Comment by defrost
1 day ago
Steel frame, flame retardant insulation and cladding, rammed earth, .. these are all options.
Flammable trees well away from a leaf free clean guttered (or no gutter) house are also no compromise requirements.
See: https://research.csiro.au/bushfire/ and https://www.csiro.au/en/work-with-us/services/testing-and-ce...
for the rabbit hole of Australian Bushfire housing certification and testing.
Burning Down the House: Trial by Fire CSIRO- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBtawn7IAnI
> Steel frame, flame retardant insulation and cladding, rammed earth, .. these are all options.
Don't even have to go that far.
Wood framing is fine: make your cladding stucco would do a lot (or brick). You can even have siding as cement-base stuff is available:
* https://www.jameshardie.com/blog/siding-types/what-is-fiber-...
You could have metal or clay roofing, but shingles with a Class A rating is available as well:
* https://www.ameriproroofing.com/blog/asphalt-roofing-shingle...
> flame retardant insulation
Which are almost definitely known to the state of California to cause cancer.
Elsewhere fiberglass and mineral wool insulation aren't regarded as carcinogens.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1947241/
https://mesothelioma.net/fiberglass-connection-to-mesothelio...
A quick look turned up one mineral wool SDS with a Prop 65 warning for formaldehyde.
https://www.jm.com/content/dam/jm/global/en/MSDS/20000000205...
3 replies →
Yes absolutely, and as another poster pointed out, earthquake codes exist. Metal framing is probably a bit easier to adapt to the same earthquake codes that timber framing has.