Preparing for and surviving fires

[Grizzleyette___Adams]

Grizz, do you have a water source? A railbird or other sprinkler system to keep the fire down around the house. Keeping the trees watered in peak fire season could help.

If you are protecting the walls of your structure a fog curtain doesn't help. You need to spray the walls directly as heat will radiate right through a fog curtain. Wood burns at 451℉ and water boils at 212℉. If your wall is wet you are okay.

I have millions of square miles of National Forest around me and am deep in the woods. I have a spring and as soon as resources allow, I want to have a spring-fed pond.

So, keeping outside walls and roof wet is key... I will look into doing the sprinkler system / railbird thing... but first, what is a railbird? (Did you mean rainbird? That is what comes up when I Google railbird and sprinkler together as search terms.)

100+ yards clearance... as in NO trees, right? In that case I have a LOT of work to do!

 

[Weedygarden]

I have millions of square miles of National Forest around me and am deep in the woods. I have a spring and as soon as resources allow, I want to have a spring-fed pond.

So, keeping outside walls and roof wet is key... I will look into doing the sprinkler system / railbird thing... but first, what is a railbird? (Did you mean rainbird? That is what comes up when I Google railbird and sprinkler together as search terms.)

100+ yards clearance... as in NO trees, right? In that case I have a LOT of work to do!

I believe it is rainbird.

 

[Caribou]

I believe it is rainbird.

Yep, I'm going to blame autocorrect. I wouldn't expect a railbird to fight a fire but it could soak things down if you knew a fire was headed your way.

 

[Flight]

I found this PDF on how to help with fire suppression around buildings, I didn't read it all, but from what I read it was to me anyways s well written. Its 41 pagers long.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sou...FjAAegQIARAB&usg=AOvVaw0TvklmvHpP8yR4aQNTNnNP

 

[SheepDog]

I like wood frame homes. They are more resistant to wind and earthquake and if built properly and they can easily be made fire resistant. Putting 5/8" type X exterior gypsum board between the sheathing and burn resistant outer covering will provide protection for 1.5 hours from burn through. That is using 3/4" OSB sheathing which is what you need for earthquake and wind protection anyway. If you use 5/8" OSB on the inside with another layer of type X gypsum board on the inside you can allow a wild fire to burn past you without the danger of getting hurt. When I built the garage and shop here I used Hardie Board cement sheathing over the other because it doesn't burn. It does transfer heat but the type X gypsum board prevents heat transfer and won't burn either. Your 2 x 6 studs can burn half way through without fear of failure so the fire would have to stay very hot (over 1500F) for a couple of hours before it affected the interior wall at all. Steel studs won't perform as well because they lose rigidity after a short exposure to 800F.
Bricks will fall apart in an earthquake and explode when exposed to heat. The moisture in them boils and builds pressure until the brick fails - just like concrete.