Quickstart
Open it in about two minutes.
The same instructions ship as QUICKSTART.md inside the download. This page exists so you can read it before buying, or find it again without digging out the zip.
- Import it correctly. In Google Earth, add the
.kmzasmap features, not as a data layer. Importing as a data layer strips the colours and flattens the folders, and the whole thing stops working. This is the one mistake that makes people think the file is broken. - Start here. Turn everything off except County Screen → Tiers 1–3. That's the fastest look at what's left, and those are the individually clickable counties. Click any one for its full scorecard.
- Then sanity-check a county. Turn on Wildfire Hazard, Water Rights, Radon Zone 1 and Well Depth, and zoom to it. Any shading that lands on your county is a warning the county-level average smoothed over.
- Reopen the map if it feels too narrow. Untick the homeschool-law screen and turn on Screened Out — 19 states come back immediately, and the top of the ranking changes completely.
Two layers need a manual step
Both draw everything by default. Under Radon Zones, untick Zone 3 and usually Zone 2. Under Growing Season, leave ticked only the bands you'd accept — it's a diverging scale that goes red at both ends, because too long is as wrong as too short.
Read the spreads, not just the medians
Well Depth and County Screen both carry within-county ranges in their balloons. Where that range is wide, the county figure is describing nowhere in particular — a valley bottom and a ridge three thousand feet up are different places that happen to share a courthouse.
The full guide is README.md inside the download. Anything else:support@preparedground.com.