Investment propertyCalifornia"s Conflagration - Building Fire Resistant Homes
Beneath the gritty, unbreathable pall that hangs over Southern California, lie the ashes of at least 1,100 homes destroyed in a half-dozen fires that prompted President Bush this week to declare the region a national disaster area.
More than 14 people have died in conflagrations that laid waste to 500,000 acres and continue to threaten as many as 30,000 additional homes and many homeowners are wondering how to protect their homes in the path of such fiery devastation.
While even a steel-reinforced bunker isn"t fire proof, building and fire officials say you can build into your home a greater level of fire resistance to protect it from a fiery fate -- if only long enough to escape or for firefighters to arrive.
The materials and designs aren"t always House Beautiful, but if you live in a fire-prone area you may want to consider giving up form for function.
The key is combining fire resistant materials with fire safe landscaping, "fire wise" mitigation and "fire wise" design and construction techniques, according to Ron Hazelton of Ron Hazelton"s HouseCalls and The House Doctor.
The materials you use should be manufactured to American Society of Testing and Materials (ASTM) standards and assembled following International Conference of Building Officials" (ICBO) building codes.
If you live in a fire prone area, especially one that hasn"t seen a big blaze in years, consider making these components of your home more fire resistant -- if only when you are conducting home improvements, according to the The Fire Safe Council.
Roofing: Your home"s strongest line of defense is a Class A roof. Most fire resistant Class A roofs are made of aluminum, steel, concrete, clay or slate. Such a roof is especially protective in a foliage-borne fire that rains hot embers. Treated wood shake looks good, but provides the least protection in a raging fire that falls from above.
Keep the design of your roof uncomplicated using a simple hip or straight gable roof. Roofs with intersecting planes and valleys are architecturally smart looking, but they form dead air pockets and eddy currents that help fan the flames of a fire.
Ceiling, Walls, Floors: Building codes typically require fire-resistant gypsum wall board in certain locations in a home, including between a garage and the main house. Consider using it elsewhere, in walls, floors and ceilings to help create a fire barrier of an hour or more.
Exteriors: Stucco, stone, masonry and other exterior materials are better than wood at preventing fire from intruding into the walls. They are the most expensive materials, but they give walls a two-hour rating. Metal siding also provides greater fire protection, but you must take measures to reduce a wicking effect that can allow condensation to develop and deteriorate material behind the siding. Also, while the metal itself is non combustible, it needs a gypsum sheathing to give it a one-hour rating.
Windows, Doors: During many California wild fires, the exterior pane of some energy-efficient dual-glazed windows cracked, but the interior pane held. Consider upgrading old windows with newer dual- or triple-glazed windows.
Tempered glass, which costs 50 percent more than regular glass, is even more resistant to high heat. It"s the glass used in patio doors and in front of fireplaces, for good reason. Tempered glass will stay in place and intact throughout many fires.
Add low emissivity (Low-E) coating and your glass is even more fire resistant. Low-E film will reflect infrared and ultra violet light -- heat rays. In a wildland fire it helps stop the radiant energy transfer to combustible materials that are behind the glass such as drapes or wood furniture and walls. Tempered glass with Low-E coating will stay intact and it will transfer less radiant energy to combustibles behind it.
Glass block is another option, provided you don"t mind losing your view. Use it where only daylighting is needed, view is not a factor, and the window faces a very high fire hazard.
Don"t overlook shutters -- yes, metal ones.
Shutters, real shutters that swing into play, not decorative shutters, can add another 10 to 20 minutes of protection to a window -- all that may be necessary for a window to survive a fire.
Metal shutters can protect a window even longer and they will not ignite. You will, however, have to swing them shut in a timely manner, should a fire approach.
Like roofing materials, doors are also fire-rated. Solid wood doors are stronger than hollow ones. Metal doors are best. In any case, a good fire resistant door requires adequate weather stripping so that the seal prevents hot gasses or burning embers from entering the building.
The use of metals only sounds like battening down the hatch. You don"t always have to give up form for function. Metal materials can be embossed and designed to look like wood.
Design: In California"s 1991 Oakland hills fire, flames snaked beneath decks, eaves and crawl spaces.
Decks are common in many panoramic regions, but the irony is the panorama -- often ranges of towering, and potentially explosive evergreens -- is what heightens the fire hazard. To begin, most decks are highly combustible structures. They trap heat and hot gasses and they often face downhill (to take in an unobstructed view) towards a fire"s approach and effectively and openly invite the fire into the home. Decks also are built perfectly to burn, much in the same way you would stack wood in a fireplace. Adding fuel to the fire, the components of a deck, joists, decking and railings, are made of only two-inch-thick wood giving the structure the high surface-to-volume ratio fires quickly devour.
Keep a deck built with fire resistant materials and create barriers by closing in the deck, screen vents, eaves and crawl spaces to ward off burning embers. You can also isolate the deck from the fuels and fire by building a noncombustible patio and wall below it. The patio prevents combustible materials from getting below the deck. The wall helps shield the deck from both the radiant and convective energy of the fire.
Additional systems: Fire and building officials say consider installing residential sprinkler systems if you are improving or building homes in fire prone areas. Sprinklers reduce the risk of fire deaths by 75 percent when combined with a smoke detector.
Mitigation: Fire-safety law requires some homeowners to clear flammable vegetation within 30 feet of a home, both to help stop fire"s encroachment and to create a defensible perimeter. Irrigated, mowed turf grass is the best fire resistant vegetation.