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Retrofit the house you already have
This page is a chooser for an existing house. Most Oregon dwellings will never see a new-dwelling R327 permit. UNR SP-20-11 and FEMA P-737 (September 2008) are the opened retrofit sources. The home-hardening ladder is the order of operations. Roof, vents, Zone 0, windows, and deck already have guides. This is not a new-construction poster.
You are standing in an older ranch with open eaves, a shake-adjacent reroof from the 1990s, bark against the siding, and no R327 stamp in the permit box. Empty the five feet and the gutters before you buy a listed vent.
Link the existing component pages. Do not scrape UNR art. Do not treat a new-construction wall stack as a retrofit permit drawing.
Why it matters
Search is “how do I harden the house I have.” New-dwelling R327 answers the wrong question. UNR’s guide is a coupled approach: defensible space plus home hardening. P-737 2008 says suppression often cannot reach every house, so the envelope has to resist embers, flame, and heat. Oregon still does not treat that PDF as adopted code.
How it works
P-737 Fact Sheet 1 (09/08) names topography and weather, defensible space, the building envelope, and community infrastructure. Embers, radiation, and flame can all ignite a building.
UNR SP-20-11 walks existing components: roof, roof edges, vents, gutters, windows, skylights, siding, decks, fences, chimneys, garages, plus defensible space. Each section is how that part fails and what to change. Use our matching guides instead of reprinting Nevada’s drawings.
The paths
| If you are looking at | Open |
|---|---|
| Order of operations / what first | Home-hardening ladder |
| Attic and underfloor holes | Mesh versus listed vents |
| Roof covering vs assembly | Covering versus assembly |
| First five feet | Zone 0 |
| Glass | Dual-pane versus tempered |
| Gutters | Gutters and debris |
| Fence at the wall | Fence as wick |
| Garage perimeter | Garage doors |
| “Does my addition trigger R327?” | Remodels when the answer is no |
| Colorado addition, reroof, or wall swap | CWRC 101.5 (500 square feet), 101.6 (25 percent roof), 101.7 (25 percent wall plus Immediate Zone) |
| Smoke indoors | Smoke-ready home |
1. Maintenance before hardware. Debris off the roof, out of the gutters, and out of the five feet. UNR and P-737 both start there. CAL FIRE’s list on the ladder page does too.
2. Close holes, then replace the weak component when it is due. Vents, gutters, then roof, windows, siding, deck. The ladder is the sequence. This page will not mint four more URLs for the same house.
3. Do not wait for a new-dwelling permit that will not come. If the work is a reroof or a window swap on an older house, BCD’s FAQ keeps it outside R327. Still spec a Class A assembly and tempered or multilayer glazing if you want both code-adjacent practice and insurer checklists.
4. Read UNR and P-737 as guidance. They are not the Bend ordinance. Confirm the local official if you are in an adopted R327 city on a new house.
What people mix up
- Treating this chooser as R327.
- Scraping UNR figures onto a drawing set.
- Citing 2025 P-737 chapter numbers.
- Buying a listed vent before emptying the gutter.
- Stamping an L1 family hub as a retrofit poster.
How to check
- Open the ladder. Find your rung.
- Open the matching guide in the table.
- Open SP-20-11 for the component narrative. Leave the pictures in Nevada’s PDF.
- If someone quotes P-737, ask which year. This page is 2008.
Limits
This page does not bid the job. It does not reprint UNR art. It does not adopt R327 onto an existing house. FireApproved is not UNR or FEMA. Catalog items that were only “roof retrofit,” “vent retrofit,” “window retrofit,” or “deck retrofit” as separate essays extend this slug.
Related records
Questions
Is this R327?
No. R327, where adopted, is new construction of new ORSC buildings. BCD’s local-adoption FAQ keeps typical additions and siding swaps on older houses outside that section. This page is retrofit guidance. See remodels when the answer is no.
Where do I start?
The home-hardening ladder is the order of operations. UNR SP-20-11 pairs defensible space with home hardening (roof, vents, windows, gutters, decks, fences, garage). FEMA P-737 (2008) starts from embers, defensible space, and the building envelope. Do not buy a Class A roof over a bark bed.
Can I use the UNR drawings?
No. SP-20-11’s illustrations are copyrighted. This page cites facts and the URL. It does not scrape the art.
What about 2025 FEMA P-737?
The public edition opened for this page is September 2008. A 2025 file on disk is pre-decisional. Do not mix 2008 sheet numbers with 2025 chapters.