KB Home unveils its first “resilient” community in California

Only a few months after raging forest fires destroyed thousands of houses in the Los Angeles region, California KB Home Unveils what he calls his first community “forest fire resilient”.

Development, in Escondido, just outside San Diego, will have 64 single -family houses when finished that meet all the resilience of forest fires developed by the Institute of Insurance for Business and Interior Safety (IBHS), a non -profit research and scientific communication organization supported by real estate insurers. These standards are designed to protect the houses from the three main sources of ignition during a forest fire: flying embers, flames and radiant heat.

A handful of houses in development are now over, with around 20 houses already sold. According to KB Home, three owners moved.

The houses are built with covered gutters, closed eating, non -combustible coatings – such as stucco and fiber cement – tempered glass windows and non -incumbustible patios, doors and roofs. They have a six -inch vertical release using the concrete, stucco and stone foundation. They also incorporate a defensible space with vegetation with low incumbustible to at least 5 feet of the houses. The metal fence is used throughout the neighborhood.

Steve Ruffner, regional director of the KB Home coastal division, said that he and his colleagues had seen a fire -resistant home demonstration by IBHS at the Pacific Coast Builders conference last summer and were impressed by the opportunity that this type of community presented. Since KB Home had already inaugurated development, they had to change speeds quickly to integrate the components resilient in fire.

“We had to change the architecture on the fly into an architecture more focused on stucco with fire -resistant shutters, or flaps and doors without fire and soaked windows. We were able to do it very quickly with the city, because they wanted to work with us. They really understood that it was important for their city,” said Ruffner.

He called it more a research and development project to see what could be the costs and how to work with business partners to reduce this cost, although it does not say to what extent these costs have increased.

Houses vary from $ 1 million to millions of people, which tends to be a movement price in this area for single -family individual houses.

“We are trying to obtain the cost at a reasonable place, because we really specialize in the first buyers and new travel buyers. So we want to make sure that we can get it in the right place where it is affordable to do so and it also has a good refund for the customer in a form of security,” he added.

Since climate change causes more severe drought in more regions in the country, attention moves to fire -resistant houses and communities.

During the fire of the Palisades in January, certain houses which had been specifically built according to the standards resistant to fire remained unscathed while everything around them was destroyed. These types of houses, however, are largely unique by personalized manufacturers.

There has been progress in California at home, according to IBHS, but KB Home is the first major production manufacturer of the country which designed and fully built 64 houses to meet the neighborhood standard prepared by forest fires.

Among the specifications, the houses are spaced 10 feet apart to help slow the progress of a fire.

“This subdivision built by KB Home is really the test bench to show and demonstrate it,” said Roy Wright, CEO of IBHS. “I know that KB Home already has two other projects here in Escondido, looking at duplexes and other types of townhouses, and I imagine that other manufacturers will quickly follow the step. They will build the houses that Californians want to buy.”

Wright underlined that part of the draw is not only to build a house that is surviving, but also that which is assurable. Insurance companies have withdrawn from California en masse, leaving the owners with climbing costs and some without insurance entirely.

Although houses are presented as resilients in fire, this does not mean that they are entirely without risk. The owners and cities will have to make modifications with regard to non -combustible landscaping, elevations and even design. The real test will come in the future, if the community was in line with a forest fire.

“Nothing is ever fire. We are always trying to try to reduce these paths of destruction,” said Wright.