Are You Ready for Wildfire?

Wildfires destroy hundreds of homes every year, often with very little warning. When a fire moves fast, fire crews can be stretched thin across an entire region — and there may simply not be enough personnel or equipment to reach every home in time. That's the gap this equipment is built to fill: giving you the ability to protect your own property in the hours before help arrives, or while it's tied up elsewhere.

One of the biggest dangers in a wildfire isn't always the main fire line — it's flying embers, which can travel over a mile ahead of the fire itself and ignite a home that never saw flame directly. A property that's been prepared in advance has a real chance of surviving that kind of ember attack. An unprepared one usually doesn't.

Here's what real preparation looks like:

1. 1Plan early, before fire season
2. 2Build defensible space around the structure
3. 3Harden the home against embers and sparks
4. 4Set up an independent water supply and delivery system
5. 5Add fire retardant foam or gel to your system
6. 6Always know when it's time to leave

Preparation only works if it happens before you need it. Once fire season is underway, you're reacting instead of preparing — and a home readied months in advance has a far better chance than one scrambled together at the last minute, especially if the fire arrives while no one's home.

Even modest steps — clearing debris, checking your equipment, adding a foam or gel applicator to your hose setup — form the foundation of a real defense plan.

Fire needs fuel, and around most homes that fuel is dry grass, brush, and overgrown trees. Reducing it breaks the fire's path before it reaches the structure.

• Clear dry grass, leaves, and dead brush within 30–50 ft of any structure
• Keep dry vegetation well back from exterior walls
• Space trees so there's no continuous canopy connecting wildland brush to the house
• Prune away branches that overhang the roof or deck
• Remove low branches on nearby trees to break the "ladder" that lets a ground fire climb into the canopy
• Keep gutters clear and consider metal gutter guards to keep them that way

A large share of homes lost to wildfire didn't burn from direct flame contact — they ignited from the inside, after embers found their way through an uncovered vent, gap, or window. Ember resistance is one of the highest-value things you can do for a structure.

• Treat exposed wood surfaces with a fire-rated coating
• Screen or seal vents, windows, doors, and skylights with metal mesh
• Box in or screen eaves and under-floor openings
• Pay close attention to gaps along the roofline, ridge cap, and fascia — these are common entry points for embers

During a wildfire, you can't count on municipal water pressure or grid power — both can fail exactly when you need them most. Your water source and pump need to work independently of both.

A pool, tank, pond, or lake can all serve as a water reserve, provided you have a pump sized correctly and enough hose to reach every part of the property you need to protect — ideally the structure itself and the full defensible space perimeter around it.

A few technical points worth knowing:

• Your system should deliver at least 100 PSI at the nozzle, at the actual flow rate of the nozzle you're using — that's what standard firefighting nozzles and foam/gel equipment are designed around
• Long hose runs lose pressure to friction — that loss has to be accounted for when sizing a pump, not just the nozzle spec on its own
• Ask for a real pump curve before buying any pump. A flow rate and pressure number on their own don't tell you what a pump can actually deliver together — insist on seeing the curve, and confirm it holds 100+ PSI at the flow rate you'll actually run
• Your system should be simple enough to operate under stress — a fire is not the moment to be reading an instruction manual for the first time
• Label your equipment clearly and keep it accessible — if your local fire department needs to use or support your setup, they should be able to find and understand it immediately

For reference, NFPA 1142 (Standard on Water Supplies for Suburban and Rural Firefighting) lays out a formal method for calculating how much water a given structure actually needs — a useful benchmark if you want to size your system beyond rule-of-thumb estimates.

13 HP Honda GX390 Twin-Stage Fire Pump Package

Electric start, 140 PSI, 120 ft spray reach — a complete, ready-to-deploy pump system with 200 ft of hose.

$2,900.00View Details →

18 HP Briggs & Stratton Vanguard Fire Pump Package

165 PSI max pressure, 140 ft spray — electric start with recoil backup, dual hose connections, gated wye valve.

$2,900.00View Details →

1,000-Gallon Norwesco Water Storage Tank

A dedicated, on-site water reserve — rotationally molded polyethylene, UV-inhibited, 3-year warranty.

$2,600.00View Details →

7.9 HP Honda GX240 MultiQuip Fire Pump Package

135 PSI, 70 GPM — a high-pressure pump for larger residential and small ranch properties.

$6,400.00View Details →

Plain water alone runs off, evaporates quickly, and doesn't cling well to vertical or overhead surfaces. Foam and gel concentrates change that: they reduce water's surface tension so it soaks into porous materials instead of sheeting off, slow evaporation dramatically, and — in the case of gel — form an insulating layer that reflects radiant heat. Properly applied, these products can multiply the effective coverage of a limited water supply several times over.

We carry gel and foam options that integrate with a garden hose, a portable pump system, or a full property setup — including products built to connect directly to high-pressure pump discharge lines rather than requiring separate low-pressure application.

Komodo K-101 Perimeter Kit

20x more effective than water. Plant & water-based, nontoxic — a ready-to-use perimeter fire retardant with a battery-powered backpack sprayer.

$1,298.70View Details →

Barricade II Fire Blocking Gel — Complete Kit

U.S. Forest Service–approved fire blocking gel that connects directly to your pump's discharge line. 4 gallons + Scotty applicator.

$1,073.18View Details →

No amount of preparation guarantees a property survives a wildfire — and no piece of equipment is worth risking a life over. The gear on this site is meant to give your home a fighting chance in the hours before a fire arrives, or while it's unattended. It is not a substitute for a real evacuation plan, and directly engaging an active fire is a job for trained firefighters, not homeowners.

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