Is there anything stopping me from an engineering standpoint installing a water tower on my property and making sprinklers around a radius of my home to drench the area in case of wildfire?
In: 83
Trying to slow a wild fire with water at quantities anything less than a pools worth is like putting a spider man bandaid on an arterial bleed.
With sprinklers, imagine a dozen fire trucks hooked up to hydrants and 50 houses trying to operate sprinklers, there would not be enough water pressure for both.
However I have always had an idea, for a house with a pool, you have 10-30 thousand gallons of water sitting there. Why not a battery powered (solar charged) sprinkler system that puts water on the roof (it seems that embers on the roof often cause fires to spread) Have it come on at intervals, like on for 5 minutes off for 10, unless the temperature gets to a preset limit (indicating a greater possibility of fire) Take it a step further and maybe some fire retardant could be mixed in with the pool water before spraying on the roof. It would all have to be automated since you have to figure there is no internet (cell towers burned up) no power etc. In many places this may not work, not enough pools in forest areas. But in L.A. or Malibu where more than 50% of the homes have a pool, and homes are worth millions, what is another 100k for an emergency automated sprinkler system that uses the pool water?
More effective to surround the property in some sort of firebreak. I never designed in an area prone to that so not sure what could be the effective of a permanent well maintained fire break around a community. Think Hahas and moats or moundinr as well as a certain distance of fire proof material like gravel. Would have to be pretty wide because the embers can be blown by wind. The more you allow for this the less likely the fire would spread but the more land you waste and less money you make developing.
A guy I met in Sonoma had an aboveground pool. When the fire was threatening the house he axed the side and flooded the property. His house was the only one left standing in the neighborhood
This is a great idea and works really well. In fact, “structure protection” in wildland fire often involves setting up sprinkler systems. These work in two ways:
1.) Turning on sprinklers for several hours before a fire arrives raises the humidity of the air around the structure, limiting a fire’s ability to burn
2.) The sprinklers get everything wet and wet stuff doesn’t burn well
The sprinklers are either fed by a pump connected to a water source like a lake or a river, a fire engine, a fire hydrant, or even the home water source. If the fire is too intense to be there when it passes, that’s ok! Sprinklers alone are often enough to protect a home without anyone even being there. We even account for the fact that the pump/hose might burn up and stop pumping. As long as the system has been running for a few hours, it’s all good.
Tldr: sprinklers work great
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