I haven’t posted anything about the fires in California for a couple reasons –
a) Its California
2) I’m not there, I’m not an expert, and my opinion is worth all of what you pay for it
III) I doubt theres anyone reading this who, in that locale and environment, wouldnt have taken steps to increase their resilience against fire
But not all Californians are clueless volunteer/victims.
Its an article about a couple guys who bought some homestead fire-fighting equipment and basically hosed their place down for several hours and came back to…their house.
Seems like every place worth livingi n out in California has a swimming pool. Why not transfer all that water to the roof of your house and the grounds around it?
There is no shortage of outfits online selling firefighting equipment for the DIY’er. And while fighting a forest fire on your own with no training is a recipe (extra crispy recipe, actually) for disaster I will completely understand the man who does in order to protect his home.
And, yes, when the sheriff shows up and tells you to evacuate or else … there may not be much you can do, but you can at least leave the hoses running and the pumps pumping like some sort of hydro-sentry-gun.
I’ve investigated this sort of stuff here and there over the years as I daydreamed moving to a nice quiet place in the sticks. Make no mistake…metal roofing, some type of reservoir, and a well designed network of hose connection points is definitely in the cards.
I’m surprised I haven’t seen more articles about people either beating the fires by tactical house construction design or water-projection defenses. Surely there’s gotta be a bunch of people, even in California, who saw the writing on the wall and invested in concrete shingles and water pumps. Perhaps the media doesnt want to encourage people to rely on something other than .gov for their safety. Or maybe no one noticed. Or maybe no one thinks it’s newsworthy. But, if it were me, I’d have had my pool plumbed to me eaves-mounted sprinkler system within the first week of building the place. But, easy to say since I’m not there.
Nonetheless, it is worth a trip through the internet to see whats available for when you do need to be your own basement-flooding, hose-dragging, ladder-monkey. 😉
So how long before they hand out the fines for wasting water?
Using water already standing in a swimming pool isn’t any such thing.
It’s the idiot trying the same trick with garden hoses hooked up to mains water, robbing its use for general fire suppression, that are the idiots in such an enterprise.
In a hosepipe ban set up to save water here in the UK, a man used a pipe to drain his bath water and water his garden. He was arrested, charged, tried, convinced and fined. They even said in court it was used bath water. After the case was over, the TV reporters went round to his house. He was using a bucket filled from a tape to water his garden, he’d fill a bucket walk off, water part of his garden come back and start again. He did not turn the tap off, and by doing so he never broke any law, and not having a water meter, it did not cost him any more.
You can find cases of people being fined in CA just for collecting rain water from their own roof. Given the history in CA how sure are you they 100% will never do it?
The example you cite isn’t using “used bath water”, it’s simply using house water and calling it used.
Nobody ever said CA wouldn’t do something stupid. That’s pretty much been their m.o. here for decades.
But it’s pointless, and wouldn’t hold up in court.
Which losing attempts have also been their m.o. hereabouts for decades.
It was even said in the court by the prosecution it was used bath water, they were happy to tell everyone he’d had a bath in the water.
Au contraire, Aesop. Harbor Freight has what is called a Semi-Trash Pump. The model I have has a 2-inch hose. Per Harbor Freight, it will pump 155 gallons of water a minute. I seem to recall that it will spray water 50 feet, which is more than enough for the vast majority of SoCal homes. The pump costs $289.00 and it is motor drive, not electrically powered. A 20-foot, 2-inch intake hose costs $69.99. A 100-foot, 2-inch hose costs $109.00. If your home needs more than than a 100-foot length of hose that sprays water 50 feet, well, good for you, you’re doing well.
My home came very close to burning in 2018. When I asked the firemen with two fire engines parked in front of my house if they could stop it, they told me they couldn’t stop it because there was too much wind. Fortunately for me, by the grace of God, the wind direction changed.
With my pump and my swimming pool, I won’t be taking water from the firemen. If they try to take my water from my pool, I expect we’ll have a fight unless they are going to use that water to save my house. My neighbor across the street has the same pump and he’ll stay. My nextdoor neighbor will run (again), but he has told me that I will be welcome to use his pool water and his pool is bigger than mine. Frankly, he’d be a fool not to agree.
I am not suicidal, but I will stand and fight. I am not stupid, however. I will evacuate only when I decide it is time to go. “My body, my choice.” Eff anyone who says the contrary.
In that 2018 Woolsey fire, 25 homes in my city burned, including two on the hill on which I live. Per the city, not one home in the city burned from the advance of the flames. Every single home burned because embers landed on lawn furniture, and other combustibles that then caught the home on fire, or embers entered eaves and vents.
The sad reality is that most of those homes would have been saved had the homeowner stayed to fight with a garden hose in hand.
I’ve got no dog in this fight, but when it comes to items that are meant to save my life (or my property) I would not trust a Harbor Freight water pump any more than I would a Harbor Freight parachute, a Harbor Freight dialysis machine, or a a Harbor Freight iron lung. There’s a time and place to save money, but life saving gear is neither of those.
Agreed CZ. While were talking about life saving gear, have you heard that NAR is being sued for selling Chinese made tourniquets advertised as “Made In USA”?
I too was hesitant with the HF 2” Predator pump, but purchased one w/ exact list fromabove and it starts on 1st pull. EVERY. TIME. Good perf for exaclty what was described above. You do periodic PM on the engine, don’t run pump sectionsry for more than a few seconds, monitor& fill oil as needed and the little effer just GOES, more than the eveready rabbit. Running VP 50:1 w/ a small shot of Sta-ble & it’ll go for ~ 2hrs on <1 gal fuel WOT. Depending on suction depth and head, it will conservatively run 100-120GPM and drain our 20k gal pool in 3 to 3-1/2hrs. That’s a lot of fight time for home & *close* good neighbors, downhill, even better perf. If people in SoCal / Cal didn’t pick up on the fact the FDs will only setup defense for structures that they are confident they can have protection & good outcome, they are already lost. I think it’s 1st degree idiocy to have a house completely destroyed-by-fire and a full pool right next to it. Just like a good firefight, I’d rather be found in a deep pile of expended brass and a burned out barrel than full mags and not so much as a shot. Also, keep in mind that a *normal* residential fire may be 2-3 alarm w/ 3 + engines & trucks assigned…that would be for a SINGLE involved residence. Stretch resources and have high seasonal winds w/ ember cast, no way they’re going to save all, even if they can deploy 1:1 engine to house. Just like the rule of 911 for local police/ sheriff…when you need them now they’re minutes away, now apply to FD’s. You are your own 1st responder should you be so inclined. Bash the HF pump if you want, but it’s going to the fight w/ us if ever needed, and it WILL work.
I too was hesitant with the HF 2” Predator pump, but purchased one w/ exact list fromabove and it starts on 1st pull. EVERY. TIME. Good perf for exaclty what was described above. You do periodic PM on the engine, don’t run pump sectionsry for more than a few seconds, monitor& fill oil as needed and the little effer just GOES, more than the eveready rabbit. Running VP 50:1 w/ a small shot of Sta-ble & it’ll go for ~ 2hrs on <1 gal fuel WOT. Depending on suction depth and head, it will conservatively run 100-120GPM and drain our 20k gal pool in 3 to 3-1/2hrs. That’s a lot of fight time for home & *close* good neighbors, downhill, even better perf. If people in SoCal / Cal didn’t pick up on the fact the FDs will only setup defense for structures that they are confident they can have protection & good outcome, they are already lost. I think it’s 1st degree idiocy to have a house completely destroyed-by-fire and a full pool right next to it. Just like a good firefight, I’d rather be found in a deep pile of expended brass and a burned out barrel than full mags and not so much as a shot. Also, keep in mind that a *normal* residential fire may be 2-3 alarm w/ 3 + engines & trucks assigned…that would be for a SINGLE involved residence. Stretch resources and have high seasonal winds w/ ember cast, no way they’re going to save all, even if they can deploy 1:1 engine to house. Just like the rule of 911 for local police/ sheriff…when you need them now they’re minutes away, now apply to FD’s. You are your own 1st responder should you be so inclined. Bash the HF pump if you want, but it’s going to the fight w/ us if ever needed, and it WILL work.
With brainworm poised to lead Americas health care system I suspect the iron lung is going to make a roaring comeback.
Survivormann99
Stay Safe, Stay Well, Stay Loaded and hope none of it’s needed.
1) How is anything you said “au contraire” to anything I stated, since I described using a much better-made version of the exact same pool-water pump system? Just wondering.
2) Idiots trying to fend off flames with a garden hose – which will have generally zero pressure by the time
flames arrive, as has been reported in these fires time and time again – will be facing a literal blast furnace of heat and smoke in protective gear that usually comprises a Hawaiian shirt, cargo shorts, and a pair of flip-flops, and even if they do have any pressure, the piddling water stream is vaporized into steam before it hits the structure. That’s pretty much the exact situation of facing a raging inferno with nothing but your wedding tackle in your hand. The good news is people in that situation will generally piss themselves on cue.
In court, that’s also sufficient proof to sustain a 72-hour hold for evaluation of suicidal intent, should such a total moron somehow escape immolation from a flame wall burning at between 1400° F. and 2000° F.
Trained firefighters aren’t that jackassical, and homeowners who try it tend to fall into the FAFO category, and win the appropriate stupid prizes.
They do, however, move the IQ bell of the gene pool decidedly to the left just as the screams subside.
When you have the option to install sprinklers or water monitors that do the same job, only better, without requiring anyone to stay behind and fry, you have reached beyond the realm of stupid human tricks, and entered into the territory of intelligent choices. IOW, there’s a smart way to go about this, and a stupid one. Personal choice here, but I’d go with smart. I understand not everyone else in CA feels that way, but I already knew that without being told, because I’ve seen who they elected to public office, as well as where they build homes with flammable roofs.
If their homes go up because of open attic vents or random combustibles close enough to catch a house on fire in a fire zone, you already have your answer of where most of them fall on the IQ curve, and hopefully understand why I’d rather the authorities proactively dumped napalm and aviation gas from the aerial tankers in the first place.
Aesop,
Sorry, but I misread your comment above. Everything else in my prior comment about my plan and my experience remains the same.
Noted.
With the same tardiness.
This is why I laugh at people who think their garden hose is going to help against a brush fire.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/c9JiNv1FHQU
There was a series of articles on how one of the major new home selling points is having your own fire hydrant.
I can tell you that some insurance companies (I am in the American Northeast and can only speak to how things are in my AO) will require a homeowner install a water supply point if their home is expensive enough and far enough from a hydrant or other water source.
One should keep in mind that a fire hydrant is, generally, a non-pressurized water source. Typically gravity will force water out of a hydrant with some vigor, but as a rule of thumb, you need a pressure source to generate the oomph to get the wet stuff on the red stuff and turn it into the black stuff.
You don’t even have to Bubba-rig it.
Any number of fire equipment companies sell floating fire hose readily-connectable pumps that can be set in any body of water, including a swimming pool, to direct that water where one might wish for it to be directed, like the roof of their own fire-threatened house, which they had some wee interest in preserving.
What’s notable is that such forethought percentage of the average resident in the fire zones is running at something around about 0.01%, to date, per direct observation.
Following. And good pointers from nursedad on pumps and the correct type of pumps to use. A body of water on site, pools, IBC totes, ponds-creeks etc is desirable versus water from a main municipal line or pulled up by a well that may not be obtainable in a pinch. Also some of those “more advanced” communities will even require a in home residential sprinkler system (!$$! Big added costs!) To any homes built beyond the water lines, municipal or hydrants for the “permits to be approved”. Something for the commander to pencil in to those property search flow charts. Harbor freight tools or northern tool, etc as others out there will have such pumps and hoses etc. The 1.5 inch universal forest service or standardized fittings hoses will be ideal versus commbloc garden hoses from those box store purveyors. You are your own first responder, the .gov second responders may show up tomorrow or next Thursday, maybe. Stay equipped, stay frosty.
Concrete shingles – Mission Tile ? is fire resistant but it is heavy and the structure underneath it requires stout construction (especially in snow country). Mission tile also requires care when walking on top or the persons weight can break the tile – the curved top collapsing. These roofs have limitations on roof pitch (i.e. slope) as the heavy weight wants to slide down
But fire resistant compared to other materials – definite plus.
They make metal shingles – more expensive than sheet metal roof, but metal shingles can be bought that look like wood, stucco, etc.
https://greenamericanhome.com/products/centura-steel-shingle/
Aircrete shingles are not the same thing as mission tile, which latter has been around for hundreds of years, as the name implies.
Nor are they particularly heavy.
Just completely fire-resistant.
For that matter, you can roof with synthetic thatch, which isn’t anything like as easy to ignite as the genuine article, but from 10 feet away, looks like the real thing.
There are metal shingles available that supposedly fit just like the asphalt ones, kind of regret not researching them more when we re-roofed. Wonder why folks aren’t clearing brush from around their homes?
Privacy. Aesthetics. “It’ll never happen”.
Take your pick.
There’s an app for that:
https://i.imgur.com/OhSm9OT.jpg
Look at the pictures, palm trees that burn like big matches were almost untouched in what should have been a fire storm.
Palm trees, which do look like big matches afterward if they catch on fire, are rather harder to ignite than you imagine.
The ones that went up in the riots were ignited with dedicated gasoline ignition sources. Occasionally you’ll see one that ignites from idiot-aimed fireworks around New Years’ or 4th of July, but then, only the tops burn.
Brush fires, even in suburban locations, tend to roll right on through and leave the taller palms’ greenery unscathed. Not least of which because most palms are surrounded by either concrete, or verdant lawns, which also don’t burn, rather than growing amidst wild brush. This is only news if you haven’t seen it here firsthand.
i have read a few articles of home owners saving their house and others but yeah i think the media tries to down play that idea. one lady had those shingles and hardie board siding. she said a “prepper guy told her”. another old guy put out embers with a garden hose on his roof and saved his house and several neighbors as well. he was pissed that the fd was nowhere to be seen. he says he watched helpless as tiny embers turned into infernos just out of range of his hose. fires that could have been stopped. what i can’t figure is a burnt house and ten feet away is a green tree. wtf?
I was surprised to hear that California has more republicans and Trump supporters than any state in the union. That tells me the Golden State is not all lost.
It doesn’t fit the narrative of innumerate red-state bumpkins with sunshine envy.
As my namesake once pointed out:
“The grapes were probably sour anyway.“
In absolute numbers, yes. But that’s simply because of how many people live there. Heck, the population of the greater San Francisco Bay Area alone is larger than some states.
Percentage wise, however, is the measure that counts when it comes to election results. (Plus however many decades of jerrymandering, of course.)
After the big fire in the early 90s, the code was changed in LA to require fire-resistant shingles.
Guess what became listed as ‘fire resistant’? The same old crap.
There are truly fire-resistant (fiberglass), and fire-proof (steel), shingles available that work just like the cheap ones: They are not cheap.
Personally, I had my house roofed with steel. Not quite as ‘luxurious’ a look but they don’t burn.
I’m sure the local government will find it worthwhile to fine the hell out of the guy for saving his house.
Nope.
They’ve already had their fill of sh*t sandwich.
Nobody hereabouts is looking for another helping, served on the business end of a plumber’s helper, and the local media looking for a new whipping boy 24/7.
Comment not on the fires but the response. Charity concerts,Big relief push for multimillionares but what is the response for mostly poor people in NC /Tennessee? Maui?(any sign of the hundreds of children in school busses that vanished?). Anyone else disgusted by the virtue signaling for Commiefornians while others have been affected as bad or worse?
BTW my only fire fighting experience is shipboard where you have no where to retreat to so you must fight it or you’re shark bait,kind of makes you a little more serious about it
VT.
I’m sure the FJB regime trafficked those children to his deep state pals.
CZ, you wrote, “And, yes, when the sheriff shows up and tells you to evacuate or else … there may not be much you can do, but you can at least leave the hoses running and the pumps pumping like some sort of hydro-sentry-gun.”
Yes, a sheriff can order you to evacuate. Arresting you at the scene is just not likely to happen. It means taking you back to the station, going through the booking procedure, and filling out paperwork. In the middle of a wildfire, no pun intended, that deputy in a patrol car will have bigger fish to fry.
And, yes, when I left my home in 2018, believing that my house would be burned to the ground, I left lawn irrigation running in one zone, and portable sprinklers connected to hoses running elsewhere. Fortunately, I am only 100 yards removed, and slightly downhill from two massive municipal water tanks, so water pressure wasn’t an issue.
And yes, my home has 1-inch thick concrete tiles covering the roof. I replaced the ubiquitous Southern California shake shingles 30 years ago.
“Yes, a sheriff can order you to evacuate. Arresting you at the scene is just not likely to happen. It means taking you back to the station, going through the booking procedure, and filling out paperwork. In the middle of a wildfire, no pun intended, that deputy in a patrol car will have bigger fish to fry.”
I agree, in principle. But, unfortunately, there are too many badge-wearers with ‘small man/woman’ syndrome who, once you fail to ‘respect mah authoritah’, will focus with laser intensity on making you sorry for disobeying them…even at the price of the greater event going on around them.
And, for better or worse, societal conditioning makes it a little difficult to just say ‘no’ when the cops tell you to do something, regardless of moral position.
Commander:
I think you were spot-on when you said that leftist reporters weren’t announcing success stories because they need everyone to need the “Nanny” state to protect them.
I suspect that THAT attitude is going to have the sh*t kicked out of it now Trump is back…
Ceejay
Wouldn’t the water just evaporate off the house with the intense heat?
From garden hoses, almost invariably “yes”.
You want a pump cranking out higher volume of water at a higher rate to defeat that phenomenon.
But now you’re already two questions ahead of the people silly enough to take no precautions in the first place, which is like trying to teach a pig to whistle.
“It wastes your time, and annoys the pig.“
There’s a finite amount of fuel to generate that high heat. Water evaporating is not a bad thing so long as there is enough of it to prevent the relatively short exposure to high heat from igniting the fuel that is one’s home, etc.
Reducing the available fuel is the first and most important thing you can do: no bushes/trees right next to the house that will ladder flames up and burn long enough to radiate a lot of heat onto the house. No flammable shingles, trim, yard furniture, etc. Keep brush cut back, especially during fire season. Don’t build your home out of fuel in the first place. Have metal shutters on hand that will prevent radiant heat from igniting stuff inside the house.
And then look into more active measures like a wetting/sprinkler system that will keep your roof and walls wet, that is not dependent upon electricity or pressurized city water being available.
I have a 25 acres pond in my backyard with a 220v water pump for my irrigation system. However, if power goes out, I cannot run that pump with my 110v generator. My house is surrounded by a small wood area big enough to be catastrophic if a fire starts. I had been thinking of a setup since a while but I was not willing to put the money into it. I now seriously think this year will be the year I do it. This guy ( https://learn.eartheasy.com/articles/our-diy-off-grid-fire-protection-system/ ) has a nice kind of affordable system.
Why couldn’t the people of California do something like this when they rebuild or retrofit all the existing buildings with these. I think this would be a great idea. These structures are 250 years old and they are still standing because they were thinking so far ahead. Also the people of California need to take their water rights back from that couple that own like 60% of them. You own the water or the food and you control the people.
https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2020/10/water-hose-festival-japan/