Just a few months after forest fires have destroyed thousands of houses in the Los Angeles area, California KB home Reveals what it calls its first “wild-fire-resilant” community.
The development in Escondido, just outside of San Diego, will have 64 single-family houses after completion, all of which meet the wildfire resilience standards developed by the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS), a non-profit, scientific research and communication organization that is supported by real estate insurers. These standards should protect the houses from the three main sources of inflammation during a forest fire: flap emissions, flames and radiant heat.
A handful of houses in development have now been completed, with around 20 houses being sold. According to the KB Home, three homeowners have moved in.
The houses are built with covered gutters, closed eaves, non-fakable siding as stucco and fiber cement and non-flammable terraces, doors and roof bonds. They have a vertical release of six inches with the concrete foundation, stucco and stone. They also include defensing space with at least 5 feet from the houses. Metal fences are used in the entire neighborhood.
Steve Ruffner, Regional General Manager of the KB Home coastal department, said that he and his colleagues had seen a fire -resistant house demonstration from IBHS on the Pacific Coast Builders Conference last summer and were impressed by the possibility that this type of community was presented. Since the KB house had already broken the ground in development, they quickly had to change the corridors to include the fire-resistant components.
“We had to change the architecture with fire -resistant shutters or fire -free shutters and doors and spirited windows to a stucco -oriented architecture. We were able to do this very quickly with the city because they wanted to work with us. They really understood that this was important for their city,” said Ruffner.
He called it more of a research and development project to see what costs the costs could be and how to work with trading partners to reduce these costs, although he would not say how much these costs increase.
KB Home's New Waldfire-Resilient district in Escondido, approx.
CNBC
The houses range from $ 1 million up to the low millions, which in this area is an ascent price for single-family-free, separated houses.
“We are trying to get the costs to a reasonable location because we have specialized in first -time buyers. So we would like to make sure that we get this in a good place where it is affordable to do it, and it also has a good repayment for the customer in a form of security,” he added.
Since climate change leads to a stronger drought in more areas of the country, the focus is shifted to fire -resistant houses and communities.
During the Palisades Fire in January, some houses that were specially built for fire -resistant standards remained intact, while everything was destroyed around them. However, these types of houses are mostly single builders.
According to IBHS, progress was made at home in California, but KB Home is the country's first large production manufacturer to design 64 houses and fully exploited to meet the forest fire.
Among the specifications, houses are 10 feet apart to slow down the progression of a fire.
The new Wildfeuer-Ressiliische district of KB Home in Escondido, California.
CNBC
“This subdivision, which was built by KB Home, is really the test bed to show and demonstrate this,” said Roy Wright, CEO from IBHS. “I know that KB Home already has two other projects here in Escondido and looks at duplexes and other types of town houses, and I imagine that other builders will quickly follow suit. They will build the houses who want to buy the Californians.”
Wright emphasized that part of the draw is not only to build a survival house, but also one that is insurable. Insurance companies have withdrawn from California in droves and fully have homeowners with rising costs and some without insurance.
Although the houses are invoiced as fire -exposed guidelines, this does not mean that they are completely risk -free. Homeowners and cities have to make changes when it comes to non -flammable landscape design, heights and even designs. The actual test will take place in the future if the community should be in the line of a running fire.
“Nothing is ever fireplace. We only try to narrow these ways of destruction,” said Wright.