Make your home the place the smoke can't reach.
Practical, spec-based guides to protecting your home and your lungs from wildfire smoke and fire. Real math, real part numbers, and straight answers about what works, what doesn't, and what not to buy.
Practical, spec-based guides to protecting your home and your lungs from wildfire smoke and fire. Real math, real part numbers, and straight answers about what works, what doesn't, and what not to buy.
Your outdoor-air intake can become a smoke pathway when wildfire smoke arrives. The standard advice of, "just turn it off" creates its own problems. This guide walks through a filtered bypass loop with automated dampers that keeps your indoor air clean for weeks at a time, for a fraction of what a premium system costs.
Read the full guide →Three steps, one number from your spec sheet, no pressure-drop math. Find out whether your ventilation unit can push air through a HEPA-and-carbon bank before you build anything.
Run the self-check →New to this problem? The short version of why your ventilation system matters during smoke events, what a smoke filter bank is, and how to tell if your house is a candidate.
Start here →Thin carbon pads are theater. What actually removes smoke gases: bed depth, mesh size, contact time and the upgrade that handles formaldehyde.
Read it →A filter can't burn out your fan, but it can choke your airflow. How fan curves work, how to read your unit's static pressure budget, and the full derivation for those who want the math.
Read it →Three steps, one number from your spec sheet, no pressure-drop math.
Firebreak Home is written from Nova Scotia, but the approach is not climate-specific: it is designed for homes with HRVs or ERVs wherever wildfire smoke is a concern. Cold-climate defrost behavior is treated separately because it can affect how the system performs during freezing conditions. The author works in energy code compliance and construction quality, and built the system these guides describe for his own house. Every recommendation here is judged against manufacturer spec sheets and real math. The goal is simple: your house, protecting the people inside it.