Fireproof Homes & the am-cor System

After the early 2025 Hol­ly­wood brush­fires, Amer­ic­an in­terest in fire­proof­ing their homes skyrock­eted. This highly pub­li­cized nat­ur­al dis­as­ter caused more than $250 bil­li­on in dam­age, and af­fec­ted nearly 18,000 homes and struc­tures. The hot and dry Santa Ana winds sweep from the ar­id hills of South­ern Cali­for­nia in­to the Los Angeles basin con­tain­ing many densely packed neigh­bor­hoods. The ex­tremely dry ve­get­a­tion there provides a prime set­ting for wild­fires. Once these fires ig­nite, the strong winds blow em­bers, which light more fires, hasten­ing the blaze’s over­all spread. Only in 2008, did Los Angeles im­ple­ment strict Chapter 7a build­ing rules re­gard­ing fire res­ist­ant build­ing re­quire­ments for new con­struc­tion in these zones. Many older struc­tures with low fire res­ist­ance ex­ist among new con­struc­tion, in­creas­ing the chance of their con­flag­ra­tion and thus the spread of em­bers to oth­er at-risk struc­tures.

The need for Fire-res­ist­ant homes

The need for fire res­ist­ant con­struc­tion in high-risk fire zones has al­ways ex­is­ted. The United States scores with­in the top 11 highest fire risk areas in the world in­clud­ing: Canada, Brazil and Cent­ral South Amer­ica, Aus­tralia, South-cent­ral and East­ern areas of Rus­sia in­to North­east China, Cent­ral Africa, South­west­ern Europe and many is­land coun­tries of East­ern Asia. The need for res­id­en­tial, com­mer­cial and in­dus­tri­al struc­tures that can with­stand ex­treme con­di­tions such as wild­fires has al­ways ex­is­ted, but pub­lic in­terest in fire­proof con­struc­tion only re­cently skyrock­eted.

How did we get here

With many Amer­ic­ans re­quir­ing im­me­di­ate, af­ford­able hous­ing, and oth­er en­tre­pren­eur­i­al types in­ter­es­ted in cre­at­ing car­bon neut­ral, self-suf­fi­cient, nat­ur­al dis­as­ter res­ist­ant home for­ti­fic­a­tions, fire­proof pre­fab homes have be­come in­creas­ingly pop­u­lar. Fire­proof homes pri­or­it­ize fire res­ist­ant build­ing ma­ter­i­als such as con­crete, brick, tempered glass and stucco, es­pe­cially for their roof and ex­ter­i­or. The am-cor pre-fab Fer­ro­ce­ment build­ing kits use am­cor­ite™, a pro­pri­et­ary Fer­ro­ce­ment ad­mix­ture, which is a type of fire res­ist­ant ce­ment or stucco over a steel struc­tur­al form. This gives the pat­en­ted tech­no­logy a two to four hour code-com­pli­ant fire res­ist­ance.* Some build­ing ma­ter­i­als such as con­crete and poly­mer mixes out­gas pock­ets of air when un­der high stress or heat changes, lead­ing to small holes that com­prom­ise the ma­ter­i­al’s struc­tur­al in­teg­rity. Am­cor­iteTM tech­no­logy doesn’t out­gas re­leas­ing trapped gasses or dan­ger­ous Volat­ile Or­gan­ic Com­pounds (VOCs) when un­der high pres­sure or tem­per­at­ure stressors.

Com­pared to oth­er fire res­ist­ant build­ing sys­tems, such as In­su­lated Con­crete Form (IFC) walls, the am-cor Pre­fab Fer­ro­ce­ment kits provide an in­teg­rated struc­ture con­nect­ing the build­ing found­a­tion to the walls via foot­ers and seam­less wall to roof at­tach­ment. Class A fire res­ist­ant roof­ing ma­ter­i­al such as shingles, Fer­ro­ce­ment and stand­ing seam enamel met­al can be in­cluded in your kit if spe­ci­fied. This build­ing tech­no­logy de­creases leaks in the build­ing en­vel­ope, of­ten found at these junc­tures, thus fur­ther in­creas­ing the build­ing’s fire res­ist­ance.

For a quarter cen­tury the Cent­ral Vir­gin­ia based com­pany am-cor inc. has provided Pre­fab Fer­ro­ce­ment build­ing kits to meet the build­ing needs of pro­jects from res­id­en­tial tiny homes to com­mer­cial ap­plic­a­tions and more. These pre­fab kits in­clude light­weight fram­ing pan­els that fit to­geth­er like lego blocks al­low­ing for easy self in­stall­a­tion with fab­ulous guid­ance from the de­tailed kit as­sembly in­struc­tions, tu­tori­als and fre­quently asked ques­tions on their web­site, ac­cess to, Am-cor ex­perts or the op­tion of quick con­struc­tion un­der the su­per­vi­sion of the con­tract­or of your choice. 

If you need quick, af­ford­able con­struc­tion of a fire­proof house an Am-cor kit may be the solu­tion for you. Most con­struc­tion pro­jects be­gin in early spring as the weath­er be­gins to warm. This means that the costs of build­ing ma­ter­i­als in­crease and avail­ab­il­ity of con­tract­ors or laborers be­comes scarce. You have the abil­ity to design a pro­ject spe­cif­ic for your needs, con­sist­ent and af­ford­able pri­cing brings the pro­ject with­in your reach and the Fer­ro­ce­ment Pre­fab Build­ing Kits ship dir­ec­tly to you ready for im­me­di­ate as­sembly.

Dis­claim­er

*The am-cor fire-res­ist­ance rat­ing is IBC (In­ter­na­tion­al Busi­ness Code) Com­pli­ant with build­ing ma­ter­i­als equi­val­ent to the fire res­ist­ance hours, but has not un­der­gone full fire rat­ing clas­si­fic­a­tion test­ing. Ap­plic­a­tion of am­cor­iteTM to one sur­face of an am-cor pan­el provides a 2-hour fire res­ist­ance rat­ing, while ap­plic­a­tion to both sides of the pre­fab pan­els give a 4-hour fire res­ist­ance rat­ing.