Resiliency 101: building an insurable house
A resilient house will keep your family safe, bring your bills down, and protect your property value.
Here’s what you need to know.
*This information has been checked for accuracy and non-bias by licensed insurance experts and representatives from National 501c3’s specialized in insurance advocacy. We are not insurance brokers. Consult with a licensed professional about your insurance policy and specific situation.
lets start with
how fire spreads
Fire lives and dies on what it eats. Insatiable, it will gobble anything flammable and grow, thus able to eat bigger and sturdier things. If it starves, suffocates or drowns, it will die.
Picture this
Somewhere out of sight, a hungry creatures appears in a spark. It eats newspaper and weeds, gaining strength and size. Emboldened, it starts rolling toward structures, gobbling up bushes, and trees, growing by the minute.
When it gets to a building the creature pauses - it can’t eat concrete or certain hard materials, only soft or combustible stuff, but if it can figure out eating this structure the creature will explonenitally expand, able to eat so much more. It wants in.
Through the window it sees plenty of edible things, but how will it get inside? If the walls or the roof are made of things it can digest, it can eat through those, or if there’s any kind of hole, it can slip right in. If not, it has to move on.
What happens next is up to you.
What is
“Home hardening”
You can call it many things - “Home Hardening”, “Resiliency”, “Mitigation” - it all means the same thing: not giving fire anything to eat.
There are some simple, practical steps to do that, whether your home is still standing, or has to be rebuilt, and the good news is, it doesn’t have to be super expensive.
If all it takes is one entry point or edible material to catch, every little precaution you take could be the thing that saves your house, so taking some steps is valuable even if you can’t do it all at once.
Did you know
you can become uninsurable
In the adverse, many insurers already offer discounted rates for properly hardened homes and more are soon to join.
why bother?
It helps keep your family safe.
In the Camp Fire, 60% of hardened homes were undamaged.
Mitigation efforts have a direct result on survival rates for homes in all fires.
It makes you insurable.
Get reduced bills, and get off the FAIR plan.
Fire Hardened homes get significant price reductions from many insurance carriers.
If you’re already on FAIR plan, by hardening you may be able to get back onto a regular insurance plan.
It raises your property value.
Preparedness is in demand.
If your home can only get super expensive insurance or is relegated to the FAIR plan, buyers and banks will be less inclined to take a risk on it.
If you take steps to keep yourself insurable, the money you spend to harden could triple in value immediately in your equity.
What’s involved?
The gold standard in fire hardening is issued by a research institute called IBHS. They are funded by the insurance industry to research mitigation methods, and have created handbooks for two levels of resilience.
Wildfire Prepared Home
(Insurance discounts)
Class A fire-rated roof, maintained clear of debris
Noncombustible gutters and downspouts
Ember resistant mesh for any openings in the building
Keeping the building clear of combustible materials (brush, etc)
No combustible fencing or objects within 5 feet of the house
Everything in the yard is spaced out so things don’t pile up and catch
Wildfire Prepared Home Plus
(Biggest insurance discounts)
Everything on the previous list
Cover gutters
Non combustible siding
Upgrade windows and doors
Non combustible deck
Other structures (sheds, etc) at least 30 feet away)
No parallel fencing
“How much does it cost?”
Annoyingly, the answer is it depends.
On a new build, with no grants, discounts, rebates or bundling with neighbors it adds roughly $27k to construction costs to build to IBHS Wildfire Prepared Home Plus standard.
With insurance and energy efficiency savings, it’s estimated that would be recouped in 4-5 years.
“Whats the least I can do for the most impact?”
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