HOMES

Upgrading your home to protect it from severe weather events, including floods and wildfires, involves a layered approach, combining immediate property maintenance with long-term structural improvements using resilient materials. Resilient home design and sustainable home design are extremely entangled. For example, installing solar panels makes your home less vulnerable to grid failures from extreme weather events, while also reducing the carbon footprint of your home. 

According to the UNEP, the building sector consumes 32% of global energy while contributing 34% of CO2 emissions. Building sector emissions need to be reduced by at least 6% annually to reach net-zero by 2050. 

•  Upgrade home insulation and use high-quality exterior caulk or expandable foam to seal gaps around windows, doors, and utility penetrations. This helps maintain indoor temperature during power outages and prevents water/smoke intrusion.

• “Passive design” involves taking advantage of the local climate and landscape to improve energy efficiency. For example, maximizing direct sunlight with window orientation and planting trees for shade. You can also install triple-glazed windows for higher insulation. Energy Star estimates energy-efficient windows can save homeowners $600 per year, while inefficient windows cost the U.S. $50 billion annually in energy waste. 
• Installing a solar roof, rooftop solar panels, solar-powered appliances, solar water heaters, or solar-powered outdoor lights can reduce GHG emissions while also lowering your energy spending. Solar panels can save homeowners between $10,000 to $30,000 over a decade, while reducing the carbon footprint of a home by 80%. 
• Consider replacing your regular bulbs with LED lights, which use about 85% less energy and last way longer. 
• Reduce your water usage with low flow showerheads, faucet aerators and greywater systems for reusing and recycling water in your home. 
• Green walls, or living walls, grow plants vertically with hydroponics, an innovative touch to your home with aesthetic and mental health benefits that can also improve air quality, energy efficiency, and insulation, reducing heat lost from buildings by over 30%. Similarly, green roofs have benefits like mitigating urban heat island effect, improving air quality, filtering rainwater, helping with flood and stormwater management, improving insulation, and reducing energy consumption. Also consider planting native permaculture gardens in your front yard instead of resource-intensive conventional grass lawns. 
• More than half of a home’s energy use in the U.S. is for heating and cooling. Improving a home’s energy efficiency and HVAC system is, therefore, a crucial part of sustainable design. Cheaper and more energy-efficient than traditional HVAC and water heaters, heat pumps transfer and amplify heat to regulate temperatures in your home, while producing zero GHG emissions. Heat pumps can reduce your home’s electricity use for heating by 75%. You can also improve your HVAC system with smart thermostats and smart lighting systems that adjust throughout the day. 
• Install Backup Power: Consider a whole-home generator or a solar power system with battery storage to ensure essential systems like sump pumps, medical equipment and HVAC continue to run during grid failures.
• Secure Utilities: Know how to turn off your home’s utilities (water, gas, electricity) and consider elevating critical equipment like electrical panels and HVAC units above potential flood levels.

More resilient homes are also more sustainable homes. Building homes to last will be important as we aim to reduce building sector emissions and face intensifying extreme weather. 

FLOOD PROTECTION 

One of the most important steps you can take is to price out flood insurance. Flood damage is almost never covered by traditional homeowners’ insurance policies, and your risk may be underestimated according to official government flood zone maps. FloodSmart.gov is the website for the National Flood Insurance Program, if you can’t find a private-market insurance company.

Your second step should be to determine how high flood water is likely to rise in your area if a storm hits. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has some resources for determining this measurement, which is called the Base Flood Elevation, or BFE.

In your home, FEMA notes that you’ll probably want to elevate utilities and home infrastructure like HVAC units at least 12 inches above the BFE. Also consider installing flood vents, a sump pump in your basement, and a sewer backflow valve. Outside the home, you should periodically check the caulking and sealing around your windows and doors. And consider elevating your home or moving it back and away from channels that may carry water. Some of these steps may also help save you money on flood insurance premiums.

WILDFIRE RISKS 

The Department of Homeland Security has some good tips about protecting your home from wildfire, but this is one natural disaster for which you should prioritize escaping to safety. Many preparedness organizations recommend that you arm yourself with multiple ways to receive alerts. The FEMA app can give you real-time alerts from the National Weather Service. Sign up for community alerts in your area as well. If you are told to evacuate, do it immediately. Make sure everyone in your family or household knows the escape plans and understands the need to comply with evacuation orders.

To defend your home against fire, you’ll want a “fire-resistant zone” around the house itself. The Ready, Set, Go! Program, which was developed by the International Association of Fire Chiefs, has some tips. Among them: Remove weeds, brush, and other invasive vegetation and debris, and use non-combustible rock mulch around your home in place of standard mulch. Keep neighboring tree branches at least 10 feet from the home and store firewood and other combustible materials as far away as possible.

• Create Defensible Space: Maintain a “lean, clean, and green” zone for at least 30 feet around your home by removing dead vegetation, brush, and debris.
• Harden the Exterior:
  • Roof and Gutters: Use a Class A fire-rated roof covering (e.g. metal, asphalt fiberglass composition shingles) and keep roofs and gutters clear of leaves and pine needles.
  • Vents: Cover attic, crawlspace, and eave vents with 1/8-inch metal mesh screening to prevent embers from entering.
  • Siding and Decks: Replace combustible siding with non-combustible options like fibre cement or use fire-rated materials for decks.
• Manage Landscaping:
  • Non-combustible Zone: Maintain a 5-foot non-combustible zone immediately around your foundation using gravel, concrete pavers, or rock mulch instead of flammable materials like wood mulch.
  • Trim Vegetation: Prune tree limbs within 10 feet of your home and trim lower branches to at least 10 feet from the ground to remove “ladder fuels” that allow fire to climb into canopies.
  • Store Flammables Safely: Store firewood, propane tanks, and other combustible materials at least 30 feet from your home.

If you have the space, you should designate a “clean room,” which is a contained space where you’re able to control your exposure to smoke and other particles in the air. Stock it with a portable air filter or air cleaner and N95 face masks. The Environmental Protection Agency has more information on setting up a clean room here.

HIGH WINDS 

Invest in your roof: Patch loose shingles, ideally with impact-resistant shingling. Consider installing roof strappings to attach the roof framing to the wall framings so the roof won’t be lifted off the house. Install storm shutters and stormproof glass in your windows, and fortify caulking and sealing around the house, including around pipes. Outside the home, keep tree branches pruned, and as far away from the house as possible.

Just like you would for wildfire risk, designate one area as a “safe room.” The National Weather Service has advice on how to construct wind safe rooms, which may be something as small as an interior closet. A wind-safe room should have walls, a ceiling and a door that can withstand wind pressure and resist penetration by windborne debris and falling items such as trees and building elements. It should not be located anywhere there’s a risk of flooding or storm surge. Finally, it should have a protected ventilation system, and ideally contain a fire extinguisher, flashlights, first-aid kit, a supply of drinking water and a weather radio. FLASH has more information about safe rooms, which can also be exterior shelters.

SEVERE WEATHER (WIND, HAIL, FLOOD) PREPARATION 

• Reinforce Openings:
  • Windows and Doors: Install impact-rated windows and steel entry doors, or use temporary storm shutters to protect against windborne debris.
  • Garage Doors: Reinforce garage doors, often the most vulnerable opening, with bracing kits or upgrade to a wind-rated model.
• Manage Water Drainage:
  • Gutters and Downspouts: Ensure gutters are clean and in good repair, and extend downspouts to channel water at least 5 to 10 feet away from the foundation.
  • Foundation: Seal foundation cracks with mortar or hydraulic cement and consider installing a sump pump or flood vents in basements/crawl spaces to manage water intrusion.
• Landscaping for Wind: Trim overhanging or dead tree limbs that could fall on your house during high winds and secure outdoor furniture and other loose items.

RESOURCES 

For more information on specific mitigation efforts, consult resources from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) or the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS) “FORTIFIED Home” program guidelines.