Roof sprinklers and backup generator for wildfire-prone rural house
Вставка
- Опубліковано 25 сер 2024
- I installed three sprinklers on my roof and a propane-fueled generator to power our well. Inspired by a person I know who saved his house in Napa County with roof sprinklers during a recent wildfire. I soldered the copper pipe with a propane torch (using a piece of sheet metal to protect the shingles). It's not a difficult job. Copper will last much longer than PVC pipe.
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #1 НАЧАЛО ПУТЕШЕСТВИЯ [Новый сезон] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/380Q7gLWGvk/mqdefault.jpg)
You do good work, I like the thought, effort and detail you put into this.
Exactly
great stuff, thanks for sharing, the concrete hold downs are brilliant and in the KISS idea, simple easy and cheap, and effective as hell
Good setup. I've done a similar thing at my county home. I run the spriklers with a pump from a 1000 liter IBC tote that fills from my rain gutters or from my well if need be. When the sprinklers run, a fair percentage of the water recycles right back into my storage tote, thereby reducing the drain on my well.
thanks for adding this, i live near Jasper Canada where our beautiful national park and town got destroyed by the latest wildfire, and realized homeowners need to start taking care of fire suppression themselves for their houses, and have seen videos over the years showing the greatest hazard yet most easily dealt with if prepared, is FLYING FLAMING EMBERS, not walls of fire, those embers take time to start a house fire and thats lots of time for a sprinkler to destroy them and save the house, i thought of your idea before i saw this vid and am glad to see others are thinking as well, especially the part of the water running back into the storage after being 'sprinkled' over the house through the eavestroughs and pipes, thanks again for sharing, i was thinking there must be many cheap ways to have that water stored, be it totes like you mention or even those 10-25 foot pools one can buy just about anywhere for their backyard, cheap, fill them up with water in the spring enjoy in the summer and if need be they could save your house
Man that is awesome engineering! Can't think of anything you missed in the entire system. Also, I thought it was hilarious, all the high dollar copper pipe and fittings, generator, fire cabinet, electric box to isolate power to your home and make the local grid safe for emergency workers and custom made reinforced cement roof hold down blocks.........then you made the roof boot from a cat food can! I think we'd get along great as neighbors lol, probably the same sense of humor.
I did use an expensive brand of cat food.
@@BiggeDink you need a heate shield to prevent
reatiated / infra red heat it over cooking gas bottels
and powercabel in the ground.. remember when you bleed
it for water in winter time.. the one part on roof does not got drained
@@BiggeDink 😂😂😂
Very nice. Very professionally done. No corners cut. Folks, a simple system like this can save your home.
I really like your system but to be really effective I think you would need some around the house spraying the walls as well. Should also be noted that embers can get in attic vents so people should have a way to close those off when there’s fire danger.
Great video and details explained sufficiently to reproduce this system. We live at the edge of a high fire area in Santa Barbara County and I was looking for practical ways to improve fire hardening of the property.
Your system will work great! Thoes sprinkler heads will spray far beyond your roof line and far enough that any wind during a Fire Storm will also blow the water back in the same direction as the embers and will extinguish them. Even though your roof likely has a Class "A" fire rating, it does not account for debris or leaf acumulation in your gutters that will also catch fire and spread up under the roof shingles. It is very difficult for ground mounted sprinklers to have adeqauite coverage and also reach high enough to wet you gutters. Your roof sprinkers will take care of that issue easily. During our firestorm in 2017 I watched many wood fences and garbage cans catch fire and then spread into the structures. If they have been douced down by your roof sprinklers then they will have a hard time propigating to underneath your eves. I built my new fences with the last 6 feet that connected to my house being built out of galvanized posts and corrugated roofing. But again, its that wet microclimate that you are creating that will keep your structure safe. The fire brands that burnt my house down were the size of golf balls and they bounced across my yard that was dry as a bone and kept going untill they found my deck. If the yard and deck had been wet it would not have started a fire... Good Luck!
This is detailed expertise, thanks for sharing!
Beautiful home, great job! Very intelligent thank you for sharing!!
This is such an elegant beautiful setup. Thanks for sharing. We are going through the Ruidoso NM fires now in NM, already consumed well over 200 homes :( I'm very interested in setting something like this up for our place.
A smart thing to do if you have a reliable water source. Two houses were saved in Napa County with a similar system.
Im installing mine tomorrow ,we are a plumbing/carpentry family . I was running pex double crown side loop and the foam insulation [pool noodles] over the pex which keeps sun off . i was doing a loop so water preasure would be equal in the entire system .pex when it has water in it it cannot melt or burn .like a fire fighters hose laying in flames.i didnt plan on going through roof but was going to put a pole in a metal pipe or angle iron cemented into the ground and use that to connect my pex to for the horizontal bracing .i get a lot of snow here in bc canada kootenay area and we have a lot of trees . Thankyou for your video i find nobody is as smart as all of us and if we all use each others ideas we can come up with the best designs and a bit of tweeking .my gen i was going to make a 3 inch thick cement box with exhaust port and natural gas connection inside of house basement . comment getting long so cant go into too much details ,i do my best planning at night laying in bed before sleeping .lolo .id love to hear back on if your farthest sprinkler has less coverage than your closest 1 as it should as far what i know about piping water ? thanks ..Gene .
amazing
All that and you have trees over hsnging yor roof.. bushes surrounding the tank.. do you want a beautiful landscape or a house after a fire??
Not only the roof but under the roof needs protection.
I've been searching for sprinkler setups for our place, nice work you clearly put thought into it, thanks for sharing.
Great system. However, it looks like you could do more to protect your home during a wildfire. Your propane takes, for your generator, are too close to your home. During a fire you should move them to at least 30 feet from your home. You have a lot of trees and tall shrubs within 100 feet of your home. You should look at giving yourself more defensible space.
Fantastic set up! I've been thinking about doing something for extra security but this is beyond my skill set. Someone needs to start a business installing these on homes. We don't know if it will help but we'll worth the investment
Very good job on everything. Thanks for sharing them.
Nice DIY system! Hope you never have to use it but if so, you will be prepared! 🙂
Impressive copper work there .👍
I was going to say , why bother protecting the roof, then I saw the tar stuff.
I’m in Aus and no one has roof material like that . Saying that, many people here still think it’s necessary to put sprinklers on a corrugated iron roof. I can’t see the point of that. It ain’t going to burn !
I think the next few years are going to be very nasty’ down under’ for fires. I’m planning on setting up a system.
Good video. 👍
I’d run that to a ground rod hooked to that copper pipe for lightning strikes. Of course where wild fires are the worse, lightning isn’t as much of a worry but we still get wildfires in lightning prone areas.
Nice job👍
Awesome work! Can you “harden” the propane tanks too, as it looks like they’re exposed to fire.
The too close landscaping will create a radiant heat when burning that will vaporize the water coming out of your sprinkler system. I'd next focus on creating a defensible space of at least 100' with no landscaping. I know it's tough to get rid of beautiful landscaping but that is what determines if your house is going to burn or not. The sprinkler system is a panacea not a solution.
We’re looking for a good systems that covers every aspect. After looking at this setup I see there’s a lot of thought, time and money put into this extravagant system. I do have a few concerns however. I watched a video of a cabin with a sprinkler. It had cameras set up to see how it fared in a wild fire. It didn’t do well. It still burned. Those wild fires roll through between 1200 to 2800+ degrees. The water from those yard sprinklers would evaporate. Fires also blow in to the sides. How would the sides of the house be kept from burning? And the fire proof cabinet, the whole purpose was defeated once the hole was cut for the fan and then having to keep the doors open during a fire. Why then even use such an expensive cabinet?
Copper retains heat and gets really hot. I truly hope this system works.
The set up is really nice but one thing I would change for sure is I would use agricultural hi-flow sprinkler to heavily douse everything including the space about 30-40ft around my house. Have a 1800gal tank for emergency water, will last 12 minutes with one sprinkler. Would douse everything if the fire is within a mile coming our way, turn it off so the tank can refill then turn it on again when the fire is closer. If need more water then use the pool water, about 12,000 gal. We need to decide on the medium to deliver the water. Not doing copper. We also need to decide where to put the sprinklers to get the roof and the sides of the house. Which sides would be most vulnerable. How to protect our sheds out of reach of the sprinkler. What are we willing to sacrifice if not able to wet…. lots to think about. Hopefully we can decide something before our house burns down. And hopefully it works.
Nice job, was wondering the total water flow rate? We can calculate the amount of energy it takes to phase change the water to vapour and from that work out what kind of fire power this can dissipate, assuming all the water went into cooling the house/garage and not miss. A fire break is the old fashioned tried and tested way to stop a wildfire reaching a house. Perhaps keep a chainsaw handy if there is a line of tall trees nearby as if a wall of fire gets a decent sized tree going each tree puts out a boatload of BTU. I would suspect tall tree fires puts out more BTU than a sprinkler can dissipate. But it did look like you only had some small shrub and short trees near you so probably not an issue. I guess this would do great keeping the house cool on hot days and if the ambient temperature was high due to a wild fire again it would do a great job keeping the house and roof cool from indirect heat. Does the roof water run off into the gutter or can it divert onto the land around you?
Idea for future proofing - have valves or some sort of easy/quick disconnect option to split the pipes into sections - so that you dont have to cut the pipes when you repair/replace the roofing
The quick disconnect is solder and a blowtorch
Is this setup cheaper than a metal roof?
you should have a pump and accumulator tank
We have them.
Do you get freezing Temps there? What would you do in winter? Drain the system? Otherwise pretty good
We generally have mild winters. I did put in a drain and do drain it during winter.
@@BiggeDink really it's a good design, it's just about what wild fire fighters do to save structures. I'll eventually be moving to a colder region that also faces wild fire risks, and this is a good way to reduce the risk!
Well engineered system. Very nice
unless they are made of metal with metal water pipes, they wont last 10 seconds with a forest fire a 100 feet from the house
Is there any device can sensor sun heat to make the sprinkler automatically operate when sun heating?
Yes those already do exist, in fact.
What about the exterior walls? Are they protected?
At first this sounds like a good idea. The reality is if your home as composition fire resistant roofing,. The roof will not burn during a wildfire. Most homes burn from embers that ignite lite fuel accumulations around the home. Patio furniture, dry landscape plants, wood decks and dry leaf and conifer needle accumulation on and under combustible materials. The effort would have been better used managing the landscape and possibly putting sprinklers around the perimeter of the home. Goggle the name Jack Cohen and information based upon many years of scientific research can be obtained.
I personally know of a fellow in Napa County who saved his homes with this setup. The sprinklers also cover a wide perimeter beyond the roof.
In fact, up to 90% homes ignite when the constant barrage of windblown embers finds its way through cracks and openings into the attic space or soffit area. Very few roofs are built with enough attention to detail, so yes, the roof CAN burn. A child can clean up the defensible space around the building, but only 10% of homes ignite due to lack of that defensible space. Marin County has done a great video on this very subject. Bottom line: sprinklers, even a rudimentary system, can save your home.
Some government official will turn up and turn this off if there's a fire- to reduce your carbon footprint. Nice work though!
You should patent your invention.
If he hasn't already patented it, it's too late since this video is a public disclosure of his invention
Man, you talk excruciatingly slow, I had to play the video at 1.75 speed to watch it.
I did basically the same system except I pulled from the swimming pool and powered the pump off my roof top solar system.
Note that I'm also got the sprinklers on a timer that spays the roof on hot days to cool by evaporation and so the attic is cooler and less energy gets used overall (so more is available to power the house.
A couple of years ago my entire neighborhood burned BUT NOT MY HOUSE! since I set the sprinklers manually on before we evacuated (located north of LA)
Good job but......all that effort to protect a fire retardant roof while you have trees right next to the house? while the roof is being watered, that wooden trellis is likely to burn the place down. No amount of water will stop the firebrand from loading on top of that trellis. If you want to get serious, you'll have to tear down that trellis completely and get it out of the equation.