A new community in Escondido is one of the first of its kind in the region, and potentially in the nation, according to KB Home.
The 64 single-family houses are built from the ground up, and each “meets the home- and neighborhood-level wildfire resilience standards developed by the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety,” according to the developer.
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WATCH HEREIBHS is a nonprofit independent research organization, according to its website. It focuses on protecting homes and businesses from natural disasters, including fire. So when Steve Ruffner and his colleague at KB Home saw a demonstration of theirs at a builders conference last year, he knew they had to make a change on their then-newly started Escondido project.
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SIGN UP “They showed us what the difference between a home built in the 1980s code [compared to how] their program would do in a fire red-flag situation,” Ruffner told NBC 7. “The house that was built to the '80s code burned down in 45 minutes. The other house didn't burn at all.”
That’s when they knew they had to apply the IBHS standards to their community at Dixon Trail. They had already broken ground in June, but Ruffner said he had the support of the city of Escondido to make the changes, and make them fast.
The alterations included fire-rated roofs, upgraded dual-tempered windows, metal doors, gates and fences, non-flammable window shutters, ember- and flame-resistant vents and eaves, and a 5-foot defensible space around each home, as well as a 10-foot space between houses. While these changes do not make the homes “fireproof" necessarily, Ruffner said, it helps give the homeowners a fighting chance against increasing fire danger in Southern California.
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The community is off of East Valley Parkway, and each home has a roughly 7,500 square-foot lot. Asking prices start at $1 million; nearly half have already been sold.
