 How what we're going to talk about today in the next 30 minutes. I might go a little bit long. I hope they don't Is what I call defending against the rat Have any of you heard of the red in this context? So you'll learn more about that that's kind of like the teaser We'll get into what the red is about a third of the way into the presentation Let's see did that did that okay? All right, so what's in the box? What are we going to talk about today? I'm going to give you some Little bits of information to hopefully provide some motivation Do some things around your home to make it more wild and fire say and then I'm going to show you some basic physics concepts Really quick. This is not a physics class They're trying to cover physics a little bit of physics in five to seven minutes. We'll see how I do And also at the end of this, I hope you walk away with the idea that doing structural hardening on your home He doesn't have to be that hard. It doesn't have to be that expensive and you're here for anything other than my structural hardening hacks as I like to call it Maybe you're in the wrong space, but you can join anyone So the overall idea is to reduce the risk when you have to evacuate in my opinion I Like to evacuate with some sense of comfort knowing That my house has a fair chance of surviving a wild empire when it blows through That's what we're about. I use the lunar module here because that thing Was not built for a porous. It was not built for ocean It was not built for flying around the globe It was built for a specific environment. So it had to be specially built for that environment We're seeing an environment that we're Evolving to that we really need to build for in my head So here's kind of the takeaway here as part of the motivation So according to a December 2021 study from the National Barrel Economic Research a home built after the state updated wildfire standards in 2008 In 2008 into the building out in the residential column and the fire requirements for Hardier built houses went into effect for homes Very high fire severity those most average risk for wildfire according to this study 40% of those homes are less likely to be destroyed than a 90-90 home with the same expiry Some information that that's my house. It is not a hundred percent fire safe But I'll work on it. I just lit these up the other day on this side Home hardening considers the relationship between your home and its environment your neighbor's house How close the propane tank is the trees of vegetation around all those things And in a minute, I'll talk more about the rat But overall my concept is you want to build your make your house as best you can To be defend against a big old bad bookie man that I call the red R. E. P. And we'll get to that All right, this is a home garden home I believe this is one of the homes that were rebuilt in paradise as One of them is an IDHS scanner that this was built on I believe it's called, you know There's zero to five hard-scaping gravel. It's got I don't know if it has gutter guards on it Probably does You have the mental key going on instead of the wood gate for the household that this has all of the features that we're going to cover today That honestly don't have to break the bank. I don't think All right, visit so anybody want to tie me seal fast. I can get through this Everybody learned in grade school about the three things in physics that make fire. There's actually four things I won't go into the fourth Feel eat oxygen If you've got a field something it'll burn You've got the field if you got heat on the lighter You've got the heat or if this thing gets too hot it can light or if a bag of saunas gets too hot If you use friction When you're striking a match that heat starts the sulfur burning on top of that match to get that going on There's heat of friction. So those three things have to be in place to make fire Well, we can't do much about the oxygen. We regard our house He really can't do much except keep our house away from heat as best we can There we go and the fuel is in fact your house So you could do something about this as you can make the fuel less likely to ignite if you have a Fuel that looks like this is a lot easier to burn than fuel that looks like this, right? So the bigger the board is on your house the less likely the number is going to land there and ignite other thing to be aware of He Increases log rhythmically with the amount of fuel that's there So if you want one tree in your order, it's going to put out a certain VTU for key output If you've got a whole bunch of trees in there, it's going to be Full lock or heat coming from that. So that's a point for a member There's conduction convention irradiation irradiation is the heat you feel it comes through the air The closer you get to a heat source the hotter it gets also log rhythmically if that table was on fire I could stand here be very hot so Less hot way So the farther you go the cooler it gets also log rhythmically so keep that in mind closer things are to something Compressible the fire is as it gets closer. It's going to put out a lot more heat the closer that target gets Convection is heat through either air or water in this case. We're mostly going to be thinking about air So in a windy event winds can blow fire and embers in that wind mouth and push fire in a direction through Convection And then of course there's conduction if you touch something that's on like the lamp on that projector or something You'll know right away because you've directly conducted it. You touched it For the purposes of this explanation We're going to use a term direct flame contact has another term for conduction So those three principles come into play water converted the steam conservation of water theory I think it's called One drop of water once it turns to its while a point two hundred twelve degrees Fahrenheit will expand 1,700 times so one rock will make 7,700 drops what that does while it's doing that it's absorbing heat That's how firefighters put out fires while we use water You go in a building in a compartment a lot of heat put a little box cream in there Get your nose will get out let this water turn the steam suck all the heat out the steam will also help push, you know Combustible products out and then the fire goes up because you've taken the heat out And you're also helping to take a little bit of oxygen out So that's what's that so the point of this is if you have fuels around your house that are Moist like well-irrigated plants they're gonna hold up better than you know the pieces of your house Then in some cases probably been killed right I certainly have right out over the 20 30 40 years Not a lot of moisture there When we go through a drought for a long period of time things dry out trees lose their moisture Lidler fuels like this like classy feels lose their moisture quicker you come more hazardous faster than say, you know So that's that point I talked about that Let's talk about surface to mass ratio in this and jump off. So again surface to mass ratio is the concept of smaller combustible particles burn easier ignite easier burn faster than bigger pieces if I were to strike this with a lighter This would ignore it really well practice if you get fire starter if you This you know not so much about You know the woods and needed to start a fire. I don't know. Which would you pick to start a fire? Yeah, and then you throw this on home and then you throw the bigger piece on top of that So that's how that works. That's the state of conservation Or surface to mass ratio in the concept there is that There's smaller the part combustible particle the easier it is to ignite and then The bigger it is the more energy it takes to ignite Kind of and then the last thing I want to talk about is Fire behavior related to well-done fires. There's another triangle the fire service. There's lots of triangles Whether topography and fields whether you can't do much about go through a 10-year drought It is worth it can't do much about that if you live on a hill a south facing hill Where you get a lot of sun or I eat very often can't do much about that maybe move Don't move away And then there's feels again that's your house and also the plants around your home So those are things that you can do something about you can't do much about the mountain You can't do much about the weather, but again, you can do something with those fields like your house and You know you're surrounding combustibles So this is the red so with those concepts in mind today Did I do that 20 minutes oh Wow Okay, so With those concepts in mind The takeaway is when you leave here remember I Wanted to prevent my house from being attacked by the red R-E-G so the first in the red is That radiated heat and the way we do that is kind of reduce some thin vegetation that's close to the house so When these things catch fire The radiated heat will pre eat this make it easier to ignite another lower-temperature You know easier to ignite. I mean I Wore once it dried out, it's easier to ignite I should say This is flippable too So this is meant to be protecting the home this clips around if your house was on fire You want to keep the radiated heat from your house fire to getting into the porous You want to keep it from getting into that natural resource? You know the three things that cause 98% of wild vampires in California Men women and children Yeah, Ronnie Coleman was one of my mentors used to be the California State Fire Marshal and he told me that one days I prefer that you should know this who put in three things that cause 90% of fires in California. I don't know Haters know they women and children. Those are things. It's the infrastructure community development things like that is where most fires Star infrastructure power is looking at looking right down the line Being over a long I was caused by downtown. Are you guys having like you guys? We just did that. Did you know learn anything from California? We just did this in 2017 and after an error Come on learn from us you guys. That's so sad So radiated heat works both ways all these work both ways The e is embers in the RED. This is the worst. We'll focus a lot on embers Studies have shown that This probably causes the most fire spread in the structure into the built environment than any of these other two things embers Embers are terrible. I'll show you how that works in a moment with a practical demonstration They go everywhere. They can be big. They can be little Small as little bits of rice like I have here. So I'll use for my demonstration But yeah, they're insidious. They go everywhere and when they're blown by the wind they can land on anything That's really like combustible. You get a number or two on here a little bit. I get dropped on there a little wind on there Okay, there you go. It's next to your house. Oh there goes the house In one case one study it was discovered that a lot of the homes in the footprint burned from the inside out The embers got into the house and caused a fire in the attic or in the underfloor area and on storage Materials combustibles in the attic space or under floor in other places and started that stuff on fire and the homes did not burn Directly from the wildfire firefront they burn from the embers getting inside inside out It's like a torch and wars, you know sneaking in there and destroying everything you own And then the last is directly in contact This is where you have things right next to your house if an emperor lands catches on fire Then you've got that direct play contact. Do you got a wooden fence going all the way to your house? Ben sketches on fire way over here birds So that's something to be aware of as well so radiated heat flying embers in directly in contact That's what you're defending against for structural hard So how do we do that? That part before two thousand and eight most homes have bands With quarter inch metal. It was a building come your bed top before the fence so many square inches per square feet or cubic feet of area But one of the things we learned that with quarter inch mash if you have like these embers you heard embers I know it looks like that If these are ember These are ember Well, that doesn't now says instead of quarter inch right You can replace those with something with a much better You only take a one home improvement project To do to make your house more wild and fire safe. My recommend is switch out From those quarter inch beds to eighth inch mesh. That's what the coat of war is now for areas in the Louis High and very high parts of areas up. It's not really that hard These guys are all around the house, let me start there with the round bed These are about two fifty fifteen dollars for six of them on Amazon Pack of six fifteen of the bottom right so these are those beds when you have a plan to add it These are burn spotters off the heads they go between the trusses around the house on the eaves By these guys, these are actually smaller than one eight. Just get these bad boys and Pop them in there Have to get on a ladder And away you go they don't look too bad if you wanted to you could probably find some pain from that to me No, I'll be careful painting the muscle because the pain can't be closed off completely Your house needs to bet. I won't go into why your house does need to bet otherwise things will get wrong and bad things will happen These are cold I just looked up soft at them This is Franklin Louver company These are my number one recommend For a couple hundred dollars probably do your whole house, but you do Oh By the way, I mentioned you don't need a permit do that permit not required Are you getting the pumpkin Oh Similar project these are the Vulcan The only difference really is that it has this material here that if there's a direct flame contact situation These will close up that gap completely and help keep everything out of that space in my opinion if You have a nearby threat that you can't do anything about like your neighbor's house In it's very close. I would go to the Vulcan that's that's on that side of the house This I don't know if I mentioned it fifteen dollars each so forty five bucks To do each of these it can get very expensive So it's up to you More risk reduction But I still think just popping in those two fifty dollar ones will give you a lot of bang for your buck without spending No, all the money for the Vulcan. So I'm not just involving products. I like them Same with the underfloor. Let's look at that Same sort of thing For 490a These are 490a and a home depot plus tap You could pop these off Put these in place Or you can even now like the Super direct you like or cheap You could buy a roll of eight inch mesh 25 bucks for 25p How to delay Pop these off Put this behind there Put those back on no repainting necessary. We've got the same look to be careful when you take the screws or nails out Um, yeah, don't bend anything. You can put those behind there put this back on So I estimated that Um a roll of eight inch mesh Should do 20 bucks if you do the math I would put it behind for aesthetics I don't know the question is Basically, if you do this, are you excluding the airflow to the point that it's going to be bad? I don't think so. I personally think it's a good trade off. I have worked a little bit in construction. Well, you don't know I built my house and Most of the time Now you can start to guys practice. I know I think most of the time when these go in there There's more of them than technically need to be there to do the math So and I really I haven't done the airflow on this I don't know For me I like if i'm evacuating Uh, I would feel a little better about this than this even if they're a little Reduction That's the Vulcan that's like popping a line with any of these vulcan beds if you're on a budget my recommend is If you have like I say A hazard that's closed You know if your propane tank is on that side of house if you're named messy neighbors If you go a lot of vegetation that you want to keep there Then go ahead and spend next money that's your peace of mind extra safety extra risk reduction with the vulcan beds on the outside of your house Um on the side where you get most of your wind Day to day put them on that side because that's probably where the fires come from so I'm a general contractor now um I would say on the eighth inch It's mainly about reducing the moisture underneath your home than actually adding And it's also a beekeeper Putting the eighth inch will reduce the amount of insects You'll have I was going to mention earlier. So A contractor or a former contractor Basically supporting what I have said and with the addition of it'll help keep the smaller critters out Which I think is good. Okay. I think I have a critter in my attic. I was actually looking at something A pile of net paper If you have if you're on a budget and can't afford to do everything with the high end beds like Vulcan Put those on the most at-risk face of your house When he get this was him with a blow torch for Demonstration purposes, please don't rip the plastic off because they'll get really greasy But when he hits the vulcan bed this honeycomb stuff has an intermissive material Which expands kind of we're old enough to remember that little black snake ones are worth a try Same like that same materials out these will expand like those and close the gap off completely to keep all air flow out If these do go off like that, you've got to replace them as well So Good question. Thank you for that to be clear Okay, so we did that talking Right. Oh, how hard could it be? Put on your hand clothes My recommend is doubt 230 Takes about a week to drive before you campaign it if you are painting it Um, this stuff is great. It'll cover a significant gap not terribly expensive 375 or 2 not bad the amount you need is going to depend on how many gaps you're trying to seal But you're trying to keep those embers out of nooks and crannies. So goal Is nothing no gaps bigger than an a again like the eighth inch screen So if you call the wide gaps If they're really wide you probably want to put a piece of trim in there and then call the edges of the trim But the idea is to keep out those embers and the critters as well keep that credit So Clocking don't terribly expensive How am I telling you? Okay, I thought I'd throw this in their nooks and crannies. I have to look it up According to the Cambridge dictionary nooks and crannies are small spaces in something or parts of something that are difficult to reach Fences, I don't need to spend a lot of time on this idea as I mentioned earlier is To not have a combustible fuse Right next to your house to light off this Easy fix put it on the chain link gate there to break it up Even if this is wood in your gates over there take out that wooden gate and put it in a non combustible gate 111 24 on people. I think a couple dollars less that factors a lot That's a way to fix up Another easier less expensive fix is if you do evacuate and you have a wooden gate Please put it on your evacuation plan Open the wooden gate set something very heavy in front of it. So the wind won't launch out So you break that continuity between the combustible fence, which is very easy to ignite most cases From lighting off your house a lot of fires started studies have shown Many, I don't know if I have lots of that sort many fires started Homes have been locked because the fence the evacuation catches the fence on fire and the fence catches the house on fire Really easy thing to think about now just require this That's not my house If you have a roof like a metal roof or a cow roof and you've got some gaps you want to ground those or caucus Sack of mortar mix probably about 60 bucks color probably for eight hours and get the color that matches whatever you're trying to match Mix it up again. It's more ladder work but Embers can get in here. You've got one of those metal roofs over an old roof Really thing age metal. Those are really bad because they're all wooden cleats and embers get into there That that can be a mess. Make sure there's no nooks and crannies for these guys embers to get in rain gutters more ladder work Cover them up in and make sure that they're clear a couple times a year a lot easier to clean stuff off of this Then it is to dig it out of that trench Oftentimes a dish you might even be able to just reach up there as best you can from a ladder and blow things off of a meat blower One thing I want to point out here is this looks to me like I don't know how many guys can see it, but it looks to me like This rain gunner was installed kind of like after the roof You know the rain gutters when they're installed can go two ways One before the roof sheet material the roof covering goes on or after It's better if the rain gutter goes on first and your shingles won't after because then you don't have an exposed wood edge In this case it looks like there might be a little bit of a wood edge here So I like that they don't cover this even still this is this exposed wood edge can be a problem All right, I'm gonna have to speed things along here Weather stripping around doors and windows Always a good idea remember anything greater than an eight. You want to try to squeeze down All these things so far are pretty inexpensive. No permit required Skylights if you they're wide open Again, eight inch mesh eight inch screen hardware cloth. It's called sometimes in larger sections cover those up If you're chimney if you're allowed to use your chimney or in a fireplace Make sure it has a Fire arrestor spark a rescue on it for a new spark arrestor a couple hundred dollars more ladder work I say that a lot because I like a lot. I used to be on the truck companies with satirized fire ladders were no problem But I've noticed the older I get the less I like funny ladders Um, this is an interesting thing here, um, if you call the situation like this Where you typically get an accumulation of woods or you know pine leaves Leaves pine needles stuff like that to build up there Not a bad idea to put some flashing here You know, they've got some flashing here kind of like that But up here if it goes along the roof and up the side wall a little bit Uh, and then car really well so you don't get water or embers in there In a perfect world you have nice metal flashing underneath there But even if you have that If this is combustible sidewall If you get that build up of you know the smaller materials and an amber gets there It can get that sidewall going even if you have a class A You don't have a class A sidewall So that's something to be aware of of course the flatter the more flat that arrangement is the riskier Um, but take a look at your house and see if you have nips and crannies where things are You know accumulated um windows Put shadows on them. If you don't know, you know about double paying kepper class Or the a way a little As you notice, I started with the easiest that we're getting to the harder stuff It's an idea. We just did a presentation on biostationoma We do a monthly show we follow our speaker series and on thursday it's a third thursday after a month from two to three It's on youtube we live streaming and then we do virtual as well But um this past thursday we have some folks from the california insurance christmas office And one of the things she said that insurance companies are accepting in lula Where we went there was double paying kepper class is shutters So that's an idea, you know But with some shutters on there again, they have to be tightened up where embers won't get in there Okay What's your youtube channel? fire safes If you go fire safes and all that YouTube you should hit it And that should be up on some of your live streams. I don't know if our post production got trending yet, but it should be up Windows if you're replacing your windows replace them with the good ones even if you're not You know, I have very high price very so my recommend is You know, if you're replacing them go ahead and do that. You gotta get double paying anyway for your energy um Get them with a second of tempered loss and they won't break and then when people ask what side should the tempered loss go Or nobody, you know, there's no requirement You have children that play mostly inside or outside If they play mostly inside put the tempered loss on the inside if they play mostly outside put her on the outside Uh, and then of course if you're replacing your roof definitely put a put a classy roof on I don't think you're allowed to do anything less than classy I am out fine. I don't think we have time for questions, but I'm already over time. Um What was that about the roof? Yes Yeah So most of this is not Kara and I took questions along the way Maybe just a couple of real quick questions, so I think I might have five minutes What did you say about plastic? Did you say something about plastic? Plastic? No, I don't think I said anything about plastic Yeah Okay, um, I think I'm on All right. Well, thank you guys