If you live in a high Fire Zone (pretty much anywhere in the foothills of the Hollywood Hills or San Gabriel/Angeles National Forest range) new codes are being enforced concerning fire resistance, from the standpoint of the roof and vents.
There are two ways to address this.
- Ventilation. Put simply the goal is to ensure your vents are ember proof. I’ve noticed some vent companies offer fire resistant vents and I suppose that’s a fine idea but one could argue that if you have fire all around your house those may be irrelevant at that point – fire that close will shatter glass, light drapes on fire, burn wood and furnishings and so forth. I’m not saying don’t get fire resistant foundation or soffit vents (intake vents), but they do come with a liability which I’ll discuss further.
Proper ventilation consists of a balance of intake and exhaust. The aforementioned soffit or foundation vents are intake vents.
Soffit vents
Foundation vent
Roof vents are mounted up high and behave as exhaust vents pulling in air from your soffit / foundation vents.
Roof vents
Fire resistance: Generally speaking a straightforward 1/8th inch metal screen is sufficient to resist embers getting inside, and for your roof vents, which are almost always behaving as exhaust vents, this should be sufficient.
Some vent manufacturers have taken this two steps further by introducing baffles and mesh. My concern with mesh is that because vents are constantly passing air with particles that they will become clogged fairly quickly (within a few years). I have seen soffit vents with a tight 16th inch screen (similar to a window screen) clogged with lint and dust; keep that in mind.
- Fireproof Roofing. Many people have asked me what can be done to fireproof my roof. Frankly there aren’t a lot of things that can be applied to fireproof a roof (or to even mitigate fire) and I’m not aware of anything that’s actually effective. But having looked at dozens of homes which survived the Eaton fire, I noticed that the ones that survived, literally surrounded by homes burnt to the ground, were homes that had tile roofs, either clay or concrete.
Even though I install asphalt shingles on a daily basis, I don’t consider them ideal roofing. I think the reason most people install asphalt shingles in the LA area is because that’s the roof that was on there when they bought the house, because it’s economical, most of the roofs in the neighborhood are asphalt shingle, and last but not least they were told their structure would not support a tile roof – if they asked that questions at all.
The reality is that a tile roof, while it costs more than an asphalt shingle roof up front, can outlast an asphalt shingle roof by 3x or more when installed properly whereas a typical asphalt shingle roof will often last no more than 30 years and it goes to the landfill. After a very long service life, tile can be reused.
Almost every house can support the weight of a lightweight concrete tile roof. In some cases we add minimal framing inside the attic to support the weight. Code weight limits = 6 lbs per square foot and lightweight tile is 6 lbs per square foot. So it’s definitely right on the line and if you have major overhangs or large spans we’ll either have to do additional work or in rare cases, we can determine the house can’t support it. But that is rare, I would say 90 out of 100 homes can support a lightweight concrete tile roof which is obviously extremely fire resistant.
If you’re interested in an evaluation for either fire resistant roof venting or for the installation of a tile roof, we are experts on the subject, please feel free to call us at 323-913-4190 for a free estimate, or go to our Free Roofing Estimate on line.
