Defensible Space Clearing

If you own property anywhere from Grass Valley and Nevada City up into the mountain communities, you already know the risk. What changes every year is the enforcement: Nevada County runs annual defensible space inspections, California's PRC 4291 requires 100 feet of clearance around your structure, and insurance carriers are now non-renewing policies — or refusing to write new ones — when the property isn't cleared. Defensible space stopped being yard work. It's what keeps your house standing, and what keeps it insured. The 100 feet is split into three zones, and they're not all the same. Zone 0 is the first 5 feet against the house — the ember-resistant zone, and the strictest. No bark mulch, no dead plants, nothing flammable touching the structure. Zone 1 runs 5 to 30 feet: dead vegetation cleared, grass cut low, tree canopies spaced at least 10 feet apart. Zone 2 runs 30 to 100 feet: ground fuels thinned and tree limbs pruned up about 6 feet so a ground fire can't ladder into the canopy. DJ works the property by zone, because an inspector does too. Trokay Handyman removes the dead brush and ladder fuels, prunes limbs back from the roofline, clears needles and leaves out of the gutters and off the roof, and opens up spacing between trees and shrubs. Debris gets hauled to the dump or chipped on-site — your call. Nevada County's ordinance goes a step past the state minimum on parcels along private roads and egress routes, and DJ knows those local rules, so the work passes the first time. When it's done, you get written documentation of the work for your insurance carrier and the county fire inspection — the paperwork that actually keeps your policy and clears the file. Most properties need this once a year; the foothills grow it all back. Trokay Handyman is a fully bonded and insured California contractor, and DJ Miller runs the crew and answers the phone himself.

“Defensible space stopped being yard work. In Nevada County it's annual law — and increasingly what your insurer checks before they renew.”