Resilience in our Houses

Resilience in our Houses

Between 1955 and 1965 about 18 natural disasters occurred in the US annually. This decade, starting in 2010, we are averaging about 110 nationally declared disasters a year- roughly 2 per week. In the past, building codes were developed from historical data, but now State and Federal agencies are pushing communities to use predictive climate models to address more appropriately what’s coming.

Resilience is defined as “the intentional design of buildings, landscapes, communities and regions in response to vulnerabilities to disasters and disruptions to normal life.”

The local environment always plays a critical role in determining what makes a building resilient, or not. In other words, resilient design is always locally specific. Tapping into historic vernacular architecture, as well as local wisdom, knowledge and experience, often prompts strategies enabling buildings and occupants to better survive disasters. The big natural challenges we face in our region are droughts, wildfires, landslides, debris flows, intense precipitation, flooding, earthquakes and maybe even tsunamis. Resilience planning “is not about keeping people comfortable; it’s about keeping them alive” says Alex Wilson, President of the Resilient Design Institute. Preparedness includes planning for potable water, food, first aid, news and communication, toilet needs and getting around, probably without a car.

The 3 most important areas to focus on are:

Creating livable conditions for post-disaster. That means making your house (and surrounding space) wildfire resistant, constructing it to be seismically strong but flexible, and incorporating passive solar heating, cooling and natural ventilation. It is also important to provide protection from heavy rains with suitable roof overhangs, drainable planes behind siding, break-away panels, if in a flood plain, and infiltration swales and catch basins near the house.

Providing for back-up power. Evolve your home to be all electric with photovoltaic panels. Provide back-up power/storage for key electrical circuits in your home: refrigerator, cooking (if electric-magnetic induction), media, phone charging, electric car/bicycle, and a few lights. Avoid diesel generators. Battery back-up is increasingly affordable and reliable.

Accessing potable water. Develop a water supply, perhaps using rainwater collection, which can be filtered/purified with hand equipment to make it drinkable-safe. There are good filters pumps and ultraviolet portable treatment equipment available that were developed for wilderness trekking.

Doing all one can to stop, and even reverse, the climate crisis needs to be our top priority, but we also need to prepare for the disasters already arriving.

Fire Resistant Homes - New & Remodeled

No home is entirely protected against wildfire. Most have at least a few weaknesses, a few materials or openings that make them vulnerable to flying embers or to the intense heat of wildland firestorms.

Reducing this risk channels attention to a few fronts. Creating a 30’-50’ “fuel free” zone around a dwelling is mandatory: key steps to implementing this strategy are pruning up and thinning out trees; changing decks, trellises, fences, patio furniture and other flammable outbuildings to non-combustible materials; and removing all plant dead wood, wood piles and other easily ignitable materials. Stone, tile or concrete patios, metal or masonry fences, tube steel trellises and cementitious sheds near the house are worthy choices.

Shifting attention to the house, avoid wood or vinyl siding (susceptible to melting in high heat). Fiber-cement siding is a good choice, preferably with tongue-and-groove rather than shiplap joints. Stucco is also an excellent non-combustible covering option. Both materials have the added advantages of being rot and rodent proof, low maintenance, requiring infrequent or no painting.

Roofs need to be constructed with non-flammable underlayment on top of plywood sheeting, which is better than oriented strand board, a composite material commonly used. Superior roofing materials are tile, metal, cementitious composites and slate. Stay away from wood shingles or shakes, even when treated with fire retardant. Don’t forget to clean gutters regularly to maintain fire safety.

Double pane windows perform far better than single pane in resisting sudden spikes in temperature during wildfires and impact from wind-driven flying firebrands. Such spikes often cause window blowout. Smaller panes survive better than bigger ones. Wood, wood clad with aluminum, metal and fiberglass frames all perform well—certainly better than vinyl frames. All exterior doors should have a one hour fire rating.

Selecting high performance foundation, eave and attic vents is critical for creating a fire-resistant dwelling shell. Soffit and attic vents can be eliminated by using icynene insulation (an open cell foam) on the underside of the roof, the only code-approved way to do so. In homes with crawl spaces, foundation venting is required by code for moisture control. Baffle vents, auto-closing vents and 1/8” screened vents are recent developments specifically designed to protect vent openings from heat and embers. In wildfires, there are hundreds of thousands of flying embers driven far ahead of the fire front by strong winds. Most are small and go out immediately. The larger ones can get pushed into any opening in the house shell, where they can smolder for hours, until possibly igniting nearby combustible materials and burning the house down. 

Wildfires are important to the health and beauty of natural landscapes. Their periodic pattern reduces fuels, recycles nutrients, regenerates plants and stimulates biodiversity. We cannot “fireproof” forests, grasslands or shrub lands that depend on fire, but we can design, build and remodel homes to be more fire resistant.

A New Standard in Green Toilets

Niagara is a company that continues to bring breakthrough green products to market, and at reasonable prices. An earlier product, its shower head with a 1.5 gallon per minute flow rate, was, and still is, best in its class and with a price tag of roughly $10 per unit. This product has made the company renowned for its water conservation solutions.

After the shower head, it decided to create the best water conserving toilet. Toilets account for 30 percent of indoor water use in the US. The Federal government mandated a maximum of 2.5 gallons per flush (GPF) several decades ago. Many brands operate at this water flow level, but the Environmental Protection Agency, through its WaterSense certification program, has encouraged manufacturers to better the minimum standard not just with toilets, but across an array of water consuming fixtures and appliances.

Niagara has created 2 award winning toilets that perform at an entirely different level from all other toilets. One, its single flush, stealth toilet, consumes only 0.8 GPF, less than a third of the maximum allowed water standard. This is the only single flush toilet in the industry with such a low GPF rating. Its other model is a dual flush unit that uses 0.5 and 0.95 GPF flushes. Both toilets are WaterSense certified and have received rave reviews from consumers.

These toilets incorporate 3 innovations. First is the pressure-assist flush mechanism. It harnesses the energy of the water filling the tank to pressurize and trap air in a tube. This pressurized air creates an accelerating force on the flush water when the button is pushed. Once the flush is complete, the system refills and re-primes the air transfer tube ready for the next flush.

The second innovation tackles the vacuum assist sound issue. Vacuum mechanisms are notorious for the accompanying swooshing noise. In this design, the fill valve is always submerged in water, never exposed, thereby dramatically reducing noise. The manufacture claims it is the quietest toilet on the market.

The third innovation is the design of the toilet bowl. It has specialized rim holes and a siphon jet—the jet for fast evacuation of the bowl and the small holes for water to thoroughly clean all the bowl surfaces. The sophistication of the design surprisingly has fewer moving parts, and this, combined with the strategic use of ceramics, makes these toilets low maintenance fixtures.

Perhaps the best thing is the price. These units range from $200-$250, low enough that they could replace many less water conserving toilets. The replacement offers an ultra-high efficiency experience that delivers a powerful and quiet performance. The wasteful problem of double flushing is a thing of the past.

Choosing the Right Building Materials for a Low-Carbon Future

Many have advocated for tight houses with low energy needs and highly efficient mechanical systems as one of the best ways to address climate change. California now requires all new houses to be zero-net-energy, although natural gas is still allowed. A new study by Chris Maywood, director of the Endeavour Sustainable Building School in Ontario, Canada, questions this singular focus on cutting building energy use. His research concludes that curbing the emissions resulting from the harvesting, manufacture and transport of building materials, what he calls a building’s up-front embodied carbon emissions (UEC), is significantly more important than the contribution from running a building on clean, renewable energy.

Zero-net-energy makes a big impact on carbon emissions, but most of that impact is in future years as a result of on-going zero energy consumption in the building’s operation. On the other hand, if UEC is zero or even provides net carbon storage, the impact on climate is immediate and powerful. Emissions that are avoided today do more to slow climate change than emissions that are averted in the future.

What materials make the difference between a high UEC structure and one that stores carbon? A high carbon house would use such common construction materials as standard concrete, extruded polystyrene insulation, brick cladding, steel frame-vinyl windows, tile and carpet flooring and concrete or clay tile roofing.

A carbon storing building would utilize concrete where much of the Portland cement has been replaced by fly ash or other substitute materials. It would be insulated with cellulose and wood fiberboard. Sustainably grown wood would be used for the framing, for wood flooring, for wall paneling and for wood windows. Linoleum might also be on the floors. Sun baked Mexican clay tiles (low embodied energy) would be a good roofing choice for our high-fire area. The study recommends plant-based building materials such as straw panels, hemp fiber board, and rice straw medium-density fiberboard, because they prevent the release of stored carbon for the life of the building.

Because the report only focused on materials that are available, code-compliant and affordable, architects and builders can make major carbon reductions with only minor adjustments to what we already do. The optimum, obviously, is to create carbon storing buildings that also run on renewable energy.

The conclusions in this report are a major revelation to the building industry. The analysis relates only to new construction, but the same team is undertaking a new study covering retrofits. Maywood’s hunch is that there will be even bigger climate-impact opportunities with remodels.