A FireSmart home requires periodic maintenance to maintain its fire resistant qualities. Below is a checklist you should go through every year to make sure your property continues to be FireSmart.
Activity Calendar – Plan the activities you want to do this year to make your home safer and get others to do the same.
Insurance Policy – Check your fire insurance policy annually to make sure it is adequate to cover a fire loss.
Home assessment – Doing a home assessment prior to the spring fire season will help you prepare for the threat of a wildfire.
Move your firewood and lumber piles away from your buildings.
Connect your garden hose to an outside spigot, and attach a nozzle. Make sure other firefighting tools like shovels, rakes and buckets are handy.
Clean dead vegetation out of shrubs and other foundation plantings.
Lawn Care – Keeping your lawn green and mowed short into the fall is critical to keeping wildfire in the woods from reaching your home.
Access improvements – If the access road to your home is not named or marked, post a sign with the name of the road in reflective letters where it easily can be seen in the dark. Similarly, post the house number in reflective numerals so it can be seen from the road.
Enclose soffits and areas under decks. Replace flammable roofing, siding and foundation enclosures with fire resistant materials.
Clean leaves out of roof valleys, gutters, siding gaps, window sills, alcoves and on and under decks.
Also clean leaves and other dead vegetation out of foundation rock mulch and plantings, especially evergreens.
Remove annuals after they have gone to seed, or when the stems dry out.
Composting – A good time to start composting is in the fall, when you are looking for a place to dispose of your leaves and other yard debris.
Pruning – For tree health, do your pruning after the leaves fall. Prune branches off trees to a height of 10 feet (3 metres) above the ground, but prune no more than 1/3 of the live branches on the tree.
Indoor Fire Safety – Make sure your home is fire safe inside. Check chimneys, smoke alarms and fire extinguishers.
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