Wildfire Advice and Calls | Hour 2

On the second hour of our fine little program, we're talking about hardening your house against wildfires. We've already discussed the longer term. Okay, you've got some time to invest some money into getting your house better prepared for wildfire.

Now we've turned the discussion for this morning's advice. Of course, all brought to you by the Mountain Fire and the fact that these these fires that kick up, they awaken us to the fact that oh yeah, it's fire season, and all it takes is is one ignition and just the right wind conditions to have, you know, a devastating fire like the Mountain Fire has already proven to be. So what now do we do in terms of where

did my note go here? Let me find where are we going in terms of fire hardening your home When the fact of the matter is you don't have much time if you know, we haven't invested in, uh, the longer term fixes of changing outdoors and windows or emberproofing our events, what do we do if now you're inside the fire zone, you may be inside the evacuation zone. And I've talked about two or three basic things. One is getting the junk away from the side of your house,

ignitable things away from your house. Two, if you haven't fire hardened your or ember proofed your vents for your attic, just tape them up, tape them up, cover them, okay, so that embers don't have the opportunity of getting in you just take it off later, okay. But number three, and this is something that I have found a great deal of peace of mind giving clients and a friends peace of mind with. I wish everyone who lives within the possibility of a fire zone would consider this for

their home. And this applies, by the way, even if there's a house on fire next to you for a completely different reason. And that is fire gel. Fire Gel has shown itself to be a massively effective defensive product. You can order it right now today and have it in very very short order, and then you are ready for an evacuation. Now, what is firejel? Firejel is a substance. It comes in one to five gallon containers. It is totally safe to store, clearly, because it's the whole purpose

is that it's non flammable. You can store it in your garage, you can store it in your outshd, wherever the case may be. It will store for years and years and be sitting there ready and waiting for you. And here's what you do. Let's say you've been called in for an evacuation order, all right, you're going to

have to evacuate. What you do instead of ignoring the evacuation order like so many people foolishly do and staying home with your garden hose as if you and your garden hose are going to effectively defend your home against a twenty to forty foot wall of wildfire flame, you don't do that. What you do, though, is prior to evacuating, as you're getting all the stuff ready to get out of your house. You'll grab your garden hose and you will hook up these fire gel containers to your garden hose.

They're set up with one of those you know, spray drawing devices that draw the chemical out of the container, mix it with water, and it becomes a foamy paste that basically sprays out of your garden hose, and you spray down the side of the house that is going to be facing the open space or the fire.

twenty four to forty eight hours. Now, that may not seem like a long period of time, but if the line of fire does reach your home, it's going to move through very quickly. In minutes, it's going to move through and pass your home. That's the key element, that's the key moment. When this fire gel, which is incredibly incredibly protective of a home. Really shines, really really shines.

And what happens is the fire moves through the home, surfaces that are covered in the gel are protected, so fire doesn't likely enter in through broken windows or through those events, or whatever the case may be. When the evacuation order is cleared and you get to return to your home, whether the home has been threatened by the fire or not, if the gel is there or not, you simply get the hose back out and you just rinse it all down and it comes off. It rinses off,

and you're done. Now, how much does fire gel cost for an abe size home? A supply of fire gel to protect an average size home, and you'll you could talk to the fire gel people about your specific home size, but it's about seven hundred dollars, and that it's a chunk of change. But when you think about protecting a home worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, your home, your family home, having it still standing, seven hundred bucks not

a big deal. This is something those of you who are concerned even about the Mountain fire encroaching towards you now could potentially order and have sitting and ready for you and certainly everybody within the sound of my voice who is concerned about any other fires that may happen this fire season. This is something that can happen very very quickly. Now, you got to get on the stick with this. The fire gel that I have that I know the most about, and they are not the only

one on the market. They are simply the one that I have been very very pleased with and and known the most about is Barricade Barricade fire gel, and you can find them at firegel dot com. Read all about what it does, how you handle it, and where you can order it and how quickly you can get it into your home. And again, it is simply something that you do like pre evacuation before you have to leave, and there is a peace of mind that comes from leaving behind a home that has a temporary barrier on.

It's like putting on a bulletproof jacket, you know, right for your house, right before you leave in a war zone. Essentially, it's really really good stuff and worth ten times more than what you're paying for it in terms of its ability to protect areas of your home that are going to be vulnerable to the fire. And there you go. So now you know long term hardening short term? What do you do if you've been ordered to have accuate? My best to everybody who is still facing those fire difficulties.

When we return, it's time to go to the phones. I want to take a couple of calls. The number to reach me eight three three two Ask Dean A three to three the numeral two. Ask Dane. You can call about anything you want, fire questions, construction design, DIY, whatever the case may be. You said, the agenda will put our heads together and figure out what's going on with your home. You are home with Dean Sharp the House Whisper am I Dean Sharp vows Whisper at your service. Uh,

so glad that you are with us this morning. We've been talking about wildfires. I want to turn the page now and move on to some calls because we've got some calls on the board.

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to start the holidays. I would love to spend time with you on that Sunday, face to face right here at the iHeart Studio. So there you go. Okay, can we fit in a call before we have to go to break, Yes we will. Let's talk to Pete. Pete, welcome home.

that much. And with even if a lot of even if that was good, a lot of people are using the water pressure and there's no water pressure because everybody's using it. So if you had your own water pressure, maybe you could even get that gell of stuff that you were talking about out farther or better or just more reliably. But then you would have your own power and water to do it.

set up that way. There are high volume sprinkler hillside sprinkler systems that are built to actually go off of reservoir and auxiliary pump power. Not a lot of people invest in them, but they are a reality. You mentioned pools. I just want to mention this about pools. Yeah, technically you can use pool water to fight fire in certain situations. It is not widely recommended, though, and I'll tell you why.

It's the presence of chlorine chemicals in a pool that can potentially damage fire fighting equipment or create toxic fumes when that water is heated to a certain degree. And sometimes some situations, depending on the materials that are burning, chlorine in the water can actually believe it or not exacerbate a fire, depending on the chemical reactions that are involved. Now, somebody asked me a while back, why doesn't the fire

department just utilize the pools on the fire line. They do, sometimes they will, but they use it really as a last resort because they don't want the chlorine messing up their own equipment, causing any corrosion in their own equipment.

And there you go. Now, just so you know, if you own a pool, and I don't want you to get upset if suddenly you find a fire department helicopter hovering over your pool, dipping a large water gathering device down into your swimming pool as if somebody is violating your eminent domain. Nope, the Fire Department cal Fire has the right during a wildfire emergency to utilize any available water anywhere, the water in your pool, in order to

fight this fire. They have the legal right to do that, and occasionally they will, although you're not gonna find it happening all that much. It's not that common again because they avoid getting their equipment mixed with chlorinated water. And also the big water gathering like the kind of the water buckets as it were. They actually need a good depth of water to gather water from and most pools aren't deep enough for them to effectively scoop out of it.

But it has happened and it will happen again. Really good question, buddy, Just raising the question, Pete, of why not water in the pools. You definitely have a use the resource there, but you got to be careful because of the chlorine. All right, When we return more of your calls your Home with Dean Sharp, the House Whisper.

cases and boom up it will come. You will find it. Home with Dean Sharp hundreds of episodes, all listed by topic, and I know for sure on the iHeartRadio app that you can do searches just by topic, like Tina did this morning very quickly finding the conditioned attic episode she just put in, and all it populated all these shows that where I discussed attic in the title of the program. So it's very very fast and easy to search for

the information that you need. The hundreds and hundreds of episodes that we have up there are a veritable home improvement reference library for you that you can listen to any time, including today's show. If you want to go back and listen, it'll be in podcast form in about an hour after we go off the air, So literally all of this information available for you to listen to whenever, wherever, however many times you want. It's kind of a house

whisper on demand, as it were. But it's free. All right. Let's get back to the phones, shall we. I want to talk to Marcia. Hey, Marcia, welcome home.

online stuff. But if there's an exception out there, please let me know and I will share it with everybody. But when you search for free online design tools, you're gonna find hundreds of websites saying, oh, use awesome, it's always free to begin. In other words, whatever the most basic, basic thing to kind of get you. I don't want to use the word suckered into committing to a plan

with them. But but and then in order to go further the way to get to the stuff that you really would like to do, then you're gonna have to subscribe, and then you're gonna have to pay for the upgrade, and then you're gonna have to end da da da. And I know of no free online design tools worth anything that are just free. They all start free and then they go to other places. But I will recommend this to you, Okay, there, I'm not that's saying that there isn't a a It's a bit of investment, a

little bit of investment in your time. But Chief Architect is arguably the best home design CAD design tools out there. In our opinion, we actually use the full suite of Chief Architect for all of the plans that we create, and they have levels of software starting with Little Baby Design software for di wires all the way up to the full professional suite that we use, which is something that would be wasted on you and you wouldn't want to.

I mean, it's a whole thing. So but if you go to Chief Architect dot com, I just look up Chief Architect software and look for Home Designer, the DIY version of Home Designer. I believe, if I'm not mistaken, that the Home Design Suite, which is a really amazingly capable little tool, is like one hundred and twenty nine dollars and it's not a subscription. It's a one time thing. You would download it, you would have it, and it's going to take you some time to get used to

how to work with it. But if that's the kind of thing that you're looking for, then then I'm going to push you towards the baby version of the software that we actually use to produce these things. And included in that would be you know, interior three D renderings and so on. And I believe, I believe I'm not mistaken, exterior landscape or area plot plan design as well, that you can start to fiddle with. That's that's where I

would push you in that direction. And in terms of you know, here's the thing if you're interested in a consultation, you can always inquire with Tina whether or not that's a thing that can happen. You can just go to house whisper dot Design and check it out. Whether or not.

We do a lot of consultations because so many people are unable to take advantage of our full design services, and we do consultations to help point people in the right direction and to kind of break open their thinking and get them you just get them thinking in the right direction, and sometimes it can just literally make all the difference. So don't price me out yet. But I don't use the show that's solicit the business, so you never hear me talk about this. But anybody can always

inquire at house whisper dot Design. But the home design software that's made from the same people who do the full scale CAD architectural software that we utilize in our business every single day, and that one I can recommend highly for one hundred and twenty nine dollars. It is it's worth way way.

calls than we've got time for. I want to tell everybody. If I leave you on the line and we don't get to your call today, then you can always call back tomorrow and we will give you a fast pass to the front of the line. Is that dating myself? Fast pass? Probably lightning lane. I don't know what is the what's one of those things? I don't know? Tina is like you know what, I live among Disney snobs. That's the problem. And they're always correcting my terminology, and

that's a problem. Anyway, we'll give you a pass to the front of the line. How about that. Okay, let's talk to go go in van Ey's go go. Welcome home.

sounds like a vent clean out. You could actually if you got back away from the house and looked up on the roof and you saw a pipe sticking out of the roof in the generally aligned with where you see it in the wall, then what we're dealing with is event it could be PVC. It's probably ABS, which is black plastic. A lot of people just think PVC means plastic anyway, And it sounds like there's a temporary

plug in that as a cleanout. There are better plugs for it than that than the interior kind of plug where you crank down and they put pressure against it. Those are usually not the kind that we would use on that. Uh, if there's anything enough lips sticking out, then you could use a low pressure, low viscosity PVC cement and just glue a cap on, or you could use a cap that covers over the top with a

hose clamp. That's what I would advise you or your plumber to do is just let's just get the right cap on the thing so stops blowing off every time there's a little bit of pressure. And also let's make sure that we know why there's pressure in the line as far as what's causing the back pressure in those lines, whether we've got a plug up top and it's not actually venting out properly. But it's probably a relatively simple fix. But let's get a plumber back out who will tell

you exactly. First of all, tell me what those lines are, tell me what they're doing, don't just do a thing and leave, And then tell me what's the best way and most efficient way of capping it off. I bet if I took a look at it, we could figure out in like thirty seconds. But I can't see it right now. So let's have a plumber out who's actually going to educate you as well as resolved the problem. But I doubt it's anything too serious. If it's a larger line like that, it's a vent line coming off

of a drain. Nothing's going to explode or blow up, I promise, But call the plumber back out.

to noon. Guess what one of our most popular returning segments are shows it was like this when we bought it. The errors, the problems, the weirdnesses and the mistakes that were made to your home that you inherited when you bought it, and how to get them fixed. We'll talk about that tomorrow when I see you yet again tomorrow morning from nine to noon. Until then, get out in this day and get busy building yourself a beautiful life. We'll see you tomorrow. This has been Home with Dean Sharp,

the House Whisper. Tune into the live broadcast on KFI AM six forty every Saturday morning from six to eight Pacific time and every Sunday morning from nine to noon Pacific time, or anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.