FireRock Ridge Design Guidelines (Fountain Hills): Height, Roof, and Color Rules for a Custom Home

If you are building a custom home in FireRock Ridge in Fountain Hills, a community committee approves your exterior design before the town will let you start, and its rules are stricter than the town code. FireRock Ridge publishes Architectural Guidelines and Standards that cap your home at 20 feet tall, limit your roof slope and color, control your paint, and set a minimum house size. This page explains what those guidelines require, why they exist, and what they mean for a build, so you design to them from the first sketch instead of reworking plans later.

This page is part of the Jematell community design guidelines library, our plain-language reading of the design rules that guard-gated and master-planned communities in our service area enforce on custom homes. These community rules sit on top of the city building codes, and they are usually the tighter constraint.

What the FireRock Ridge guidelines require

The FireRock Ridge guidelines control the height, shape, roof, and color of every new home, and a design committee must approve your plans first. FireRock Ridge is a community in Fountain Hills, and its design guidelines are the binding rules its committee uses to review custom homes. The biggest single rule is height. The document limits homes to single-story or split-level plans and caps how tall any part of the house can stand:

Homes within FireRock Ridge are limited to single story or split level plans that follow natural topography... with no single wall plane or ridgeline to exceed 20 feet above natural grade.

Natural grade is the original ground level before any soil, paving, or decking is added. So the 20-foot limit is measured from the dirt as you found it, not from a raised pad. A few more of the hard rules from the guidelines:

• Roofs. The maximum pitched-roof slope is 5/12 (5 inches of rise for every 12 inches of run), and the roof material reflectance cannot exceed 50 percent. Red "Mexican tile" or "barrel tile" roofs are not permitted. White roofs are to be avoided.
• Paint color. House paint must have a Light Reflective Value, or LRV, of 50 percent or less, in subdued desert colors. LRV is a 0-to-100 scale for how much light a color bounces back, so a 50 percent cap rules out bright or pale walls. Each color must be submitted with the manufacturer, color name, LRV, and two paint chips for approval.
• Garages. Carports are not allowed, and a fully enclosed two-bay garage is required. Garage doors must be sectional metal roll-up doors, recessed at least 16 inches from the face of the wall. Wood overhead garage doors are not permitted.
• Minimum house size. Livable area, not counting garages, patios, or porches, must be at least 2,500 square feet.
• Setbacks. Building setbacks follow the approved zoning district, so the Town of Fountain Hills yard rules still apply underneath the community guidelines.

When these guidelines come into play

These rules shape the home before the floor plan is final, so they come into play the moment you start designing on a FireRock Ridge lot. A few common situations:

• You want a two-story home. FireRock Ridge does not allow it. The single-story or split-level rule and the 20-foot cap mean a tall, stacked design is off the table, so the square footage has to spread across the lot instead of up.
• You picked a roof tile you love. If it is red barrel tile, or a glossy material over 50 percent reflectance, the committee will reject it. Roof color and material both get reviewed against the approved list.
• You chose a bold exterior color. A bright white, deep black, or saturated accent wall will likely fail the 50 percent LRV limit. The palette runs to subdued desert browns, beiges, and grays.

The committee reviews your plans against the CC&Rs (the recorded covenants, conditions, and restrictions you agreed to when you bought the lot) and these guidelines. That committee is a design review committee (DRC) , and it, not the Town, is the authority having jurisdiction (AHJ) for design fit, while the Town still issues the building permit.

What this means for your build

Design to the 20-foot height cap and the single-story rule from day one, because they decide the whole massing of the house. On a Fountain Hills lot with slope, the natural-grade measurement matters. For example, say your lot drops 4 feet from the street side to the back. A roofline that sits 18 feet above grade at the front can measure 22 feet above the natural grade at the downhill wall, which fails the 20-foot rule even though the house looks the same height throughout. The grade has to be checked at each wall, not just at the front door. Pick your roof slope, roof material, and paint colors against the guidelines before you fall in love with a look, since the committee can send any of them back. For how these numbers compare to other luxury communities, see how tall can a custom home be in a gated or hillside community in Arizona , what roof types and slopes do luxury Arizona communities allow , and what are LRV paint color rules in North Scottsdale luxury communities . Plan for the 2,500 square foot minimum and the recessed two-bay garage as fixed inputs, not options.

Remember this is a second approval on top of the town permit. For how that HOA review works in Arizona, including the law that governs it and the on-site inspections, see how HOA design review affects building a custom home . For the town zoning that sets your setbacks underneath these guidelines, see Fountain Hills Residential Zoning and Setbacks , and for the codes your structure is built to, Fountain Hills Adopted Building Codes . For the Scottsdale-area version of this design-review system, see how HOA and community design review works in Scottsdale .

Source

The height, roof, color, garage, and house-size rules above come from the FireRock Ridge Architectural Guidelines and Standards, Revised 7/2022, published through the community's managing agent: View the FireRock Ridge Architectural Guidelines (PDF) . The FireRock Ridge guidelines are a private, copyrighted association document, quoted here only briefly for accuracy; read the full guidelines at the source.

HOAs revise and re-post these documents, so the version and the file location can change. This page reflects the 7/2022 revision. Confirm the current guideline version with the FireRock Ridge design committee or its managing agent before you rely on any number for your plans.