Code changes coming, builders worry

Energy efficiency upgrades to be part of new building codes come January.|

Homebuilders in the North Bay and elsewhere in California will have several significant new requirements in 2020 for protecting structures from wildfires and reducing the projected impact of dwellings on the environment.

The requirement for solar electric panels on new homes grabbed headlines earlier this year, but it is just one of several notable changes in the California Energy Code triennial update, set to take effect in January unless local governments adopt amendments. Other energy standards include significantly increasing in indoor-air-quality standards and requiring better-insulated exterior walls - 2-by-6 walls with R-20 insulation, up from 2-by-4 with R-13 or 2-by-6 with R-19 in the 2016 version.

Without the solar panels, single-family homes built to the 2019 energy-efficiency standards would have energy savings of 7%, but that would jump to 53% with the mandated arrays, according to the California Energy Commission. And while the new state efficiency standards, called CalGreen, don’t go as far as requiring that dwellings use electric instead of natural gas for the furnace, water heater, stove and oven, and clothes dryer. Several North Bay governments are trying this fall to do just that.

Sonoma County jurisdictions - specifically, Santa Rosa, Windsor, Healdsburg, Petaluma, Cloverdale and Sebastopol - are the farthest along in the North Bay toward an effort across the state to adopt ordinances for all-electric new homes up to three stories tall, but some in Mendocino and Marin counties are taking initial steps toward them, according to Panama Bartholomy, director of Petaluma-based Buidling Decarbonization Coalition, and Rachel Kuykendall, senior program manager of Sonoma Clean Power. They’re among the over 50 governments in the state are pursuing all-electric provisions.

“Some are looking for all-out restrictions on natural gas infrastructure like Berkeley with local police powers,” Bartholomy said. “They can do local reach codes for banning gas under the building code or the energy code. And some have a hybrid where you can do dual-fuel homes, but you have to exceed the state energy efficiency code by 10%-15% and prewire for all electric so that when the furnace or water heater dies it can be replaced with an electric one.”

The California Energy Commission allows local reach codes that make efficiency standards reach further than CalGreen, as long as they are proven to be cost-effective for the homebuyer and don’t slow the homebuilding process. Behind the local and state efforts are climate action plans and policies they have adopted to cut emissions deemed harmful to the environment.

Some builders objected to the speed of reach-code adoption process or the cost comparisons between gas-serviced homes and all-electric homes when Santa Rosa and Sonoma Clean Power officials presented the proposal at an industry roundtable in mid-September.

“To have it done community by community doesn’t make a lot of sense to me,” said Keith Woods, CEO of North Coast Builders Exchange, a contractor trade group with 1,250 members. “So this seems more like overreach codes by individual communities, and I with all this energy would be put into what is probably inevitable on the state level, so it is a level playing field.”

Kuykendall, who co-presented the concept at that gathering, responded that the energy commission often looks at what local governments have adopted in previous code-adoption cycles to inform future state codes.

On the cost-effectiveness question, electric alternatives to gas appliances are being promoted: heat pumps to replace furnaces, water heaters and air conditioners, and induction cooktops instead of burners. John Sutter of Applied Building Science is a Santa Rosa-based remodeling contractor who told the gathering that he has completed about 17 electric conversions from gas since 2008. He said solar with battery storage is integral to making such a switch.

“I consider solar and all electric to be like peanut butter and jelly,” Sutter said.

A big line item in the cost comparison that raised contractor eyebrows was the $6,550 cost to extend gas infrastructure to a new house, largely in digging a new utility trench. Among several who addressed this was David Keith, CEO and chief construction officer of Santa Rosa-based Sonoma County Builders. He pointed to a number of installed utilities to house sites in subdivisions and the common practice of using a joint trench to install multiple utilities at once, reducing that gas-only only.

“As a builder, I’m extremely concerned for my clients and future client who don’t want this stuffed down their throats,” Keith said last week.

Matt Taylor, lead designer for Farrell Faber and Associates Architecture and Planning, encouraged the Santa Rosa City Council at its Sept. 24 study session to employ a carrot rather than a stick with its reach code. He said that the Santa Rosa-based firm has designed over 300 homes in the area since the 2017 fires, and a major portion of those were related to the rebuild. Out of those, he estimated nearly all have been specified to have gas ranges and fireplaces, and some designs called for exterior kitchens plumbed for gas to supply barbecues.

Taylor recommended phasing in or encouraging all-electric new homes, rather than requiring them.

“Some of the things that we’re seeing people are more willing to give on is maybe a gas water heater, exchanging that out for all electric, looking at an electric heat pump, mechanical heating in the homes, and also even electric dryers, over giving up their gas fireplace and or cooktop,” Taylor told the council.

Santa Rosa plans to consider adoption of a reach code, as well as an all-electric-favored option that would call for prewiring for electric major appliances but not transition to them. The next hearings are set for Oct. 22 and Nov. 19, the latter of which is virtually the last opportunity to get its reach code before the energy commission before the base energy code kicks in, according to Jesse Oswald, chief building official.

HARDENING AGAINST FIRES

While incorporating the California Fire Code update, North Bay governments have been crafting a number of tighter standards for how homes are built in the wildland–urban interface. Notable examples of WUI - pronounced “WOO-ee” - have been hard hit by recent California blazes: Mark West-Larkfield and Fountaingrove areas of Santa Rosa, western outskirts of Redding, and Paradise. Santa Rosa’s Coffey Park neighborhood was ignited when the 2017 Tubbs firestorm rushed east across a six-lane highway from Fountaingrove.

Santa Rosa building and fire officials have been working with others in the burn areas of the North Bay to develop “more restrictive amendments” to the fire code that focus on WUI homes. Here are the proposed additions to the state’s Chapter 7A wildfire-area rules:

Developments must have two ways out, in case of evacuation.

Limits will be put on flammable vegetation and greenery within 3 to 5 feet of structures.

Gates and their hardware can’t be easily ignited.

Class A roofing materials, which are harder to burn and stay lit, would be required citywide.

Significant remodels or additions, over 50% of the structure square footage or property value, would need to have new state and local wildfire protection standards applied to the changed parts, such as a reroof or new room.

“All of our rebuild homes that are pulling building permits to rebuild are being rebuilt to (chapter) 7A (standards),” said Ian Hardage, assistant city fire marshal. “So we are going to have a large swath of the community up there that is built to the home-hardening criteria that wasn’t up there before.”

Some City Council members were concerned about the cost of the new rules on owners of existing homes in the WUI areas. Building and fire officials estimated from computer data that about 12,000 homes were in such areas, or about one-third of the city. Though 2% of Fountaingrove homes were built to 7A standards, which took effect in 2008, officials estimate that few homes in the WUI areas would reach the threshold for having to do 7A upgrades, which could add up to 30% to the cost of the project.

Jeff Quackenbush covers wine, construction and real estate. Contact him at jquackenbush@busjrnl.com or 707-521-4256.

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