Picture this: Eric's off gallivanting at Design and Construction Week in sunny Orlando, probably sipping on a piña colada while we’re here holding down the fort. But hey, no worries, because we’ve got a gem of an episode from the vault featuring Fred Malik from the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety. We dive into the absolutely riveting world of home resilience—yes, we’re talking about how to fortify your castle against those pesky storms that seem to pop up out of nowhere. Fred, with his wealth of knowledge, breaks down the Fortified Home program, which is basically a superhero cape for your house. Who wouldn’t want their home to withstand whatever Mother Nature throws at it? We chat about the nuts and bolts (pun intended) of building structures that can weather the storm, from the roof to the garage door—yes, even that garage door you thought was just a pretty face. It's shocking how much a little wind can turn it into a pancake if it’s not up to snuff. So, kick back, grab a snack, and get ready to take notes because this episode might just save your home from becoming the latest headline news during storm season. Spoiler alert: you’ll never look at your garage door the same way again!

Takeaways:

1. Understanding how to fortify your home can save you a fortune in repairs after storms.
2. Garage doors are often the weakest link in your home's storm defense; don't skimp on quality!
3. Making simple upgrades like sealing gaps can drastically reduce water damage during heavy rainstorms.
4. The Fortified program offers valuable resources to help homeowners make informed decisions about resilience.

Links referenced in this episode:

1. aroundthehouseonline.com
2. ibhs.org
3. fortifiedhome.org
4. wildfireprepared.org

Companies mentioned in this episode:

1. Fortified
2. Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety
3. Gulf Coast
4. Florida
5. IBHS
6. Wildfire Prepared

Thanks for listening to Around the house if you want to hear more please subscribe so you get notified of the latest episode as it posts at https://around-the-house-with-e.captivate.fm/listen

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We love comments and we would love reviews on how this information has helped you on your house! Thanks for listening! For more information about the show head to https://aroundthehouseonline.com/

Information given on the Around the House Show should not be considered construction or design advice for your specific project, nor is it intended to replace consulting at your home or jobsite by a building professional. The views and opinions expressed by those interviewed on the podcast are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Around the House Show.

Mentioned in this episode:

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel to see every part of the project for Blacktail Ranch

Exciting collaboration alert! This playlist documents our joint project renovating Cam Anderson's new farm property on Blacktail Ranch—the home base for his adventures beyond the workshop. Cam (the woodworking wizard behind Blacktail Studio, with millions of fans loving his epoxy tables, live-edge builds, and creative furniture tutorials) is stepping into brand-new territory: his first-ever full home renovation and remodel. From the charming (but dated) farmhouse with its "lead paint chic" vibes to tackling structural updates, layout changes, and modern upgrades, we're transforming this 17-acre property into a functional, beautiful living space. I'm Eric G from Around the House, bringing my remodeling, construction, and design expertise to guide the process—planning layouts, solving real-world renovation challenges, handling the practical home improvement side, and making sure the build is smart, efficient, and homeowner-friendly. Expect step-by-step progress, honest discussions on budgets/timelines/hiccups, tool tips, design decisions, and the fun dynamic of blending Cam's woodworking flair with pro remodeling know-how. Whether you're a Blacktail Studio fan curious about Cam's new chapter, a DIYer tackling your own home reno, or just love watching big transformations, this series is for you! https://www.youtube.com/@aroundthehouseEricG/playlists

Blacktail Ranch

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Visit SiteHype Designs and lets build a website that works as hard as you do! Use Promo Code "Eric G" for your free website audit and 30 minute consultation.

Site Hype Designs

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel to see every part of the project for Blacktail Ranch

Exciting collaboration alert! This playlist documents our joint project renovating Cam Anderson's new farm property on Blacktail Ranch—the home base for his adventures beyond the workshop. Cam (the woodworking wizard behind Blacktail Studio, with millions of fans loving his epoxy tables, live-edge builds, and creative furniture tutorials) is stepping into brand-new territory: his first-ever full home renovation and remodel. From the charming (but dated) farmhouse with its "lead paint chic" vibes to tackling structural updates, layout changes, and modern upgrades, we're transforming this 17-acre property into a functional, beautiful living space. I'm Eric G from Around the House, bringing my remodeling, construction, and design expertise to guide the process—planning layouts, solving real-world renovation challenges, handling the practical home improvement side, and making sure the build is smart, efficient, and homeowner-friendly. Expect step-by-step progress, honest discussions on budgets/timelines/hiccups, tool tips, design decisions, and the fun dynamic of blending Cam's woodworking flair with pro remodeling know-how. Whether you're a Blacktail Studio fan curious about Cam's new chapter, a DIYer tackling your own home reno, or just love watching big transformations, this series is for you! https://www.youtube.com/@aroundthehouseEricG/playlists

Blacktail Ranch

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel to see every part of the project for Blacktail Ranch

Exciting collaboration alert! This playlist documents our joint project renovating Cam Anderson's new farm property on Blacktail Ranch—the home base for his adventures beyond the workshop. Cam (the woodworking wizard behind Blacktail Studio, with millions of fans loving his epoxy tables, live-edge builds, and creative furniture tutorials) is stepping into brand-new territory: his first-ever full home renovation and remodel. From the charming (but dated) farmhouse with its "lead paint chic" vibes to tackling structural updates, layout changes, and modern upgrades, we're transforming this 17-acre property into a functional, beautiful living space. I'm Eric G from Around the House, bringing my remodeling, construction, and design expertise to guide the process—planning layouts, solving real-world renovation challenges, handling the practical home improvement side, and making sure the build is smart, efficient, and homeowner-friendly. Expect step-by-step progress, honest discussions on budgets/timelines/hiccups, tool tips, design decisions, and the fun dynamic of blending Cam's woodworking flair with pro remodeling know-how. Whether you're a Blacktail Studio fan curious about Cam's new chapter, a DIYer tackling your own home reno, or just love watching big transformations, this series is for you! https://www.youtube.com/@aroundthehouseEricG/playlists

Blacktail Ranch

Around the House Top Products!

Producer Jim shares an insider look at Eric G's hand-curated Top 10 products for 2026. From smart locks and app-controlled garage openers to precision tools and energy-saving water heaters, these are the game-changing items Eric personally recommends to make your home smarter, safer, and more efficient. Head to AroundTheHouseOnline.com/Top-Products to see the full list, click the product links for exclusive Amazon deals, and upgrade your home today!794msFast

Around the House Top Products

Around the House Top Products!

Producer Jim shares an insider look at Eric G's hand-curated Top 10 products for 2026. From smart locks and app-controlled garage openers to precision tools and energy-saving water heaters, these are the game-changing items Eric personally recommends to make your home smarter, safer, and more efficient. Head to AroundTheHouseOnline.com/Top-Products to see the full list, click the product links for exclusive Amazon deals, and upgrade your home today!794msFast

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Foreign.

Ready to turn your house into the home you've always dreamed of without the headaches or huge bills.

You're tuned to around the House, the nation's number one home improvement radio show and podcast with expert advice that's helped millions tackle everything from remodels to repairs.

Hosts Eric G. And John Dudley have got you covered with the best advice and information about your home.

Now let's get this hour started.

Eric is down at Design and Construction Week checking out the latest in new products and design trends and he will be back next week.

Today we are jumping back into the catalog to discuss how to remodel or build that new home.

To handle today's bad weather, we have Fred Malik, managing director of Fortified for the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety.

Now let's get to it.

Welcome to the Round the House show.

This is where we help you get the most out of your home through information and education.

Thanks for joining us today.

This is probably going to be one of our most important episodes of the year as far as I'm concerned because our weather has been crazy.

I don't care where you're located in the US one day it seems like you've got 60 degrees in the winter time and the next day it's 18 and snowing.

And it is doing some damage to our homes that I'm still picking up around my place.

From the last one we have Fred Malik from the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety.

But they've got this amazing program called Fortified Home.

Welcome to around the House, Brother.

Hey, Eric, thanks man.

Appreciate it, man.

I love what you guys are doing.

And me being a Pacific Northwest native, I'm as good as the bubble I'm in.

And when I was out in Florida at the Southeastern building conference down there, I was shocked to really dive in and understand what Gulf states and those guys are doing down there to build for weather.

And it's something I know in the Pacific Northwest we got to do a lot better of.

Yeah, you guys have had the atmospheric river out there this, this whole week.

Strong winds, torrential rains.

I bet you that's opening a few people's eyes that hey, maybe we've got to pay attention to this stuff just like some of these other folks do.

Yeah.

In the month of January, great example.

We had a basically a frozen hurricane come in here into the Pacific Northwest.

We had couple days of 18 degree weather which is super cold for us.

And then we had winds coming down the Columbia Gorge here that were 80 to 100 and we had trees Coming down and just destruction.

It looks like a hurricane hit in some neighborhoods.

Yeah.

And we got to do a better job of building homes that way.

Yeah.

Down on the Gulf coast and up through the hurricane prone portions of the east coast, we've been using something called as graduated scale of design wind speeds for a while now, which helps to improve performance by up leveling the.

Or leveling up the components and cladding in particular, and some of the other structural design elements of the house.

But for most of the country, including where you are out there in the northwest, the design wind speed is pretty flat.

It's 115 under the most current version of the building codes.

And that leaves a lot of room for improvement when you're encountering the kinds of conditions you guys are seeing now.

Absolutely.

This is one of those things that when you.

It's.

It was shocking because I was looking at it going down there, looking at the building codes, because we were building up those.

Those little demonstrations down there and I'm like, wow, we're tying the top plate into the foundation.

This is stuff we should be doing around here.

Yeah.

The load path is certainly an important feature of the home that you're talking about.

And that's a series of connections that ties the roof to the wall, to the floor and the floor into the foundation and the ground.

The whole purpose of that is to transfer all those load can be applied to the house either by the wind or even those dead loads from things like snow get that stuff into the ground.

That's the whole goal.

But the areas of the house that are the most vulnerable, even at lower wind speeds, are things like the roof and your garage door, believe it or not.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That garage door is shocking, we think about roof.

Right.

You know, you get a 50, 60 mile an hour wind and all of a sudden you got shingles in the driveway.

But I think people really don't realize or forget that is one big sale that's covering their garage door.

And if you've got that budget friendly steel one, those things taco in pretty quickly.

Yeah.

And the unfortunate thing is it's maybe been an under appreciated risk that's out there.

And so the market just really hasn't demanded that things like labeling and lots of transparency about design, wind pressures and ratings for the garage doors be included.

Now that's been a staple in hurricane prone areas for a long time, especially in Florida.

Florida really brought that to, to, to the country after hurricane Andrew.

Until recently, there really hasn't been a whole lot of transparency for folks that are building away from the coast.

And so builders like you and me maybe would like to make a better decision.

And we just didn't know what we didn't know, which is crazy.

But now that's starting to really come to light.

And we've got a lot of great research that just shows how important that garage door can be, even to keeping something like your roof on.

Yeah, that's.

You got me thinking about that garage door, because once that garage door comes in, now you've got the, the lift on the roof system.

And so all of a sudden those maybe traditional hurricane rafter ties, those little pieces of sheet metal, are the only thing holding the roof on the building.

And if that's an attached garage, once you open that up, you're now really just asking for issues on the rest of the home as far as losing a roof system.

Yeah.

Back in the day when I first started learning how to build a house, I was building in Virginia and we used to put those little things called hurricane clips.

And I was, I was well away from the coast.

I, as a new guy in the industry, I was like, what are we putting hurricane clips on for?

We never see hurricanes here.

Here we are, fast forward 30 something years later.

And I really understand and appreciate the value of those things.

But yeah, when you're talking about the garage door.

So imagine your house, or think of your house as a rigid balloon.

And as long as the windows and the doors and all those features stay intact, the air pushes on your house, it moves around your house.

But your house is designed to take that load in those places.

But if the garage door fails, which is the largest opening in the house, then that air is rushing into that rigid balloon and it has to go somewhere.

And the only places it can go is out or up.

And the out or up is when you start to see things like wall and roof failure.

There's a interesting statistic that just really puts a fine point on this, that in places like Joplin Moore, or even in Florida with some older buildings stopped during hurricane Ian, if you had a garage door that stayed intact during those really severe events, 90% of the homes that had garage doors that stayed intact did not have structural roof damage.

Wow, that's crazy, isn't it?

If you basically read a different way.

If your garage door was damaged, you were very likely that you had some sort of severe structural damage to your home.

That's.

Wow.

That's the kind of risk that that particular component of your house can either prevent or really contribute to some sort of damage.

And that is one of hundreds of materials in your house that you're depending on to hold that structure together.

Yeah, exactly.

And you're really, if you're a homeowner, you're, you're really counting on the building contractor and the code officials in your location to make sure that you got the right stuff there.

And the knowledge needs to get transferred from the coast to the inland locations and out there to the Pacific Northwest.

You think about it just as a homeowner, you're out there, you're like, hey, my garage door is ugly.

It's an old one, I'm going to go put one on.

You go out and get prices for it.

And you're just talking to garage doors installers, you're not talking to code enforcement, you're not getting permits.

Right.

And you're out shopping for them and go, that's a good buy right there.

And I just need a simple garage door.

You don't see it from the street, who cares?

And they order it and it comes in, they put it up.

They don't think I'm thinking about it.

But if they'd have spent maybe a few hundred to a thousand more, the level of protection in a wind event is massive.

Yeah.

And you just, you just made an excellent point that this is not the kind of mitigation that maybe costs you a fortune or really is something that you have to really think long and hard about because it's going to be years before you can get a payback on that.

That's a, that's a relatively simple and affordable thing to do to upgrade your door.

And again, as a homeowner at one, an uninformed homeowner at one point, when I was a new guy in the business now as a well informed homeowner and a builder, most of my clients paid attention to the color of the door and the style of the door, that those are the things that they were going to interact with every day.

What does it look like?

How does it enhance my curb appeal?

And those are reasonable and justifiable things to be thinking about.

But you also want it to perform.

And if you don't know the design pressure rating of your door, then you really don't know whether it's going to protect you.

The fortunate thing is at ibhs, in our fortified program, we have very specific information about what kinds of design pressures you should be looking for based on where you are in the country.

That way you can just say, hey, I need a door.

It needs to be almond.

It needs to have the black Brackets and it needs to be DP35 and you know, plus 35, negative 35.

That's critical information that now your supplier can get you a door that meets those parameters.

If you are new to the show, you can find out more about us@aroundthehouseonline.com.

we will be right back with more from Fred Malik, managing director of Fortified for the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety.

Around the House.

We'll be right back.

The kids these days will never understand.

What it's like to play an instrument.

Like being a fan.

What's up?

This is Sticks it In ya and.

Satchel from Steel Panther and you are.

Listening to around the House with Eric G. Yeah, we love Eric G. And you should, too.

Welcome back to the around the House Show.

Eric G. Is down at Design and Construction Week in Orlando finding the best new products for your home.

He will be back next week.

Now let's get back to our previous conversation with Fred Malik, managing director of Fortified for the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety.

Let's continue the conversation.

That way you could just say, hey, I need a door.

It needs to be almond.

It needs to have the black brackets and it needs to be DP35.

And you know, plus 35, negative 35.

That's critical information that now your supplier can get you a door that meets those parameters.

Yeah, that is smart.

But you think about it, I don't think there's any place in the country that is not susceptible to a wind event.

We have our windstorms here.

You got the Santa Ana winds that happen in California.

You've got everything from tornadoes and windstorms across the Midwest, nor'.

Easter.

It's basically something that every homeowner should be taking a peek at because I don't think there's, I bet you there's not a house out there that goes, oh, we don't ever get wind.

Yeah, certainly not.

And, but it is one of those things that's underappreciated because last year, 20, 23, there were 19 severe storm weather events, each one of them causing a billion dollars in damage or more.

And when you hear that number, a billion dollars of damage, that means homes like the ones you and I are living in, that's where the damage is happening.

And just 19 storms caused over $19 billion worth of damage.

And there was only one tropical cyclone last year.

So that means that everywhere around the country is seeing these things.

And unfortunately, as homeowners, we get complacent storm, but we need to recognize that a storm doesn't have to make national headlines to wreak havoc on your home or even your business.

Yeah, yeah.

It's huge.

And it's funny, it's.

Building materials are such a big part of this.

You'd mentioned roofing earlier and again, it's like garage doors.

People go, oh, that's beautiful.

Oh, it's got a 30 year warranty.

Let's go with that.

I like the look of that.

It'll be a nice upgrade to the house.

But the wind resistance and hail damage resistance and all that other stuff sometimes doesn't come into that conversation.

Yeah, for sure.

And we have studied how buildings interact, particularly with high winds and rain for a long time.

Over three decades now, IBHS has been studying the performance of different types of building systems and how they perform in high winds and severe rain.

We have a one of a kind research facility located in South Carolina where we have full size wind tunnel.

We can put full size houses in there, 105 fans.

We can create category three winds, we can create realistic hail storms, we can create 8 inches of rain an hour.

So we really are able to look at these systems and comprehensively understand them.

And when we look at that and we say where does the damage start and how does it escalate?

The most vulnerable system in the house is your roof.

Yeah.

It's shocking and it again, it's one of those things that there are roof systems out there that are extremely durable.

You just have to know which ones you're looking at to make that choice and have a roofer that's going to spend the time and walk you through why that's such a good system.

Yeah.

You either have to really be able to trust your roofer that they're going to, they're going to give you the best advice that's out there.

And there's a lot of guys that are very conscientious guys and gals that are very conscientious about that.

Or you can look at something like fortify, which lays out for you.

Here's all the things you really want your roofer to do.

You don't have to be an expert and talk to somebody like you're in the trade.

You just have to say, hey, I know about this fortified thing.

Here's their checklist.

I'd like my roof to check all these boxes so we can we solve a lot of those, those communication challenges and those technical issues for homeowners.

All they have to say is, I want a fortified roof.

But to your point, I think one of the things that you mentioned.

And I think it's a very typical way that folks look at their roof, but they're primarily focused on the COVID because that's the thing that they can see and it's doing the heavy lifting.

But really what makes a roof system durable is the entire system.

So it's everything that, from the roof deck, which is connected to the, either the rafters or the trusses that make up the structural components of your roof, how that is attached, how thick is that, then on top of that, there should be a redundant layer of roofing that creates what we call a sealed roof deck.

So a lot of times in modern houses, especially now, we have these big four by eight sheets of roof sheathing that come together.

And every time you have two sheets coming together, you have a seam.

And because of the way mother Nature works, when humidity increases or decreases, those sheets expand and they contract.

So we have to, as contractors, leave a gap in there to allow that to happen.

So you don't have unfortunate cosmetic issues, you don't have performance issues.

Those gaps provide a, an unfettered pathway for water to get into your house if the primary roof cover is lost.

And so we talk about, we talk about sealing up the roof deck, and we've got five different techniques for doing that.

So you don't have to just be married to one specific thing.

There's lots of options depending on where you are, what kind of roofing you're using, what climate zone you're in.

There's lots of ways you can achieve a sealed roof deck.

The most important thing is you get one that you have one.

Yeah.

Because our studies have shown that roof coverings, they fail.

And unfortunately they fail in events that are below what they're technical design level is.

And once that happens, if you don't have a sealed roof deck, a typical underlayment that's installed, it goes to, and now that exposes that roof deck.

And we did a study once that showed that for every inch of rain an hour that falls on a bare section of a roof deck, not the entire roof deck, a bare section of the roof deck that can allow nine bathtubs of water to come into your house.

For every inch of rain that falls where you are in the country, you guys get a lot of rain.

Yeah, absolutely.

And what's interesting, and it's sometimes not even the fault of the roofing system that's up there, maybe it's the neighbor's patio furniture that got caught in the wind, gets the edge of the house.

Now you've damaged the drip edge or whatever and the wind's getting underneath it and then mother nature takes it the rest of the way and then you've got a water feature coming into your living room.

Yeah, you're right.

The secret to a fortified roof is, you know, basically three steps that can be summarized is nail it down, seal it up, lock it in.

Nailing it down refers to that roof deck.

Making sure that's properly attached and it's not going to go anywhere.

Sealing it up we've already talked about, but the locking it in piece is the edges.

It deals with how the edge details are done.

No matter what your roof shape is, whether you have a gable end roof shape, you got a hip roof or some of the other more complex and exotic sort of roof shapes that we see out there, wherever you come to an edge or a ridge, okay, that's where the highest pressures are going to be exerted on your roof by the wind.

And so they're very vulnerable.

And if you, if you're not paying attention to those details, as a lot of people do, they gloss right over that stuff.

If you're not paying attention to those details, you're right.

You can have damage that gets started for some reason and once it starts, it just escalates from there.

Yeah.

I can't tell you how many videos I've seen on social media where guys doing roof tear offs and they're pulling like a full square of shingles off at one time because they weren't attached correctly.

It looked like it was the easiest tear out ever.

And that's just an installation area error where they made a mistake but at some point down the road.

But I really like what that system and what you guys are doing and I think we should talk a little bit.

Let's jump off materials for a minute and talk about fortified home and really what that is.

Because what you guys are doing I love because it's not a.

You're not one manufacturer out there pitching a product.

You're out there pitching better products for a home independently.

And I love that you have multiple options and multiple solutions to make somebody's house more durable in a storm.

If you are new to the show, you can find out more about us@aroundthehouse online.com we will be right back with more from Fred Malik around the House.

We'll be right back.

Welcome back to the around the House Show.

Eric G. Is down at Design and Construction Week in Orlando finding the best new products for your home.

He will be back next week.

Now let's get Back to our previous conversation with Fred Malik, managing director of Fortified for the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety.

Let's continue the conversation.

What you guys are doing I love because it's not a.

You're not one manufacturer out there pitching a product.

You're out there pitching better products for a home independently.

And I love that you have multiple, multiple options and multiple solutions to make somebody's house more durable in a storm.

Yeah.

Our focus is really how do we learn what we have to know about making buildings more durable and then how do we get that information out to people when.

At the right time, when they're making important decisions?

Sometimes you may be making a decision today that you're not going to have an opportunity to revisit for 10, 15, 20 years.

For example, if you're putting a new roof on today and you don't know about Fortified, tomorrow you learn about Fortified.

You're not reroofing for, you know, at least a decade.

So it makes it very difficult to accomplish something affordably if you, if you're not aware.

So we're trying to push that information out.

That's what Fortified really is designed to be, is a way to get information out to the folks that need it, when they need it.

But Fortified is based on the science that we do at, at ibhs.

And we've looked at how buildings interact with these severe weather events, and we've identified what is the hierarchy, what happens first at the and most frequently at the lowest intensity of wind and rain.

And then how do we ratchet up the level of resilience as we get to those less frequent but more severe storms.

And so we put together the Fortified program that is meant to walk alongside the local building code.

We're not a building code replacement because our mission is to focus on some very specific things in the house.

So we don't deal with things like H vac and plumbing, electrical, that kind of stuff.

We deal with what is making your roof vulnerable to wind and rain.

How can we secure that building envelope, things like that.

Fortified is broken down into three, three pieces.

Roof, silver and gold.

We've already talked a bit about roof.

If you want to improve your resilience, then you get to your openings.

And that's where we talked about garage doors.

Right.

Focusing on your garage door, especially if you're away from the coast, the most important opening in your home is going to be that garage door.

That's the one you're going to want to focus on the most.

But if you are closer to the coast, then you start to look at things like windows, egress and ingress and egress doors or personnel doors in and out of the house, attached structures like porches and carports, how are those attached to the house, things like that.

And then if you want to have the supreme level of resilience, that's where you go to gold, Fortified gold.

And fortified gold builds on roof and silver and adds that continuous load path we talked about earlier.

Right.

So now we're really looking at how is the load path designed and how is.

Are the.

The connections, how are they executed?

And one of the other things that makes fortified a little bit different than, than what you may be used to, especially if you're someplace that doesn't have a lot of code enforcement, which is a good bit of the country.

Fortified includes a verification step.

So we train independent evaluators across the country.

We're in 27 states now, over 60,000 homeowners living under fortified roofs.

Now, we'll do another 15 to 17,000 this year, but we train independent evaluators.

We also train roofing contractors to know how to install fortified roofs.

But the evaluators partner up with the homeowner and the contractor.

They collect documentation during the construction process, whether it's a re roof or it's a new construction job.

And at the end of that, similar to what you may be familiar with when it comes to LEED or Energy Star, they bundle up all that information.

They send that up to me and my team, and we have a staff of experts that looks at every single job, reviews every single picture, and says, hey, you know what?

This meets the fortified standard.

We send out a certificate.

And that certificate then can unlock things like lower insurance rates more.

It can give you more choices when it comes to property insurance.

There's tax incentives, and for most people, it gives you the ability to communicate to a potential buyer, hey, my house has these improvements built in.

And this certificate tells you that you can count on the things that are there.

So that's.

That's fortified in a nutshell.

Yeah.

And it's amazing.

A lot of people, we've got people all coast to coast in the country that listen to this radio show and podcast and worldwide.

But I think a lot of people think of you guys as the.

You're the Gulf coast states group, but you deal with wildfires and everything else.

And on the west coast, that's a common occurrence for us here.

And even, shockingly, I think, for the world Hawaii last year.

And there was such a great example of seeing the flyovers of the devastation there.

But then you see a home or two that are virtually untouched, and everything else you can't even tell, except for some concrete foundation, that something was even there to begin with.

And it really shows how planning ahead on the building side of things can make a difference of the house standing or not being a sign of it.

Yeah, I think that the important thing, too, to know is that you don't have to be building new to get to be resilient.

There are things you can do to fortify or make your home.

Wildfire Prepared.

Our sister program, which you just referred to, is called Wildfire Prepared.

And it follows a very similar sort of philosophy that we do on the fortified side, but it really says, what is the thing that poses the most risk and what can we do about it?

And on the wildfire side, by the way, I didn't mention it earlier, but at our research center, we actually can burn stuff, too.

We could create ember showers in our test chamber, and we can really understand how wind impacts the flow of embers around a house, how radiant heat and how the proximity of different types of fuel can interact with the building.

But on the wildfire side, Lahaina provided a really clear and stark example of how important that first zero to five feet happens to be around your house.

That's where a lot of combustible material tends to accumulate around our house.

And if you have those fuels up close, your home is really vulnerable.

And that's going to create.

It's going to require a change in how we as consumers and homeowners think about our property, because we love to have beautiful stuff right up close to our house.

We don't want it to be.

We don't want it to be unattractive from what we're traditionally used to.

But if you really want to.

If you really want to take control and minimize your risk, we really got to think about that.

Zero to five feet.

Yeah.

Those beautiful evergreen shrubs and landscape bark.

And even just lack of maintenance can be the difference of having a beautiful home and filing an insurance claim for the whole home, for the whole thing.

You know what?

You just said something that's super, super important, Eric, and that is this concept of maintenance and deferring maintenance.

The.

When it comes to an existing home, whether you're trying to resist high wind or rain, or you're trying to resist wildfire types of scenarios, homeowner maintenance plays a big role in landscape maintenance.

In particular, when it comes to wildfire.

But lots of folks may be listening to this and saying, you know what, I'm not building a new house anytime soon.

Interest rates are pretty high and I'm not sure when I'll be able to afford to do that.

If you're an existing home, you may not be moving anytime soon.

You're looking at how do I harden my house that I'm in today?

And there's a lot of DIY stuff that you can do to help to minimize the potential impact of severe weather.

It does not necessarily take a reroof to do it.

And we have some really great resources for folks.

We have a website called ibhs.org if you go to ibhs.org we have on our website things called the Thunderstorm ready guides.

And in there there's a list of things that you can do.

Just as a couple of examples if you're really worried about wind and rain.

And as we've talked about, everybody should be a couple of things that really stand out.

One is take a walk around your house and look to see if you see any gaps around your windows, your doors, things like caulking.

A small opening can allow a tremendous amount of water in.

And unfortunately what we see is once water gets in, the cascade of damage and the and the amount of financial loss that can occur grows rapidly.

So even those small gaps just going around with a tube of caulking and caulking those gaps is a really great way to to minimize wind and rain risk.

Also helps out with wildfire, to be honest with you, because embers just need a small little area to get into something that is combustible.

Caulking is one thing.

Taking a walk around your house, trimming up your trees, cleaning up debris, making room in your garage for your car to get back in there.

Right?

How many of us have accumulated stuff in our garage and our car can't go in?

But if your car's sitting outside and the hail storm comes, you're going to be looking at some pretty serious damage.

So just those kinds of things and what makes it super friend DIY friendly is these are things you can do in small chunks.

You don't have to do it all.

If you are new to the show, you can find out more about us@aroundthehouse online.com we will be right back with more from Fred Malik, managing director of Fortified for the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety.

Around the House.

We'll be right back.

Welcome back to the around the House Show.

Eric G. Is down at Design and Construction Week In Orlando.

Orlando.

Finding the best new products for your home.

He will be back next week.

Now let's get back to our previous conversation with Fred Malik, managing director of Fortified for the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety.

Let's continue the conversation.

Obviously, property insurance has a place in the market.

Right.

It has a role to play.

And there are some risks that, you know, when it comes to mitigation, the gap between what you're able to do and what may happen.

Insurance is there to take care of that.

But we can really, as homeowners and consumers of insurance, we can really help out what we pay or what might be available to us by taking care of those smaller risks.

Right.

Taking care of those things that most people take for granted that small things might happen.

But enough of those small things occur over a wide enough area and it ends up in a billion dollar loss for a storm that didn't make any headlines.

And that's, that's the crazy part.

If we keep our focus on what are the things we can do, then there, there's a, there's opportunities to help us with the risks that are maybe a little bit further, a little bit more comprehensive to deal with.

But storm shelters, to your point, one of the things that, that is really encouraging to see.

There's a lot of innovation going on in that space.

There's a lot of ways that you can create storm shelters either in a closet or in a garage or an exterior shelter.

So people should definitely, if you happen to be in an area that's particularly prone to severe convective storms, which is the fancy word for storms that can spawn tornadoes, storm shelters are definitely something to strongly consider.

Yeah, that's smart.

And to highlight your point earlier, of maintenance, I have 13 of those big trees in my yard.

I didn't lose a single one of them.

But I have an arborist out almost every year that walks through and takes a peek at stuff to make sure things are looking good.

Yeah, I've got a dump trailer full of limbs, but that's an easy cleanup compared to severe damage like that.

So my trees did well because I had a guy come out and look at them every year.

Yeah, you can't, you can't.

There is no substitute for preparedness and taking, taking action to, to really understand, hey, do I have something I need to be worried about?

And sometimes that means you got to get it professional.

Now look that it's not all always the case.

Resilience can be affordable for everybody.

And, and part of what we try to do through our Science and through our programs is say, hey, when you are thinking about managing your risk and making your home or your business more resilient, here's the priorities that you should have.

These are the things that you should be thinking about.

Because nobody wants to see somebody who's really focusing on preserving their economic capabilities wasting their money on something that they just maybe shouldn't have to spend their money on.

That right now, if they, those dollars would have been better allocated if they could have focused on say, their roof versus installing some sort of additional load path enhancement for a storm that they might not see for a decade versus one that they're going to see every single year.

That's the other benefit of a program like Wildfire prepared or fortified is we've already done the hard work to say what should my priorities be?

And then we stack them so that people know what to do.

Yeah.

One thing I wanted to talk about, and that's the great thing that we haven't really addressed too much is windows.

Because again, that's another big opening into your house.

And it doesn't matter if you've got a West coast windstorm or you're down on the Gulf coast or you're up waiting for the nor' easter or even the hurricane going up the East Coast.

These are important openings that again, can lead to more damage.

And I love what they've been doing in the Gulf coast states as far as having very impact resistant windows that'll.

If something gets loose out there, it hits the window that you haven't just created a big freeway into your, into your living room, for instance, with wind there.

Again, in the Gulf coast, in particularly in places like Florida and places where the most modern codes are enforced and being enforced.

We've been looking at design pressures and impact rating for a long time.

Why is design pressure important for a window?

Again, when that wind is pressing against that window and rain is blowing against that window, the pressure that builds up on that window can force the water in.

And so there are tests to help minimize that.

It doesn't necessarily eliminate water getting in that way, but there are tests that say, hey, this has been pressure rated.

And if you know what your design pressure rating should be because of the risk that you're likely to face, then you can ask specifically for those kinds of, of components.

Same goes for doors, but those openings, one of the big things that really needs to be paid attention to is installation.

Right.

You can have the best window in the world.

You can have the best door.

I know I'm preaching to the choir.

But when I go out and I look at these post disaster scenarios, or even when I'm out on a sunny day and I'm walking through jobs that maybe aren't following Fortified or whatever, I see some really questionable installations in flashing.

The concept of flashing, I don't know how we are still so far behind the curve, I'm telling you, but making sure that the openings get set correctly, make sure that you're layering your drainage plane, your house wrap or whatever features that you're using to create that secondary drainage plane.

And then there's so many great products in terms of flashing tapes that are out there that are specifically designed to be on the wall.

And in those window openings in particular, there's just a, there's a lot of technology, A lot of innovation has happened in that space to make our jobs as builders way easier on that front.

But what really it comes down to is devil's in the details.

You've got to pay attention to details, Fred.

It's funny, when I tell people in the shopping for windows, they're like, okay, what should I look for?

I said, one of the first questions I want you to ask your installer is what brand of flashing they're using.

And I want to see there with the window specs in your contract.

But they're going to be following that brand's best practices on flashing that window correctly.

Because I can't tell you how many times I'm walking the dog in the neighborhood and I'm like, wow, that's beautifully done.

And then four houses down I'm like, somebody missed flashing day.

Yeah, no kidding.

You hit another really good point there.

And that is manufacturers put a lot of time and energy into figuring out how to make sure they're putting product will perform the function is designed to perform.

And they put out lots of details.

And if you follow those details, you're going to get a great performing product in the majority of cases.

So all the hard work of figuring out how do I install this product?

It's all there.

You just got to be able to be committed, right?

You got to be intentional.

And when we talk about resilience as a whole, as a building industry, we really have to be in order for us to make the building environment and our building stock more resilient, we as building professionals need to be intentional.

We have to make a conscious choice that we're not going to just follow the code, which is the legal limit, right?

The minimum limit you can build to.

But if we want to really deliver that Shelter that's going to last a lifetime for our customer and potentially generationally, which over in Europe we've seen that done for hundreds of years at generational housing.

If we want to do that, we have to really be making decisions that are going to lead to preventing simple stuff like water.

And Fred, I want to say this just so people can really have it sink in and you touched on it.

I just want to make sure and put an exclamation point on the end of this.

When I'm looking at windows, siding, indoors and actually roofing, if I want to put that on there, 60% of the performance is in the person putting it in.

There's some, there's a lot of truth to that in a lot of products.

There are some products that have some built in vulnerabilities and we may have some more to say about that later this year.

Keep a.

If you're listening to this show and you're interested in the kinds of things that we're talking about, keep an eye on ibhs.org keep an eye on Fortified Home and and we share all of our information for the most part for free.

And we will, we'll share some stuff later this year about what we were learning about different kinds of roofing materials and different expectations people might want to have.

But yeah, more to come on that later.

Excellent, Ben, excellent.

We're starting to run out of time here.

I want to put a nice bow around this.

If people are thinking about building a home, what's their first steps to be working with you guys?

Yeah.

First thing they want to do is go to fortifiedhome.org and take a look at the standard.

And if you're working in a design phase or you're interviewing contractors, take the standard and ask them to take a look at it and tell you what do they currently do.

And you need to tell them, hey, this is what else I would like you to do.

And the other thing that they need to do, the 1B step, 1B in the process is we have a free provider network directory and you can click on that and find a professional in your area, particularly the fortified evaluator.

That's your partner, that's who's going to document your project.

And you want to find one of those really early in the process because they can help you understand what's going to be required and how we need to document it.

And if you're in a Wildfire zone, does the same rules apply?

Yeah.

So out in California, the Wildfire prepared.

We have a really cool website out there.

Wildfireprepared.org and you can again find there's a really clear set of instructions on how to start that process and get an inspection done, particularly if you're in an existing home.

But the standard is up there for anybody to see.

It's a free download.

That is awesome because it doesn't matter if you're taking on a small remodel project or building a new home.

This is important stuff that can one save you a bunch of time and money and a little peace of mind along the way?

Yeah, more than a little peace of mind.

It can give you a lot of back of mind.

Absolutely.

Hey Fred, thanks for coming on today.

Let's hit your website one more time so people can find that and do their own research and get educated on the the process.

Yeah.

So two important websites.

Ibhs.org take a look at our thunderstorm ready guides for homes and commercial businesses.

And if you're interested in taking a look at Fortified, go to FortifiedHome.org Fred.

Thanks for coming on today, man.

I appreciate what you guys are doing and it's making a huge difference out there.

Thanks, buddy.

Appreciate the time and your audience here.

All right, everybody, you've been listening to around the house.

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