Technologies To Protect Your Home Against Extreme Weather

Threats from hurricanes, wildfires and tornadoes are a growing concern for many homeowners looking for ways to protect their properties—especially as some scientists report that extreme weather events will likely continue to have far-reaching consequences in coming years.

New technologies are emerging. Companies are developing innovative roof systems such as one made by Tesla Inc. that aim to handle high winds and punishing hail. For new homes, novel uses of concrete, including a method that squeezes it out in layers like toothpaste, offer sturdy alternatives to wood-frame construction. “The Romans had concrete, but the way we’re using it by doing 3D printing is new,” says architect Rose Grant.

Homeowners contemplating some of the more cutting-edge approaches to shoring up their homes could be looking at hefty price tags—meaning they will need to weigh potential benefits against costs. And because most American homes are older than 10 years, retrofits will be key, industry experts say.

In the face of weather and climate threats in coming decades, the best advice remains avoiding coasts, floodplains or forests as home sites, says Nicholas Rajkovich, a University at Buffalo associate professor of architecture.

But for those looking to fortify their homes, here are coming options and the latest expert advice:

Roofs Go High-Tech

Solar roof systems are among the newest offerings for homeowners, billed as offering sturdy protection while also generating power. These non-traditional roofs combine sleek aesthetics and environmental sustainability with disaster resilience, building experts say.

Tesla Inc. is among the companies making a solar roof system that features strong glass tiles embedded with solar cells. Tesla says its roof, constructed with a combination of glass solar tiles, glass roofing tiles and architectural-grade steel tiles, has the top fire rating, second-highest hail rating and can withstand 110-mph winds. Costs vary by roof size, a Tesla representative says. Ivan Gould, a real estate agent in Sarasota, Fla., says the Tesla roof on his 2,400-square-foot home cost $41,500 after a tax credit.

GAF Energy, part of privately held Standard Industries, this year launched a roof system that it says directly integrates solar technology into traditional roofing processes and materials. The company says the system uses the world’s first nailable solar shingle and has the same fire and wind ratings as Tesla’s roof.

Seal the Roof Deck

As too often seen in recent disasters, severe weather can take off a roof’s shingles, allowing rain to pour through gaps in the underlying roof deck and destroy the home’s interior. An unsealed roof deck allows up to 60% of falling rain to enter the attic, the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety says.

Here, a tried-and-true fix can make a big difference. Sealing the roof deck is relatively easy, and can reduce water entry by as much as 95%, the insurance institute says. One method is to cover seams with flashing tape, then top the deck with a reinforced synthetic material. The roof deck of a 2,000-square-foot home could be sealed for as little as $500, the institute says.

3D-Printed Walls

Most houses are “stick built” with wood frames, yet some builders are shifting to concrete to build stronger walls. Austin-based Icon Technology Inc. says it has used 3D printing to build more than two dozen homes and other structures. A 46.5-foot-wide gantry-style printer dispenses a concrete mix, layer by layer, to form walls at a home site. The computer-driven process can save time and money, and yield a structure whose exterior won’t burn or rot and that can withstand extreme weather better than conventional wood-frame homes, says Bungane Mehlomakulu, Icon’s head of building performance. Compared with other types of construction, 3D printing can more easily create curved walls that allow high winds to flow past, he says.

Iowa-based Alquist 3D, which focuses on affordable housing, says it plans to print hundreds of homes over the next three years. Black Buffalo 3D Corp., which supplies Alquist’s material and printers, says its proprietary concrete mixture cures to a compressive strength of 7,500 pounds per square inch, well above the global wall-strength standards range of 2,500 to 4,000 PSI.

Ignition-Free Zones

Increasingly intense and destructive wildfires have focused attention on efforts needed to mitigate risks for homeowners—and is bolstering a growing idea that joint neighborhood efforts can be more effective than those of individuals. Embers and small flames cause a majority of homes to ignite during wildfires, the nonprofit National Fire Protection Association says. Many of the prescriptions remain basic: To lower risks, homeowners in fire-prone areas should clear potential fuels—anything that can burn—up to 200 feet from the house, the group says. The most critical zone is the 5-foot perimeter around the home.

Remove dead leaves from roofs and gutters. Enclose areas under decks with wire mesh to keep out debris. Move anything that might catch fire, including plants, away from exterior walls. Tree placement is also key, the association says. Branches and leaves should be at least 10 feet away from the house, and there should be more space between trees closest to the dwelling.

Protect the Entry Points

Windows are vulnerable in a wildfire, and heat from burning trees can shatter the glass before a home ignites. Double-paned windows, with one pane of tempered glass, can reduce the risk, according to Home Innovation Research Labs, an independent subsidiary of the National Association of Home Builders. Finding ways to make windows more resistant to heat and flame is a major focus of research in the homebuilding industry that is expected to bring new products in coming years.

Embers and flames that enter through a vent can ignite a house from within, so it is important to seal off potential entry points, usually found on the roof, around crawl spaces and on the undersides of eaves. Covering vents with ⅛-inch metal mesh screen can block embers big enough to start a fire, the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety says.

Insulate With Concrete

With roots in post-World War II Switzerland, a method known as “insulating concrete forms” is winning plaudits from safety experts for its strength and gaining a higher profile as efforts ramp up to find ways to fend off severe weather. Canada-based Nudura Inc., says structures built with its ICFs can resist winds up to 250 mph, equivalent to an F4 tornado.

Several companies make these forms, which can be stacked along exterior walls like Lego blocks. The forms consist of two layers of insulation material separated by a void several inches wide. Concrete is poured into that gap, creating a concrete-filled sandwich.

Mike Russell, a Nudura technical sales representative, says his 2,500-square-foot ICF house near St. Augustine, Fla., emerged unscathed from Hurricane Michael in 2016 and a tornado in 2017. While the house cost 5% more to build than a traditional home, he says, the insulating effects keep his electric bill around $40 to $50 a month, even in summer.

Let the Water In

In a counterintuitive idea, building experts say allowing part of your house to flood could help you protect it. Using a technique known as “wet floodproofing,” small rectangular openings can be added to foundation and garage walls, below the expected flood level. If flood waters allowed to enter a home’s enclosed area can quickly reach the same level as flood waters outside, the destructive effects of hydrostatic pressure are reduced, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. This can help limit damage to the foundation and other parts of the house.

“You just allow your basement to flood, so that you can clean it up later,” said Nicholas Rajkovich, a University at Buffalo associate professor of architecture. This, of course, would require putting the furnace, hot water tank and other appliances at higher levels. And, to be sure, it’s best for basements, garages and other areas not used as living space.

Beware the Garage

The garage door is typically the largest opening in a home’s building envelope, and if it breaks open during a hurricane or tornado, the rapid buildup of air pressure inside can “literally rip the roof off the house,” says John Peavey, who directs the building-science division at Home Innovation Research Labs. He recommends a reinforced garage door, which some local codes require. Impact-resistant windows and skylights will also help prevent blowouts, as do hurricane shutters.

Extra protection against wind can add 20%-30% to a garage door’s cost, according to Mischa Fisher, chief economist at Angi, formerly Angie’s List.

PARIS —Paris has long been a byword for luxurious living. The traditional components of the upscale home, from parquet floors to elaborate moldings, have their origins here. Yet settling down in just the right address in this low-rise, high-density city may be the greatest luxury of all.

Tradition reigns supreme in Paris real estate, where certain conditions seem set in stone—the western half of the city, on either side of the Seine, has long been more expensive than the east. But in the fashion world’s capital, parts of the housing market are also subject to shifting fads. In the trendy, hilly northeast, a roving cool factor can send prices in this year’s hip neighborhood rising, while last year’s might seem like a sudden bargain.

This week, with the opening of the Olympic Games and the eyes of the world turned toward Paris, The Wall Street Journal looks at the most expensive and desirable areas in the City of Light.

The Most Expensive Arrondissement: the 6th

Known for historic architecture, elegant apartment houses and bohemian street cred, the 6th Arrondissement is Paris’s answer to Manhattan’s West Village. Like its New York counterpart, the 6th’s starving-artist days are long behind it. But the charm that first wooed notable residents like Gertrude Stein and Jean-Paul Sartre is still largely intact, attracting high-minded tourists and deep-pocketed homeowners who can afford its once-edgy, now serene atmosphere.

Le Breton George V Notaires, a Paris notary with an international clientele, says the 6th consistently holds the title of most expensive arrondissement among Paris’s 20 administrative districts, and 2023 was no exception. Last year, average home prices reached $1,428 a square foot—almost 30% higher than the Paris average of $1,100 a square foot.

According to Meilleurs Agents, the Paris real estate appraisal company, the 6th is also home to three of the city’s five most expensive streets. Rue de Furstemberg, a secluded loop between Boulevard Saint-Germain and the Seine, comes in on top, with average prices of $2,454 a square foot as of March 2024.

For more than two decades, Kyle Branum, a 51-year-old attorney, and Kimberly Branum, a 60-year-old retired CEO, have been regular visitors to Paris, opting for apartment rentals and ultimately an ownership interest in an apartment in the city’s 7th Arrondissement, a sedate Left Bank district known for its discreet atmosphere and plutocratic residents.

“The 7th was the only place we stayed,” says Kimberly, “but we spent most of our time in the 6th.”

In 2022, inspired by the strength of the dollar, the Branums decided to fulfil a longstanding dream of buying in Paris. Working with Paris Property Group, they opted for a 1,465-square-foot, three-bedroom in a building dating to the 17th century on a side street in the 6th Arrondissement. They paid $2.7 million for the unit and then spent just over $1 million on the renovation, working with Franco-American visual artist Monte Laster, who also does interiors.

The couple, who live in Santa Barbara, Calif., plan to spend about three months a year in Paris, hosting children and grandchildren, and cooking after forays to local food markets. Their new kitchen, which includes a French stove from luxury appliance brand Lacanche, is Kimberly’s favourite room, she says.

Another American, investor Ashley Maddox, 49, is also considering relocating.

In 2012, the longtime Paris resident bought a dingy, overstuffed 1,765-square-foot apartment in the 6th and started from scratch. She paid $2.5 million and undertook a gut renovation and building improvements for about $800,000. A centrepiece of the home now is the one-time salon, which was turned into an open-plan kitchen and dining area where Maddox and her three children tend to hang out, American-style. Just outside her door are some of the city’s best-known bakeries and cheesemongers, and she is a short walk from the Jardin du Luxembourg, the Left Bank’s premier green space.

“A lot of the majesty of the city is accessible from here,” she says. “It’s so central, it’s bananas.” Now that two of her children are going away to school, she has listed the four-bedroom apartment with Varenne for $5 million.

The Most Expensive Neighbourhoods: Notre-Dame and Invalides

Garrow Kedigian is moving up in the world of Parisian real estate by heading south of the Seine.

During the pandemic, the Canada-born, New York-based interior designer reassessed his life, he says, and decided “I’m not going to wait any longer to have a pied-à-terre in Paris.”

He originally selected a 1,130-square-foot one-bedroom in the trendy 9th Arrondissement, an up-and-coming Right Bank district just below Montmartre. But he soon realised it was too small for his extended stays, not to mention hosting guests from out of town.

After paying about $1.6 million in 2022 and then investing about $55,000 in new decor, he put the unit up for sale in early 2024 and went house-shopping a second time. He ended up in the Invalides quarter of the 7th Arrondissement in the shadow of one Paris’s signature monuments, the golden-domed Hôtel des Invalides, which dates to the 17th century and is fronted by a grand esplanade.

His new neighbourhood vies for Paris’s most expensive with the Notre-Dame quarter in the 4th Arrondissement, centred on a few islands in the Seine behind its namesake cathedral. According to Le Breton, home prices in the Notre-Dame neighbourhood were $1,818 a square foot in 2023, followed by $1,568 a square foot in Invalides.

After breaking even on his Right Bank one-bedroom, Kedigian paid $2.4 million for his new 1,450-square-foot two-bedroom in a late 19th-century building. It has southern exposures, rounded living-room windows and “gorgeous floors,” he says. Kedigian, who bought the new flat through Junot Fine Properties/Knight Frank, plans to spend up to $435,000 on a renovation that will involve restoring the original 12-foot ceiling height in many of the rooms, as well as rescuing the ceilings’ elaborate stucco detailing. He expects to finish in 2025.

Over in the Notre-Dame neighbourhood, Belles demeures de France/Christie’s recently sold a 2,370-square-foot, four-bedroom home for close to the asking price of about $8.6 million, or about $3,630 a square foot. Listing agent Marie-Hélène Lundgreen says this places the unit near the very top of Paris luxury real estate, where prime homes typically sell between $2,530 and $4,040 a square foot.

The Most Expensive Suburb: Neuilly-sur-Seine

The Boulevard Périphérique, the 22-mile ring road that surrounds Paris and its 20 arrondissements, was once a line in the sand for Parisians, who regarded the French capital’s numerous suburbs as something to drive through on their way to and from vacation. The past few decades have seen waves of gentrification beyond the city’s borders, upgrading humble or industrial districts to the north and east into prime residential areas. And it has turned Neuilly-sur-Seine, just northwest of the city, into a luxury compound of first resort.

In 2023, Neuilly’s average home price of $1,092 a square foot made the leafy, stately community Paris’s most expensive suburb.

Longtime residents, Alain and Michèle Bigio, decided this year is the right time to list their 7,730-square-foot, four-bedroom townhouse on a gated Neuilly street.

The couple, now in their mid 70s, completed the home in 1990, two years after they purchased a small parcel of garden from the owners next door for an undisclosed amount. Having relocated from a white-marble château outside Paris, the couple echoed their previous home by using white- and cream-coloured stone in the new four-story build. The Bigios, who will relocate just back over the border in the 16th Arrondissement, have listed the property with Emile Garcin Propriétés for $14.7 million.

The couple raised two adult children here and undertook upgrades in their empty-nester years—most recently, an indoor pool in the basement and a new elevator.

The cool, pale interiors give way to dark and sardonic images in the former staff’s quarters in the basement where Alain works on his hobby—surreal and satirical paintings, whose risqué content means that his wife prefers they stay downstairs. “I’m not a painter,” he says. “But I paint.”

The Trendiest Arrondissement: the 9th

French interior designer Julie Hamon is theatre royalty. Her grandfather was playwright Jean Anouilh, a giant of 20th-century French literature, and her sister is actress Gwendoline Hamon. The 52-year-old, who divides her time between Paris and the U.K., still remembers when the city’s 9th Arrondissement, where she and her husband bought their 1,885-square-foot duplex in 2017, was a place to have fun rather than put down roots. Now, the 9th is the place to do both.

The 9th, a largely 19th-century district, is Paris at its most urban. But what it lacks in parks and other green spaces, it makes up with nightlife and a bustling street life. Among Paris’s gentrifying districts, which have been transformed since 2000 from near-slums to the brink of luxury, the 9th has emerged as the clear winner. According to Le Breton, average 2023 home prices here were $1,062 a square foot, while its nearest competitors for the cool crown, the 10th and the 11th, have yet to break $1,011 a square foot.

A co-principal in the Bobo Design Studio, Hamon—whose gut renovation includes a dramatic skylight, a home cinema and air conditioning—still seems surprised at how far her arrondissement has come. “The 9th used to be well known for all the theatres, nightclubs and strip clubs,” she says. “But it was never a place where you wanted to live—now it’s the place to be.”

With their youngest child about to go to college, she and her husband, 52-year-old entrepreneur Guillaume Clignet, decided to list their Paris home for $3.45 million and live in London full-time. Propriétés Parisiennes/Sotheby’s is handling the listing, which has just gone into contract after about six months on the market.

The 9th’s music venues were a draw for 44-year-old American musician and piano dealer, Ronen Segev, who divides his time between Miami and a 1,725-square-foot, two-bedroom in the lower reaches of the arrondissement. Aided by Paris Property Group, Segev purchased the apartment at auction during the pandemic, sight unseen, for $1.69 million. He spent $270,000 on a renovation, knocking down a wall to make a larger salon suitable for home concerts.

During the Olympics, Segev is renting out the space for about $22,850 a week to attendees of the Games. Otherwise, he prefers longer-term sublets to visiting musicians for $32,700 a month.

Most Exclusive Address: Avenue Junot

Hidden in the hilly expanses of the 18th Arrondissement lies a legendary street that, for those in the know, is the city’s most exclusive address. Avenue Junot, a bucolic tree-lined lane, is a fairy-tale version of the city, separate from the gritty bustle that surrounds it.

Homes here rarely come up for sale, and, when they do, they tend to be off-market, or sold before they can be listed. Martine Kuperfis—whose Paris-based Junot Group real-estate company is named for the street—says the most expensive units here are penthouses with views over the whole of the city.

In 2021, her agency sold a 3,230-square-foot triplex apartment, with a 1,400-square-foot terrace, for $8.5 million. At about $2,630 a square foot, that is three times the current average price in the whole of the 18th.

Among its current Junot listings is a 1930s 1,220-square-foot townhouse on the avenue’s cobblestone extension, with an asking price of $2.8 million.