Resilient home design: What It Means, What It Takes, and How to Think About It
Co-authored by Michael Maines and Ben Bogie, offering two perspectives on the same question. This is The Designer’s Guide, written from Michael’s viewpoint. Ben will publish the Builder Field Guide companion on his site tomorrow, featuring his perspective.
Michael Maines is a residential designer, building science educator and a principal at Mottram & Maines, a residential architecture firm in Maine that integrates design quality, indoor air quality and building durability with budgets and constructable details.
Ben Bogie is a residential builder and principal at BPC, concentrating on sequencing, execution reality, and the QA/QC details that ensure performance is evident on-site and over time.
Resilient Home Design
“Resilience” is becoming a ubiquitous term in product marketing and news articles. It may be a buzzword but it’s one with substance behind it. Our design clients rarely list “resilience” among their priorities, but they always want what resilience provides: assurance that their home will be able to withstand both everyday and unusual stressors without failing.
These stressors come in many forms, and Ben and I hear from our clients and fellow professionals that risks feel more imminent than ever: wildfire smoke is no longer a distant headline. Rain- and wind-storms are trending heavier and more powerful than ever. Periods of high heat and humidity, as well as frigid cold spells, are extending beyond where they have in the past. Our clients have heard enough fear-based messaging and don’t want more gadgets or platitudes as solutions. They want to know what matters, what is optional, and which components require early decisions.
As builders and designers we have different perspectives but overlapping concerns. It may be obvious to some but not to everyone: our role as project designers is to start with our clients’ goals and dreams, guide them through the many decisions that go into planning a custom home or renovation, and communicate effectively what needs to be done to the build team. The builder’s job is to translate our drawings and specifications into a completed home. We have found that the entire process goes more smoothly when the design and build teams are on the same page from the start, and the farther the project is from “conventional,” or what everyone else is building, the more that coordination matters.
This series will focus on how to make those decisions and how to set the project up for success. We’re calling it Resilience Ready, and over the next year we’ll publish deep dives into the decisions and solutions that make a home resilient. Each time, we’ll share two companion articles:
The Designer’s Guide (Mottram & Maines: homeowner-focused explanations, design priorities, tradeoffs and decision-making.
Builder Guide (BPC): construction reality, sequencing, coordination points, QA/QC checks, and common failure modes observed on site.
In this kickoff article we’ll share an overview of how we see resilience as it relates to our homes, highlighting some that are priorities for our clients and that we’ll revisit in upcoming pieces.
What We Mean by Resilience
Ben said it well when discussing why this series seemed worth pursuing: “I’m thinking about resilience as how we construct houses given what we know now, versus what we’ve known in the past.” My take was in more general terms: “I think of resilience as elastic—something that can bounce back from an outside source.”
A resilient home can withstand external forces and recover without turning into a crisis for its occupants. These forces might include smoke, multi-day power outages, storms with wind-driven rain, extreme heat waves or extended wet seasons. Which forces take priority varies by location and project, but the principle remains constant: prepare for the unexpected.
Beyond the building, important aspects of resilience include the quality of the community you’re in and access to services and supplies. We encourage social considerations at all stages of the design process. Here we will focus on the more tangible features of the home itself.
Resilience is not a single feature but a series of decisions working together. It’s a deliberate design perspective that helps ensure the home remains livable under abnormal conditions. This is the essence of resilient home design as we use the term throughout this series.
The Resilience Priority Stack
New construction is a blank canvas but renovations can add resilience to existing homes as well. When designing new homes, the four elements our firm focuses on first include:
1. Enclosure First
The building enclosure includes the four critical control layers, managing stormwater, air, heat, and vapor, with structural systems and finishes that quietly support the building and protect its occupants from the elements.
In our practice at Mottram & Maines, we consider the building enclosure to be “ours” and we guard it tenaciously. We start preliminary sketching using thick walls, as it gets hard to make thicker later in the process, and thick walls have space for the important things, like a structure that can withstand high winds, snow loads and potentially floods, and plenty of insulation. (We don’t have to worry much about the earthquakes that are a priority in other regions.) We take an active approach and show the control layers on our drawings: an air control layer that runs continuously around the building section (drawn in red, as drilled into us by architect Steve Baczek); a water resistive system that makes the entire building storm-tight before any cladding is applied; a vapor control system that doesn’t try to force moisture to do things it doesn’t want to do; and last (and least in importance, but still important) a thermal control layer, the insulation and other materials that slow heat flow, in or out. We include rainscreen gaps for drainage and drying, and we use energy modeling to optimize our enclosures for performance while enhancing aesthetics.
2. Stormwater Management
Water is the surest path to costly failure. Sometimes mistakes show up quickly and dramatically. More often they build slowly over time, creating hidden dangers that don’t show until it’s too late to fix easily. Building resilience includes controlling what happens to stormwater, from roof slopes and flashing discipline to materials and assemblies that can dry readily after wetting. It also means expecting that Mother Nature may not behave the way she usually has in the past. Ben gets straight to the point: “The biggest concerns for me recently have been around high winds and strong rain and flooding events.”
At Mottram & Maines, we try to think like raindrops and aim for water management to be logical, repeatable and inspectable, with forgiving details. This includes:
Simple rooflines to minimize challenging transitions and to direct stormwater away from vulnerable areas;
Generous roof overhangs, like an umbrella protecting what’s below;
Rainscreens as a default for drying our walls and cladding;
Explicit detailing at high-risk locations: roof-to-wall transitions, window heads and sills, decks and penetrations.
3. Ventilation & Filtration
If you’ve ventured down any building science rabbit holes, you have likely heard the phrase, “buildings need to breathe.” Hopefully you also found the wise response, coined I believe by Dr. Joe Lstiburek: “buildings don’t need to breathe, YOU need to breathe. Buildings need to dry.”
Most of us spend the vast majority of our time indoors and we respirate about 2,500 gallons of air every day. That air includes contaminants, from undesirable organic compounds to particulates small enough to pass through your sinus cavity into your brain. Outdoor air isn’t always “fresh” air, thanks to wildfires but also to pollen, dust, car exhaust and other sources. Low indoor humidity is tough on our immune systems but high humidity promotes mold and other microbial growth in our buildings. Radon is a colorless, odorless gas and the second leading cause of lung cancer. For our health and well-being, we need to have control over the air we breathe.
Instead of vague “healthy air” claims, we focus on measurable, buildable choices: source reduction, controlled ventilation, intentional filtration, pressure behavior, and moisture management.
At Mottram and Maines, we include ventilation and filtration an integral part of our designs, not line items that can be eliminated:
Planning for controlled outdoor air exchange instead of accidental ventilation through leaks;
Monitoring pressure behavior to prevent unwanted contaminants from entering;
Aligning filtration choices with mechanical design to ensure system performance.
This is where ventilation and filtration become a tangible homeowner outcome: “the house stays comfortable and the air stays clean, even when the outdoors isn’t cooperating.”
4. Backup Power
Some hearty souls relish time off-grid but the rest of us get antsy when the power goes out, and when it’s out for extended periods it can be a serious health and safety issue. Some people want their backup systems to fully recreate their grid-tied lifestyle, while others are willing to forgo luxuries and focus on right-sizing for relative necessities.
For many households, right-sizing means protecting:
Heat sources (or cooling sources, in other regions;)
Water supply (for those on wells);
Refrigeration;
Lighting, charging and internet access;
Ventilation and filtration (especially during smoke events).
This is the core of power outage preparedness home planning.
At Mottram & Maines we start planning for backup systems with our clients by defining what “livable” means for their household, then work backward:
Reducing loads through good design and an effective enclosure to minimize backup needs;
Selecting critical circuits and essentials rather than assuming we need to power the whole house with no compromises;
Determining what backup power strategy makes the most sense for the situation;
Ensuring the build team has the information they need to implement the backup strategy.
While those four aspects of building resilience are the ones we focus on the most, two more are gaining ground:
5. Wildfire and 6. Wildfire Smoke
Here in the northeast US we have been blissfully exempted from major fires for decades, while they have raged in the western US, Canada and other areas. In recent years, drought and winds have brought the risk of wildfire closer and we have been learning and implementing ways to improve the fire resistance of the homes we design and ways to keep the indoor air healthy for the occupants when smoke is heavy in the air. Among resilience concerns, Ben noted that for him and his company, “Smoke is one that’s a relatively new occurrence for us and growing in frequency.”
We are more familiar with smoke blowing in from western fires; while seemingly more benign, it carries high levels of the tiny particles we don’t want entering our bodies.
For resistance to fire itself, we start with the site: keep trees and heavy vegetation away from the house, create ember-resistant zones directly around the building, either build close enough to services that firefighters can reach you quickly or have your own source of water. For the building, this is where some of our standard high-performance techniques serve double duty: simple rooflines reduce potential ignition points; triple-glazed windows and well-insulated walls keep excessive heat at bay, and even our favored rainscreens and vented roofs can be detailed to reduce the risk of embers entering.
When it comes to wildfire smoke indoor air quality, we start with a tight building enclosure which allows us to control air intake and maintain indoor air pressure control. Then we recommend ERV ventilation systems that with high filtration levels; Merv-13 filtration is a common upgrade from the standard 8-MERV filters. We have the option of going all the way to HEPA-level or approximately Merv-16 filtration without taxing the motor, if the system is designed for it, providing cleaned air to bedrooms and living areas while exhausting from kitchens and bathrooms. An airtight enclosure does not allow smoke to sneak in around cracks and gaps, and the windows and doors we specify seal tightly, not just on day one but continuing over decades. We encourage having no fuel-burning appliances indoors, which means minimal penetrations, and maintaining a neutral or slightly positive indoor pressure means that smoke won’t be sucked inside. For clients seeking extra protection during smoke events, we discuss room-level filtration as a support measure, but not as the primary plan.
What a Smoke-Ready Home Needs
An airtight enclosure to prevent unfiltered ventilation through random cracks and gaps;
Balanced ventilation to avoid negative pressure that pulls in outdoor contaminants;
Filtration designed for the job, focusing on particulate control.
Durability or Resilience?
These terms are closely related and often conflated but represent different concepts. Durability is akin to toughness, especially over a long term: will the flooring hold up to daily abuse? Will the window seals last or will thermal cycling loosen them? Will the heat pump outdoor units rust in a salt-air environment?
While durability can support resilience, it can also work against it. Long-lasting, impermeable plastic siding may prevent the wall from drying, leading to rot and mold. Vinyl flooring may hold up well to abuse but can also trap moisture and result in microbial growth. A tough building can be uncomfortable to be in during smoke events or power outages if they aren’t planned for.
We think a coherent strategy for durable low-maintenance home design should be part of the resilience strategy, not a separate set of preferences. We avoid “fragile beauty;” if a detail will be hard to maintain or impossible to repair over the long term, or if a class of equipment is not likely to make it to the mainstream and instead be discontinued, we look for other solutions, no matter how excited we get about new technology. We aim for durable and resilient detailing, including:
Assemblies that manage bulk water and that can dry readily when necessary;
Materials that withstand normal wear and tear (and then some) without increasing risk for the entire assembly;
Clear, repeatable details instead of reinventing the wheel on complex one-offs;
Mechanical systems designed for efficient operation but also for serviceability and eventual replacement.
Summary: A Pretty Good Baseline
Every house is a science project but resilience means using our experience and that of our fellow building science nerds to ensure a safe, comfortable home. A solid baseline includes:
An effective building enclosure;
Excellent water management;
Mechanical ventilation;
A filtration strategy;
A backup plan aligned to priorities;
Details and materials chosen for durability and repairability.
Ben’s plain-language definition captures the intent:
“A building constructed to manage increasingly volatile and uncertain weather patterns, ensuring the client’s investment is protected.”
If you are planning a new home or major renovation and want to think through resilience from the design side first, we can help you make smarter early decisions around enclosure, water, air quality, durability, and backup planning so the home works better not just on paper, but in real life. Contact us HERE.