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Defensible Space Around Your Home: A Brush-Clearing Checklist
Dry brush and overgrowth close to a house is one of the easiest wildfire risks to do something about. Here is a plain checklist for Clark County homeowners: what to clear, how far out, what you can handle yourself, and when it makes sense to bring in a machine.
Short answer: clear almost everything flammable in the first five feet against the house, thin and break up brush out to about 30 feet, and reduce the heaviest fuel out to about 100 feet. No amount of clearing makes a home fireproof, but it gives a fire less to work with.
What defensible space means
Defensible space is the area around a house and outbuildings where dry brush, dead vegetation and other fuel has been cleared or reduced. The goal is to keep a fire from burning right up against the structure, and to give embers fewer places to land and catch. It also gives anyone defending the home a safer place to work.
The three zones
- Zone 1, first 5 feet: the area against the house. Keep it as bare of flammable material as you can: no dead leaves or needles, no brush, no woodpile, no bark mulch right up against the siding. Keep roofs and gutters clear of debris.
- Zone 2, out to about 30 feet: thin out brush, remove dead vegetation, and break up continuous patches of blackberry and underbrush so fire cannot run straight to the house. Keep grass short.
- Zone 3, out to about 100 feet: reduce the heaviest fuel, especially dense blackberry and brush growing under trees, which acts as a ladder for fire to climb into the canopy.
These are the zones commonly used by fire agencies and Firewise programs. Your local fire district and the Washington Department of Natural Resources can tell you what they recommend for your property.
What you can do yourself
Plenty. Rake and bag dead leaves and needles, clean the roof and gutters, move firewood and propane away from the house, mow dry grass, and trim small brush near the structure. Do the work in the cooler, damper part of the day, and keep power equipment away from dry vegetation.
When brush clearing by machine makes sense
The hard part is usually not the first five feet. It is the thick blackberry, scotch broom and underbrush out in zones 2 and 3, which is slow, thorny work by hand and leaves a big pile to deal with. A forestry mulcher grinds that growth to ground level in one pass and leaves the chips on the ground. There is no burn pile and no hauling.
A few honest limits. Mulching works on brush and small trees, up to about six to eight inches at the base. It leaves the root mass in the soil, so regrowth is normal and most properties want a follow-up pass in a couple of years. The first few feet against the house, the roof and the gutters are best handled by hand. Larger trees are a separate job.
What it costs
Price depends mostly on how thick the growth is, then acreage, slope and access. Our launch pricing runs about $2,600 to $3,400 per acre on workable ground, with light growth at the low end and heavy blackberry at the high end. Steep ground costs more because the machine has to work slower. We walk the property before the price is final and give you a written quote.
Where we work
We clear brush across Clark County, including Vancouver, Camas, Washougal, Battle Ground, Ridgefield, La Center and Yacolt, and the south end of Cowlitz County. Washington side only.
Want the area around your home cleared?
Tell us it is for fire risk when you call. We will walk it with you, tell you what needs to go and what can stay, and quote it in writing.