These are brief notes from a presentation given at Creston Firewise’s 2025 annual meeting, combined with some of the questions. This should NOT be considered advice from a specialist, but simply the opinion of a well-informed neighbor.
House remodeling projects in 2025
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If you are doing any remodeling (and even if you aren’t), for sure consider screening your vents and gutters with 1/8" or smaller metal mesh. Also enclose any part of your house that has deck or stairs lower than 4 ft, to stop both combustible debris and embers from gathering there.
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Also strongly consider upgrading the bottom 6" of your house (or more) with truly noncombustible material (such as concrete)
- if the price difference is small, why not do a foot rather than 6"
- This upgrade also needs to include posts that support stairs or a deck
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In general, avoid wood or other combustible materials in new materials if you can at all. If your project specs call for combustible materials accessible to wildfire, conduct deep due diligence to establish the fact that there really is no noncombustible replacement.
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do not trust what your contractor tells you: in many case they simply DO NOT KNOW. For instance, many think that Trex is an appropriate material for decks: your insurance company (or, more exactly, IBHS, the big insurance consortium that conducts wildfire research and develops standards) does not agree.
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Wood-shingled roofs: do not consider a wood-shingled roof in 2025. These roofs are the criterion most associated with ignition of a house in a wildfire. Some research find them correlated with the ignition of up to 10 more neighboring houses. They should not be permittable, but, seemingly, some of them still make it through permits
- if repairing a wood-shingled roof, look very hard at the possibility to replace the whole roof with a class-A roof rather than repairing an existing wood-shingled roof. The possibility exists that, in the future, Berkeley may require the removal of existing wood-shingled roofs, as other cities in California have already.
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new roof: the most fireproof roof is a tile roof, probably followed by a metal roof. Slate roofs are hard to consider because they are so heavy and typically require a different roof line. Tile roofs themselves are quite heavy (although not as much as tile), and may often not be retrofittable to existing shingled roofs—so the typical replacement consideration should be a similar class-A roof, or a metal roof
- do evaluate the additional cost of a metal roof compared to a asphalt-shingled roof. The lifespan of a metal roof is very long. Often, insurance companies hound you on the age a an asphalt-shingled roof, and may require its early replacement even if it was sold as a 40-year roof. If a metal roof may be obtained for a minimal increase it cost, it may be worth the peace of mind.
- look carefully around chimneys, and make sure there is no place for embers to deposit in a nook under a piece of chimney. Make sure to get it tucked if so.
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gutters: only consider metal gutters (or none). Avoid copper of possible because copper is MUCH harder/costlier to screen.
- if replacing gutters, consider bundling gutters guards at the same time
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gutter guards: only consider metal gutter guards, if possible stainless steel, no more than 1/8" mesh (consider 1/16" mesh if suitable in your case; for instance, one tree that sheds on mine is a deodar cedar, where 1/16" mesh is much better)
- look into galvanic corrosion issues when placing metal screens on your gutters (in particular if you have copper gutters), if you live in an area exposed to strong westerly winds from the ocean
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Siding is not an overly critical part of your home’s wildfire resilience. So do not fixate on upgrading your siding. What is most important, though:
- embers will accumulate at the bottom of your outside walls. The 6" of noncombustible material in this location is truly critical: once breached in one place, the integrity of your house will shortly lead to its destruction. Definitely upgrade this base of non-combustible material if it does not exist, and consider making it taller than 6": on wildfire videos, many accumulations of embers appear taller than 6".
- Stucco walls are essentially as good as concrete board walls, as long as they are well maintained and tucked. Ay crack could cause failure of your house integrity and result in house ignition, particularly low at the bottom of walls, or high near the eaves if you have any (because this location would trap heat).
- if you do make large alterations of your walls, in particular (a) on the E or NE side of your house, or (b) facing your neighbor’s nearby houses (particularly when they are close), then do consider upgrading the siding for the whole wall in that area to concrete boards such as Hardie board.
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enclosing eaves: while siding is not as important, enclosing eave with noncombustible material (typically concrete board( can make a significant difference, as eaves will trap heat from embers combusting at the base of walls, and very possibly result in a house breach. Enclosing eaves, while not totally inexpensive, is MUCH cheaper than redoing siding, and is likely a much more valuable upgrade. Good quality concrete board can look like wood and be very hard to distinguish from it, so do not let aesthetic considerations keep you away from enclosing your eaves
- if you do (enclose you eaves) and need vents, remember to screen them with fine metal screens (the usual 1/8" or smaller mesh)
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Windows: if you upgrade any windows, don’t stop before you pick double glazed double tempered windows. You will regret the small cost increment if you don’t
IBHS, a consortium of insurance companies, now requires double glazed double tempered windows for its PLUS certification even though CA generally only requires double glazed single tempered windows.- between metal, vinyl and wood: research shows metal to be by far the safest, followed by vinyl (I know, weird), followed by wood. Go for metal.
- compared to 5the rest, this is a bit of a stretech. But—if your house is near another house (theoretically less than 50 ft, but, in particular, less than 20 ft) it is sensitive to radiated heat from that structure, and may ignite just for that. If all screens, wall bases, gutters, vegetation are OK, then the most likely weakness will be your windows (even if double glazed double tempered). If you are very close to your neighbor, consider installing metal shutters on this side of the house, over the windows (there shouldn’t be very many in this direction). To tell the truth, I am unsure of the relative priority between siding and window shutters in this case: it likely depends upon the kind of siding and the distance to the neighbor.
- If upgrading windows, don’t forget to look at garage door and garage wall windows
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Doors: if upgrading an exterior door, consider paying a 10-20% upcharge and making it fire-resistant for 30 minutes or more. I have a fire-resistant fiberglass door that is visually impossible to distinguish from a wood door (the fire inspectors make this mistake every year)
- consider adding a metal screen door to the outside door (s). It costs quite a bit more, but it adds a lot of resilience (since the bunch of the embers will not pile up at the bottom of the door)
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Stairs and decks: if they are not very tall, by all means look at hardscaping them with rock, flagstone or concrete. Not only does it make them extremely resistant to wildfire, but it also, when looking at IBHS regulations, takes them out of the zone 0 equation (not true for CalFire right now btw): you don’t have to surround them with zone 0 5ft zone; instead, you can count zone 0 from the walls.
- new decks: while CA and the city of Berkeley still allow Ipe and “fire-resistant” decks, IBHS is obdurate that decks MUST be noncombustible, accepting only hardscape or metal, and requiring a continuous metal surface with no grooves such as those between two pieces of wood. That includes the framing, which would have to be metal if required.
- retrofitted decks: IBHS allows a retrofitted deck for the purpose of PLUS certification to keep the original wood framing, as long as the surface of the deck is truly noncombustible (metal or stone/concrete). This, essentially, only allows metal surfaces because, right now, most stone surfaces would be too heavy for framing built for wood surfaces.
- in conclusion, when building a new low deck or stairs, by all means consider hardscape (stone, flagstone, concrete) as your first choice by a big margin if at all possible. Redwood is unlikely to be permittable and should be a very last resort, if at all to be considered.
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Garage doors: if new, by all means look at metal and do not consider wood. If old, though, don’t be too hasty to discard your old garage door: you may have other priorities for the money you would spend. For sure, though, make sure to
- carefully seal all edges if that it possible. The lack of sealing will lead to loss of integrity for your house, and house ignition.
- consider strongly adding a plate of metal, 6" to 24" tall, at the bottom of the door.
- If you need to replace the windows in an old wood garage door, you may want to get a quote on replacing the whole door. If it is a metal door, a window upgrade (to double glazed double tempered) may be more efficient.
- If the door cannot be made to seal, do consider a metal door replacement.
Remember, this is the opinion of a well-meaning neighbor, not the advice of a specialist. And it is free, so you know what it is worth