Great Ways To Protect Your Home From Wildfires

Wildfires to extensive damage to the natural world and the homes and property of mankind every single year that they occur, but if you own your home, there are some things that you can do to slow down or even completely prevent excessive damage to it. All you have to do is follow a few simple guidelines and wildfire damage to your property will be minimized.

If you live in an old home and not a new construction, you may want to consider having some of the exterior materials of your home replaced with some that are more fireproof. If the outside of your home is wooden or vinyl siding, you may want to have it replaced with brick, stone, or even metal, since these materials resist catching on fire much better than the former two.

The material on the roof of your house also probably needs to be replaced. The shingles that you have on your old home are probably made of asphalt, wood, or even metal. The metal is fine unless it is rusted and leaking, but wooden and asphalt shingles need to be gotten rid of since they will catch on fire fairly easily. The roof is the most important exterior surface of your house, since firebrands carried by the wind can land on it and set it on fire. This is one reason to keep your roof wet when a wildfire is anywhere near your home and to keep dead vegetation away from your house. This means raking up cut grass and dead leaves and getting rid of it as soon as it starts to collect.

You also need to have small windows in your home instead of large ones. Windows that have multiple small panes instead of one large pane in them will radiate a lot less heat and will be less likely to catch drapes on fire or burst and allow wind laced with firebrands into your house.

You should also not have any trees close to your home, especially with branches that hang over the roof. While you can keep the roof and the exterior of your home wet with your garden hose to help protect against firebrands, keeping the tree wet might be a little too difficult.

When evacuating your home because of a wildfire, take only those things that are the most valuable and cannot be replaced. If you are evacuating voluntarily, you may have a little more time to prepare, but if it is mandatory and enforced by local law officials, you might not have much time.