Wildfire Advice and Calls | Hour 1

tell you what I want to do this morning. I want to talk about just protecting your house, whether it be ordinary or extraordinary. I want you to have the chance of transforming your ordinary house into something extraordinary during wildfire season here in southern California. So we're gonna we had some other plans for this morning, but I want to take a little time this morning and talk about fire hardening your home. Once again, we've done this earlier

in the year. We try to help you through that as much as we can. But then, of course everybody's ears and eyes sort of open up when we have something happening, like what is happening right now the Mountain fire out in Ventura County and a lot of homes lost to this fire already. Now hopefully, hopefully the wind event that really drove it at the beginning has calmed itself and will remain calm. But and right now, CalFire reports fourteen percent containment of the Mountain Fire, twenty thousand

plus acres burned and a few hundred homes taken. But if that changes, then well we know things can change very very quickly. So we're going to talk wildfire hardening of your home today, appropriate for anybody who lives up against open space or within two or three miles of open space. And of course we're going to take some calls as we do. And when it comes to calls, always here on the program, you get to set the agenda. I'm gonna talk. I'm going to hand out the best

wildfire advice I can give you this morning. You can call me about anything that's going on with your home, anything that's got you scratching your head wondering what do I do next, whether it's wildfire related or not. You set the agenda and don't be shy, because that's the

way it always is with calls. Regardless of what I've set for the agenda today, you set the agenda when it comes to your call, so it can be construction, diy inside, outside, landscape, hardscape, decor design, whatever the case may be. Give me a call. The number to reach me eight three three two. Ask Dean eight three three the numeral two ask Dean eight three to three to ask Dean. The phone lines are open now. We are

live and ready to roll. Give me a call and we'll put our heads together, we'll figure and if we do this all right, we're gonna bring some light into your morning and we're gonna make you feel glad that you were here. I promise you, the team is here for you. Sam is on the board. Good morning Sam, Good morning Dean. How you doing today? I am well. I am doing well. And there is our live studio audience.

More on live studio audience because then just a bit we'll talk about that on the other side of the break. But I'm gonna give you yet another opportunity to win some tickets to our House Whisper Holiday Home show, What's going to be happening on November twenty fourth, Sunday the twenty fourth at the KFI Studios in Burbank, And you can be a part of it. More on that. In just a bit, Producer Lindsey is standing by taking Oh she's taking calls right now. Look at that. She's busy

on the phone. That number again, eight three three to ask Dean eight three three two ask dean. Eileen Gonzalez is at the news desk. Good morning, Eileen, Good morning Dean. How's it going? Uh, I'm going. I'm doing pretty good. It was. It was a tiring week. I won't uh, I'm not going to pull any punches. It was a busy, busy, kind of crazy, wacky week. How about you? Busy, always busy, same same, Yeah, Well, weekends. It continues on the weekends, doesn't it It does? Why is that? Well, it's because

we're lucky enough to have these jobs. I do consider us lucky, don't They don't they know that they could just the world can just press pause and just just let us relax a little on the weekends. But no, no, all right, Eileen, glad that you're here as always. Uh. Sitting across the table from me, my better half, clearly, my design partner, the co owner, the co found owner of House Whisper, and just so happens, my best friend on planet Earth. Tina is here. Welcome home. How you

doing good? Yeah? That was a loaded good. Yeah. Oh, there's been a lot going on. Yeah, that's true. There's been a lot going on. All right, So how about this, how about we get to it. Yeah, okay, we're going to hand it some wildfire advice. When all right, on the other side of the news break, I want to talk to you about winning some seats at the House Whisper Holiday home show. We'll talk about that and wildfires and your calls get fine sharp the House Whisper at

your service. Ah, well, here we are a Saturday morning live here November ninth, twenty twenty four. We have the Mountain Fire burning here in southern California, twenty thousand acres and fourteen percent contained currently. Thankfully, the wind of that really really drove. It has subsided, and I haven't seen any indications that there's anticipation of another one coming soon.

But so let's keep our fingers crossed on that. But a lot of homes lost, a lot of evacuations, a lot of people affected, and a good amount of acreage burned from the Mountain fire. And so we are tabling our previously planned discussion this morning, so that we can just spend some time talking to you about fire hardening

homes and what you can do. I'm approaching it a little bit differently because the fire is present right now then I normally would where we take an extra amount of time on all of the prep I just basically want to divide my advice this morning up into two categories. One, if you have some time, however much time that is, meaning that you're not being threatened by a wildfire currently.

And two, if you don't have much time when you find yourself in the situation of facing potential evacuation and the like, I just want you to hear the full, well rounded advice that you know what your options are. So number one, like I've said before many many times on the programs, if you have some time, you need to take a look at the orientation of your home in regards to the open space where wildfires can happen.

And of course, none of this advice is you know, excludes your home whether or not you're anywhere near a wildfire open space area, because you know structure fires can happen, and none of this hurts even if you are embedded miles and miles into an urban or suburban environment without a lot of open space. But here in southern California, there is open space all round us. And it's rare, actually that you are more than just a handful of

miles away from an open space area. And of course we've expressed the concern before that we now know embers flying from those wildfires can travel four miles two to three miles in good conditions, or I should say in bad conditions. In the right conditions, I should say, for an ember to stay lit can fly a long, long distance. And this is why when you hear about wildfires starting up and threatening neighborhoods and stuff, that quite often the first house that begins burning is not even on the

fire line. It's before the fire line actually reaches the edges of residential properties, because attics are sucking those embers into their attic open space. And I get asked this question all the time, why is it dep that houses are designed for addicts to draw embers into them, And

it's a really, really valid question. It's a question that I have been asking myself of the building community for a long long time, and it's one that just an fyi that I addressed an entire program around earlier this year, it's been what I don't know, a couple three months or so. Please go onto the podcast and look for a New Attic. It's a show on the new Attic. And I'm not sure if that's exactly the name. Maybe Tina can look that up and find it for us.

But it's the idea of a conditioned attic space, meaning that we're including the attic space in the air conditioned and heated air of the house, and a lot of benefits to that. Not only is it nice in the attic because of that, but it's also, I make the argument, more energy efficient, and when that happens, then we don't need and we don't use at events at all, zero at events coming into your attic, which means that you don't have to worry about embers crawling into your attic

during a wildfire. One of the benefits of that is the fact that it really fire hardens a home. I believe that we're going to see in the next decade, because there already is a trend moving towards conditioned attic spaces, certainly among our clientele and others. I think in the next decade you're going to see it become a mainstream concept right here in southern California, conditioned attic spaces. So you can go and look that up and I discuss

it in greater details. So find the episode on the podcast and Tina will have that title force just bit. But of course, the whole idea here is that the eighty percent of homes that are ignited as a result of wildfire activity are not not homes that are on the fire line, homes that are being literally threatened by the flames themselves. Oh. There, it is the New Attic in June, so you'll find it dated June sixteenth. June sixteenth. Yeah, the New Attic is the show that we did that

on to find out about conditioned attic spaces. So if you have some time, we need to talk about emberproofing your existing attic. Okay, assuming that we're not completely remodeling the attic to become a conditioned space, we need to talk about emberproofing it. We'll talk about emberproof vents and what that means. You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from KFI AM six forty PFI AM forty Live, bringing an HD everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You have

found home with Dean Sharp the house Whisper. I hope you do feel like your home here on Saturday mornings when we are live with you talking about your home and everything that makes it special. Trans transforming, transforming, Yeah, transforming ordinary houses into an extraordinary home. That's what we're all about this morning. We're talking about wildfires and fire hardening your home. So I've divided my advice up into two categories. One, if you have some time because you're

not being threatened by a wildfire currently. Two if you don't have much time, and what you do in those situations. If you've got time, ember proofing the vents in your attic. And I already did a big lead up to this, so the point is those vents that you find, smaller vents around the eaves of your attic down the eaves of the roofline. Quite often they are small two inch

holes with mesh over them. There's a number of different ways that attics can be vented over the years, and so that's not necessarily the configuration you're gonna find on your home. But the idea is this, a well vented attic has low vents for drawing in cooler air and higher vents up near the ridgeline in order to let hot air in the attic out. You may have a

gabled roof in which there are large gable vents. A gable is the big triangle on the side of your house where the roof comes to an abrupt end, and you may have a gable vent there. You may have one on each side, whatever the case may be, where the vents are in order to fire harden them. If you live within realistically i would say four miles of a wildfire zone of an open space zone, then it would be very very wise, very very wise for you

to invest in some emberproofing materials. Now, whether you just replace the vents or there are companies that will give you materials that you can place on the back side of the vents that you already have in order to emberproof. And basically what that means is that these materials are designed to trap the embers as they try and get through. As they're being sucked in. It's the convection process in

your attic that actually draws them in. It's not like embers are hunting your house, but your house is very quietly vacuuming air around it on any given day as heat rises in the attic. So that's the idea. Brands that I've recommended before that are still out there doing a stellar job Vulcan Vents, Brand Guard, vent Embers, out vents, all cal fire approved, all fantastic materials, different effects, and so you need to shop it around and find out

which one works best for your situation. Also, if you have some time, in other words, you're not being threatened currently, and you've got an older home and you've never changed out your windows and doors, then consider fire rated windows and doors, at least the side of the house that faces the wildlife urban interface the fire zone. Fire Rated windows and doors simply means that those windows and doors that face the open space will be switched out to

tempered glass. Now, if you have a sliding glass door and it's not you know, I mean it's younger than let's say twenty years old, you have a tempered glass door there. That's the nature of sliding glass doors for a long long time. That's been the case, so that wouldn't need to shift. But the windows are annealed regular standard glass windows unless your home was built under current

fire codes. And a lot of older homes aren't even a lot of older homes that already switched out their windows don't necessarily have tempered glass windows facing the side of threat for the house for fire. So you know, obviously this is money. Okay, So we're just talking about whether or not this is a good investment for you long term. And this is not something you do in an emergency, Okay, this is if we've got some time.

And in addition to this, cleaning up your trees, getting your trees pruned this time of year is a wise thing to do for the life of the tree. We've had entire programs. If you want to look back again in the podcast, find the episodes about when to prune a tree. Fall is the optimal time to do this. Cleaning up and cleaning out trees in the fall is an excellent way of fire hardening your property and then clearing your defensible zone for those of you who are

pushed up against the open space. A defensible zone is usually required by the HOA or your local city or the state. And you know, and I always see eye rolls on the parts of phoe owners who are like, I gotta go out there, and I got it pay to have this thing. Listen. I don't know if you've ever asked this question before, but I'm gonna ask it and get you thinking about it. A wall of wildfire flames can be twenty feet tall on a still day, okay,

when winds are blowing it and exasperating it. Thirty to forty foot tall walls of flame okay, coming down the hillside or up the hillside towards your neighborhood, all right, that wall of flame can pump out well over well over one thousand degrees of heat. Okay. So here's a question. Not a lot of people know the answer to how far away from that wall of flame does a firefighter need to stand to effectively defend your home from it? When it's forty feet tall and fifteen hundred degrees Well,

the answer, generally speaking, is three to four times. The height of the flames is the distance that you need to stand away from it in order to even begin to effectively fight it. So let's just be moderate and say that we've got twenty five foot flames coming up the hillside. Okay, three to four times. That means one hundred feet away is the ideal, or I should say, minimum distance that firefighters want to be away from that flame in order to defend your home and your neighborhood.

That is what the defensible zone is about. Okay, It's not just about not having materials that can burn all the way up to your home. It's about giving room for the fire department to come in and save your home. So clear the defensible zone. That should go without saying, I think all right, when we come back, well, we're gonna flip over to the other side of that conversation and talk about what do you do when you find out that you might be right in the path, you

might be facing evacuation. What if some of these things that you could have done ahead of time weren't done ahead of time? What do you do? Then? I've got some solid advice for you, So go knowwhere your home with Dean Sharp the house whisper can't pie Dean Sharp

the house whisper, Welcome home. We're talking about wildfire hardening of your home today, just handing out some advice, pertinent advice because of the Mountain fire and the fact that you know it always throws everybody's eyes open to the fact that oh yeah, oh yeah, it's fire season time, and every time we have a severe wind event, man, it comes and it comes fast and hard and heavy, as the Mountain fire did, destroying several hundred homes, earning

twenty thousand acres. Currently fourteen percent contained according to cal Fire, and hopefully that's going to grow, assuming that wind events don't reoccur, you know, creating more problems with the fire. So we are talking about fire hardening your home, and

I'm dividing it into two sections of advice. The first which I've already covered if you've got some time, things like changing out your windows and doors to fire rated temper glass windows and doors, and ember proofing the events for your attic, which you know, I know, I sound like a broken record on for those of you who have been listening to the show for years and years, It's true. It's just so necessary. Cleaning up your trees

and clearing the defensible zone. Now we want to turn to what if you don't have much time, What if you get caught, you know, with your pants down as it were, in a fire zone and it's it's happening. I want to give you that advice, And so I'm first bit of advice here we're running a little late on time because I ran a little long on a couple other segments. So I will start this and then we'll pick up the other side, and then we are

taking calls. By the way, eight three three two. Ask dean A three to three the numeral two, ask dean. If you're on the phone lines, hang tight. I'm coming to you, I promise. But the very first thing that you can do if you don't have much time is number one. Get stuff away from your house before you have to leave, before you potentially have to evacuate. Move the junk away from the walls of your house, anything, anything that could burn, anything that could ignite. Get it

clear away from the house. I don't know how more so to put that. It is simply really really smart in terms of just you know, as a designer, I would tell you just do that permanently and never move it back. All right, but move stuff away from the house. Secondly, let's say we haven't ember proofed your vents and you are potentially inside the two or three mile radius of a wildfire, whether you've been told to evacuate or not. If you have your concerns and rightly so, tape them up.

Tape up your vents. I don't care what you expected. To tape up your vents. Put cardboard over them. I know, cardboard burns. I'm not talking about the fire line reaching your house. We're simply talking about protecting your attic from sucking those vents in duct tape, cardboard, whatever you can find. Tape up as many of the vents on your attic. Believe me, your attic is not going to suffer for a few days or a few hours of having the vents closed off, especially this time of year, So tape

them up. I don't want vents, I mean, I don't want embers getting into your attic, so safely. Okay, don't do any heroic stuff on extension ladders if you're on a two story house, But if at all possible, just seal those vents up, even temporarily, so you don't have that worry. And then, finally, I want to recommend again a product. I'm going to do this on the other side of the break Firejel, I wish every one of you listening to me right now had fire gel sitting

in your garage. Some of you are like, what is Firejel, What does it do? We'll talk about that right after Eileen Gonzalez gives us the news. You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp The House Whisper on KFI. You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from KFI AM six forty