Episode 98 - Is Your Home Toxic? The Truth Behind Common Building Materials
Episode #98 | Andy Pace | Is Your Home Toxic? The Truth Behind Common Building Materials
In this episode of The Curious Builder, Mark Williams sits down with Andy Pace from the Green Design Center to dig into the world of healthy building versus energy efficiency. Andy drops some serious knowledge from his 33 years in the biz, pointing out how using non-toxic materials can open up a whole new market for builders. They also cover practical tips to make homes healthier, like tackling formaldehyde and EMF issues, making it a must-listen for anyone in the building game!
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About Andy Pace
Andrew Pace is a Healthy Home Materials Expert and Founder of The Green Design Center, a leading resource for homeowners and contractors looking to source products that are healthy and green and receive expert consulting advice on designing and building healthy green homes. Andrew is the host of the weekly Non Toxic Environments Podcast. He is a worldwide expert on green and healthy building products and services customers and contractors from around the globe. As founder of the oldest healthy building supply company in the United States, Andrew has become one of the single most helpful and educational experts dealing with the day-to-day concerns of those individuals who suffer from allergies, asthma and chemical sensitivities.
His projects and expertise have been featured in numerous media outlets and industry podcasts including Real Simple, Men’s Health , Architectural Digest and Wellnessmama just to name a few. He has recently presented alongside Gwyneth Paltrow and Deepak Chopra as part of the 2023 Change The Air Summit with host Michael Rubino and discussed The Science of Healthy Buildings at the Healthier Tech Summit.
With over 30 years of experience, Andrew has assisted over 30,000 clients worldwide in their endeavors to make their living space healthier. Specializing in chemical sensitivity, mold related illnesses such as CIRS and MCAS, Andrew can be your healthy architectural consultant, by recommending materials, methods and systems to make your living space as safe as possible. Andrew can work with you, the consumer, directly, or with you and your builder/architect/designer as a team.
Resources:
Find The Green Design Center’s Website Here
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Andy Pace 00:01
for any of the builders that are listening right now, I'm sure many of them are saying, listen, nobody asked me about this stuff. Nobody ever comes to me and asked me to build a healthy home. They're not worried about this, not that. I understand that. But keep in mind that maybe you've never gotten a phone call about this asking because your the potential customers already know that you don't do it, and you're not even open to it, and so once you do it, and once you say to yourself, we this is not rocket science. It can be done fairly easily. Just listen to the right people and use the right materials and take your time with the educational process, they're finding a whole new market of customer base that they never had before. Today on
Mark D. Williams 00:46
the curious builder podcast, we had Andy pace on from the green design center and wow, we could have talked for a whole series, years and years of content here, one of the things that intrigued me the most was the difference between healthy building and energy efficiency. Andy is a 33 year veteran of understanding how our health is affected by the products we choose and in the homes that we live in. So without further ado, here's Andy pace, welcome to the curious builder Podcast. I'm Mark Williams, your host. Today, I am joined by Andy pace from the green Design Center. Welcome Andy. Thank you, Mark. Great to be here. I was asking you beforehand, like, which one of your eight businesses do you want me to introduce you as? Because you're also a healthy home concierge, healthy building expert, the podcast, non toxic environments. You've you're a renaissance man.
Andy Pace 01:31
Yeah, they call me one of those serial entrepreneurs. Oh,
Mark D. Williams 01:34
I thought you had to go a serial killer, but yeah,
Andy Pace 01:38
sometimes the mind starts to go but no, honestly, I've been at this for so long, and it seems like I've had to reinvent myself many times over the years, but we've always stayed on mission, which is, it's all about healthy home, common sense, building materials.
Mark D. Williams 01:52
I love it. I was doing the cheat code on guesting knowledge beforehand and listening some of your other podcasts, and I feel like, Man, I could. I can't wait to tune into your podcast. One of the biggest things just this non toxic home building. I think my leading question, I maybe I should stop for a second for the audience. We'll probably break this into three different like segments, roughly 20 minutes each, but the first will be, obviously, who you are, what you do, why it's important, big. I think one of my lead questions after we get through that is healthy building versus energy efficiency. I feel like you could almost have the entire podcast be about that, frankly. And then maybe towards the end, as I mentioned before we came on air, is I'm actually in the middle of designing a my first spec home in 16 years, and I'm really designing it around a philosophy that centers and it's way beyond my knowledge base, which is your wheelhouse, is really just healthy living. And so we'll use my own ignorance of really just asking questions that basically because I'll actually use what you tell me right now on this home that I'm doing. So I think just setting it up for how this podcast will probably be broken down sounds fantastic. Looking forward to it. Let's so let's start just a bunch of give us a quick intro. You've been doing this for 33 years, and just tell us a little bit about your company and where you find yourself and why you're still doing it. 33 years is no joke. You're a veteran.
Andy Pace 03:06
Thank you. Yes. And sometimes the age starts to creep up on me, and then I get excited about it all over again. This is such an exciting industry to be in. It's never been like this. It is probably because
Mark D. Williams 03:19
you have more support now than you've ever had the green maybe walk us through. You started in 92 I was a I'm 44 so I was, I was 12 years old when you started. And I bring it up, you're welcome, no. But the reason I bring it up for context, just for context for the audience, is really we started, we've been hearing about, there's green washing, there's actual green principles, and at this point, no one even knows it, what they're even talking about anymore, whether a company says they're green or not, that everyone's great. I'll buy it because it's got a green leaf on it. They don't know any of the back end practices. And I know that you'll be able to speak to us a little bit about that. So it's interesting. It went from being this, like taboo, weird thing, till now it's a dominant market force, right? But yet, is it really? Anyway, I'll let go, give you the floor to give us that evolution. Because right now, I guess I'll add one thing I find that in my 20 years of building so I started in 2005 I very rarely, when I ask clients if they're willing to spend the money or if they're interested in it, almost exclusively, and usually I've gone with energy efficiency, not home health, which is why I'm particularly excited to talk to you, because I think it's my messaging that has been wrong and but very rarely are they willing to spend the money on it, unless there's a financial returns, unless they had some sort of allergic, like health reaction, violently ill, to a certain tax. And then, obviously you have to they're aware of it. They're usually the ones informing us as the builder. But now I feel like the younger generation, they've been hearing green, not only efficiency, but I think we're in a real huge swing towards health, which I certainly hope, because I'm a huge fan of just wellness, and I feel like the younger generation is going to be way more like this is going to be expected. And so I'd like to just with that kind of shape, from my perspective, I'm curious to see if it's accurate or not. And I'll give you the space all
Andy Pace 05:01
those different topics that you pointed out there. I can sum it up in the history of my existence in this business. I started in commercial construction architecture back in 1989 and I just got a school my family has owned a commercial construction material supply company send that dates back to the 30s. I get out of school, I start working for the family business, and a few years after I started, I find myself just, you know, head into architectural specification writing. I am traveling the country, meeting with the largest architectural engineering firms, helping them detail materials in their projects, writing specifications for these projects. I spent two years as the youngest president of the construction specifications Institute local chapter, and I was just I loved it. I loved the industry. We had a situation on a project in Milwaukee where we were supplying, we specified and supplied a water based epoxy coding for a below grade parking structure. Now this is 1992 everybody thought water base meant it's safe. Don't worry about it. They've taken all the junk out. So we got to specified our crew. They were applying the primer coat to this three coat system, and people started calling down to the job trailer, complaining because this is a blow grade structure with 1314, floors of condos and offices above. Occupants were calling, complaining of the odors, saying that it's really strong. They have to leave their condos or their offices. We thought some people just complain because they see a can that opens up and they instantly go to something's bothering me, and I didn't know anything about sensitivities and the sick building syndrome and all that. I was a neophyte when it came to that stuff. So we continue on the project, and now we actually run into serious issues. First of all, a sitting United States senator office called and said, Now Senator so and so cannot be down here. This you got problems. And then three of our workers were rushed to the hospital because of inhalation complications. They could not breathe. They're literally the caring process of this coding was causing all the oxygen in the room to be sucked out, and now we are scared. And I'm young in this industry. I'm 2122 years old, and I'm thinking, I'm gonna ruin my family's 60 plus year existence in this business by selling this lousy coding what's going on? So bunch of searching, we found a company in California, a very small company called AFM American formulating and manufacturing, and they made products that were designed for people with sick building syndrome or environmental illness. And somebody told me they got something that'll work for this. Call them. I did call them. We worked it out. We finished the project. And then the wheels started turning in my head, and those were, I don't want to risk my family's business. Number one, number two, more importantly, I don't want to poison people. Here I am selling products that I thought were safe, the industry thought were safe. So why would I continue to sell these materials? And it's just like the light bulb went on and it was just this epiphany, we have got to focus on selling human, friendly, common sense building materials. And so over the next several years, I put together a series of flooring materials and countertops and cabinetry and paints and coatings and cleaning materials and HVAC systems, and you name it, anything that could be healthier for the occupant. Now remember, at this time early on, I was focusing on commercial construction, and I had friends who were principals in large firms, and I would go to them and say, you should really specify this AFM product, because you're not going to have people complaining about chemical odors. And they would say to me, well, stick this in the file, in case anybody's ever interested in that stuff. And then a few years later, when the United States Green Building Council started, and a couple years after that, when they created the LEAD program, then it became an issue of, do your products meet the lead standard for energy efficiency and or sustainability? From a global sustainability standpoint, it completely missed the boat when it came to human health. It just bypassed it. And so while I was involved in those organizations, I sat on the board of the USGBC here in Wisconsin. I co wrote the green build home standards here in the state. But we we found that the industry completely sped off in a direction of energy efficiency and sustainability, recycled content, all that stuff, which is important, of course, but it ignored the human health aspect, and we stuck true to our nature, which is, let's provide materials that are healthier for the occupants. Wow. They were. Do
Mark D. Williams 10:00
you find yourself now, in terms of you said, now you're in a world, in a time where you probably feel way more supported, there's a lot more colleagues, there's a lot more awareness of it. Where do we find yourself now is I remember when lead was a big thing in the late 90s, early 2000s as a recall, and now I don't see or hear and I'm not in commercial, so I don't know if it's still prevalent there, but residential at least, it doesn't seem to be big here. We have something called the Green Path in Minnesota, but I think it's our most of the stuff that I'm being educated on with our building, cu credits and things like that, have to do with energy efficiency, right? And Minnesota has been around the top. I actually think we are the top at scale. Nobody builds more efficient homes than Minnesota does at scale, but that's because of more northern climate here in Wisconsin, so you'd be somewhat similar, but that doesn't speak to home health, which is obviously one of the things I mainly want to talk about here today. When
Andy Pace 10:49
you got started in the business, and you said mid 2000s that was at basically the I would call the zenith of the green building industry. This is where everybody was focusing on, lead on on green from a standpoint of energy efficiency, global environmental concerns, green washing was at its peak where every manufacturer on Earth was trying to talk about how green their products were. For instance, somebody could say, we make our products all local. It's all locally made. They don't tell you from parts made in China or from toxic additives. They'll just say it's made locally. Therefore,
Mark D. Williams 11:24
can you, can you imagine if they sold, uh, green treated plywood and green treated two by fours? That's a green product, the amount of chemicals and that stuff has got to be out of this, out of this world
Andy Pace 11:35
back then, though, it was the Wild West, and manufacturers could say and do anything they want. And then late, 2000s early, two teens, the recession hits. Now, at the time, I was distributing the Safeco products to about 150 stores across the country, small, little, green supply stores. And within the next three to five years, we lost 80% of those stores because of they just couldn't make it. All the money went out of construction, residential construction, and all those customers over the last several years who really started focusing on green from a standpoint, hey, I'm going to do my part to save the Earth. Really well intended. They base went out of the market, and they came back in later on, mid 2000 teens, and they said, I still want to buy green however, there needs to be more of a focus on it improving either my bottom line or and or it improves the health of the occupants of the home. And that's when I started seeing the switch from, I think we all understand energy efficiency. None of us go to Home Depot to buy a new wash machine and ask the salesperson I want the Can you show me the least efficient wash machine you got? We all understand energy efficiency saves money. So that's a no brainer. But now you have people walking into those stores saying, Do you have any like dishwashers that don't use a bituminous coating, because when it heats up, it releases a toxic gas. Those questions are now starting to happen because of, it's because of, I think people are finally realizing that our homes are potentially dangerous, and I think out in the last four years because of COVID, and people really focusing on their health. Obviously, they're spending more time indoors. Their the thought process is is now coming full circle. It's coming complete now we're saying, if we're going to do something in this house, we should probably do something that's not going to harm the occupants. It still has to maintain our budget and our esthetic and our time frame, but it's got to be healthier. And
Mark D. Williams 13:40
I think for a long people have been talking about health forever, as long as humans have been alive to some degree. But I feel now the word wellness seems to be a word that is used a ton Sure, whether it's health and fitness and exercise, running, lifting weights, whatever that might be, but And we often look at nutrition and what we eat as you are, what you eat or a balanced diet. I have three young kids. We're obviously trying to teach them the merits of a healthy, balanced meal. But I don't think I've ever in my entire life, and I just mentioned this recently, which is why this is so fortuitous that you're on is no one talks about what we breathe, not at least not in my world. And like I'm a I do a lot of running on an athlete. I do Ultra running, so obviously my VO, two, Max, and my lungs are very important to me, because I can't run the distances I run without a healthy lung system. But what's amazing to me is how amazing our body is at filtering stuff, and so we've been breathing this stuff unaware, but like, our lungs, and I'm not saying that it's not in there, but it's like most people are unaffected, like, we tend to be a pretty reactionary society like until there's a problem, we tend not to do much about it. Mold was a big thing on the late 90s and 2000s because at least in our code, here was, you put poly on the walls in a basement, they'd sweat. It would cause water everywhere. Then all your pink insulation would turn to black mold, and then you'd open up the walls and you had a mold issue. But that was you. So they weren't they weren't preventing it. They were waiting to react to it and say, how do we fix it? And I get you don't know what you don't know, but why has what we breathe been so slow? And I said, touch. I was listening to one of your podcasts about all the things that you touch. Tell us a little bit about what we touch and what we breathe and how. Because ultimately, the people listening to this podcast are builders. We have to inform our homeowners, like the zealous homeowner who has a rare disease, or I actually had a homeowner that wore 2p 98 masks or whatever during COVID Because he had a very rut where so it's because of him that we did ultraviolet HEPA filters, because he's if I get sick, I'm going to die. I really had to react to my client, but I feel like builders, we should have some education to educate our clients of why they should care about some of this.
Andy Pace 15:47
Yeah, that's a tough that's a tough one to talk about, because for years, it frustrated me that the building community just didn't want to start discussing these things everybody knew is the elephant in the room that nobody want to talk about. And I realized, if you are a builder who has been building homes for 50 years, your firm's been building homes for 50 years, and now tomorrow, you start advertising we can build healthy homes. What does that say about the 1000s of homes you built prior to that? That tells the world that all those homes are toxic, and I don't mean they were, but the perception is, Oh no, you're now. You're doing healthy, which means they were unhealthy before. So it's a fine line that the building community has to walk on. This I work with a lot of builders that are I don't want to say they're startups, but they've started up completely separate entities from their traditional firms, because they don't ever want people to look back and say, Yeah, but what about that house? And that house, it's, it's the idea like, there's a giant manufacturer of insulation, a fiber less insulation, about 10 years ago, came out with a formaldehyde free version of their insulation, and when they launched it, they started getting threatened lawsuits because they were saying it's formaldehyde free. No longer does it have this stuff in it? And people were like, Yeah, but my house has had this for 40 years, so now you're telling me you can make it formaldehyde free. So they instantly came out with all these full page ads and the trade pubs saying we didn't do it because of any perceived health issues with formaldehyde. It's perfectly fine. We did it because there are better products to use now. It's like the tobacco industry kind of, you know, looking back and saying, maybe it wasn't a good idea that we had doctors smoking on advertisements, and it is tough to make the switch without the fear of people saying, but what? Why didn't you do it earlier? People always want to find somebody to blame. That's true. Obviously a
Mark D. Williams 17:44
manufacturer of a product might be different. But like, for me, like, you don't know what you don't know, I think a big, a big part of the podcast and what, certainly one of my main goals, I obviously want to educate. We want to entertain people too, because people want you could educate people, and they won't listen because it's not funny or interesting and all that. But like, we education a huge part of why you're on here today, I assume, is to educate. And I'm I, yes, I bet you could keep remaking the circuit, because everyone's audience is different. The vast majority don't know, don't care, and don't need to need a reason to care. Lake society magazine is Minneapolis premier target market boutique lifestyle and design publication. It embodies the unique lifestyles and design of the Minneapolis city, lakes neighborhoods from Lake of the isles to Lake Harriet. It showcases the best in local design projects by both premier builders, architects and interior designers in this area. Lake society magazine has the look and feel of a national publication, with glossy covers, high end finishes. It's mailed directly to upper bracket single family homeowners in the city lakes area, and it's the perfect local coffee table top publication. Subscriptions can also be available through the website lakesociety magazine.com additionally, publisher and founder, Karen Steckel, has over 27 years in a local magazine publishing industry, and has a passion for high end photography and quality graphics. Her commitment to quality visual simplicity and beauty are strongly reflected in her beautiful lake society magazine. This episode is brought to you by adaptive. For over two years now, I've been using adaptive it's an incredible game changer. It's AI technology based. It helps you with Bill Pay and as a builder, there's very few things at Angular subs more than not being paid on time. Well, those days are gone. Not only do you know exactly where you are, but you can pay people through your ACH channels, making draws extremely quick with one click of a button, which used to take hours, my office staff is now able to generate a draw to the bank or to the client in literally seconds. The thing that I appreciate the most about adaptive is their ability to keep changing. We've given them three or four feedbacks on things that we need as builders, and within just a few months those they're rolling those things out. This is saving. Us hours per week and days per month in terms of our efficiency. If you're looking to upgrade your business, I'd highly recommend adaptive. You can reach out to them@adaptive.com or listen to the curious builder podcast episode 15 or episode 80, where we dive into their origin story.
Andy Pace 20:17
Roughly 25% of the population has a genetic predisposition for severe mold sensitivity, and that's now been proven through genetic testing and over the last seven, eight years, I've been saying for years that about 25% of the population has a chemical sensitivity, and now we're finding that it's the same. Now that means that one out of four in a household will be affected more so by mold, chemicals, possibly electromagnetic fields. The rest of the family is going to say, no, that's just that. That's just so and he or she they just have allergies. They're always kind of a sickly person. Well, no, it's a genetic thing. The other thing is, while 75% of the population may not have that genetic predisposition, I would say that 100% of the population that lives in in in housing, whether it's apartments or homes, today, they are affected. We all are affected by the materials in our homes. Most people have the ability to filter. And you talked about this before, it's amazing how our bodies can filter out the toxins. Our lungs can get rid of the crud. A lot of it has to do with just getting a good night's sleep every night. One of the things I talk about with all my clients is, if you're going to build, remodel a home to be healthy, make the bedroom the safest room in the house, you got to get six to eight hours of sleep, of restorative sleep every single night. And if you're inundated with chemicals from the carpeting, from EMFs coming from the wires behind the wall, you're not going to get that restorative sleep. Couple all this information with something I just so there's a DR Shoemaker who's a mold expert. He's written the protocol on, on, on mold detox. He was on a show recently, and he was saying that studies are showing that 75% of homes in the United States are affected by water damage, 75% and it's obviously because of the building materials we use. You talked about vapor bears in the walls, and the problem is with the vapor bear that most companies use, it allows transmission both ways. So now moisture inside of the home can go back into the cavity wall, and then in the middle of winter, can turn to frost, and then it melts, and then we have a mold problem in spring. And so there are new methods out there to build our homes to be breathable from a moisture standpoint, airtight from an energy efficient standpoint. And this is where I said earlier, I'm so excited about where our industry is right now, because we're finally getting it. We're not using these adages like, oh, a house needs to breathe. No the occupants of the house need to breathe. The house can care less. But from a standpoint of air infiltration, you want it to be airtight from moisture. You want it to be able to allow that moisture to breathe in and out so it doesn't get locked anywhere. Combined with a piece of moldy wood or a mold sport infected wood turns into a mold factory. So these are the things that are coming out now. And I think we this is really at the breaking point. And what I mean by that is there's been so much momentum in our industry now over the last 456, years that it has to take off now, if we revert back to our old ways of how we build houses the United States, it's just going to be an ongoing problem. And so I'm very excited of getting phone calls and emails from builders and building experts across the country who are now reaching out and saying, I want to do this. I want to learn more. And so this is a perfect opportunity, it
Mark D. Williams 24:02
is interesting how energy efficiency helps healthy buildings, and healthy buildings can help energy efficiency. Sometimes they're they come combat. Obviously, sometimes they're not the same. I know maybe we should talk about spray foam a little bit. A lot of people think spray foam is the end all be, all to everything. It's not. I think I've heard one energy expert say it's in its proper application, it's a great tool, and I think a little bit like a surgeon, scalpel is exactly what you need when you're doing open heart surgery, not a chainsaw, but if you're cutting down a tree, a scalpel is going to do you no good. You need a chainsaw like it's a different tool for a different job. Would you agree with that statement when it comes to a spray foam 100%
Andy Pace 24:38
I think that spray foam insulation. There are certain situations on projects I'm working on where we just say we have to use it here because we have no other choice. I rarely would recommend it on a project, unless the project has gone along too far like we already know what our wall thicknesses are going to be. We know we have this energy code we're trying to. Meat, so we just don't have any other options here. Spray foam is it's 100% plastic and doesn't breathe, even though it does lead to problems with moisture down the road, because of the divorcing of the foam to the wood and leads to a channel of air and water coming through. But from the bigger standpoint is I have helped numerous clients over the years completely remediate their homes because the spray foam never fully cured, or it cured incorrectly, and it was nothing but a toxic soup from that point on. So they had a Ice Blast all the walls to get rid of any residual of it. And I just don't want
Mark D. Williams 25:39
to go there. Oh, wow. I've never heard that Ice Blast. Tell me about that. That's, yeah, Ice
Andy Pace 25:43
Blast is essentially taking, oh, like, liquid nitrogen, nitrogen, and essentially freezing the surface so that all of that can be scraped out properly. Otherwise it's hard to get it out of the cavities. Sounds
Mark D. Williams 25:55
super cheap and easy to do. Oh, yeah,
Andy Pace 25:57
very Yeah. It doesn't take any time at all. And the meantime, you got somebody paying a bill to be in a hotel for six months, and these are usually people who already have a compromised immune system, and so now we have to put them into a hotel, which there's no such thing as a healthy hotel. It's just a just an ongoing thing. So that's why I like to get involved in a project early on, so we can make these decisions early, so we're not having to make a quick decision because we didn't have time to to integrate healthier opportunities. So with
Mark D. Williams 26:29
spray foam, I've heard before, correct me if I'm wrong, and I know it has, it's a it's a compound of two chemicals being sprayed at one time. So a lot of it is being mixed in the field, which is why there's a lot of volatility to it, right? Because you could have a good product, but if it's applied wrong or incorrectly, depending on the temperature, there's a lot of variables with spray, a lot of variables. One of them I've heard is you can you should only do is it two or three inch lifts at a time, because that allows it to cure an off gas and heat right? So if you're doing it within, let's say three inches or less, I think that's the protocol. Then they come back like the next day. Let's say you're doing a six inch let's say it's a lid or something like that, you would do three inches, let it cure, let it air out for 24 hours, or whatever. Then come back and do a secondary one is that the proper way to handle that for those that do a lot of spray foam,
Andy Pace 27:10
sure. So there's obviously a difference between open cell and closed cell and their expandability, expansion capabilities and time frame. You're always making sure you're following manufacturers suggestions, so you don't avoid any warranties. But keep in mind that spray foam is always a part B, and both Part A and Part B are made up of dozens of different chemicals, and you are asking a skilled crew, but sometimes not accurate, to go into the field, whether it's 90 degrees outside or 30 degrees outside, whether it's 80% humidity or 20% humidity, and you're spraying cavities. And it's not like you're spraying on a finish on a 63 split window Corvette. This is not a $200,000 car that they're spraying that one little Mar is gonna ruin the finish. This is let's just get it in that cavity and move on. And so when you watch them spray you'll notice there are many areas where they don't spray it on enough, or they spray on too much. It expands too much, not enough, and they go over the top of it. As you said, with the next lift, it's this is not scientific. All the calculations that are done with spray foam and with just about any other liquid material that we use on site, all the calculations and suggestions, they're MSDS and so forth, their certifications, they're all done based upon laboratory settings. And as well as I do that, no job site is a laboratory setting. And so you're asking for a very scientific material to be applied in the field. Here's an analogy
Mark D. Williams 28:40
for you. You're doing open heart surgery on a jet ski in the ocean,
Andy Pace 28:46
exactly, exactly. And I know these crews, they're good at what they do, but they're not scientists. They're not chemists.
Mark D. Williams 28:54
So that being said, should people try to design away from spray foam? Yes, yeah, 100% so one of the things that we're doing, a part of it's our climate, is we're doing as much external insulation as we can. Yeah, there's a number of different manufacturers. We use zip most of what we've been doing is zip six. But actually, and we'll speak about this maybe the last 20 minutes, about things that I'm doing on my home, and you can run lab on it, but we're doing an R 12, which is significant. So, but my original plan, before talking to you what would be to do an R 12 to the outside and do like a one inch or two inch spray just for air sealing on the inside. And that's it. Is that a good idea or not a good idea?
Andy Pace 29:30
I look at a couple ways. First of all, what do we do as an industry? Before spray foam, we
Mark D. Williams 29:35
had bat insulation and poly or bib insulation. Or, I know you like mineral. I like mineral too. So I love mineral. Whatever I can do, if I can do. If I could do mineral dip, great. And then we would do poly, or smart perm poly, and, you know, and then spray foam really came around. It seems like, in my experience, because it didn't, maybe was there in the very beginning. But it's really, it's though, it's we didn't have enough space, we needed density, or you had those weird corners where it just, I can't get the bat to do what I needed to do. Do, and I need insulation there, so we're gonna spray foam it,
Andy Pace 30:03
yeah. And so that's exactly right. And so the reason why I asked that question is that people always say, what are we gonna do if we can't use spray foam? Well, what did we do 20 years ago when we didn't have spray foam? The problem we have now is, I look at this as the unintended consequence of trying to do the right thing. We are trying to build our homes more energy efficient. I love that idea. Obviously, we all do. Nobody wants to pay more than they have to for energy, and it's and from an environmental standpoint, it's the correct thing to do. Now, how are we going to do that if we still want these tight corners, we still want cathedral ceilings, and we have very small amount of insulated area, we have to think about the way we design our homes around insulation that's not toxic. And I love the idea of doing insulation on the outside of the of the wall. I think that continuous insulation is probably more beneficial than in between the studs. I'm not an energy expert. I
Mark D. Williams 31:00
think it is, no, it is. It will be, it will be, in my opinion, one of the biggest revolutions, big word, evolutionary from the building process. So I think will be one of the biggest game changers that our industry has seen in decades. And it's already here, but the adoption of it in our climate, it's becoming more it's going to be close to code, and you always struggle with, I don't know what's going to happen the middle parts of the country. Of the country, in the south, either we've been forced to because of our cold, but obviously it still makes a lot of sense in let's say you're in Arizona, it's 120 degrees cooling AC cooling is very expensive in terms of energy consumption. If you're home, you can get to net zero with this kind of stuff. And so I think that's really gonna lead the initiative, obviously, that from the health quality, I guess one of my questions, so we don't spend the whole time talking about insulation, is, how do you test your home? I think a lot of people, we do a lot of remodels. I'm thinking of what you just said right now, if you're sleeping whatever percent of your life in your master bedroom, or owner's bedroom, or your kid's bedroom, like it used to always be, we build luxury homes in the 2 million to 5 million range, and we'll just keep it for that for this, because that's what I do. But not everyone does that. But my point is, usually, in our market, everything is hardwood, finished on site wood, and then the second level and the basement would usually be carpet. I have tried to do whatever I can to get wood on all levels, and just because I'd rather see the dust bunny so I could vacuum them up, and I've seen videos of what grows in carpet, and you're just like, oh, the amount of bacteria and gross and stuff in there is pretty repulsive and but I was thinking about most people save money in their kids bedrooms. I've never but it's usually a cost discussion, right? I'm sure, if you presented it in a way, not totally terrible, but hey, I understand you're trying to save some money, but like, what how important is your kids health to you? I've never phrased it that way. I'm going to now after having talked to you, but just expound a little bit on the materiality of what we're using in our homes. 90%
Andy Pace 32:54
of the chemical toxicity issues that you'll face inside of a home will come from the things you see and touch on a daily basis. Flooring is number one in anybody's home. Flooring has the biggest potential for chemical release. Why is that? Because of, first of all, the area, if you're building a three to $5 million home, and you're probably looking at, let's say, 5000 square feet, you have 5000 square feet of material that can off gas for 30 to 40 years. And let me just step back and say there's a people use the term off gassing and curing interchangeably and that they shouldn't. Curing is the process of the liquid component turned into a solid. For instance, if you're doing site finish polyurethane on a hardwood floor, it takes seven to 10 days to reach a full cure. Now it's fully cured. Now is when off gassing begins. Off gassing is the release of unreacted chemical monomers. It'll never become part of the coating or part of the substrate, and that can last anywhere from three to five years, up to
Mark D. Williams 33:56
30 to 40 years. Wow. How toxic is that? Or it depends on the chemical.
Andy Pace 34:00
It depends on, on, on what is actually releasing. For instance, the biggest thing that I worry about is formaldehyde. Formaldehyde is a key trigger for people with allergies, asthma, chemical sensitivities. It's anybody who has any type of depressed immune system. Formaldehyde can be a real problem, and so we're trying to find materials that are either low or zero in formaldehyde release. The problem is that you get a polyurethane coating that gets applied to wood, and you can look at the Safety Data Sheet, it won't say formaldehyde on it. They may even say it doesn't contain formaldehyde, because formaldehyde hasn't been encoded since 1982 or something like that, but manufacturers use what are called formaldehyde donors or precursors, and so as it cures, if the chemical curing process creates formaldehyde to help with flow rate or curing, or a mild aside, it works great as a mildew. Side, it's a byproduct or a derivative of flame retardants. Yes, and we look at that and something like plywood sub floors, and this is getting better now, but most plywood sub floors, up to about the last 10 years, have emitted great deals of urea formaldehyde, which is going to last anywhere from 30 to 50 years, because it doesn't have a lot of exposure to release. So it releases slowly, and it releases from a very thick amount of material, a paint that goes on a wall. It's only an off gas for about three to five years. I say only because it's a 10th of the plywood, but those chemicals can emit off of that coating for three to five years after it reaches a full cure. And this is even if you buy what's called a zero VOC paint. And that's a whole 60 minute discussion, right? There is I don't look for products that are lower zero in voc because when it comes to the human occupants, VOCs are irrelevant. VOCs are regulated because of outdoor air pollution. That's the only reason why manufacturers use lower zero voc additives in their materials. The fact that some VOCs are dangerous for humans that exists, it's also true that out of the 92,000 chemicals that are used in building materials and home goods, only a few 100 of them are actually classified as VOCs. So if a product is considered zero voc, but it's still toxic, that tells you that the VOC is not the issue, it's the toxicity of the ingredients. And I'll give you an example. If you, anybody in the audience is familiar with acetone, which is nail polish remover, acetone, if used in paints and coatings, the EPA says zero voc. How can that be? It's a highly toxic solvent, an extremely dangerous solvent. Matter of fact, if you take a can of acetone into a high school and you open it up in one room, within 15 minutes, every child in that entire high school have detectable levels of acetone in their liver in 14 minutes. No way, yes. But in paints and coatings, the EPA says, Oh yeah, you can use it. You can use it. You don't even have to disclose it, because the EPA looks at VOCs, because of the fact that they react with nitrogen UV to create low level smog. Acetone is not photo catalytic, so it will not create smog, therefore the industry is lobbying enough to allow the use of acetone in their materials and not have to disclose it. Wow. So now think of the fact that zero again, zero voc, right? Everybody looks for the VOC content. If you woke up this morning for breakfast, you had an orange. You sliced an orange, peeled it, you've released 850 grams per liter of VOCs. Does that mean that the orange is toxic? Of course not. So we have to look at things differently. We have to look at so
Mark D. Williams 37:54
funny without you educating me on that anytime. If a painter told me, Is it water base? Is it low VOC or no VOC, they'd said yes. In my mind, I'm thinking, I'm doing a great job. I'm providing something that's really because I just don't know. I would say the majority of people don't know. No,
Andy Pace 38:07
you're right. And this is where it hearkens back to when I first started the company, when I first had my own crew going to the hospital because we thought water base was safe. Now people are getting lulled into the sense of security, thinking that zero voc means safe, right? And it's not true.
Mark D. Williams 38:23
Are you saying that even water based finishes, so like water based flow, like we do a five inch white oak solid and we sand and coat it with a white oak, or, sorry, with a with a water based sealer. Sure. Now I'm gonna have to ask him, what's in that
Andy Pace 38:35
well, water base. Water base in the industry only means that 50% of the liquid component is water. The rest can be whatever they want it, to be sure, and because of the VOC regs, they can't use xylene anymore or toluene. So now they're using things like ammonia, which is not a voc, acetone, butyl acetate, and other derivatives that they can say, Oh, we use acetone. No, we use such and such a chemical name that is acetone, but it doesn't say acetone
Mark D. Williams 39:03
this, and it's actually this came up recently. I forget where I heard this, but I heard you say a version of this as well, but that basically everything, everything is a poison depending on the dose. For instance, oxygen, too much oxygen will kill you. Too much hydrogen will kill you, too much water will kill you. Pretty much anything will kill you in the wrong dosage. So everything is a poison. So I it's funny, because as a dad of three children, obviously I'm very sensitive to, like, what is poison? Trying to teach your kids, but awareness of and we do, we make lots of decisions without, okay, it's or I've done this long enough and there's been no issue, so I'll keep doing it. It's a lot. It's very overwhelming, even I'm sure people listening right now, if they're still here, are probably like, man, do I have to be an expert like Andy. How am I going to continue to build one of my questions is, maybe this is what your business does. Are there checklists or pre approved lists where somebody like myself, who's. Not a deep research analyst or cares to be, but I do care about the health like, how can we as builders comply educate ourselves and others in a way where we're relying on scientists or people like yourself to basically say, Hey, here's some great guidelines. Maybe it's not everything, but hey, 7080, 90% improvement is a huge movement. Is that a common question that you get? And is that even something you can
Andy Pace 40:22
do? Yeah, it's very common. I've started writing a book about 10 times in the last 20 years, and I always stop, because by the time I get checked to chapter two, Chapter one's obsolete. I know I have a lot of friends in the industry. I've written books on the subject, and I write for several publications. The thing is that we can't treat everybody the same, and what is maybe problematic for one person is no big deal to the next. And so we run into trouble when we try to find a blanket recommendation that's good for everybody. You mentioned lead before lead is lead for home started many years ago, and they found that people would people who had allergies and asthma would walk into a lead platinum home and have to walk out within minutes because of the toxic off gassing. Then it comes down to, I thought you said, this is a greenhouse we did. What does green mean? Green means energy efficient, and it means that we use some recycled content flooring material or carpet that was made from partially from corn cobs or whatever it was at the time. So I think we have to look at things like, yeah, there are things we can do as an industry to just make all the homes overall safer, and most of that has to do with the structural things that you know, that 10% behind the walls, under the floors, above the ceilings that we don't see. That's what the industry needs to get better at that last the 90% the things you can see in touch, this is going to be more specific, from customer to customer, which is why my career really has been now working with customers one on one as an architectural design consultant working now I work with some some contractors, And I help all of their customers through doing zoom calls, and how do we get their home to be just a little bit safer? Maybe they don't have health issues that they're worried about right now, but they just want to protect themselves future proof, just in case somebody develops a health issue down the road that depresses the immune system. So it's tough. It's really tough to say. Here's a checklist that'll work for everybody, because it's not possible somebody's gonna react. So we have to look at things on an individual basis, which is why I do so much work with custom home builders across the country. Because you're used to having a customer that you meet with and has a Pinterest page with 1400 pictures of the same kitchen, saying, build me this, right? And you're like, Yeah, I can do it. We can do this. We'll figure this out. So customers who want a healthy home, that's essentially the same thing. And the good builders that I work with will say, I'm not exactly sure how we're going to achieve this right now, but we can achieve this. Work together, work with Andy. We'll get this taken here.
Mark D. Williams 43:06
This episode is brought to you by Pella Northland, for 20 years, I've been using Pella windows, and I couldn't be happier to call them as a business partner, a trade partner, and someone that really supports us in our quality builds. You know, we use wood windows and doors on every single one of our homes, and 98% of every home that I've ever built has been a Pella window. I've gotten to know their team here, locally, as well as nationally, and the way that they support us as a craftsman as well as they support our homeowners with their lifelong guarantee. It's actually been a game changer for me. So when people ask me who I use, I recommend Pella. If you want to hear more about Pella story. You can listen to episode one, Ryan interview Peter and Ed from Pella Northland about their journey into the Pella ownership, one of the and we might have to be back on to go specifics on some of this stuff, but I guess there's a as we wind down here for the next 20 minutes, my original idea of to workshop through this spec home I'm doing probably isn't going to work, because there's going to be too many questions back and forth. I would just want forth. I would just want to hit up a few things that you came on. One was like, MDF. We do all custom cabinetry, and let's say, in our specific market, we'll do mostly painted cabinets. The big, wide panels tend to be MDF because they don't shrink and crack, and they're also cost effective. We're seeing obviously, a pretty, pretty big resurgent in stain, woods, white oak, things like that. How I mentioned MDF has glue in it, and is MDF healthy to breathe? Not healthy to breathe? And what alternatives are there when we talk to our cabinet shop and say, Hey, we this is this house is going to paint a custom cabinets inset, blah, blah, blah, we're meeting that 120 design bullet points in their Pinterest page. But now I have to hit their health requests. And what do I say about MDF?
Andy Pace 44:45
Sure. So before I get to MDF, I'll just say that obviously the goal is to design and build a home that is healthy but also meets their esthetic and their price point and all the other factors that they have. And it really comes down to early on in the. Project probably in the design phase to understand that sometimes you may have to give a little to get a little. Yep, there is no perfect project. There's no perfect product. In the 30 plus years of doing this, I have never done the perfect project because it's just it's impossible. So if somebody says, I really want 10 inch wide white oak floors, but I wanted to be chemical free, free of energy, off gas and whatever. I'm going to tell them, It's impossible, because 10 inch wide white oak you're going to have to do at least a glue assist, nail down, or a full spread, and you can't find non toxic glue. So sometimes you have to talk them off of that and say, maybe do a five inch so we don't have to glue it down. When it comes to cabinetry, MDF, when it comes any cabinetry, you've got two issues. One is a substrate, whether it's MDF or plywood, and the other is a finish. There are urea formaldehyde free mdfs on the market now, and I distinct that because there's urea formaldehyde, there's phenol formaldehyde, urea formaldehyde is the one we really concern ourselves with, because that's the one becomes airborne. That is the carcinogen of the formaldehyde. Phenol formaldehyde, or phenolic resin, is about 200 times less likely to ever become airborne. But phenol formaldehyde is also moisture resistance. So if you are using van tech subfloors, that's actually an OSB made with phenyl formaldehyde. I don't worry about that, because phenol formaldehyde has an off gas. That's
Mark D. Williams 46:35
so funny. I literally had written down here to check with Advantech to see what their product was beta. So now you've saved me a phone call.
Andy Pace 46:42
So now, when it comes to MDF, there's a company called MEDEX that makes a phenyl formaldehyde MDF. So what was the name of that company? MEDEX? M E, D, E, x is the product. And medics is it's going to be it's still made with a formaldehyde, but a phenol formaldehyde, so now I'm not worried about it. I'm more concerned about that product, just from a standpoint of cutting, because wood dust itself, even though it's natural, wood dust can be very, very dangerous for people with allergies and asthma. And now we're dealing with the finishes. The finishes are what are most likely to lead to long term off gassing when it comes to cabinetry, painted finishes ultimately are safer than stained and clear coat, because just the nature of stains and clear coats, they incorporate a lot more formaldehyde, typically, where paints don't have that much when I do testing of cabinetry for formaldehyde off gassing. Painted cabinets always come in at least 50% lower than the stained cabinets. So that's
Mark D. Williams 47:47
a huge number. It is and are these? Would these be finished on site? Or most of these would be factory finished? You're referring either
Andy Pace 47:53
it's just across the board painted would always be about two times better than stained and cleared. Now from that it's still off gas. Painted cabinetry can off gas for five years, and can be very, very dangerous. Even though it's paint, it's still off gassing. So that company I talked about earlier, AFM safecoat, they actually make cabinet finishes that do not off gas. So we work with some really high end cabinetry companies that they will actually build their cabinets unfinished. And so, matter of fact, we work with crystal up in your neck of the woods, yeah, and they'll make their cabinets unfinished. We'll ship them down to the job site in Texas, and then we have the local painter or finisher use the AFM safe coat to make sure that the system is completely safe the boxes and finish. That's
Mark D. Williams 48:42
how we do it. Here I'm in our homes. I have everything installed raw, mainly because I like I'm pretty picky on how my crown details look. Sure, I want the enamel to be perfect, but that's just another reason. Now, just to look into the AFM safe code, how you'd mentioned a little before about floor, hardwood, solid surfaces are going to be probably your best. Stay away from carpets. But are there, like, usually in basements people do like a wool carpet? Are most wool is going to be safe to breathe and for off gassing. Walk us through some of obviously, there's a lot of people listening that are like, Wait, does every Think of how loud it is? If the whole house is wood, it's going to be an echo chamber. Then you're either buying rugs, which now you have the same problem as before, or handwritten. There's, yeah, a myriad of choices that happen. So there are some carpets that are acceptable. Yes, there
Andy Pace 49:25
are. And to your point, how about the whole house being loud? Here's an example of a project was actually up in in the Twin Cities. A customer contacted me because the family installed 4000 square feet of hardwood flooring in this house, and within a couple of months, everybody in the house gets sick, and they went back to their builder, they talked to some indoor air quality experts up in Minnesota, and nobody could figure it out. And somebody pushed them over to me. I drove up there, and I tested all the wood. It was completely free of off gassing. But then I looked around, I noticed they have area. Rugs all over the house because of all these hardwood floors, I started testing area rugs, and the area rugs were off gassing toxic levels of formaldehyde, like 10 times the limit of just being relatively safe. And I told them that, let's take all the area rugs out, put them in the garage or put them outside. And so I drove home, six hour drive. I get home, I have an email from the customer saying, we are feeling better already. Wow. So yes, you have to be careful of that. So how do I look at this? Carpeting is generally safer than plastic carpeting, and I say generally because obviously the fiber itself is natural, the brand or the quality level doesn't really matter. Here, there are some really good quality wool carpets that are $150 a square yard that are still dangerous because they're using pesticides, moth proofers. They don't get a moth infestation in the warehouse. They're using chemical dyes, and once they use all that process, they may even have to add in flame retardants, the backing typically contains styrene butylene rubber, which releases a lot of formaldehyde. There is a brand out there called Earth weave. They're out of Dalton, Georgia, where all carpets made, but Earth weave actually makes carpeting that is completely synthetic, chemical free. It's wool fibers, no pesticides, no chemical dyes. The backing is hemp, jute, cotton, and held together using natural latex right from the rubber tree. So they'll do wall to wall. They'll also do area rugs. So we use them now, mostly for our projects that require carpeting. But you have to be careful in a basement, as you said, Because basements generally a little bit higher humidity. You have to worry about moisture vapor. So we always want to make sure we're testing vapor pressure before we do wool down there, because you don't want to have wool stain damp long, because now it could lead to moth problems.
Mark D. Williams 51:56
How often are well, and maybe this transition a little bit here to your business. Do builders like myself? Do they contract you to help them on an hourly basis, to help source some of this stuff? Or like, how would somebody like myself work? Yeah, I don't actually know. Are you mostly an educator? Are you supplying the materials that people are coming from? How is it that your business other than education, sort of interacts with people on a on a different level. Obviously you have this healthy home concierge. Is that sort of that platform. It started
Andy Pace 52:24
off years ago, was just selling materials, and I learned enough about about the issues and about the products, and got to the point where people around the country would call up and say, I know you don't sell aluminum windows, but can you help me find the best window that's out there? And it got to where I was spending literally hours a day answering questions about things that I don't sell and I don't profit on. Therefore, it was making it difficult to have employees. And I finally said, I'm going to be a consultant, but I'm still going to sell materials. I work on a basis of appointments with homeowners. Mainly, they can book me for a 15 minute call. They can book me for an annual platform where it's unlimited time. But now it's turning into I work with a homeowner who hired a contractor, and now that contractor is now my one of my annuals just ongoing for their projects, because they're finding that the more they know and the more they can incorporate into their projects, they're getting more referrals because people are saying, and this is the reason why, if any of the builders are listening right now, I'm sure many of them are saying, Listen. Nobody asked me about this stuff. Nobody ever comes to me and asked me to build a healthy home. They're not worried about this, not that I understand that. But keep in mind that maybe you've never gotten a phone call about this asking, because your the potential customers already know that you don't do it and you're not even open to it, and so once you do it, and once you say to yourself, we this is not rocket science. It can be done fairly easily. Just listen to the right people and use the right materials and take your time with the educational process. They're finding a whole new market of customer base that they never had before.
Mark D. Williams 54:07
Because that's how I'm looking at it right now. I'm looking at it as offense, not defense. I'm like, the number of people that talk about this is I can think of one. And so now I'm thinking like, man, do you want to be a little minnow in an ocean, or do you want to be the whale in the pond? Yeah, I want to take offensive on this and bring it to the forefront, for sure, one of the questions I had for you is, and this kind of goes with at least a lot of the information that we're seeing in the from electric vehicles to electric electric, everything is electric. Now there's a whole nother podcast about how electric is created, and there's multiple ways to do that. But for instance, if you're going all electric appliances. I know that, for instance, I read something years ago about gas just most of the stuff we're doing is, let's say, a wolf Sub Zero range, or a gas range from whatever manufacturer, that even when you're burning it's still only burning out 80, 90% efficiency. There's still 10% of carbon monoxide, or the off product of is that you're breathing, and it leads to asthma, all other things. And so one of the one of the benefits of going all electric, especially if you're doing like convection or conduction, you don't have that transfer, you don't have that off gassing of happening you mentioned, though, yeah, explain at what point do we have to worry about too many electric things in our house? And maybe just shed a little light on that. Yeah,
Andy Pace 55:16
it's there is a whole science of EMF mitigation electromagnetic fields that come from our wiring, from our electrical equipment, that come from Wi Fi, Bluetooth, all that. And I think this is we're really at infancy stage of this, but we do know that there's a lot of folks who have mold sensitivity and chemical sensitivity, also have sensitivity to EMFs. And we do know that electromagnetic fields, if they're close enough to you, will disrupt the REM sleep cycle, so it makes it difficult to have a good night's sleep. Now, when it comes to the idea of going all electric, I'm fine with that, provided that a nobody in the household has an electromagnetic sensitivity. B, you have a backup plan for like, you're in Minnesota, I'm in Wisconsin. We lose power once in a while because of ice storms and snow storms. What are you gonna do? What's your backup plan? I got a customer right now in Georgia who's designing a home, and they're not bringing any gas to the the land. They want to go all electric, but he wants to be able to have a backup generator, I said, powered by what? So bring a propane tank. There's
Mark D. Williams 56:20
a number of ways, not a number, I guess I only know of one. We had Paul crummet on from Greenway solar, and they were talking about the Tesla power walls, essentially giant batteries. Now they're great for a couple days, and they're very expensive. If this was a long term outage, I'm not sure if that's really viable in a city setting. Probably fine, but like, obviously, what happened, and was it Ashton, North Carolina, or obviously, I don't know what's happening in terms of LA, in terms of, like, power outages, but gas, to your point, whether it's propane, we have, up until these Tesla power walls have had a lot of clients that have pools, and because our climates are cold in the winter, let's say they have a hot tub. We will do a backup gas generator so that should the power go out, or even for a short period of time, they can have a circulator pump still working on their hot tub. Otherwise, you might have to that freezes burst pipes underground hot tub. You might you meet like 50 grand generators, anywhere from 12 to 25 grand, depending on how many things you want to power, is pretty reasonable insurance. And so anyway, what's your thoughts on?
Andy Pace 57:23
I guess my thought here is that we can't do things. This goes back to having a checklist. We can't do things that are that should be blanketed for everybody. I have too many clients that have electromagnetic field sensitivities, and so induction tops specifically are far worse for you than the old fashioned coil range tops fireworks, because when you touch the handle of a pot, you become part of the circuit. And so it can be very problematic, interesting. And to your point about gas and what doesn't get combusted, or the or the combustion that gets into the house, if you look at all the studies that are out there about how bad for us, and I'll use it in air quotes, bad for us, natural gasses, especially when it comes to cooktops, they never take in consideration the fact that maybe the people who are using it aren't using a range hood. They're not using a range hood properly, or they just don't have one. The proper use of a gas stove is when you go into the kitchen to start preparing your meal, you turn on the range hood, then you mix things together, and then you turn on your range and it's already creating this current of air that expels out all that junk. Most people start to cook something, they don't turn their range hood on until they see smoke, and that's the incorrect way of using this. We need to teach people how to use their appliances so it's not problematic. The gas stove is not the problem. It's the fact that we don't ventilate properly. So I don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater here. I don't want to get rid of gas stoves, because what about all those people with electromagnetic field issues? What happens in all these giant developments that are the municipalities are mandating that there's no gas brought to the developments. And last year, we had a snowstorm in my area. In my subdivision, I had power. People two houses down didn't have power for three weeks. Three weeks, yeah, in the middle of winter, it was 20 below zero. Whoa, if they had a Generac or a cola natural gas backup, they'd be fine. But if you're in a neighborhood where it's all electric, what are you doing? And so we need to look at these things, and not just we can't do things because it's it seems to be the right thing to do. We have to do. We have to look at the consequences, those unintended consequences of trying to do the right thing. We need to focus on
Mark D. Williams 59:46
going back to your earlier statement. There's not one size fits all here. I'm just thinking to where I was even going with my current home here that this guy who we're gonna have to have a longer conversation about. But basically, if I went all electric and had the Tesla walls, I don't have a viable back. Backup? Should we get a three week outage? That's a problem where, if I had a gas furnace and electric storage, I've got some redundancy there, right? Or vice versa, go all electric and then have a gas gene x, or whatever, backup ready to go, then I'm covered. But basically, you've got belt and suspenders, which most builders, that's how they build. Most builders, it's funny how, right now, I'm asking a lot of questions to try to solve all this, but in some ways, it shouldn't be as daunting as maybe a lot of us, or at least what I'm thinking of, oh man, I gotta fix all of these things, because most builders do built and suspenders. It's the reason why you have ice and water and shingles. It's the reason why you have your siding and your cladding and your WRB and all these different things. We're doing multiple things to try to in concert together, work in a way that the homes have longevity and comfort and energy efficiency, and ultimately, I think also we have, and this is obviously totally beyond you look at the United States, nobody builds homes faster, not saying better, but faster, in my opinion, than we do in the United States. And I think someone had brought this up, post World War Two, the baby boom generation, the amount of stick framing we needed was just astronomical, and we have a huge housing shortage now across the United States. But you go to Europe, where they're a little bit more landlocked, and I have a friend of mine who is over in Switzerland, and there's a reason why a lot of their technologies are far advanced to ours. And when I say technologies, they're it seems like they're way, as a culture, way more interested in doing triple pain long because they're looking at building a home for multiple generations. And part of that is the average American lives in their house for, I think it's nine to 12 years, something like that. And so we don't look at it long enough,
Andy Pace 1:01:38
yeah, and that's to that point most people don't live in newly constructed homes. They live in a home that was built 200 years ago, that's been handed down from generation to generation. The last time I was in Italy, I was staying in a villa that was built in the 1400s and it's still operating as a hotel. And a matter of fact, the count still lived in the basement. There's
Mark D. Williams 1:01:58
the count like, oh, Ian T Yes, correct. I was like this, okay, we don't have enough counts in the United States. We need cooler titles, right?
Andy Pace 1:02:09
And so, yeah, we just, we everything here is fast, efficient, technology laden. For some reason, we all think that technology, all technology is great, and the more the better. And then you look at a home that's built in Europe, and the walls are concrete or brick or stone. There's not a lot of wood used in those old structures here. What's the oldest standing building in the United States? A house built in Jamestown in the 1600s they don't last very long compared to Europe, because we use materials that are destined for failure. We use materials that are designed to to biodegrade. And so we need, I think we need to look at all these materials. If we're up to me, I would get rid of wood in buildings, and I would use steel and concrete and glass rock and other things that we know will just last longer because of the environment we have here. But that's not cheap and it's not fast and it's it's not technology, and so there's a bigger conversation to be had about that. And I tried to have that conversation with clients 20 years ago, like I was the biggest advocate for insulated concrete form you could find, but I had to stop advocating for it, because nobody knew how to do it right, and it was way too expensive. And the industry is not ready for insulated concrete form, even though the in the ICF industry thinks it is. It's not we are. We're a stick frame, traditional stick frame society, we might get to panelized. We might get to sips, because it's still what we're used to, the similar materials, but just a different way of putting them together. But we're never gonna
Mark D. Williams 1:03:50
it'll be interesting to see over the next I think, with 10,000 baby boomers retire a day, and I don't know the actual stats for housing and labor and all those things, but it's a lot like any industry. It'd be interesting to see that as we face increased cost of construction, inflation, but labor shortage, will that force us to adopt different framing practices, like panelization? And it'd be easy for someone like myself who thinks, hey, I do custom homes. We have to do everything custom one off. That's not true. We've got, I think Nick schifr out in Boston, he's doing a ten million spec home that he talks all the time about, and the whole thing is panelized. And they, I think they set the entire thing like this giant 8000 square foot house in seven or 10 days. So it is possible with design. And I think the other thing that we don't spend enough time on, and even if, I guess, is education. Let people do what they want with their own business practice. But like custom home builders, custom home builders have more ability to change and do things like this, I think, to really move the needle, you've got to get the Nationals on board, right? You've got to get the Lennar, the poltis, the DR Hortons, like those guys of the world, because they're out selling us 10,000 units to one. And to really make a cultural change. Uh, it has to start there. And they, I would assume, they're obviously responsible to the people who buy it, supply and demand. But a lot of it is cost. And if they can figure out a way to do it, it's going to drastically change a lot
Andy Pace 1:05:12
of this. It produces it for everybody. I'm probably not the the one person you want to ask, what do you see? What do you predict? Because I was 20 years ahead of the time. This is not going to happen tomorrow. Folks, this is going to happen in 10 years, maybe. Yeah, but SIP homes, pre panelized homes. This is the wave of the future. Because of the fact that we are in this we are losing skilled labor on a very regular basis in our industry. The younger generations don't want to work with their hands as much as we did. I'm saying it's a bad thing. It just is what it is. And so we need to find ways that we can still build really good quality homes, but using less people doing it, less hands putting together. And I think that you're finding these panel plants popping up all over the country now, and they are doing a really good job, because with using computerized design to build somewhat custom homes, but everything's penalized. And so I feel that this is an industry that's just ripe for taking
Mark D. Williams 1:06:08
off, right? Are you going to be at IBS this year? Maybe I'm trying to work it out in my schedule. Ominous, ominous. I appreciate very much you coming on the podcast the time, though, everything that you've shared, we'll have everything in the show notes. We could talk for another hour or two, maybe a week or two. You got a lot of information to go on your podcast. I think it's called the non toxic environments. Is that correct?
Andy Pace 1:06:28
That's correct. Non toxic environments. You can get all of the all those links right from our website, which is the green design center.com From there, you can find links to the non toxic environments both on Spotify and iTunes, but also YouTube. Show we're starting up our new season in the next few weeks, I believe, and so look for that coming out soon, and also you'll find a link directly to Bucha an appointment. And I'm not expensive. I do 15 minute calls if you just want to learn how to tile a bathroom shower so you don't have mold problems in the future, that's a 15 minute phone call. Otherwise, if you're doing a large project, that's why I have the annual packages, and I'll be happy to help.
Mark D. Williams 1:07:02
Yeah, that sounds great. Love everything in the show notes, thanks again for coming on, and we'll see every other listeners next week. Thanks, Mark. We're excited to announce that the curious builder collectives are going into three other states. For those not familiar with what the collective is, it lives between what the contractor coalition is and a builder 20 group. What we do in each state is we have a group of 25 to 30 builders that get in a room, and you break up into groups of nine. You spend 45 minutes talking about a set topic, whether it's branding, marketing, contracts, whatever that set topic is for that day. And then you talk for 45 minutes. You get up, you mix up the groups, and you do it again, and you're out of there, you'll be out in under three hours. We're gonna be going to Phoenix, Arizona. Brad Levitt is gonna be leading a curious collective in Phoenix, Arizona. We are going to San Antonio. We've got David and Angela Penske from Penske homes, leading a group down there. And we have Brad Robinson and Vince Longo in Atlanta, Georgia, also leading a collective, as well as obviously me in Minnesota as well, for our second annual collective. So if you're interested in collaborating with other builders, if you really want to dive deep on your business in a person to person relationship, ask a lot of questions. The collectives are for you. We also have in Minnesota interior design collective as well as the architect collective. Check out the Events page at the cures builder podcast.com thanks for tuning in the cures builder podcast. If you like this episode, do us a favor. Share it with three other business owners. The best way that we can spread what we're doing is by word of mouth, and with your help, we can continue to help other curious builders expand their business. Please share it with your friends. Like and review online, and thanks again for tuning in. You.
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