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Built to Burn
- rcarmo 8y agoLiving in a country where pretty much _everything_ has been built out of brick/stone/concrete for a long while now (with clay shingles), I find US building codes to be baffling. Not criticizing, mind you, since clay shingles are still supported by wooden beams in older detached homes and those go out too in forest fires (which we also have, on a yearly basis and with tragic results) - I just don’t get the rationale for small homes to be built out of wood these days - is it cost? (Edit for typos)
- noir_lord 8y agoPartially and historically the US has had a lot of wood, the UK deforested early (we built a lot of ships and wooden structures) so we had to go to brick and slate quite early (also our climate is hell on wood without modern treatment). Also the US climate is far more varied than the UK's so in some biomes wood makes sense.
- kitten_mittens_ 8y agoA lot of the interior West and SoCal where fires are the most intense is unforested. A good deal of the lumber used to build is shipped in from elsewhere. My home state of Idaho (the south) is largely cheatgrass, tumbleweeds, and sagebrush. None of which are useful for construction. All extremely flammable most of the year.
- hollerith 8y agoThe West Coast of the US is prone to earthquakes, and wooden structures survive earthquakes much better than brick structures do. (They're also quite a bit cheaper.)
- rsync 8y agoWood framed buildings are much, much safer in earthquakes and with plywood shear walls can be considered the very safest construction method. Aesthetically, I dislike it because I have a taste for very solid, permanent things, but if you live in California, stud-wall ("stick built") construction with plywood shear walls over them is really the only choice.
- erikpukinskis 8y agoA wood house can be permanent if you get the moisture management system correct.
- chrisseaton 8y agoAmericans don't believe me when I tell them my relatively recent regular UK house is built out of brick! They say things like 'it's a wooden frame with a brick facade, right?' or 'I'm sure the supporting structure isn't brick.' No it's brick. It's all brick. The walls on all sides in every room are about 30cm of solid brick with plaster directly on top. Even the internal ones. If you want to run a new light cable or something you'll be using a hammer and chisel to make a channel to put it in.
- 0xffff2 8y agoI don't think you could do this in California due to earthquake-related parts of the building code.
- erikpukinskis 8y agoYeah, a brick house becomes a sandcastle in an earthquake.
- luckydata 8y agoWe had the technology to build earthquake-proof houses for quite a while without needing to use timber framing which has all kinds of downsides. http://dme.engin.umich.edu/stubbornstructures/ http://dme.engin.umich.edu/stubbornstructures/ The only advantage is cost and speed of execution, they call them McMansions for a reason.
- defterGoose 8y agoNot sure where you're from, but cheap lumber, bro. California has lots of forests, and therefore timber framing is comparatively cheaper here.
- stevenwoo 8y agoMost (all?) California residential including apartments are wood framed for earthquake survivability of the residents. https://www.nytimes.com/1999/01/31/weekinreview/the-world-one-defense-against-quakes-build-homes-of-wood.html https://www.nytimes.com/1999/01/31/weekinreview/the-world-on...
- imhoguy 8y agoReinforced concrete frames are also earthquake resistant and fireproof, e.g. popular in Greece. Search "Eurocode 8" for reference.
- JohnJamesRambo 8y agoThe sheer stupidity of having a wood shingle roof in a place with the Santa Ana winds astounds me. That’s wasn’t against code? This was such a fascinating article. Classic government intervention, focusing on large projects that are ineffective and not backed by current science instead of direct interaction with the problem door to door in lots of smaller expenditures that would actually be effective.
- thrower123 8y agoI'm amazed at how many places appear to be opposed to steel roofing. Everywhere I look, it's asphalt shingles in new construction. I'm in the northeast, so the main problem here is snow load - which is a PITA with shingles, and you've gotta shovel your roof off - not fire, but still, if you've got swirling embers that land on a steel roof, the worst they'll do is scorch the paint.
- snarfy 8y agoSteel roofs are three times the price.
- thrower123 8y agoI don't think that's accurate. Maybe for standing seam, but the screw-down panels aren't that pricy, and it takes less work than nailing shingles.
- mc32 8y agoAre they noise dampened? What is their sound profile during precip? Also, if your house is on fire and firefighters need in thru the roof, steel makes it harder for them to get in.
- 14 8y agoAny home I have been in you can definitely hear the rain falling. But it is one of those noises I think you can find relaxing like a fire crackling. The thing I disliked about the metal roof was the major decrease in cell phone signal.
- viraptor 8y agoSounds like they could learn lots from Australia. Controlled burns are a norm every summer, CFA has pretty much everything from the article in their advice (https://www.cfa.vic.gov.au/plan-prepare/how-to-prepare-your-property https://www.cfa.vic.gov.au/plan-prepare/how-to-prepare-your-...), there are requirements for water tanks on new properties in many places. CFA mostly acknowledges the bush fire and lets it burn. They did the same mistake with fuel buildup years ago, but it seems the transition to new system was much quicker.
- epilogue 8y agoAlong with the majority of houses in suburban and rural areas having metal (Colourbond) roofs and brick walls means that the issue of embers discussed in the article would not be as dangerous to homes.
- el_benhameen 8y agoBrick walls are unfortunately not a good choice in earthquake-prone California.
- eftychis 8y agoWhat you are forgetting here is that people and the market build houses with a short lifespan in mind. They could as easily build new houses with reinforced concrete. And if there was that much earthquake consideration you would see support structures and dampeners as part of the regulation in non-trivial buildings (https://resources.realestate.co.jp/buy/earthquake-building-codes-and-technology-in-japan/ https://resources.realestate.co.jp/buy/earthquake-building-c...) (Also see regulation in Greece and Italy -- https://earthquaketrack.com/p/greece/recent https://earthquaketrack.com/p/greece/recent). The real estate market forces cheap wooden houses. It is not tradition or earthquakes... I feel here in California there is dangerous complacency regarding earthquakes (https://www.economist.com/united-states/2018/02/03/america-is-not-prepared-for-the-next-big-earthquake https://www.economist.com/united-states/2018/02/03/america-i...). People fear them but the rarity has transformed the fear into wishful thinking and avoidance.
- Theodores 8y agoThe lessons of the Great Fire of London still apply. Yet discussion moved on to this idea that 'natural fires' should not be suppressed as this causes too much dead wood to build up on the forest floor meaning that the 'natural fire' burns too intensely. That massive fire in Yellowstone way back in 1988 was when this new thinking set in. From then on the Forest Service could be blamed for poor management and allowing this kindling to build up, resulting in truly catastrophic fires. It was a seductive way of thinking and whilst everyone was thinking it the basic lessons of The Great Fire of London were ignored. In The Great Fire of London the problem was the wind and embers being blown across town to start new fires. This overwhelmed the authorities of the time. The solution was to build houses with non-flammable materials. In that way an ember landing on a house would not cause another fire to start up. The other detail of note was the use of parapets. In London roofs are always behind a parapet, so, if a house or property does go up in flames then the roof will not fall off the house but be contained within the four walls. In this way adjacent properties, e.g. across the street, don't go up in flames too. Nowadays building codes in London expect a property to not go up in flames even if the adjacent house is fully ablaze. This is buying time, clearly there is expectation that the adjoining fire gets put under control within a few hours. It doesn't seem that in California there is this thinking, which is understandable if you do have lots of garden and some distance to the adjacent house. But I bet that the first people to populate London thought that way too, they never imagined the pasture land next to their house would become a housing estate some centuries later. Another small matter is that of sprinkler systems. Architects do not like sprinklers even though they do a fantastic job of suppressing fire. They also design atriums with no vents in the roof specifically there to let hot air out if there is a fire. This is considered old fashioned thinking by the entire architecture business, they check the checkboxes on building codes at minimal cost and don't think from first principles about how to make a building work within its environment.
- upvotingWasted 8y agoIf HN's voting system wasn't trash, I'd upvote this.
- thedufer 8y agoCity fires are completely different from forest fires. For example, the parapets you're so focused on don't make much sense when houses are 100s of feet apart, as is the case in a lot of places that are burning. Also, London is a different place than California. Buildings in California aren't built with wood for no reason; they do it to withstand earthquakes. There's a big difference between just fireproofing a building and simultaneously fire- and earthquake-proofing a building - the latter is far more difficult and expensive. I don't see that many of the lessons from the Great Fire of London apply to the problem in California.
- jefftk 8y ago> Fire has no boundaries and no preference for where it burns That's a weird thing to say: there are definitely places that are more fire prone than others.
- 8bitsrule 8y agoBeen a couple days but, IIRC, that statement followed an explanation of why embers and certain kinds of roof design don't go together. (don't think it was intended to be generic)
- thoughtexplorer 8y agoHmm, I thought controlled burns were best practice and was being done. Is that not the case?
- maire 8y agoControlled burns are best practice but are not being done. For federal land, agencies have had their budgets repeatedly cut. This has left less money for thinning and other prevention work. Fire fighting money comes from a different "emergency" budget even though fires happen every year so it's not really an emergency. For private land creating a defensible space is on the books but is not being enforced.
- rsync 8y ago"For private land creating a defensible space is on the books but is not being enforced." That depends on the area... I am a volunteer firefighter in Marin County (basically San Francisco) and we do defensible space consultations all summer and the paid firefighters of Marin County do indeed drive around all summer writing fix-it sheets for homeowners that are in the wildland-urban interface.
- gdubs 8y agoThe Paradise Fire might have been an entirely different beast than the survivable events that are primarily discussed in this article. (I still think this is a great article; bookmarking for reference.) But the Paradise fire moved so fast, and so tall, I don’t think anything stood a chance. Look at, for instance, the Safeway in the town — completely demolished. Flew over the area the other day — got a first hand look at the smoke from above which we’ve all been breathing in down in the South Bay all week; tragic, devastating event. Edit: primarily talking about the stuff related to landscape and building design. I’m in favor of controlled burns, but it’s not trivial to start doing it given just how much fuel is built up in California.
- pixl97 8y ago>I don’t think anything stood a chance. Look at, for instance, the Safeway in the town Eh, I would disagree. Pull up google maps and drop in street view. This town, in the middle of fire country, is filled with pine trees. Many of them have ladder fuels under them. Tall fires happen because of crown fires.
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- luckydata 8y agoThe whole way houses and cities are built in California is to blame for this tragedy (not discounting the effects of global warming of course). It's high time California realizes building wood framed boxes with walls of compressed paper with no defensible space between the wilderness and the houses is a BAD idea and we start building with more sensible materials like concrete, bricks and stone like Europe has been doing for centuries - because it works.
- pixl97 8y agoEh, telling people to build with brick in earthquake zones is a bad idea. Of course putting pine trees beside houses in fire zones is a bad idea too.
- luckydata 8y agoEver heard of concrete? Also, there's plenty of earthquake resistant techniques you can apply to masonry. Mediterranean houses are all built with steel-reinforced concrete and bricks even now and there's all kinds of seismic activity over there. https://clay-wienerberger.com/expertise/brick-buildings-for-seismic-prone-areas https://clay-wienerberger.com/expertise/brick-buildings-for-...
- cronix 8y agoIt seems a sprinkler system on the roof, in addition to the yard, would go a long way in terms of embers. Just keep everything saturated?
- daphneokeefe 8y agoCA has frequent water shortages, and is in drought conditions right now. Where would the water for the sprinklers come from? What is going to raise it from the underground water source to the roof level? Electricity, which may not be available? Are you going to retrofit a large and heavy cistern on every roof, that relies on gravity to distribute the water?
- cronix 8y agoIt can be done on a community level, not individual houses. In Portland, we have several HUGE water towers that hold tens of millions of gallons that supply pressurized water to neighborhoods, like the Denver Water Tower. They also have them on the ground in hills where you can't see them, supplying houses below. For fire suppression, it doesn't have to be potable water. It's just a quick thought I had. I know if I lived there and there was a fire breakout and heading towards me, I'd stick a sprinkler up there whether there was a water shortage or not.
- dyyni 8y agoAs far as I know California is already short on water. Would a sprinkler in every house system be sustainable or even possible in such conditions that everything burns?
- pixl97 8y agoYou would have to have a pressurized water storage tank at each house. It would be quite expensive and have a lot of maintenance for how rare the usage would actually be.
- 8bitsrule 8y agoThe second part of this (podcast, see Episodes 317 & 318 in http://feeds.99percentinvisible.org/99percentinvisible http://feeds.99percentinvisible.org/99percentinvisible) goes into changes in Montecito, CA. IIRC, their last exposure to wildfire resulted in very few house losses.
- sunstone 8y agoSpeaking with a guy from a forestry service who studied fire impact mitigation strategies, apparently the cheapest, effective approach is for each home to have an emergency water sprinkling system that covers the entire house and as much of the property as the owner wants to preserve. Sure there's a cost to this but is it really so much different that having sprinklers in high rise residential buildings?