It’s wildflower season in Utah. My wife and I finally got a chance to get up into the mountains for a hike to escape the heat and enjoy the colors on the hillside. It was 109 degrees down in the valley, and thankfully only 90 up the canyon. Unfortunately, it’s also wildfire season. A record dry winter, many years of urban growth into wildland areas, extended drought, and occasional irresponsible behavior (not by me, I promise) has led to record fires raging across the state. This season, a number of structures have sadly been destroyed and fire fighters have tragically lost their lives as fire crews have fought blazes unaided by mother nature.
I’ve written about this issue before after the LA fires last January, but in light of the current situation it bears highlighting again. While one of the less flashy design goals, it immediately becomes the most critical on that one day in the life cycle of the home when it becomes relevant. I’ve never had a client bring it up as a goal they’re excited about in an initial design discussion, but it often gets added early in the research phase as an important dimension of planning.
Thankfully, there are many fire safety design strategies that we can employ that don’t cost really anything at all. They do have to be considered during the design process with care and intention, however. This comes down to selecting Class A fire rated roof and siding materials, for example. We need roofing and siding, so to be sure that we are using materials that do not burn is often a choice that has zero cost implication. Some things do cost more, but the delta is negligible on the scale of a statement home, and next to many of the luxury amenities that will be installed will be a non-issue for nearly any owner.
The code that governs fire resilience in areas prone to wild fires is the Wildland Urban Interface code or WUI. This code guides design teams in decision making both within and surrounding the home to ensure that the home itself, water and fire-fighting resources, and surrounding vegetation will all work together to support the homes’ survival.
Recently, I was working with a client whose home was adjacent to a WUI area – but not inside of it – who found out that insuring their home was going to be a considerable cost. I suggested to them that they employ WUI strategies in the home design as a way of expressing to the insurance company that they were taking fire safety seriously, even though they were not required to do so by the county, or the state WUI map. This can be a great strategy for many owners looking for ways to keep their homes safe from fires. We should recognize that the WUI maps are not updated as often as perhaps they should be, and that even if they were that would bring you little comfort if you had to watch your home burn because you had chosen not to implement WUI standards since it was not required. If your home is in any danger of being in the path of a forest fire in the future, then take action in the design of the home now. Implement WUI strategies, and maintain your home long term to give your investment the best chance of surviving if the worst were to happen.
The single best thing you can do to protect your home from a nearby fire is to maintain a Defensible Space. This is a buffer zone free of flammable vegetation within a specified distance from the home. This space should include the removal of dead plants, leaves, and debris, as well as proper maintenance of trees to minimize fire hazards. This does not mean you can’t have trees and vegetation near your home, just that it has to be carefully managed. The importance of this zone cannot be understated.
An interior fire sprinkler system is the next installation, and the biggest investment. This is frequently required across the Wasatch back and in many other forested areas of Utah.
Another active system that can be setup just as you are evacuating is a water cannon. Essentially a giant water gun: this can draw water from a cistern or your pool, it is powered by a generator, aimed, then it will run as long as it has water and fuel. Sometimes the few hours it is capable of running for is all it takes to keep your home safe.
Selecting materials that do not burn was mentioned above, but I want to go a little further and talk about the entire building envelope. All materials should be carefully considered as a complete system. Siding, roofing, soffits, doors, vents, and windows. All vents should have spark arrestors so that sparks cannot enter the home. Some vinyl windows can melt and deform at just 700 degrees so are not advisable to be used if fire prone areas. I could go on at length here. The point is that throughout the design process we should keep coming back to fire safety as a design goal. Not only early in design, but also late in design and during construction. The Grenfell tower catastrophe in London took place because of a fire vulnerability that was introduced during value engineering during the construction phase. The insulation underneath the outer siding was substituted for a cheaper flammable alternative. Always review design goals when reviewing design changes! It can be easy to lose sight of why decisions were made 6 months ago.
Are you scared, just a little? Let’s pull it back, somewhat. If you are building in the middle of an urban area we can take a different approach on fire safety. It is generally considered far safer and dangers from spreading fires are fewer. (Although, one of my neighbor’s houses blew up from decades old dynamite last year. Actually true story. Ask me about it and I’ll send you the news article. It was only a mile or so from my house.) One of the lessons we learned from the LA fires was that flammable fencing and trees/shrubs too close together allowed fires to spread between homes that were otherwise thought to be far enough apart to be safe from each other. Apart from that, suburban homes are not thought to need any other special systems or features to keep them safe (freak 100 mph wind storms notwithstanding).
Again, I understand that talking about fire safety in the design of your new home is not what you get excited about, and it’s not why you call an Architect in the first place. But, it is exactly why it’s so important that we do work closely together. I’ll work with you, your interior designer, your Landscape Architect, and your Contractor to ensure that even though you won’t know all the details of the fire safe design, it will certainly be in place when you need it most.