Lot clearing and brush mowing in the North Valleys and Stead (89506)

ZIP 89506 takes in about 91 square miles north of Reno. Its housing comes in two ages: the American Community Survey puts about 30% of homes before 1980 and about 49% in 2000 or later.

At a glance

• ZIP 89506: about 91 square miles, about 17,400 housing units
• Stead station: about 11 inches of precipitation a year
• Mitchell Canyon Fire (1984, 9,469 acres) mapped about 6 miles away
• About 50 minutes from our Carson City yard

Old lots and new tracts need different work

Either way the tool on open ground is the same: brush mowing with a tracked machine that rides over soft and rough ground.

How often does it need doing?

The Stead weather station, inside this ZIP, averages about 10.97 inches of precipitation and about 16.7 inches of snowfall a year (NOAA 1991-2020 normals). That is a little more than Reno's airport gets, and it comes mostly in the cool months, so grass and weeds come up each spring and are dry by summer.

Mowed sagebrush stays down for years. The annual plants do not, which is why owners of open ground here tend to put mowing on the calendar once a year, after the growth and before it cures.

Clearing a vacant parcel to build

With nearly half of the ZIP's housing built since 2000, lots are still being opened. Lot clearing for a home or a shop means the brush rooted out of the pad and driveway, trees removed, stumps ground or dug, and everything loaded into our own dump trucks.

Around the future house, leave some of the native cover in place. The University of Nevada, Reno Extension's Living With Fire guide warns that removing all vegetation can lead to more invasive weeds and grasses such as cheatgrass, which is a worse fuel than what was there.

The fire record north of Reno

The National Interagency Fire Center maps the Mitchell Canyon Fire of 1984 at 9,469 acres, centred about 6.1 miles from the middle of the ZIP, the Reservoir Fire of 1999 at 6,163 acres, about 5.8 miles away, and the Verdi Fire of 2006 at 5,662 acres, about 6 miles away. There are 29 perimeter records of 300 acres or more with centres within about 10 miles.

The ZIP has no Forest Service rating of its own. Lemmon Valley, which lies inside it, is ranked higher than 99.2% of US communities for wildfire risk to homes.

Fifty minutes out: how we plan it

The North Valleys are about 41.6 miles and about 50 minutes from our Carson City yard without traffic. The loader comes on a trailer, so the estimate is built to finish the parcel in one mobilization where the ground allows. If you have trees to prune or a stump to grind as well, say so when you call and it can be looked at on the same visit.