Home Construction, Was: [U.S.] Protest Thursday - Nobody is Above the Law

[LynnInDenver]

Oh, my house was fun too.  Finding open electrical boxes concealed behind drywall is always fun.

Some comments on the fires, now that they've mostly died out.  First, the Paradise fire was mainly an urban fire, despite being surrounded by trees.  In fact, the trees largely survived, but the buildings were decimated.  All of the raking our American President could want would do nothing against a urban fire.  Second, we're at the limits of current fire control regulations.  California has had strong building codes for decades and defensible spaces, and they didn't prove exceptionally helpful in the latest conflagrations.  We had homes with stucco walls and tile roofs burn down.  Ventura County has been in a drought since 2012, so we can't just throw water at our landscapes to defend them.

Yeah, when we were house hunting, there was one house that something seemed a little off as we were checking it out... and then our realtor said, "give me a second," went into one of the utility spaces downstairs, and came back out and let us know the house wasn't a good pick, because we'd need them to replace the whole power panel before we'd buy it - it was an older make and model known to have been the cause of many a house fire.

On the latter, ouch. Yeah, that's getting into "we're past denuding the lot, now you need a minimum setback from the other houses, or houses hardened well past what we've already insisted on", which in an area of the country already known for high housing costs, is not going to help the costs in the slightest. Plus, well, I wouldn't be surprised if Paradise isn't allowed to rebuild, at least not in the form it was prior to the fire. Plus, they're starting to see the ugly reality that building codes are only as good as the oldest building and the codes it complied with when it was built.

Not that Colorado doesn't have it's own wildfire problem, again complicated by the number of people who have decided that living on the urban/nature interface is something they have to do.