Protect Your Home with Home Hardening

Hardening Your Home Can Reduce Risk of Wildfire Loss

Home hardening is a process that reduces a home’s risk of wildfire damage by using non-combustible materials, keeping the area around the home free of debris, and preventing embers from entering the home. Embers are considered the biggest threat to a home.

Hardening your home is a process to prepare your house for wildfire and ember storms. Your efforts should focus on the most vulnerable parts of your house and address those aspects with building materials and techniques that can improve resistance to heat, fire, and related aspects of a fire.

It’s important to note that hardening your home does not make it fireproof. It’s a process that reduces risk by addressing things we can control. It’s important to minimize combustible materials on your property, especially within the first five feet of your home. Use fire- and ember-resistant materials when updating or retrofitting your house, as possible.

As identified by the California Fire Safe Council, your top three priorities should be your roof, vents, and near-home vegetation.

Roof – Your roof is a large exposure risk to fire embers, and thus a primary focus area.

  • Remove all materials, such as branches, leaves, and needles, from the roof and gutters. This needs to be redone on a periodic basis and should be checked prior to any red-flag warning days.
  • Consider getting gutter guards to keep materials from accumulating in your gutters. MOFD periodically provides gutter guards to residents.
  • Trim trees to create six feet of vertical spacing between the roof and branches/foliage. Maintain 10 feet of clearance from the chimney outlet.
  • Inspect and repair or replace your roof with tile, metal, asphalt, shingles, or other Class-A fire rated.
  • Plug gaps between your roof covering and sheathing to prevent ember entry and install metal angle flashing at the roof’s edge.

Vents – While vents maintain temperature and humidity regulation for your house, they also can allow embers to access your crawl space, attic or foundation.

  • Ensure that vents have 1/8″ or 1/16” metal mesh or use specific fire-rated vents to reduce risk. MOFD provides residents with BushFire 1/16” mesh cut to certain sizes or reimbursement for ember-resistant vents. Learn more.
  • Inspect vents to ensure that there are no larger gaps or cracks that could allow embers to enter
  • Avoid storing combustible materials (e.g. cardboard boxes, papers, newspapers) near attic or crawl space vents

Vegetation – While there is no such thing as a fire-proof plant, some plants are much higher risk than others.  Learn more about Defensible Space as it pertains to plants.

  • Plants such as juniper and rosemary have high oil contents that allow them to burn hot and fast.
  • Remove any Monterey Pine or Eucalyptus trees within five feet of a structure or attached decks.
  • Remove  or cut grasses and weeds to a height of three inches or less. This must happen every year by June 1.
  • Remove all non-irrigated brush as well as any dead or dying trees.
  • French broom is a fast-growing shrub that can quickly dominate an area, forming dense stands that out compete native vegetation. It is highly flammable and produces high volumes of seeds, and its accumulation can increase fire risk in the wildland urban interface zone. MOFD has a “broom puller” lending program that can be used to help remove larger plants.

Beyond these items, you should consider what other hardening efforts you can undertake directly around your house. These include:

Fences – studies have shown that fences can provide a direct path to a home for fire to travel if surrounding vegetation is on fire. Best-practice is to use non-combustible material for the last 5 feet leading up to the house.

Additionally, MOFD code requires that there are no screens, fences, or other structures made of bark, mulch, or wood chips within 100 feet of a structure or within 10 feet of the paved edge of the road.

Decks – your deck is essentially an extension of your house, so treat it like you would your house with appropriate attention to Zone 0 requirements. Build with fire-resistant materials, do not store combustibles under your deck, and remove any debris that accumulates and could help embers spread.

Widows – replace old windows with dual-pane, tempered glass, which is about 4 times more resistant to breaking during a wildfire. Also consider that if you need to evacuate, it’s important to shut your windows to prevent fire from accessing your home.

Siding – learn about fire-resistant siding from Fire Safe Marin

Additional Resources related to Home Hardening