Having now done a bit of house and farm sitting, (we were very near the fires at Kangaroo valley in NSW). I am amazed that owners are so casual about their fire fighting gear. As yet I have not been to one property that has a serviceable and portable fire fighting setup. Some have no suitable water supply, and none with swimming pools have the facility to use that water in their systems. 50 years ago on the farms the ****ies all had a fire fighting pack either on a trailer, or on the back of the Ute. Certainly they were much more fire fighting conscious than what I have seen of late.
Having been involved with "Hot work" welding and grinding in industry, the focus was very much on fire watch and fire prevention. Just has me shaking my head, if anyone saw how easy it is for a grinder to start a fire, or saw the exhaust flames coming of of the small petrol motor, it may get them into action. Every big fire starts off as a small fire, and if one can nip it in the head, that's a disaster prevented.
In the 1980s a colleague who lived in the southern highlands was very please with the completion of his latest home protection. He had installed a whole house sprinkler system, seperate pumps with their own power supply. The next project was to increase increase water storage as he only had a few hours capacity for the sprinkler system.
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Procrastination, mankind's greatest labour saving device!
50L custom fuel rack 6x20W 100/20mppt 4x26Ah gel 28L super insulated fridge TPMS 3 ARB compressors heatsink fan cooled 4L tank aftercooler Air/water OCD cleaning 4 stage car acoustic insulation.
It takes 3 things to create fire ....ignition......oxygen......fuel.
We can't do much about the 1st two......but we can do a lot about the third.
Our fires "come from the east" during the Dry. On the easterly side of our buildings I have bare ground from the buildings for approx 100 metres.....no trees no anything.
It takes me approx 10 mins to load IBC/fire fighting unit/hoses into back of ute and fill IBC.
All fire fighting "gear" including slashers have a 50% rebate from Bushfires NT. hence "a lot" of people have slip on units.
We see (on TV) a lot of examples of people building on the "edge" of suburbia /in the bush where insurance must become a real issue.
I've always wondered about the idea of sprinklers mounted on a house roof. I was working and living near but still a good way off, the fires of "Ash Wednesday" in the SE of South Australia. During these fires the wind can get up to a great no. of Knots. Indeed, I was helping the neighbor fasten down his hose roof, and at work a huge door blew off and just went flying.
I think that the water from those sprinklers would be blown away, and not even touch the roof. I Think those commercial irrigation heads, small ones like those on the self driven units, mounted about 40 meters away, up stream of the approaching fire, about 250m from the house would be better.
But still no excuse not to have some serviceable hoses about the house, and a means of getting water from the swimming pool.
Insurance is going to get totally unaffordable for a lot of people.
If people want to stay they will need layers of defence from passive design to active protection with backup systems. Additionally some mobile units with quick refilling like steam trains filled their water tanks.
& 200,000 litres of water, not in exposed plastic tanks.
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Procrastination, mankind's greatest labour saving device!
50L custom fuel rack 6x20W 100/20mppt 4x26Ah gel 28L super insulated fridge TPMS 3 ARB compressors heatsink fan cooled 4L tank aftercooler Air/water OCD cleaning 4 stage car acoustic insulation.
Conventional impact or knocker sprinklers are very water hungry and need a fair size pump. The roof top thing is really only a wet down before the S H T F .
Apparently some success with a water curtain approach around all verandahs.
