Exterior Fire Wise Vent Covers, Plumbing Pipe Boots and HVAC Lineset Covers

One of my main concerns with home design has been “what to do about wildfire” I know a lot has been written about fire resistant roofs, wall claddings, attic vents, doors, windows and deck design & construction, etc, but one area of residential detailing I haven’t seen a lot of comment on are the smaller building envelope penetrations, like HRV & ERV vents, bathroom fan vents, kitchen range hood vents, dryer vents, plumbing vents or HVAC and electrical boots.
For example, what good is having a long lasting waterproof rubber gasket wrapped around your roofs plumbing vent and covered with a protective plastic cover if they will melt easily in a fire and drip molten material down into your attic? Or if wildfire embers get blown into your ERV outlets and set the plastic vent covers on fire?
I have seen these two ads in every single edition of Fine Homebuilding magazine for the last several years (which would cause the average reader to assume that they “must be the best of the best” products available):
1. DryerJack.com (apparently this roof cap vent is the only choice that is “specifically designed to meet the demanding needs of clothes dryers”). They also say that code disallows screens and requires a damper (which apparently most “out-of-the-box” roof caps don’t have). It’s made from heavy gauge deep drawn powder coated galvanized steel.
2. DryerWallVent,com (also made from heavy gauge deep drawn powder coated galvanized steel).
So I would think that these products, being metal, would hold up better than plastic in a wildfire situation, but what about the other building penetrations I mentioned? Are there other, or better, products for all these smaller holes in the building envelope that would do a much better job than plastic at protecting a home in a wildfire?
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Replies
Airex Titan Outlet for line sets achieved an “HB” rating based on UL 94 for the hard plastic mounting cover, which is the best rating for that test. It’s still plastic, but it’s not the worse. The PVC liner/cover for the line set insulation is not rated, however.
OP, have you found anything for ERV vents? I'm having a hell of a time trying to find something to vent my Zehnder. Ideally through the wall.
And what about plumbing vents? How do you make those fire proof?
There's two approaches, you can get vents with a bug screen on them with the concept being that it'll stop the embers from getting in. But they're horrible for airflow and can really squash the performance of the ERV (they make them way too small as it is and charge way too much, don't get me started).
I'd say preferable would be to have main grate to stop birds from nesting and a backdraft damper to dampen bug ingress, and potential embers in a wildfire scenario.
Plumbing vents aren't usually a big concern. The OP talked about melting the rubber gasket from the ambient heat... If you're trying to protect from ambient temperatures that high, it's a whole different storey in resilience design, different from protecting against incoming embers.
However, there are better practices than the norm for better fire resilience, like using rockwool insulation under steel roofing, instead of asphalt shingles on OSB. A cast iron plumbing vent instead of ABS/PVC pipe that would melt much sooner than the boot itself. and there are fireproof silicone boots (often made for wood stove) that have high heat resistance which could be substituted from the standard EPDM roof boots.
To be upfront, I don't get wildfires where I am in the big smoke of Toronto. So I'm not necessarily standing on the shoulders of lessons learned from others experiences with wildfire housing loss. So please take my thoughts with a grain of salt. However, I do have a similar problem, in that in some spots of the city I'm in, house density is so high that you ought to think about what happens your house or your neighbours house catches on fire. Embers and radiant heat from your neighbours house fire will easily catch yours. So fire resistant design comes into play for me as well from this regard.
Jamie
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