Lessons From Two Surviving LA Fire Homes

okay friends heavy topic on the build show today we're going to be looking at two houses in particular that survived the fires out in LA and I want to look critically uh and really see if we can understand together why these houses survived such a horrific event before I jump into that though let me pause and say look if you're if you're in any way connected if you're watching this from LA or California if you know somebody this has been absolutely horrible it reminds me in the rest of the country about the lahina fires that

happened last August absolute massive loss of life and just I mean the images that I saw on 60 Minutes I mean it looked like the fires of Hell raging down the streets it was it it is it continues to be terrible I'm seeing over 12,000 houses lost in LA and the latest that I heard was like 75 people have lost their lives lah 101 confirmed deaths thousands of houses lost people are just now starting to rebuild in lahina and so I don't want to make light of the tragedy but I do want you especially Builder

friends across the country that are in Texas like me or in Rhode Island or wherever non Wildfire zones or maybe you're in Wildfire zones I want us to have to use this to learn something and to take it back to our job sites today because you may be building a house that could be in a wildfire Urban interface soon or already building it and I think that we need to look critically at what happened there and see if there's any takeaways but I don't want to minimize the fact that somebody in that fire zone could

have really literally done just about everything right and you put a blowtorch on a wood building and we're going to have problems and of course there's going to be people that are going to say look we should build with conc or we should build with you know whatever and that may be part of the solution but we're in America we've been building with wood for years and we can actually build a very fire resistant house out of wood if we do some things right uh but again 100 mph winds if this was a hurricane we'd

call this a category 5 I mean this is Katrina right I mean this is unprecedented blowtorches was the word I heard over and over on the 60 Minutes report uh actually let's let's watch just a minute or so of the 60 Minutes report because I want to I want to show the winds and the Embers in particular and then we're going to look at that in comparison to these houses so let's do that real quick The Inferno and a daed Calvin Family sifting through the ruins of their homes and their lives this is unreal oh

God Z Calvin and his family have oh man it's heartbreaking to see him in that situation I know all of us feel the same way let's fast forward a little bit in the story though because I think uh this section coming up here where they're talking about the devil wins and showing some footage this is what I want to show and then we're going to show those two houses he told us that devil winds hurled Embers far ahead of the fire like snowfall from hell I think we've gotten the gist here there's obviously a lot

more to watch amazing job by 16 minutes I thought they do did a really nice job covering this horrible story but let's look at a cowf fire video uh you know I've been looking at some resources one thing that I want you to take away from this video is actually a few different resources um really three in particular we're going to get to those in a second but I want you to watch just quickly this calfire demo and what they've got set up here is two test houses I'll actually start playing while we're while we're

talking here two test houses the one on the left is really kind of standard construction it looks like wood some type of wood siding standard construction normal mulch bed the house on the right I suspect is probably like a James Hardy uh fiber cement or allora fiber cement and notice that there's a rock bed around and also look specifically at the fence types the one on the left has a wood fence the one on the right an open metal fence non-combustible so basically the house on the right has a 5ot defensible space around the house

and you noticed all they did was kind of light the uh the mulch a little bit and then the winds and then obviously these fans are not blowing 100 mph winds this is not the same as the video we saw a second ago but check out that elapse timer we're talking 12 minutes until that fence is a charred rubble and here at 13 minutes the house is basically absolutely gone right we still have some studs that are burning because they're a thicker wood but that's it the house on the right on the other hand appears

to be basically untouched and it was the same type of fire the difference was the defensible space okay now what we've been thinking about and wanting for or waiting for let's look at these two houses one of them crazy enough was Tom hanks's personal home uh we all know and love this actor and this is an image of his house and it looks to me like there were some other houses that survived potentially as as well it's kind of hard to tell what's happening over here in the right but this house behind absolutely charred and

I don't know what's happening with the wind in this area it looks to me like Tom is downhill from some fire and every report that I heard said that the fire in the wind was running downhill which is a little different right most of the time the wind comes from the coast and up and these were like 70 60 80 100 mono winds coming downhill couple things at Tom's house though look at this um pool and Hardscape around the house so some defensible space looks to be a metal roof here and a flat roof here

possibly with a ballast it's a little hard to tell from this JY photo but you know what a ballast is it's where you do a let's say a TP or a PVC roof maybe a keer roof you put some type of rock on top of it and The Rock keeps the UV rays off the roof membrane makes it last a lot longer well that rock is also non-combustible and in general a lot of the uh flat roofs let a PVC roof you can get a Class A no problem uh which is the highest fire rating

the other thing that you're going to notice on Tom's house there's no traditional uh you know attic space it looks to be a contemporary relatively flat roof so my guess is there's no sopit vents around this house it looks to be hardly any overhangs and you know kind of a green lawn on that downhill side on the uphill side it looks like there's a concrete barrier maybe holding back a a hillside hard to say exactly but he's got some defensible space he doesn't appear to have any sopt vents with which would let in some Embers

and again metal and probably other class a uh roofs here's an even more striking image though and this one is what a friend actually sent to me uh on X and said check this out have you seen this brand new house I think it's actually six months old next to an absolute Charred House and it appears everything around totally gone interestingly enough this uh this post from this uh uh architect and Builder I did some digging into him this guy Greg Chason and crazy enough he commented on an Instagram post I put up yesterday look

at his look at his uh his wording for this no words really just a horror show some of the design choices we made have helped but we were also very lucky well said Greg I think that's I think that's absolutely true I kind of dug into the comments to see what he said and what um what people said about the house but crazy enough I found a Reddit thread and someone found a news report with him let's watch a minute of this why is this the last house standing well there's a reason architect Greg Chason

built it just 6 months ago he came by to see how it fared in The Inferno the side is stuck which serves as a fire block on the sidewalls here so that helped a lot we also used a metal roof steel roof with special underlayment to protect it uh designed to protect it against fire check out the burned out car on the left you can see it on the Twitter photo uh this car is absolutely destroyed on the left hand side it caught fire and see that little Silver Streak right there that's that's actually aluminum

that melted from some part on the the car maybe the rims I can't remember there was a bunch of speculation online about that aluminum melt at 1200° F so when that car was burning in that vicinity was 1,200 de but back to that defensible space Greg specifically talks about how there's really a total uh desert Aid scaping around the whole house so we've got a this full 5ot clear the other thing it did that really saved the day especially from that car burning this is a concrete wall That's not just a regular fence fence not

even a a metal fence that's a concrete wall now there is some metal fencing it looks like at the man gate and the driveway but everything else say a short it appears to be maybe a 4ft tall perimeter wall but that concrete wall saved for sure this part of the house from the heat also the fence that's over here metal fence again not wood uh and he specifically mentions in one of the stories that the homeowner was smart enough to go hey anything that's outside that's near the house that could combust needs to get away

for instance these trash cans uh got shoved to the front of the lot uh those could have absolutely ignited and if they were right next to the house they could have caught fire I've seen some speculation on what the siding is it actually looks and appears to me to be wood siding I'm not totally sure maybe it's a aluminum siding that looks like wood but honestly it could have been real wood with this defensible space and not necessarily caught fire the thing you're going to notice is look at the Monopoly style framing going on here

there's no sofits there's no Eaves there's no overhangs uh and there's no ventilation here too this is a fully conditioned attic space it appears and Greg actually mentioned that at some point that I saw online so there's nothing to soak in or or bring in Embers into an attic and burn fascinating house I believe that I saw online that he specifically used tempered glass uh on the house for fire resist resistance there is a benefit to going to tempered and believe it or not there is some glass that has some type of fire rating which

is probably a laminated tempered as well I don't know for sure but I guess that these are either aluminum windows or they're probably wood with an aluminum um coating on the outside an aluminum cladding I should say on the outside so nothing to catch fire there nothing uh ignitable the other thing that we need to think about with Windows is you know if you had a Vine if this house had vinyl Windows the glass might survive but the vinyl would melt the window would fall out and then the house would be gone uh any any

house in this area that had vinyl windows they would have melted like that the glass would have fallen out and and the house is lost uh it appears to be a a metal garage door that was down to and all the windows obviously need to be closed that house needs needs to be shuttered so two houses crazy Survival let's look at a couple of online resources say that might help us explain a little bit about how these houses survive so first off there's a uh organization called Wildfire prepared. org this is the sister organization to

the Fortified program if you're in the uh southe East if you're in the east coast if you're in a hurricane Zone you're familiar with fortified I've made some videos about them it's doing some things during construction that are really smart to make sure when things when the crap hits the fan uh no pun intent Ed or pun intended uh that your house is going to survive the hard part about Hurricanes versus fire though is hurricanes you can hunker down your house and typically what's happening to your neighbors is not affecting you with Wildfire especially in

this Urban setting what's happening at your neighbor's house is absolutely going to affect you and having these houses so close to one another uh gives you a lot less uh ability to withstand and again though it is possible based on that house that we saw that Greg built this is a just a general um uh kind of here's what you can do and there's a lot of good information on this site if you actually live in California or Oregon there is a designation program which I believe will give you an insurance discount if you kind

of follow their program they have kind of a regular program and they have a plus program for building and they have a standard that you can download that has some fabulous information on it I believe the link is right here how to prepare your house checklist and if I were to kind of summarize this uh there's really kind of three or four areas that you need to think about and funny enough as I was doing my research on this I just thought you know I'm going to see what chat GPT says about this and I

read this chat GPT before I started reading through all this info but this is kind of a good summary which is of course what chat GPT is good for us and chat says on a summary look we've got this immediate Zone 0 to 5T we saw that in a calfire video if we take care of the first 5et and make it non-combustible uh gravel rocks Stone mulch remove all plants keep everything clear of flammable debris we're going to be in much better shape and then we've got this kind of intermediate Zone you know 5 to

30 ft if we take care of that zone and really think about that zone to be as sparse as possible low cut grass get rid of sh Shrubbery that could burn that sort of thing then we can go to the next Zone which is the extended Zone and thinking back to specifically the house that Greg built this is where we might have a perimeter defense system uh and as we talk about that you know I learned about something new that I didn't know about there is actually a company based out of Australia that makes specific

meshes to be used for retrofit or new construction for this defense of purpose uh and this could be used in Perimeter fences uh or we could I'm going to get back to ventilation in a minute but what you're looking at here is a stainless steel mesh that's been powder coated they make it in a couple different varieties but uh I would I would say that this E8 inch variety is not giving you as much protection as the 16in 11/16th inch opening variety and what this is going to do is actually reject like 98% of the

Embers that might go against this they sell this in all kinds of different roll sizes but let's say if you had a roll of this that was 5T tall by 50 feet you could wrap your perimeter fence with this and now you've got a 5 foot tall wall that any blowing Embers when they hit this they're not the energy is not going to get through and would really reduce the possibility of ignition in your yard and ultimately in your house space the more uh common use I would say for this though is things like this

they sell it with frames already so you could really easily retrofit the ventilation on your house if you have a typical vented house they also sell it in a bunch of different roll sizes I think they make it in like a 7in roll a 12in roll 24 that sort of thing you can learn more at Wildfire defense mesh.com uh I met with the founder of the company really neat guy he's actually in LA today meeting with people you can buy it online and uh I suspect there's some retail outlets that will have that as well

let's keep going on the list there so besides the uh kind of perimeter defense we need to think about fire resistant building material so start with the roof we got to have a class a building material on the roof believe it or not though you can get an asphalt shingle that is Class A rated I just put one on house that I built uh several manufacturers make it mine happen to be from Atlas uh and a lot of them will have both a wind and a fire rating so think about a class a roof you

also need to think about your fire resistant underlayment uh and of course metal andle are that much better in my mind than asphalt shangle my house actually has a metal roof remember the Monopoly framing we talked about though a second ago at the um at the house that Greg built I really think that he was thinking about uh fire resistance for another way in that there's no big valleys in here that could catch leaves although he does have a flat porch here I'm not sure if there was any uh any possibility of uh of leaf

or debris holding here but that's that's one thing I like about Monopoly Framing and kind of simplifying your roof design for instance my personal house if you were to look um at the house that I built for my family not too long ago I completed a couple years ago metal roof but there's not a single Valley I have that same A-frame Monopoly Style check out my videos to see why I did and how I did put overhangs on the house uh I'm in a totally different climate though so I have exterior insulation I've got overhangs

because I've got more than double the amount of rain that they get in LA in general one of the benefits of La as a climate is it's pretty uh uh it's pretty mild I mean it's hardly ever 20° colder or 20° hotter than 70° they also get less than 20 in of annual rainfall so this is not a really harsh climate when it comes to temperature and rainfall so it makes a lot of sense not to have overhangs uh and of course not having that ventilated roof made all the difference that's another key point that

I wanted to make on this video and let's jump into that ventilation uh as we think about it I mean ventilation on the house uh is a major uh source of ignition for a lot of these houses but also just for regular old houses uh in neighborhoods even if there isn't uh a wildfire risk for instance uh in the last couple years here in Austin Texas I can think of two houses uh that burned all the way to the ground that one was a chimney fire issue or a chimney spark issue this is my personal

chimney and I've got a spark arrester up here if I didn't have the spark arrester and I'm burning wood here uh you would see quite a bit of uh red Embers coming off here and one of my neighbors uh I don't know how many years ago three four five years ago uh had a Chima in their backyard are you familiar with that you know what I'm talking about when I say that it's a um it's like a little Clay Pot that you burn wood in the backyard well they had one of these going uh they

went to bed and the fire was not out yet at let's say 10:00 they went to bed an hour later the entire roof was in flames and they got out with their lives but the house was absolutely lost burned to the ground a spark out of the went into the sopit vent and lit the roof you know the basically the attic on Fire House totally gone had they had something like this over those vents that would have prevented that and so this is something that I actually uh I'm going to think about using in all

of my houses even if uh I'm not in a wildfire Zone this would absolutely prevent that from happening we could also use this uh in our rain screen areas you know if we have a ventilated siding we could use this in a u- shape and prevent Embers from the bottom or from the top coming up uh this seems like a really cheap defensive method for keeping those uh Embers out of those ventilated spaces the last thing I want to mention on this other house though uh or the house that Greg built that was not uh

that survived those fires there was some talk online about whether this was a passive house uh you know did it have exterior insulation let's say a rock wool type insulation that would be more fire resistant uh and Greg commented online no this was not a passive house we certainly used some principles uh from passive house but this was not a rated house it had no exterior insulation again because his climate was pretty mild but he did specifically mention that it had a 1hour uh wall rated assembly and I had to look that up cuz I

actually didn't know exactly what that meant what that really means is that on the inside of the house you've got 5/8 typex uh gyps and wallboard and and on the outside you have some type of 5/8 typex gypsum sheathing as well something like a you know dense glass gold or U you know USG makes some as well a fiberglass facing that's a cement or not cement based it could be cement based or gypsum based sheathing on the outside can be just regular old standard 2x4s nothing nothing special there and then of course you can use

a more Flame fire resistant uh type of ins insulation like a mineral wool a rock wool insulation would certainly help but that 1H hour rated fire wall Greg also felt like was a big help uh on this house and you saw in the video he mentioned specifically he had stuck o down his two sidewalls brick fiber cement these are all Class A fire resistant materials uh and again I think he might actually have had wood on the front there uh but that wood was was in a more concealed place that wouldn't have direct flame upon

it and he was really smart about that defensible space you know another thing that I want to mention is we talked about things being outside the house you know a broom leaning against the house uh non or combustible deck furniture things like that but don't forget decks are a huge source of ignition when I visited the Marshall fires in Colorado a couple years ago the house that I visited that was being rebuilt they specifically mentioned how their deck was a big Source attached the house uh burnable ignited the deck ignited the house that's something to

really be thinking about is how can we move to a uh firewise deck class a deck materials you know think about PVC decking uh the guys at ASAC and timbert take make a lot of Class A materials we also could use things like rolls of this around the perimeter of the deck underneath to make make sure that Embers are not getting into that space uh or if it's an elevated deck you got to keep that clean and think about class a building materials potentially even metal uh deck framing there's a lot that can be done

on decks to keep them from igniting but we need to really pay attention to that let's see let's talk resources real quick and let's let's wrap the video I did a little research and I don't have my full research done but there is some Coatings that can be applied no relation to these guys someone just I saw on a Reddit thread mention these guys so there are some things that could be done on the outside of the house I also uh if you look at the Delta Millworks website these guys sell wood uh to a

lot of wildfire areas and they have this fire codes for exterior wood cladding diagram and discussion on their website and they tell me that they're actually in the works for a class A rated wood exterior product so that's something to keep in mind you could call those guys for more information and they're a great Local Company um but in terms of resources let me show you a couple other things besides what I showed you so Wildfire prepared. org another great one um is the NFPA what does that stand for the National Fire Protection Association maybe

I can't remember but this video in particular I'll link to it in the description is a fabulous video with some really really good um kind of advice let's actually watch just a minute or two uh so that you can kind of see what what they're talking about but I really liked how in this video they actually talk about fire Brands which they call burning embers they call them fire Brands and let's let's actually watch a second of this this pretty cool isn't it how they fix figured out how to shoot those burning embers at a

house I have no idea how they did that but I would love to see this test someday I think this might have been at the ibhs which is the Insurance Institute for business and home safety they're the ones that started uh the Wildfire safe and the um and the other organization I mentioned anyways I don't want to watch the whole thing for you but I will link to it that's definitely worth 13 minutes I think my big takeaway here is look builders should dig into how to do uh a better job on this fire resistance

even if you're just in the middle of a city in the middle of a regular Urban or rural setting and you're not worried about Wildland uh Urban interface or wildfires in general but let's end by saying gosh our hearts uh are with those affected in La uh I thought about this scripture this is from Psalm 34:18 the Lord is close to the Brokenhearted and save those and saves those are crushed in Spirit uh our hearts are with you guys our prayers are with you uh I think that the rebuilding efforts really need some careful thought

I think we need to think about our codes and what we're doing uh when we do rebuild let's not make the same mistakes we did in the uh 50s 60s 7s when we build houses and we had kind of short-term thinking uh or maybe we just didn't know any better uh you know our motto here at the build show is know better build better and so I wanted to make this video for Builders like me that are not dealing with this every day to kind of get a sense for what happened and what we could

do I hope you learn something but please dig into the links I'll have links for all three of those organizations in the description below uh I think it'd be worth your time to get out there that being said guys hit that subscribe button new content here of course every Tuesday and every Friday we'll see you next time on the build show I cannot believe I didn't say something about the brave men and women whove been literally working like 24hour I've heard like 48 hour shifts from the fire departments locally and abroad it's it looks like

we've got Mexican firefighters and Canadian firefighters and probably half of uh California's firefighting forces there gosh amazing Brave Heroes thank you for all that those guys uh have done I mean I don't care what side of the political aisle you're on I don't care what religion or faith you are or don't have uh when it comes to loss of life loss of houses and families that's what unites us and my hope is that this disaster will unite America with the desire to build better houses in the future uh thanks for joining me on the special

build show guys [Music]