Fire Resistant Landscaping
No one disputes that the wildfires are a major risk each summer. Sprawl development around big cities and second home projects in scenic areas have pushed more homes into the “wildlife urban interface,” where uncontrolled fires ignite houses and put both residents and firefighters at risk.
Ultimately, firefighters’ lives and homes will be better protected when homes are landscaped to be able to resist wildfire damage with minimal or no need for human intervention. This is entirely technically feasible, and is necessary if communities located within fire-prone landscapes are to become sustainable.
The first action is creating a defensible space around your home. Allow at least 30 feet, and in very fire prone areas at least 100 feet free of combustible materials. This means reducing the amount of wildfire fuel from shrubs, dead plant material and firewood. This area should utilize fire-resistant vegetation that is healthy and green for most of the year.
Defensible space is an area around a structure where forest fuels and vegetation are treated, cleared, or reduced to slow the spread of wildfire towards the structure. It also reduces the chance of a structure fire moving from the building to the surrounding forest. Your house is more likely to withstand a wildfire if grasses, brush, trees, and other common forest fuels are managed to reduce a fire’s intensity.
Here are some more suggestions on how to make home landscaping more resistant to wildfires.
Always keep a watchful eye towards reducing the fuel volumes available to fire. Be aware of growth habits of the plants within your landscape and of the changes that occur throughout the seasons.
Remove annuals and prune perennials after they have gone to seed or when the stems become overly dry.
Rake up leaves and other litter as it builds up through the season.
Mow or trim grasses to a low height within your defensible space.
Remove plant parts damaged by snow, wind, frost , or other agents.
Prune all plants, trees, and shrubs in a timely manner; this is critical. Pruning not only reduces fuel volumes but also maintains healthier plants by producing more vigorous growth.
Maintain your landscaping. This is a critical part of your home’s defense system.
Consider too, that regular landscape maintenance provides fire safety. Over time, plants grow and spread; mulches dry out; leaves and pine needles accumulate. All contribute to the fuels from which a fire grows. Proper maintenance improves the appearance and helps protect your home from wildfire.
Using fire resistant plants in your landscaping is part of the overall fire defense plan.
What are fire-resistant plants?
Fire resistant plants are plants that don’t readily ignite from a flame or other ignition sources. Although fire-resistant plants can be damaged or even killed by fire, their foliage and stems don’t contribute significantly to the fuel and, therefore, the fire’s intensity.
Plants that are fire-resistant have the following characteristics:
Leaves are moist and supple.
Plants that have little dead wood and tend not to accumulate dry, dead material within the plant.
Sap is water-like and does not have a strong odor.
Most deciduous trees and shrubs are fire-resistant.
However, it’s important to remember that even fire resistant plants can burn, particularly if they are not maintained in a healthy condition.
While little can be done to control the natural fires that occur in many areas, homeowners can change their approach to landscaping and help improve the chances of their homes and property surviving a brush fire.
Easily Organize Your Tools With A Tool Shed
Anyone who has lived in one place for any length of time often finds themselves accumulating things over the years, and not quite knowing where to put them. Tools are a big problem too. You find yourself with all sorts of tools for gardening, lawn care, small home projects, hobbies and more. A lot of the most common tools people use to care for and maintain their homes are not easy to store. And often these tools get quite dirty, so we don’t relish the idea of putting them in the house somewhere. And the garage of course, assuming you have one, is usually piled high with all sorts of other things. Boxes of keepsakes, old clothes and toys, cars, bicycles, and all the things we keep around to maintain those too. So there isn’t often much room at all in the garage for storing the tools you’ve accumulated over the years. And if you do try to store them there, you often find that you spend more time hunting for those tools than you do actually using them! And that’s what makes outdoor tool sheds such a useful invention. In fact, tool sheds don’t have to be placed outdoors either. You can buy smaller cabinet style tool sheds to place in the garage if you have room for instance, and it will still be a huge help because all of your tools will be organized and easy to find when you need them. Outdoor tool sheds are quite useful too though, particularly if you don’t have an indoor space to place even small tool sheds. If you need more space, the outdoor tool sheds become even more useful too. In fact, outdoor tool sheds are used for a wide variety of purposes. If you do a lot of gardening for instance, you can use the tool shed to store all of your gardening tools and supplies. Small pruning shears, extra potting soil and fertilizer, and even extra container pots all fit very easily into the smaller sized tool sheds. If you have larger gardening equipment such as hedge trimmers, weed wackers, bulk bags of mulch or fertilizer, hoes, shovels, rakes, and tree limb cutters, there are plenty of larger sized tool sheds which will allow you to fit all of that in with room to spare. Guys who like doing woodworking or various household chores can share the tool shed, or have one of their own too. Then there’s room for the various saws, sanders, drills and so on that seem to always being laying around just out of reach. Not only do tool sheds come in a variety of sizes, they also come in a wide variety of materials too. You can get tool sheds made of wood, metal, and even vinyl too. Some come pre-painted, or you can choose to paint it yourself so that the tool shed matches your house design. Regardless of what kind of tool shed you choose to get though, once you have the tools all organized, protected from the weather, and easy to find in one place, you’ll wonder why you waited so long to get one.
