Green Builder Media co-founder Ron Jones walks through the exterior specification at the Mariposa Meadows project, explaining how a standing seam steel roof, James Hardie fiber cement siding and trim, and manufactured stone veneer reduce wildfire risk. He argues the assembly is essentially maintenance free and built to outlast the buildings themselves.
00:00:02:26 - 00:00:41:25
Ron Jones: Primary objective was to reduce our risk of damage from wildfire in the extreme. So anything that we could do in our specification to help mitigate our risk and to assure the durability and longevity of these buildings with paramount. So starting at the top, we have standing seam steel roof by for brawl. And I will tell you that it not only was great to work with, but it's beautiful and it'll outlast almost any other component.
00:00:41:26 - 00:01:26:07
Ron Jones: It's going to be there 50 years from now, 7500 years from now. I don't know. We didn't put a single ventilation penetration of any kind through the roof on any of these buildings. And because of that, they should be permanent for all practical purposes. As far as the siding and the soffits, fascias and trim, we went with James Hardie and the great set of products that they have to accomplish that with the fiber cement sheets and all of the trim sizes, from 2.5in battens all the way up to 12 inch faces, the soffit boards, the trim is excellent.
00:01:26:09 - 00:01:49:12
Ron Jones: There is no maintenance required. I'll never have to to raise a paintbrush to any of this, and it is really durable. One of the things we noticed right away was we don't have any woodpecker problems anymore. The woodpeckers love to to drill on wooden soffits and faces and things. We don't have any woodpeckers hanging around here. It doesn't do them any good.
00:01:49:13 - 00:02:22:20
Ron Jones: So that was a really nice touch. Sort of the final feature in terms of the esthetic, and it was very important from an architectural standpoint, is the stone facade on the Wayne's coat. And that came from creative minds and they were wonderful people to work with. The selections were extremely broad, and we were able to choose a a version of it that is so close to the natural stone that we have on site.
00:02:22:28 - 00:02:51:20
Ron Jones: You can lay pieces side by side and put an arrangement of 20 pieces there, and you'd be lucky to guess half of them, right? They give us a permanence in terms of that outside finish. It ties us to the site esthetically. And again, no worries about combustion non-flammable. And they're going to be permanent. We really don't have to do anything because they were installed properly to begin with.
00:02:51:21 - 00:02:58:17
Ron Jones: So the choices that we made on those I think have proven to be very good ones.