SAN DIEGO — A new neighborhood in Escondido is redefining home construction, offering a possible new model for communities threatened by increasingly devastating wildfires.

What You Need To Know

  • New 64-home "fire resilient" community in Escondido is the first of its kind

  • Dixon Trail is the nation’s first wildfire prepared neighborhood certified by the Institute for Business and Home Safety

  • The homes use research-based methods from IBHS to protect them from the dangers of both flames and embers

  • Changes include fire-rated roofs, 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

The homes being built in the Dixon Trail neighborhood look a lot like any other Southern California subdivision; but Steve Ruffner, who oversees KB Home projects across the region, said if you look a little closer, they are being built to withstand wildfire. Each house features design choices like double-paned glass windows tempered to withstand the heat of a wildfire, flame-resistant stucco and shutters, and a protective moat of gravel.

“A 5-foot area where we have gravel all the way around the house — that’s the ‘no plant zone,’ that’s where you don’t want any ignition source up against the house,” Ruffner said.  

He said Dixon Trail is the nation’s first wildfire prepared neighborhood certified by the Institute for Business and Home Safety, a research nonprofit funded by the insurance industry.

“Having been in California most of my life, wildfires are just a terrible thing here and the tragedy that happened in LA was so bad; but we did this before that, because we were just concerned. How can we do something that our customers will feel safer about?” Ruffner said.  

Professor Daniel López-Pérez is the architecture program director at the University of San Diego. He designed a fire-resistant home called the Polyhaus, a 540-square-foot home consisting of just 64 panels. Instead of traditional lumber, he said the Polyhaus was built using mass-timber products.

“Leaving no air gaps, they don’t give the fire oxygen to grow,” López-Pérez said. “I think what is exciting about the period that we live in now is that there is a collective consciousness that technology has to inform our way of building.”

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López-Pérez said his Polyhaus and the Dixon Trail neighborhood show the need for developing updated building standards, especially in extreme weather areas, like the wildfire-prone area of Escondido. He hopes other developers can grab inspiration from what they are doing in San Diego County and help resiliency spread across the nation.

“We live very close to nature. In fact, there’s that cliché of ‘indoor-outdoor living,’ we are blessed with the climate that we have; and that we don’t want to give up,” López-Pérez said. “But we just want to be able to responsibly mitigate these events by building smarter and bringing advanced technology down to the single residential house.”

Ruffner said even the privacy fences, a suburban staple, are a safety feature in Dixon Trail.

“Instead of wood fencing up against the home that could catch on fire in a wind-blown fire, this fencing is made out of steel. So this fencing will not burn,” he said.

With every house that goes up, he is confident a wildfire will never bring it down.

“This really makes you feel like you’re doing everything you can to help people,” Ruffner said.   

 As part of the HOA, homeowners will need to take precautions during Red Flag Warning days, which include removing patio cushions.