Net Zero by Design: P. Allen Smith on SIP Panels, Moss Mountain Farm & the Future of Home Building-181

Podcast: Anewgo of New Home Sales  |  Host: Anya Chrisanthon  |  Co-Host: Beth Byrd, VP of Sales, Anewgo  |  Guest: P. Allen Smith

In this episode of the Anewgo of New Home Sales podcast, host Anya Chrisanthon and Anewgo VP of Sales Beth Byrd sit down with P. Allen Smith — PBS television host, garden and community designer, and owner of Extreme Panel Technologies - to explore how structurally insulated panels (SIPs), sustainable materials, and intentional design are reshaping residential construction. The conversation covers Moss Mountain Farm, the Extreme Gatehouse Cottages, real-world build cost and waste comparisons, and the future of energy-efficient, net-zero home building for builders, developers, and build-to-rent communities.

Guest | P. Allen Smith - PBS host, garden & community designer, owner of Extreme Panel Technologies
Host | Anya Chrisanthon, Anewgo
Co-Host | Beth Byrd, VP of Sales, Anewgo
Key Topics | SIP panels, net-zero building, Moss Mountain Farm, sustainable construction, build-to-rent
Guest Website | pallensmith.com
Extreme Panel | extremepanel.com

About P. Allen Smith

P. Allen Smith is a nationally recognized PBS television host, garden and community designer, and sustainable living advocate. As the creator of Moss Mountain Farm - a 550-acre working farmstead in central Arkansas on the banks of the Arkansas River - and owner of Extreme Panel Technologies, one of America's leading manufacturers of structurally insulated panels (SIPs), Smith is on a mission to make net-zero, energy-efficient home building the new industry standard. He previously appeared at the International Builders' Show (IBS) alongside Anewgo VP of Sales Beth Byrd.

What We Cover in This Episode

1. What Are Structurally Insulated Panels (SIPs)?

Structurally insulated panels (SIPs) consist of a dense polystyrene foam core sandwiched between two layers of oriented strand board (OSB). Extreme Panel Technologies uses zinc-boray-infused OSB, which provides resistance to insects and mold. Key advantages for home builders:

• Superior energy efficiency with high R-values across 4.5", 6", 8", 10", and 12" panel thicknesses
• Faster build times - the Extreme Gatehouse Cottages took just 47 minutes to unload and four workers five days to fully close in
• Factory precision: panels arrive pre-numbered and pre-cut for doors and windows, with laminated construction drawings
• Dramatically less job site waste - a Birmingham, AL build-to-rent project showed all SIP waste fit in a couple of wheelbarrows vs. a full dumpster for a comparable stick-built house
• Straighter, truer walls than typically achievable with today's dimensional lumber

2. Moss Mountain Farm — A Model for Sustainable, High-Performance Building

Moss Mountain Farm, located in central Arkansas on a farmstead dating back to 1840, is the original set for P. Allen Smith's PBS series Garden Home. The main farmhouse was designed in the Greek Revival style - with proportions drawn from historic properties within a 175-mile radius - while integrating high-performance building technologies 20 years before they became industry buzzwords:

• Insulated concrete forms (ICFs) for the basement
• Soybean-oil-based spray foam insulation between wall studs
• Shredded denim recycled from a blue jean factory as batting insulation
• Passive solar design with PEX tubing under standing seam metal roof panels circulating heated glycol to a radiant brick floor
• Standing seam metal roof - a technology Jefferson used at Monticello

3.

Transcript

Anya Chrisanthon 0:34

hello and thank you everybody. Thanks so much for joining us for a new episode of Anewgo of New Home Sales. I'm your host, Anya Chrisanthon, and joining me today are two people. So one, we have Beth Byrd, who is VP of Sales here at Anewgo Hopefully all of you're already familiar with Beth. So Beth, say hello.

Beth Byrd 0:57

Hello,

Anya Chrisanthon 0:58

and we have a special guest today. Joining us is P Allen Smith, who is a TV personality garden and community designer and longtime PBS host, known for his passion for sustainable living and thoughtful design as the creator of Moss Mountain Farm and owner of Extreme Panel Technologies. One of America's leading manufacturers of structurally insulated panels. Allen is on the mission to make net zero energy efficient building the new standard. Today he's focused on shaping communities where sustainability, walkability, and intentional design go hand in hand. With that, I'm gonna hand it over to you, Beth.

Beth Byrd 1:44

Thanks,

P Allen Smith 1:44

son.

Anya Chrisanthon 1:45

Thank you,

Beth Byrd 1:46

Allen. I'm so excited that we can have this conversation. For those of you who don't know who are listening today, Allen and I spoke together at the Builders Show and it was so exciting for me because I've been fan girl for a long time. Gardening's my hobby. I have your books. I'd watched your show, so it was an honor to share the stage with you.

P Allen Smith 2:05

It's a lot of fun. I really enjoyed it.

Beth Byrd 2:08

It. It was great. So I thought there were, there was so much to talk about in that time. I wanted to expand on a few ideas that we discussed on the stage and go a little beyond that. So to give our listeners some background, will you share the story of Moss Mountain Farm?

P Allen Smith 2:25

Absolutely, yes, and thanks for having me on the show. It was so much fun to be together at IBS this year. We had a great audience, really good questions, and there was a lot of interest about structurally insulated panels and Moss Mountain Farm. So, to your question, Beth Moss Mountain Farm is, located in central Arkansas on the banks of the Arkansas River. We, we have about 550 acres and I, started that farm, or created. What's there today out of an idea for our PBS show, garden Home, and we've been at Moss Mountain for about 20 years. It's a farmstead that goes back to 1840. The Moss family came there. Then in the 1830s, late 1838. At that time, that was really part of the new state of Arkansas, which was part of the Louisiana Territory, around 1803 when Jefferson bought the Louisiana Territory from, from Napoleon. But the idea was to put into place an old idea that I think has relevance today, which is this notion of the fair Morne. Or the ornamented farm, meaning a functional landscape, but one that's done with aesthetic considerations. And so the, it was an idea that caught Jefferson's attention in 1786 when he was with John Adams and went around to English Gardens using Thomas Whiteley's observations on modern gardening. Jefferson had a 1770 edition. Of that book and they went around to look at sort of the top gardens in and around London. Whiteley had I think 19 in his book that were must sees and, Jefferson Adam saw, well, 16 of them. So they, they got around to see them, but it was a fair more, it was Phillips South Coats Wilburn Farm that really, I think, called Mr. Jefferson's attention. He was looking for ideas from Monticello and anybody who is interested in Thomas Jefferson knows that. Jefferson was one who really loved function, and form and, beauty and, functionality. And you see that Monticello in spades, right and left. You see his in this particular indelible mark on everything that he did. So what I tried to do with the, with Moss Mountain farm was to create a modern fair Monet when I was a graduate student in England. In 1986, the then Prince of Wales really caught my attention with what he was doing with Poundbury and also the Dutch of Cornwall, converting it all to organic practices. I knew his head farmer, David Wilson, and everything he was doing really captured my imagination and I wanted to come home and create a fair Monet. And something that was organic and represented a lot of the, the green movement that was underway as a graduate student in England, yeah.

Beth Byrd 5:24

There's so much beauty and history and tradition, but what's fascinating to me is how you really utilized innovation and modern technology in the building process. So tell us a little bit about that decision making process and what was your goal as you were choosing your materials for the farm?

P Allen Smith 5:42

The goal from the outset was to create something that represented time and place. And since the Moss family had come there in the 1830s, we adopted an architectural style that would've been found in that part of the world, which was Greek revival. And we went to properties, within 175 mile radius of the farm. Looked at. A domestic architecture from that period and really took dimensions, details and, more importantly, I think the proportions of things, were very important in the, creating the aesthetic of the main house. And in the main house, we actually went to IBS 20 years ago and met with lots of people and tried to make choices that were greener choices every step of the way. To make our approach much more sustainable. And some of the things that we did were just basically time honored, practices like Rumford, fire boxes for the fireplaces, which are more efficient. I mean, fireplaces aren't efficient to begin with, but if you're going to have a more right, if you're gonna be true to the period, we weren't trying to be, we're gonna make this look like an old house. Now it does, and the greatest compliment I get is people walk up to me and go, gosh, when did you restore this house? And I said, I didn't restore it. I built it a new. And, so the idea was to use the use time honored practices that fit and then also to integrate as much modern technology as we could to make it as green as possible. And some of those elements that were more technologically advanced, we used, for instance, ICFs for the basement insulated concrete forms. What a great product. I wanted to build the house, go from the i, the ICFs up, with sips, and we could not find a manufacturer at that time that we could work with, with our sponsorship program. And so we ended building it with two, framing. It just, sticks and they're using two by eights. And we used a soybean oil based. Foam insulation for in between the studs. And we also used shredded denim from a BlueJean factory for batting and that kind of thing. And walls inside the house. Yeah. And then we did a passive solar on the south face. We used a standing steam roof, which I think are very good for modern times. But also it was a technology that Jefferson used at Monticello, the standing seam roof.

Beth Byrd 8:15

Right. So you were really implementing the high performance, home technology really before it became a buzzword in the industry.

P Allen Smith 8:22

We were trying to, I was just, I'm just so into all of that, and as long as it doesn't get in the way of the aesthetics, right. And so I'm, I wanted to do Solar Beth, but I didn't want it on the roof because it would destroy the aesthetic. And so that's why we did. The passive. So we use Pex tubing underneath the roof panels, the metal panels that takes the heated glycol down into the floor and we have a brick floor in the basement and the heat warms the floor. It works beautifully.

Beth Byrd 8:56

Amazing. So what was the connection from building that home to extreme panel?

P Allen Smith 9:02

Well, I long as I mentioned, to build, go vertical from the foundation up with sip panels and just, that didn't work out. So we built another house on the farm. They call, we call the Southern Living Cottage. And we did that as a program for Google. When Google bought YouTube, they wanted to up sort of their content, make it a little more compelling. And so they hired, a hundred producers from around the country and we were fortunate enough to be one of them to produce a lot of content for them. I made a drawing of a farmhouse and I said, I wanna show. How you can build a high efficiency home for $150,000 in 150 days. And so we set out to do that. Tried to use zips again. It didn't work out. I've gotten into the assisted living, space. We had a project that came up where my partner wanted to build our new facility with sticks, and I, again, brought up sips and I had been introduced through my design partner, Lou Oliver, who does a fantastic job. He introduced me to a representative from Extreme Panel Technologies. I was trying to get my partner in assisted living to maybe think about SIP panels, and as a result of that meeting and getting to know the family, I ended up purchasing Extreme Panel Technologies and just love it.

Beth Byrd 10:36

Yeah. Tell for our listeners who aren't familiar with sips, give us maybe a short overview of what does Extreme Panel do? What is a sip?

P Allen Smith 10:45

Yeah. Well, structurally insulated panels use, a dense polystyrene, a structural, block of polystyrene, and it is sandwiched between OSB and we use a particular type of OSB. That is infused with Zinc Boray, so it's in insect, resistant as well as moldability resistant. We do a jumbo panel here at Extreme Panel, that's an eight by 24, so they're really large panels. So it makes the building process much more efficient. So with sit, why sit panels? Well, they're extraordinarily energy efficient. R values are through the roof, and we do, a six four inch, six inch, eight inch, 10 and 12 inch thick panels, for walls and roofs and floors. But the idea is to help with energy efficiency. Also, the speed of build and also the structure, the durability of the structure itself over time. So there, there's a lot of interest in what we do from the, now, the, build to rent space. There's a lot of those developments going up presently because the insurance rates and so forth are more. Favorable to, a better built product like we produce.

Beth Byrd 12:03

And let's talk a little more about cost there, because you and I have talked about how there's so many factors in terms of cost of living that aren't always considered.

P Allen Smith 12:12

Yes. Well, I mean, you think about just the average American living in a home and what their costs are, and depending on where they are in the country. Particularly if you go around coastal areas, insurance costs have gone through the roof, so that has to be considered in one's daily life and expense. And then of course energy is there. And then just the overall maintenance of a home. And, you want something that is resilient and durable and it's gonna hold up for a long time. Yeah.

Beth Byrd 12:47

You know, I think it's interesting. People sometimes think that forward thinking technologies like this have to look modern, and I love that you have paired the history and tradition with modern materials. And so after all those projects where you couldn't find sips, the gatehouse cottages, you finally were able to use them on your property. Tell us about that.

P Allen Smith 13:08

Yes. Well, thank you. It was important to me to. Demonstrate from the beginning with this whole thesis of Moss Mountain Farm and building the main farmhouse for PBS, the Garden Home Show, making that traditional but high efficiency. And so we come around to the present day. We've built those two gatehouse cottages at the farm that are 1000 square feet each. There's a pair, we call 'em the twin sister gate houses. 'Cause they're side by side. With a space in between we have a lot of weddings and things at the farm, and the idea ultimately is to use those as rentals for people who are having weddings at the farm. But presently, they are there to, for someone to go inside and see the panel construction of one that is unfinished on the inside. And then go into the one, the, neighboring sister and take a look at how it's furnished and completed on the inside. And they're both in the Greek revival style. They're a mirror image of one another. So they do have that sort of 1830s, aesthetic going on with the standing seam roof and tried to use similar materiality to what we did 20 years before with, the main house.

Beth Byrd 14:23

They are beautiful, and I love that you've continued your educational approach that you've used really throughout your, career in your product.

P Allen Smith 14:33

Well, thank you for recognizing that. Yeah. Teaching is so important to me and I love just sharing information and my experiences. I guess it really started in the garden and my interest in architecture and construction, it's spread into that, particular realm as well. Yeah.

Beth Byrd 14:52

So I wanted to ask you about sustainability. That's another factor that I think that is a challenge in the home building industry. Mm-hmm. There's a lot of waste. There's often not enough attention on, the ecology of the building material process. So can you speak a little bit to how SIP panels and some of these different technologies are improving sustainability in construction?

P Allen Smith 15:18

Yeah, sure. Well, one of the things that I'm really proud of with our manufacturing process here at Extreme Panel, and I happen to be here in Cottonwood, Minnesota today in my office here, is that there's very little waste on the floor. Like we're really zero waste. As we take those big panels and we move them through the system, any debris, leftovers, are used in other ways. We're very proud of the fact that on jobs, once the panels are delivered, so they're all stacked and packed and wrapped and delivered to job sites. The panels are numbered and they're, we send a laminated, sheet and all the drawings together. So if it's raining and that kind of thing, when these things go up, you're safe and you can fall with them and they're all loaded onto the truck so they come off in the right sort of order. But the thing that's so fabulous about the process of building, if you go to a site that's stick built and we've all been there and just seen these. Landscapes that are littered with all kinds of waste. It's just extraordinary. Yeah. And with us, there's very little waste at all 'cause the doors and windows are already precut. Right. And, we, we just did a job recently in Birmingham, Alabama for Navigate. We just shipped them 14 houses, this past week. When we were working with them to demonstrate the first house, they were astonished because they did two of our houses and then one conventionally just because they wanted to do all the data and just see what savings might there be with sips and that sort of thing. Mm-hmm. But what they realized is that the waste involved, you can put all of the waste of the sip build in a couple of wheelbarrows. For the stick built house, they had to have a dumpster, for the waste that went into it. So it's sizeable and that's one of the things that I'm really proud of. I think the other thing is just the resources. Other resources is time. The gatehouse cottages, for instance. Each one of those houses. The two story, but it took 47 minutes to unload one of those and it took four men five days to get it completely in the dry and wrapped. So you know that you're really saving a lot of labor there to get those, to get the house in the dry ready for, you have the trades, the windows door is being popped in, and then of course your electrical, mechanical, and plumbing.

Beth Byrd 17:55

I would imagine there's a significantly higher level of accuracy too when this is done at your location, essentially in a factory rather than on a job site. Where you've got people and in the open elements trying to Yeah. Interpret architectural plans.

P Allen Smith 18:11

Our builders love that aspect, but the precision of it, I had a builder in, Idaho recently send me a picture that showed it was a big building, and a long wall on it. And, he took a photograph of just how straight. And true and plum that wall is, and he said, there's no way we could have done this with stick-built lumber. Not today, the lumber's. It looks like a dog sign leg. It's so crooked. So many cases today.

Beth Byrd 18:39

Yes. Oh yeah,

P Allen Smith 18:40

absolutely. That exaggerated. But you get my point.

Beth Byrd 18:42

Yeah, you're you're very true. Yeah. Very good. It's so interesting, I think. We get stuck in ruts in the construction industry of how we build and stick-built has been the norm for so long. So it's exciting. It has, yeah. New technologies like this becoming more accessible to builders because like you found years ago, this was not an accessible product for you.

P Allen Smith 19:07

Right. Yeah. It was just, there just weren't that many manufacturers 20 years ago.

Beth Byrd 19:12

Mm-hmm.

P Allen Smith 19:13

And the ones that we did find were so far away, or they were a smaller company and really couldn't participate in the project.

Beth Byrd 19:22

Right. Yeah. When we're talking about this, sometimes you might think, well, this is for a small custom home, and yet some of the best use cases are on a very large scale. You mentioned build to rent. This is a great use case for this type of product.

P Allen Smith 19:35

We provide, sip panels for all kinds of projects, big commercial projects. We work closely with large timber frame companies where they'll skin out a beautiful, timber frames, often antique, one that's hand, they'll skin it out with our sit panels, hotels, apartment buildings, you name it. Yeah.

Beth Byrd 19:57

Yeah, it's exciting. Are there any new developments that you think we should be watching in terms of technology in this home building space?

P Allen Smith 20:06

Well, I think that there's always things going on on the tech side. Mm-hmm. But, one of the things that I've gotten particularly focused on is just the low voltage lighting. And with our sit panels, people often ask, how do you deal with the electrical? Cause you don't have these open studs. We have chases in the walls and the panels are marked where a light switch would be, or a plug would be. And those chases make it very easy. But in the Gatehouse Cottages, one of the things that we use there, and I give Terry Deacon, who's the founder of Extreme Panel Technologies, all the credit, he found a low voltage lighting company. And the lighting is just glorious and it's just plugged into the wall, essentially with the intel, the entire house. So, very excited about that.

Beth Byrd 20:57

That's impressive.

P Allen Smith 20:58

I'm very much a low tech person and, like the inside of a house to feel very cozy and comfortable with, authentic things. And I like the lighting to simulate natural light. And now they can do that, with these colors of lights and things like that. And then of course, fire boxes. We use Rumford fire boxes, in the main house, which is a, it's just a wonderful thing to have, gives you great comfort just coming out of winter.

Beth Byrd 21:25

Well, I've been a big fan because I'm the same. I like home to feel warm and cozy and authentic. And so I'm excited to see, all the new things that will be coming out of, your extreme panel. And, for those who have not. Checked out Allen's website, follow him on Instagram, watch his show on PBS. And you have a brand new book about to come out, right, Allen?

P Allen Smith 21:49

Well, yes, and I was just gonna say, I think in this new book, which is rather large, it's 288 pages. I do talk about sort of the evolution of fault and ideas around Moss Mountain Farm. And I do touch on the sip panels and the gatehouse are featured in the book and people can go to that. Website and pre-order the, they'll be, released. And we'll ship those pre-orders out the second week of May. Yeah.

Beth Byrd 22:15

That's exciting to know. You've worked really hard on that book. That is a book and especially considering the amount of photographs that I imagine must be in it.

P Allen Smith 22:22

Well, I think it's about 550 photographs. Yeah. So there's a, it's very generous on the visual side, so yeah, hopefully people enjoy it. It's helpful. It's got a list of resources and lots of books from my library that work. All instrumental in, I think influencing my thoughts and decisions about the farm.

Beth Byrd 22:44

And you also offer tours of your farm, correct?

P Allen Smith 22:47

Well, there, there is a tour schedule, yes. And we're underway with tours. We started in March, first week of March, and we'll go through the end of June and then we close for the summer, and then we pick back up in September, October, November, and, you know, a couple of weeks in December for the holidays. And then we close again and start back in the spring.

Beth Byrd 23:06

I'll make it out there one of these days. It's, it's a plan.

P Allen Smith 23:09

We, we are so looking forward to you getting out and seeing us. Yeah.

Beth Byrd 23:14

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. I've really enjoyed continuing our conversation and, hope that we'll get to do this again.

P Allen Smith 23:24

I do too. All right. Very good. Thank you so much, Beth.

Anya Chrisanthon 23:28

Thank you so much for being here. This was just as fascinating as sitting in the front row of IBS. I really enjoyed both presentations and when I was sitting in the front row of IBS, I really enjoyed all the visuals that you had, so I'm looking forward to seeing those in the book. We maybe can include some of those visuals from the presentation. In the show notes, I will be sure to link all the things that where you can pre-order the book. You can learn more about the extreme panel technologies and all the things that Allen is involved with. Again, thank you so much for being here with us today and we'll see you next time. Bye for now. Bye-bye.

P Allen Smith 24:07

Thank

Anya Chrisanthon 24:10

you.