The Day Clore Came to Lamorinda

The Before

Picture a typical Lamorinda homeowner who has done the obvious hardening work. The roof is Class A. The vents are 1/8-inch mesh. Zone Zero is clean along the foundation. The defensible-space inspection from MOFD comes back with a passing grade. They have read the site and done the work it describes.

And yet. Every time that homeowner walks the property, the same thought shows up. The wood fence along the property line they did not build. The neighbor's structures that are too close to read as anything other than "also my problem in a bad wind event." The hedge planted by someone who owned the place before them. They have done what they can control. The fuel they cannot control is everywhere.

That is the homeowner this site is for. It is also the homeowner we are becoming. We are earlier in our own journey, still cataloguing our own roof and vents and working through Zone Zero. But when we heard about long-term retardants, we paid attention, because the problem that hypothetical homeowner ends up with is already visible from our own front yard.

This is the reason we started looking into long-term retardants late last season. Not as a replacement for defensible space. Not as a silver bullet. As a layer we could add on top of work we had already done, for the zones of risk we cannot harden with framing and sheet metal — the fence we did not build, the hedge the previous owner planted, the shrubs that line the path between our yard and the neighbor's.

That's when we found Clore Wildfire Defense, we wrote about the product first. The chemistry, the testing, the safety profile. This post is about the day we actually learned how to apply it. We invited the founders to come spray our home, partly as a proof-of-concept for Lamorinda Ready — we do not want to be a site that only writes about what other people do — and partly because we had questions we wanted to ask in person.

A fair disclosure: we did not pay for this christening application. Clore demonstrated how to perform the application as part of agreeing to the filmed interview. Going forward, we pay retail like any other homeowner, and any future product we apply or recommend is evaluated on its own merits.

Keep in mind every property is different. Lot size, vegetation, wind exposure, the hardening you have already done — all of it shapes whether something like this makes sense for you. Consult your fire district and speaking with Clore before planning your own treatment.

The Trigger: Finding Clore

The product came up in a conversation with a neighborhood friend last winter. Long-term ignition resistance, dry to the touch, rated through the California State Fire Marshal, and after a few web searches we came across a couple of Bay Area teenagers who founded the Clore after watching smoke from Canadian wildfires drift into Boston in 2021.

That last part is what caught us. A local startup. Founders who are our neighbors in the bay. A product positioned not for forest service aerial drops but for homeowners — for the fuel at the edge of your yard.

We reached out. The founders said they would be happy to come up to Lamorinda, talk through how the product works, and run a demonstration spray. A few weeks later, on a warm clear evening with the hills still holding on to the last of the green season, they showed up.

Who Clore Is

Sebastien Burkhardt, 18, is the CEO and co-founder. Barrett Deng, 17, is his co-founder and COO. Both grew up in the South Bay. The founding moment came on a family trip to Boston after 8th grade, on July 21, 2021, when Canadian wildfire smoke pushed south and choked the city for a day. As Sebastien told us standing in our yard:

"It initially started with us in Boston. We realized it was Canadian wildfire smoke pushing down to the city, and we thought wildfires were just a California issue. Then we realized they affect all over the United States and our northern neighbors, Canada. And we realized, wildfires are just getting worse and people need to be prepared for them — because as they get worse, they're going to destroy more homes, and we don't like seeing that."

The company spent its first couple of years developing and testing the formulation, earned the California State Fire Marshal fabric retardant license (C-027583) in 2023, and by early 2025 had product pre-positioned at approximately 50 homes in the Palisades and Eaton fire zones ahead of the January Southern California wildfires. A handful of those properties subsequently encountered active fire. All of them survived. The founders are careful to note — and so are we, repeating it — that they do not claim Clore alone saved those homes. Each of those properties had other layers: private fire companies, defensible space, structural hardening. Clore was one piece of a larger strategy.

In August 2025, Sebastien and Barrett drove to Calistoga during the Pickett Fire and personally sprayed client properties overnight with the same kind of backpack units they brought to our yard. That was the first time the founders themselves performed a direct-spray operation in the path of an active fire. The product worked.

Both founders deferred the start of college for a gap year to focus on the business. Sebastien started at university this past fall. The company is small and delivers most of its scaled work through a partner applicator network. The "how we got here" arc matters to us because the product framing is clearly downstream of the founders' personal experience. It shows up in the way Sebastien talks about it.

"It initially started with us trying to give firefighters additional tools, but we realized they already have a good arsenal. Homeowners have next to nothing. That's where we started looking into what homeowners can use that will protect properties, but at the same time won't damage them."

The Spray Day

Sebastien arrived with his backpack unit, a hose and wand attachment, and a translucent jug of product. We walked the property first. He asked about the wood fence separating us from the uphill property. He looked at the hedges that run the length of the side path. He paused at the wooden benches and the cedar shed.

Then he said the line that stuck with us, and that we think about every time we walk the property now:

"One of the biggest things is you see a lot of wooden fences around here, and they're kind of like big matchsticks."

The day was about being shown how and where to spray, not about finishing the job. Sebastien demonstrated on a handful of representative surfaces — the fence, a stretch of hedge, the shrubs along the path, the wooden bench. He walked us through how to pace the wand, which surfaces to prioritize (the horizontal faces of fence tops, the underside of eaves, the dry grass at the base of the hedge), and which to skip (anything inside Zone Zero, interior surfaces, the house itself). We did not cover the whole property in one sitting. We did not try to. The point was to learn how to think about the job, so we could finish it ourselves at our own pace.

Sebastien brought the ready-to-use version — product in 5-gallon jugs, paired with a sprayer, no mixing required. Clore's site describes the average home application as running under 90 minutes. In practice, one kit treats a reasonable-sized residential perimeter in a single pass, with room left over for the shed, the bench, and whatever edge cases you notice on the second walk-through.

After it dried, we could not tell anything had been applied. That is the point. Unlike the short-term gels and foams we wrote about in the March piece, Clore treats the cellulose substrate itself — the wood, the fiber of the fence, the dry vegetation — and makes it ignition-resistant whether or not it is wet at the moment a fire comes through. It does not rely on staying moist. Reapplication is recommended once a year, or after 2+ inches of rain.

What We Sprayed, and Why

The decisions were about two things: fuels we could not remove, and fuels we could not harden.

Fuels we could not remove:

• The property-line fence (wood, shared with the uphill neighbor)
• The cedar shed
• Landscape shrubs we want to keep for the ecosystem they support

Fuels we could not harden:

• The hedges that run the side path, which serve as our privacy screen
• The grass strip along the back fence
• Ornamental wood features (benches, planters)

We did not spray:

• Inside Zone Zero (the first 5 feet around the foundation). We keep that area clean and mineral; we do not want anything sprayed within that buffer that could affect soil chemistry near the foundation drainage.
• The house itself. The Class A roof and ignition-resistant siding handle that layer already.
• Interior / habitable surfaces. Clore is for outdoor cellulose fuels.

The mental model that worked for us: Zone Zero is the first line, defensible space is the second, structural hardening is the third, and Clore is a fourth layer that buys time for the zones outside our direct control. It is not a substitute for any of the first three.

The Community Angle

Sebastien said something else that we cannot shake. We asked him why the product is positioned the way it is — community-scale applications, not just single-home defense. He said:

"It's about working with your neighbors as much as it is about building a defensible space yourself. If you have a big blow torch right next to your house on fire, your house will probably catch one way or another."

And then:

"Spraying as many of them as you can is a big effect, because they're kind of like dominoes. Even if you spray one home or two homes, if three homes down they're not sprayed, it starts catching from there."

This tracks with the defensible space literature and the Firewise USA frame. Individual hardening matters. But wildfires in the WUI spread structure-to-structure as much as wildland-to-structure, and a single hardened home surrounded by unhardened neighbors is less safe than a cluster of moderately-hardened homes working together. Clore can be a neighborhood play — a block or cul-de-sac, rather than one property at a time. It is worth a conversation at your next Firewise meeting.

That is something we are working on ourselves. Sebastien mentioned the possibility of bulk pricing for coordinated block-level applications. Separately, we are putting together a plan with Clore to train a handful of local students to run a seasonal spraying service — using Clore's equipment and product — that could serve a small number of neighborhoods through the summer and into the school year. If the economics work and the safety protocols are right, it turns what would otherwise be a one-yard-at-a-time purchase into a shared project. Neither piece is a commercial operation yet. We are trying to figure out whether any of it is worth building.

The Numbers

Here is what a DIY application looks like, based on Clore's published pricing as of the time of this writing. Confirm current pricing with the company before you commit.

Compare that to what we spent on the EBMUD Zone Zero project — roughly $6,000-$7,500 net — and the 10-gallon kit is a materially different budget tier. A kit and a morning of DIY spraying is less money than most of the other hardening work we have written about. It is also less permanent. The Zone Zero gravel strip is still there three years from now whether we do anything or not. The Clore layer is something we have to renew, the same way we renew the annual defensible-space inspection cycle.

What We'd Tell a Neighbor

1. This is a layer, not a substitute. Do the Zone Zero work, the structural hardening, the defensible space first. Clore is the layer that extends protection to the fuels those other layers cannot reach — the fence you did not build, the hedge you want to keep, the neighbor's shed.
2. Know the honest limits. Clore has published acute-toxicity data (LD50 above 5,000 mg/kg, less toxic than table salt at that measure). It has not published long-term aquatic-runoff data specific to its formulation. That is a legitimate open question that the category broadly — including the aerial retardants forest services use — is still working through. Ask the company directly if it matters for your property's drainage.
3. Do not claim insurance benefits you do not have. No California homeowners carrier currently lists Clore in a published Safer-from-Wildfires filing or discount schedule. The things that do move insurance needles — Class A roof, 1/8-inch mesh vents, Zone Zero compliance, Firewise certification, IBHS Wildfire Prepared Home — are still the path to the real discounts. Clore may, over time, earn that recognition. It has not yet.
4. Talk to your neighbors before you talk to an applicator. If the domino framing is right — and we think it is — a two-home or three-home coordinated application is more valuable than one heroic solo job.
5. Keep expectations calibrated. Wildfire is stochastic. No product, ours included, makes a home fire-proof. The goal is to improve odds and buy time for the firefighters who will be working the scene. That is still a worthy goal.
6. Document before and after. Take photos the week you spray. Make a note on your calendar a year out, and after every major storm that crosses 2 inches. It is the easiest way to remember what you have already done and what needs renewal.

Why This Matters to Us

We started Lamorinda Ready to be a place where homeowners in Lafayette, Moraga, and Orinda could find information tailored to our specific hills and canyons, not to generic California. The christening was our way of moving from writing about things to doing them.

It was also our way of saying something we believe: the people working on this problem — firefighters, code officials, product founders, neighbors, insurance engineers — are mostly pulling in the same direction. Our job is to connect those dots for the homeowner who is trying to figure out what to do next.

This is the first of what we hope will be many hands-on pieces. Our first newsletter is on the site now and covers BEACON, the new MOFD fire and WUI codes, a spring Zone Zero checklist, and a walkthrough of an EBMUD rebate project. Issue #1 goes out in a few weeks.

If bulk pricing for your block or a coordinated spray day through that local student service sounds like something you would want in on, reach out through the newsletter signup and let us know. We are not selling anything yet. We are trying to figure out whether any of it is worth building, and the quickest way to find out is to hear from you.

If the Clore piece is useful to you, the most helpful thing you can do is send it to the neighbor whose fence sits between your two properties. That is where this conversation gets interesting. That is where it starts to matter.

Further reading on the site:

• Clore Wildfire Defense — the product-first piece (chemistry, safety, comparative positioning)
• Defensible Space Zones 0, 1, and 2 (the first line of defense)
• Our EBMUD Rebate Zone Zero Project (how we built our non-combustible perimeter)
• Newsletter Issue #0 (BEACON, WUI codes, Zone Zero spring checklist)