This article is not meant to achieve or guarantee fire prevention for you and your property, and is simply opinions on the subject and products offered by the industry. Consult a fire safety professional to find out how to attain a comprehensive plan for fire protection for your family and property. Now that the obligatory preamble is out of the way, let’s talk about fire safety and your home.
Recent fires in Los Angeles County have home owners wondering what they can do to safeguard their families and homes. Considering the unprecedented loss of life and property so far in 2025 for Los Angeles County, this is understandable. Not one person at J&J Roofing remained without impact from these fires, including the company itself having to shut down for over a week, or even family members who lost their homes. To say it has been on our minds is an understatement.
While there are products marketed to make your roof more fire resistant, unless you have a wood shake roof, it’s hard to prove the worth of these expensive coatings. Most of you already have Class A fire resistant roofing systems, if you hired a licensed contractor, and had a permit issued with your installation, over the last 25 years or so. The entire roofing industry has shied away from Class B installations over the last few decades.
You could invest in a fire resistant coating. We think the jury is still out on these (other than Flamestop II for wood shake), but they could make a difference. They are not cheap, when done by a licensed roofing company and in adequate coverage. But there are other things you can do.
A Class A fire resistant roofing system is still exposed to flying embers, making it vulnerable. Keeping fallen plant/tree debris clear from your roof can make a big difference, as such tinder is easily ignitable. Try to not have tree limbs/branches on or against your roof, and ideally not planted right next to it. Before altering or moving a tree, consult a licensed arborist first to ensure the health and stability of trees on your property.
A recent development is fire departments are asking builders and remodelers to stop using large dormer style roof mounted vents and wind turbines, and instead, to switch to either turtle style vents, or (more common in California) O’Hagin low profile vents. We have started pushing the O’Hagin vents more and more. The simple reason? It is harder for flying embers to get sucked into turtle or low-profile vents. Here is an example of an O’Hagin vent, shown how we install it (with your shingles also installed on top of it):
Most installers do not install the shingles on top of them; we do so simply becase we think it makes the vents blend in better. You can request them installed without shingles on top of them. It does not alter how they perform either way, or change the life span of the vent applicance. A newly installed vent will typically last at least as long as the shingle roof, if not longer.
For those wondering if they should replace their existing dormer vents, it’s not prohibitively expensive to do so, but it’s not cheap either. We’re talking around $485.00, and the more you swap out at a time, the less it would cost per unit. It depends on how hard it is for us to work on the roof (e.g is it steep/hard to walk on). Another consideration is the new shingles used to roof in a new vent are not going to be an exact match to the old shingles, even if it’s the exact brand and color. So you have to ask yourself, similar to buying insurance, is the price to get my dormers swapped out worth it. It’s less expensive to swap these out (or have them added) when re-roofing.
A last option worth considering is active ventilation appliances such as an electric roof mounted attic fan. Ideally you would have an electrical outlet in the garage so you don’t have to pay to have electricity supplied to it. Or alternativelyi, a solar attic fan. The advantages of solar fans are they are quiet, inexpensive to run, dependable, don’t require an electrician. The advantages to electric attic fans are they don’t depend on solar panels charging them, and the initial cost of an electric fan is much lower than a solar fan. Over long periods of time, the solar fan eventually becomes less expensive due to not having to use electricity. Both do a good job in their own way. Some people also pay a handyman to have a gable mounted fan installed (as opposed to roof-mounted), and those can be effective too. Ventilation is an entire subject so we won’t digress on it other than to say a licensed roofing contractor can advise you, and we should write an article on that important subject soon to be honest.
