Facing Wildfire Risk, Homeowners Turn to New Innovations to Protect Their Homes

Is your home too risky to insure? For many families, their insurance company's answer is "yes" because of wildfires.

But some Bay Area homeowners and homebuilders are taking action. The NBC Bay Area Responds team looked into two new innovations designed to save homes and homeowners insurance

"It's a beautiful place," said Mark Mitchell looking out at the home he owns.

It's dry in Bonny Doon where Mitchell's home is.

But look closer at the house. It's raining, not from the clouds, but from the roof and eaves.

"It looks kinda like a car wash," said Harry Statter, CEO of Frontline Wildfire Defense.

To explain this man-made rain shower, let's rewind to 2020.

"One evening we started seeing lightning strikes all through the night," Mitchell recalled.

Home video from Micthelll's backyard shows the CZU Lightning Complex Fire sparking up.

Mitchell said his home was spared by the fire, though he knows neighbors who lost their homes.

"The house made it, with significant damage," he said.

Today, Mitchell's home is fully restored with an innovative addition: a sprinkler system attached to the roof and under the eaves to fight fires.

"Anything we can do to defend the house is worth doing," Mitchell said.

The misting apparatus is the brainchild of a company called Frontline Wildfire Defense. It was created after research showed scorching embers can float for miles, then burn down homes and businesses.

"That was really the ‘ah ha’ moment," said Harry Statter of Frontline Wildfire Defense.

Statter says this proprietary system monitors for wildfires and embers.

"Our software will detect a fire," Statter said.

An app warns you. Then, unless you decline, it remotely triggers the sprinklers.

"All the combustibles on and around the home are going to be saturated… they’re going to be wetted down to create an environment that's simply too wet to burn," Statter said.

Water at first, foam if fire moves closer.

"This is the same Class A biodegradable foam that firefighters carry on their trucks," Statter said. "You simply don't need a firefighter there to apply it."

Statter pointed out a four-day battery backup as a satellite antenna. So if the power and internet go out, the sprinklers can still fight off a fire.

How much is a retrofit like this?

"We’re about $10 dollars a square foot," Statter said.

That's $20,000 for a two-thousand-square-foot home.

"It's not a cheap product," Mitchell said.

For Mitchell, it's money well spent. Especially since his family's insurance company canceled their policy. They’re now in the state's insurer of last resort, which caps coverage. The Mitchells shoulder significant personal risk. Thus, the sprinkler system.

"That becomes part of our insurance plan, to prevent the fire," Mitchell said.

Fire-Resillient Homes

More than one hundred miles north in Santa Rosa, another innovation is being used to fend off fires. This time, it's not a home add-on, it's the home itself.

"If you were driving by the home, you would have no idea," explained Kellan Hannah, Director of Growth at the company DVELE.

DVELE built the home in Santa Rosa on the site where a home burned down during the 2017 Wine Country fires. DVELE says it designed the house -- and others like it-- for fire resilience.

"All of our homes are built with metal framing, the floors, the ceilings, and the walls, you have a material that is not combustible, like traditional homes where they use timber," Hannah said.

Case in point: there is no wood siding on the outside of the home.

"The metal just doesn't burn. It's an inorganic material," Hannah said.

DVELE says its prefab homes are sealed for day-to-day energy efficiency, which plays a second role when wildfires spew hot embers.

"We have such an air-tight envelope in the home, that you’re just not getting the possibility of embers entering the home like they traditionally would," Hannah said.

What premium do buyers pay for floor-to-ceiling fire resilience?

DVELE just sold the Santa Rosa home for $2.2 million, which is in line with what the real estate app Zillow estimates for nearby houses built with traditional materials.

Finding Insurance Coverage

What about insurance?

"This house is the house of the future," said Janet Ruiz of the Insurance Information Institute of DVELE's Santa Rosa home.

Ruiz toured the home, saw lower risk, and expected a lower premium there.

"Insurers are looking for homes they can give discounts to," Ruiz said.

But, as we’ve reported in previous stories, insurance companies sometimes calculate fire risk by neighborhood or zone, not home-by-home.

Ruiz said if more people reduce fire risk, insurers might re-assess some areas, even offer to re-sign customers they canceled.

Back in Bonny Doon, Mitchell has been asking insurers about this.

"We did make phone calls after the system was installed," Mitchell said. "The response was, generally, ‘that's really good. But no, we still won't write you an insurance policy.’ I’d like to see that change."

Innovators like Frontline and DVELE hope for change too.

"I think it makes sense," said Statter with Frontline.

They’re banking on a deluge of wildfire innovation, more homeowners buying in, and eventually holding insurance companies’ feet to the fire.

"Homes need to be built this way," said Hannah with DVELE.

Short of buying a new home or retrofitting yours, fire experts told us there's one big fire-safe step you can take today, basically for free. Focus on the first five feet away from your home. Remove anything that might burn if an ember were to land there. For example, replace wood mulch with rock.