Standards
How Great Basin Defensible assesses a contractor
Summary
Every assessment here is built from facts the named company publishes about itself, read from its own website or its public licence record. Nothing is estimated, nothing is bought, and no contractor sees a briefing before it is published.
Why the criteria here are different
A stump in a lawn and a stump in a fuel zone are not the same product. The first is a tripping hazard and a sprouting nuisance; the second is a buried fuel body that can hold heat and re-ignite after a fire front has passed, which is why mitigation specifications call for twelve to eighteen inches below grade rather than six to twelve. Almost every contractor in this region publishes one figure at most, and it is usually the landscaping one. That distinction, and others like it, is what these briefings are built to measure.
Not published is recorded as not published
Most firms here publish no zone method, no fuel-zone depth, no documentation offer and no certified-arborist count. Several are, by every other signal, very good at the work. But an assessment can only weigh what it can check, and a contractor who states a figure has accepted being held to it. Where nothing is published we record exactly that. We never estimate the number and we never invent a shortcoming to fill the gap.
The critical lines are about disclosure, not competence
Every negative remark in these briefings is a statement about what a company does not publish about itself. None is a claim that a firm does its work badly, because we have no way to verify that and it would be unfair to a real local business to imply it. “Publishes no fuel-zone depth” is a fact about a website, not a judgement about a crew.
Scores
Scores run to one decimal and are relative within a single briefing. Criteria are re-weighted for each question — a land clearing assessment weighs machine scale and debris routing, a defensible space one weighs zone discipline and documentation — so a score in one is not comparable with a score in another.
What this site is not
It is not a fire-safety authority and not a substitute for an inspection of your own property. Defensible space requirements vary by jurisdiction and change; confirm current rules with your fire district, your county and, in the Tahoe basin, TRPA. Where a briefing describes zone distances or grinding depths, those are figures published by the contractors named, quoted so that bids can be compared.
Money and corrections
No contractor pays for placement, a score or inclusion, and links to contractor websites are ordinary editorial links. If a company named here publishes a figure we have missed, or has gained a credential since September 2026, the entry is wrong and we want to correct it. Every page carries the date it was last checked against source material.