Resilient Home Guideline

What is a Resilient Home?

Our goal is to enhance your understanding of your home's resiliency to help you make choices to improve your situation.

A Resilient home allows you to prepare for emergencies, shelter-in-place for a period, and quickly recover. Typical characteristics include:

Durability - construct (or renovate) for passive survivability and faster recovery

  • flood proofing or raised floor construction
  • wind resistance and natural storm water mitigation
  • landscape and tree protection while reducing structural and exterior damage

Energy Efficiency – using less energy for comfort and survivability.

  • lower carbon emissions by burning fewer fossil fuels to mitigate impacts of a warming planet
  • on-site renewable energy technologies to cover power outages

Mitigation of Chronic Stressors & Acute Shocks, including -

  • A hotter, more humid Houston
  • poor urban air quality
  • long commute times
  • more severe storms and climate shocks

The Diagnostic Toolkit

STEP 1:

QUESTIONS

 Respond to the eight quick questions on the next page to calculate your score

STEP 2:

DIAGNOSIS

 Use your score to diagnose where you are currently on your resilient journey

STEP 3:

ACTION

Review the actions, resources, and consider your options for enhancing your resilient journey

    ** Select all answers that apply to you **

     

    QUESTIONS

    Are you prepared for a disaster at home?
    Is your home prepared for a disaster?
    Is your yard prepared for a disaster?
    Does your house reduce summer heat stress?
    Does your house help with energy bill stress?
    Does your house help with indoor air quality?
    Does your house help with work commute and isolation stress?
    Are there other household strategies?

    POINTS CALCULATION

    Question 1 0 Total Points
    Question 2 0 Total Points
    Question 3 0 Total Points
    Question 4 0 Total Points
    Question 5 0 Total Points
    Question 6 0 Total Points
    Question 7 0 Total Points
    Question 8 0 Total Points
    Cumulative Total Points 0

    HOW FAR AHEAD ARE YOU?

    Assess the stage you're at, and where you can go next

    STARTING OUT

    0-25

    		 You're getting started. You probably got some ideas on what you can do next.

    MAKING PROGRESS

    26-60

    		 You're well on your way to a more resilient home life. Time to learn more and take it up to the next level.

    LEADING THE WAY

    61-100

    Have you been working on this for long? You've got something going!

     

    Your answers will greatly assist the City in our Resilience planning for neighborhoods as we want to collect meta-data.

    Your answers will be correlated by zip code and not tied to your email or to you.  We respect your privacy. If you want to receive your checklist responses by email, please fill in your email, otherwise leave blank, but your Zip Code is necessary before you click submit.

    Thanks for your participation to improve your community.

    Top Ten Elements of a Resilient Home

    Now that you have reviewed the 8 questions and 32 answers, you probably can see there are no “10 Easy Elements for a Resilient Home” – this is a list, but they are not Easy.

    Resilience is complex and dependent on many features and a response to multiple stressors, some of which are unique to Houston’s hot, humid climate and experience with extreme weather events and flooding.

    Feel free to compare this list with your scoring on the toolkit, and develop your action plan to make yourself more resilient at your house!

    1. Design for use and occupancy post disaster/shelter in place, a survivable home.
    2. Improve the energy efficiency of the home – especially the building envelope (walls, windows, attic.)
    3. Improve home systems, check electrical for resiliency and HVAC for improved operation and Indoor Air Quality.
    4. Design, replace and select materials for durability and health, especially in indoor environments.
    5. Modify outdoor space (Home Grounds/Yards) for resiliency.
    6. Make your yard a sponge - Improve site landscaping for stormwater management and plant trees.
    7. Alternate energy supply – consider solar panels, solar hot water, fireplace, gas range, etc.
    8. Implement Home Maintenance strategies for resiliency.
    9. Implement community building strategies for your neighborhood.
    10. Lower household Carbon Footprint to reduce impacts from climate change and build up city and regional resiliency.

    For more information on Questions 1 through 8, please review the following resources

    Acknowledgments

    Houston Permitting Center Acknowledges and thanks the following for their contribution to this guideline: