There was a super story in Fine Homebuilding about why that house survived while neighboring houses didn't. See "Fire-Resistant Details." There is a lot that goes into fire-resistant design beyond xeriscape and a defensible perimeter.
Posted on 10/09/2017 6:34:07 PM PDT by Yollopoliuhqui
“new children” are our hope....
“:^)
Good idea...
Interesting. I lived in Santa Rosa for a year or two during elementary school. I really enjoyed having the creek in our back yard and riding my bike to the candy shop that had the best popcorn and chocolate bubble gum ever.
There was a super story in Fine Homebuilding about why that house survived while neighboring houses didn't. See "Fire-Resistant Details." There is a lot that goes into fire-resistant design beyond xeriscape and a defensible perimeter.
There is a video at SF Gate of a guy in Santa Rosa who woke at 2:30 am hearing explosions in the distance. At first he thought it was hail. I figure either propane tanks or car gasoline tanks.
Wow! Sorry it is your neighborhood...Hope your home was OK...
I am posting link to this on thread in Breaking News.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3593394/posts
So sorry to hear this!!
I’m so sorry you are having to go through this.
It looks like what I would expect after a nuclear bomb went off.
Radiation through windows causes interiors to burst into flame. That shows how hot these fires are. Also, forced air convection will suck burning embers and superheated air right into your attic via the eave vents and set the attic on fire. Good fire resistant roofs are helpful, but not sufficient.
See my post at 45 about an article in Fine Homebuilding June 1995 on fire resistant design.
In the huge Laguna Beach Fire of 1993 one house survived in a neighborhood where every other house burned down. And 441 total did burn down.
It had been designed by a Japanese man for his parents and he used simple design elements that anyone could do.
You have to keep embers from entering the attic space, and keep superheated air from collecting under eaves and igniting the roof.
So he had minimal eaves, and vents that keep embers out. No exposed wooden beams to catch fire and let flames enter the structure that way.
Those are the design elements that I recall... he may also have had shutters to keep heat from transmitting through the windows and igniting drapes and furniture, but I don’t recall if he did.
We should require this in homes built along SoCal ridge lines. Otherwise they are just fuel when the 50 ft flame front of a brush fire comes their way.
Anybody have any idea of how all these fires started?
9% humidity.
Santa Ana Wind condition.
Hot.
Extremely dry brush and a lot of it.
Any sort of spark that would normally result in a tiny fire that no one would hear about can explode into a massive fire when we get Santa Anas.
This started very close to where the Canyon Fire was burning last week. Hot spots persist and this could have started with an ember from that one heating up when the Santa Ana kicked up.
Thanks. That’s a picture that should impress anyone.
About 25 years ago they used to have fires in the nicer suburbs of Dallas that would burn whole rows of wood shingled houses (most of the neighborhoods had restrictive covenants requiring that roof). Then one fire burned a row of houses but stopped abruptly when it got to a house that someone had re-roofed with conventional shingles. With heavy press coverage, it didn’t take long before the covenants were invalidated, and most folks replaced their roofs. The problem disappeared.
““new children” are our hope....”
And what is THEIR hope?
Sorry, I was thinking of the Canyon Fire 2 in my neighborhood, not the NorCal fires.
I’m so sorry. I hope you and yours are safe.
Sorry for your loss, but glad you survived the fire.
Here on the San Fran Peninsula, most houses had gorgeous wood shake roofs. Same thing happened with the Oakland Hills fire. You can still put on a wood shake roof, but their lifetime is cut from 20 years to 10 with the required fire impregnating chemicals.
Most houses now have asphalt composition with some tile and a very little bit of slate or metal.
We reroofed in the late 80s with shakes. We reroofed again a couple years ago with 50 year asphalt composition. It still break s my heart to see asphalt on the roof. Yuck, it just isn’t natural.
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