metal roofs last longer anyway, and the well-designed ones channel away water even when they leak. Pests can't infest them.
No, home foam kit (Score:3)
You can build a stand for a sprinkler to sit on the peak of a roof out of pipe pieces. If you have water pressure (which you can arrange to have, if you're motivated) you can keep your roof damp, and put out cinders that fall on it. Flammable roofing ought to be illegal in California. Metal roofs last longer anyway, and the well-designed ones channel away water even when they leak. Pests can't infest them.
The roof is not enough. You need to get the underside of the roof eaves, attic vents, base of exterior walls, etc. A home foaming system has been developed for such applications. I don't know if the commercial system is related but I saw a documentary on wildfires a while ago and a retired California fire captain was talking about how rooftop water was insufficient, how sparks will ignite material under eaves, in the attic at the base of walls, etc. He had his own jury rigged foam system for his house.
ht [jjsfiresupply.com]
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The problem with those systems (gel and foams) is that they’re only really effective for a brief duration after application. Basically they need to be applied shortly (within hours) before the fire arrives. I went through a WA wildfire a few years ago and was a small part of the team that successfully defended a small town. The real secret to our success was enormous amounts of water. We were able to loft 2300 gallons/minute of water into the atmosphere over the site, radically changing the fire behav
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The roof is not enough. You need to get the underside of the roof eaves, attic vents, base of exterior walls, etc.
Fires jump because burning materials land on flammable roofs (or vegetation, etc.) By the time the fire is next door, you're probably screwed anyway.
Some water containers outside the home would seem to be necessary too in case the neighborhood looses water service.
I admittedly only mentioned that in the subject line, but I did mention that.
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Some water containers outside the home would seem to be necessary too in case the neighborhood looses water service
Like, for example, a swimming pool?
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You need a lot of things, depending on the duration of high local risk, your perimeter, and the house design. Getting rid of wood or asphalt shingles is a good starting point, and sprinklers can’t hurt (if you can figure out how to control them automatically). Personally, I am most curious about misting systems low (eaves and down) for both the house and perimeter. The issue is you quickly get close to 50-100gpm, so a window of 2-3 hours could 20,000 gallons, and about 6kWh.
Infrared sensors and wind/
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I think relying on active cooling for a prolonged period is ultimately setting up for failure. When conditions are ripe for wildfires you're likely going to lose a great deal of that water almost immediately to evaporation. And you really need to get very even distribution of the water to protect the roof, which just worsens the evaporation problem.
I think building the roof from non-flammable materials, ceramic or metal comes to mind, and mounting the roofing materials to non-flammable structure would be th
The rest of the USA (Score:2)
Citizens in more advanced states don't have to spend their own money on DIY projects as the grid and gov ensure the power stays on.
During summer and winter.. for decades. What sets CA part from the rest of the USA?
It not trees, weather, size, money...grid design skill?
Every other US state has the same list of conditions, heat, cold, snow, forests, distances, level of worker education.
Yet in green and polit
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that does not have CA politics can keep the power on and keep a power grid working around trees..
PGE is one of the biggest utility monopolies in the country, and California represents special challenges for a variety of reasons. The same sort of future is coming to other states with trees, though.
Citizens in more advanced states
More advanced states? What is that supposed to mean?
What sets CA part from the rest of the USA?
Population, GDP, hollyweird, home of the US tech industry, produces around 50% of the food consumed in the USA...
Every other US state has the same list of conditions
LOLOLOLOL
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The power in most other US states stays on in summer and winter. The connected grid paid for keeps "working". Even in hot conditions near trees... with the power production been from far away.
Conditions like CA, but the power stays on.
Thats the more "advanced" tech than the results in CA.. the power been on part.
Re A "Population" in the dark can't keep working. Unless everyone has the free extra wealth to invest for some DIY project..
A US
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The power grid in CA is more "advanced" than in most places - if you don't maintain infrastructure, it "advances" toward breaking point. CA is just more capitalist than other states so it has allowed market forces to reach their logical conclusion: Maximum short-term profit for a corporate monopoly, maximum long-term harm for the public.
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Oddly enough LADWP is working fine, while PG&E sucks, so I guess you are in favor of government-controlled utilities.
PS: I live where the LADWP serves and I know the lights have stayed on all this time.
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Re "government-controlled utilities"
1. Full gov gird take over? Gov connects the building and makes the power? Union workers all the way. Full new gov pension costs.
2. Some traditional coop structure that puts all profit/spending back into its own grid?
3. The full third world option. A different private company from outside the USA considers entering CA after some gov deal. With US tax payers full support?
Communist Ch
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Weather is a major factor. When I lived in California for a couple years it did not really have a winter and summer. There was a rainy season for a few months and then about 8 months without precipitation. They called them golden hills, but they are more brown than golden. All that dead grass is indicative of how dry everything is.
Soffit vents (Score:2)
Re:Soffit vents (Score:4)
I used to live in the area that had the recent Tick fire in Los Angeles county, The houses mostly have concrete tile roofs which are fire proof. The houses catch fire when embers are drawn into the attic through the soffit vents. Having an easy method to close them would prevent many house fires.
It also depends on how hot the fire is, how close it is to the house, and how long it heats the house. I have a cousin whose house burned in the Tubbs fire two years ago. After his family left, he'd stayed to grab some documents even as the flames were fairly close. He knew he'd overstayed his time and that it was time to leave RIGHT NOW when his neighbor's house just erupted into flames from within. The house itself hadn't been burning, but the ambient heat next to it was so great that eventually the flammable materials inside reached a flash point and the house burned from within.
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This.
If the system takes '4 to 5 hours' to install, that's 4.75 hours too late for many houses. I've lived in the Sierra foothills my entire life, and been through some of these fires. The fires are primarily a threat when the wind is blowing, and when it's blowing, the fire is advancing at 30 to 40 miles per hour. By the time you see it you have minutes to evacuate. The embers blow miles in front of the fire lighting spot fires, and the heat is intense. Commercial buildings made of metal with steel roofs,
Soapy water with bubbles - car wash attachment (Score:2)
I used to live in the area that had the recent Tick fire in Los Angeles county, The houses mostly have concrete tile roofs which are fire proof. The houses catch fire when embers are drawn into the attic through the soffit vents. Having an easy method to close them would prevent many house fires.
Things under roof eaves in general and at the base of exterior walls too. Saw a documentary on wildfires where a retired California fire captain jury rigged a garden hose and foaming carwash attachment to spray his special mix. Foamy, lots of small bubbles, he paid particular attention to the roof eaves, vents and lower portions of exterior walls. It seemed effective against the windburn hot sparks. IIRC it provided about 30 minutes of protection. Better than water.
This led me to wonder about the foam av
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https://www.jjsfiresupply.com/... [jjsfiresupply.com]
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There are a few different types. Newer types of foam concentrate is relatively environmentally friendly, but you're still required to dispose of it as special waste, and not allowed to let it just dump it into storm sewers.
We have a project where we are putting am automatic foam fire protection system in a large hanger. This is a high-expansion foam system (there are also low-expansion foam systems) fed from foam ge
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The place I used to live burned in the Tick Fire. Adobe walls, tile roof, no attic. The problem was the plywood additions.
Comment removed (Score:3)
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Stop zoning these areas to allow for permanent residences.
The areas where the most structures are burning aren't really in the middle of the forests. But burning cinders can be thrown literally for miles, especially when the houses that ARE in the forests have propane tanks which explode.
Instead of evacuating, insurance payout, rebuild, only two burn down again.
The majority of people don't rebuild, actually. Many (if not most) of them are underinsured and can't afford it. And since California was already in a state of housing crisis, most of them are leaving the state. Hopefully they'll settle in some red states and flip them blue.
Politics, not encroachment, is the problem (Score:2)
Stop zoning these areas to allow for permanent residences.
No. Build properly. Allow brush near the home to be removed despite being habitat to some rodent.
Building properly is not just about roofing material, its also about preventing the hot sparks from getting into attic vents and into material under roof eaves or at the base of exterior walls. A retired California fire marshal demonstrated in some documentary how roof, eaves, vents, exterior walls could be protected from the windblown sparks with a garden hose and some foaming car wash gear using some specia
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https://www.jjsfiresupply.com/... [jjsfiresupply.com]
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There is not a thing a human has ever built that's as wonderful as a natural ecosystem this is sustains it self. We are not running shorts of people and communities to represent the human species on this planet. But we are running out of wonderful systems that are better than anything humans could ever plan manage and maintain. The most efficient solution is to remove the humans as without their interference the area over time will self stabilize.
Sorry but I am extremely familiar with these California environments that have been developed. They are not the majestic forests or something else that is "special", they are largely hills with ugly scrub brush. Stuff that is naturally expected to periodically burn and be destroyed. Keeping 50 yards around a home clear is nothing. These communities represent a tiny fraction of this ecosystem. The lack of jobs and infrastructure keeps the development relatively minor.
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I would change that to build home out of something other than match sticks (aka timber frame with timber siding) and bitumen roofs and insist on misting/sprinkler systems and all utilities underground and you would not have a problem.
The problem is that most people in the USA have clearly not read the "Three Little Pigs" and build their houses out of entirely unsuitable materials.
This utter stupidity with building out of entirely inappropriate materials in the USA goes for tornado and hurricane zones too.
He
What was that again? (Score:2)
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Or you could just rake your yard, eh?
Can't, its protected habitat for some rodent.
Build the house out of rocks and clay (Score:1)
When the fires approach, leave some unfinished pottery lying around. When you come back, you'll have a new set of dishes
This is California (Score:2)
flexible aluminum sheet and a fiberglass backing
There must be dangerous adhesives used to glue the fibgerglass to the aluminum that can cause cancer, plus if fiberglass particles are inhaled they can also cause cancer. Surely this product is known to the State of California to cause cancer and not allowed.
On a different note, the carbon emissions from California wildfires in 2018 was equal to the amount of carbon emissions from all the power generation for electricity used by the entire state for the whole year.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/u... [nbcnews.com]
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I've some experience with FireZat (Score:2)
In general their materials are seriously backordered, and I think the estimate of four people being able to wrap a house four to five ours is optimistic.
Forest fires can burn at thousands of degrees. (Score:1)
these fires come with 80mph wind (Score:1)
Better option (Score:2)
Build a moat!
Everybody should have a moat. With a drawbridge, so that you can inconvenience unwanted canvassers. And crenellations on your roof so that you can hide from sight until you're ready to pop out and launch a wooden arrow rapidly at the idiot trying to attack you.
To all the people claiming that this won't help due to airborne matter: Come back next week for the discussion on training flocks of starlings.
let's learn a lesson from 3 little pigs! (Score:1)
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California has a lot of seismic activity and so brick and concrete construction in residential structures is far less common. It isn't that it can't be done safely, it's just more expensive to use it, and even more expensive to build it strong enough to hold up to the earthquakes.
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It's partly a design problem (Score:2)
on the news were western-style post and beam design,
constructed mostly of cedar.
One spark would be enough to set one ablaze.
If these houses had been built out of concrete blocks
with fireproof roofing (e.g. ceramic or metal), I'll bet
they would have lasted a lot longer.
Fire Smart programs work, and save homes (Score:2)
I'm in BC, Canada, and pretty familiar with the program that is promoted here: https://firesmartbc.ca/wp-cont... [firesmartbc.ca]
There are multiple facets to it, but it boils down to making a property, or at least the structures on it, defensible. It's not just a single item, though starting with the riskiest items first is going to help right away. Vegetation around the home is one aspect, and construction style and materials are important as well. (e.g., cedar shake roofs are pretty, but consist of kindling that catches a