SPEAKER_01: 0:12

Today we're back with the second part of our interview with Ken Levinson, the managing director of the Passive House Network.

SPEAKER_00: 0:19

So I went so I did that and I actually did a lot of what I did with the civil disobedience work was training, was training in nonviolent disobedience and um and uh de-escalation um and you know how to how to um yeah run this run these protests, which was really interesting and fun. It's just a lot of smart people and uh and really great great sort of culture and atmosphere in that introvert or extrovert, a lot of big personalities.

SPEAKER_01: 0:54

Doesn't matter introvert or extrovert, a lot of big personalities. You know, yeah, yeah. I mean, I've met some of the some of the quietest, you know older ladies that had that were just fierce. Oh just unbelievably fierce. I mean, like, I don't want to meet this one in an alley somewhere, and I don't want to get her mad. Good God. It's like it'll be that's right, sweetheart. And the minute I turn around, it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm like, holy moly, this person's on fire. So it's it's it's so third act kind of really kind of inspired me here. I think I'm gonna try to get um a little bit more involved with it. I learned a little bit about what you're talking about, what you were teaching down when I kind of got involved for a little bit down in Occupy when that happened. Yeah, and it was it was fascinating to watch, um, to be part of it. I I just happened to work downtown at the time doing work building down there. And uh I I was I just wandered past it one day and said, wow, that sounds really interesting. Somebody was talking as they do, they get up and you know say something. And I was like, that sounds fascinating. Who who's saying this really good stuff? And I sat down there and I got up three hours later and went, oh my god, it's dark. I got to get home. You know, so and so I I learned a lot there. I was only there for three days, but I learned a lot. And and and it kind of it kind of informed what I'm doing right now with the passive house building and and designing and the podcast and all the other stuff. It's like, and that's what third act really kind of is all about. It's like it's later than we think. We contributed to this, and we're in the best position to actually do something about it. And that's absolutely inspiring. It's like, yeah, I'm 64, 64 two days ago. It's like, yeah, but I'm like more engaged now than I've ever been in my life. So it seems like you are too. Yeah, no, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 2:44

Yeah. It's good. So what ended up and so to finish the story, sort of, uh, was my wife was like, Yeah, you really have to get a job. And um, and so kicking around, I was like, Well, what I'm passionate about and what I like doing and how I relate to things, um uh PHN never had like an executive director, a full-time person to run the the the um the organization as such. Um and so it seemed like you know, I would have to essentially raise the money to pay any salary that I would have and and beyond that. Um but uh it was a job, so it passed certain must or at home. And I got and the board was board thought it was uh a uh a good move, so they brought me on and um you know I made uh a tiny pittance, but um things are growing and moving, and I'm really enjoying what I'm doing in so many different ways. Um it's it's super powerful. I wanted to bring it around though and talk about kind of like the attitude of the organization and the culture and towards building performance and you know, getting hitting the certification marks and all of that. It's really interesting, and I think there's a lot to unpack, and we could talk for a long time about it. But you know, on the one hand, you have the logic and the building science um of passive house and the real strong reasons for hitting the marks, hitting the targets, getting certified even to have that quality assurance so you know what you've got, uh, especially if you're dealing with investors or policy or incentives or things, you need to be able to hit marks and hit really rigorous marks, not you know, like let's break a sweat and know that if you're staying in shape, you're not gonna kill yourself like breaking a sweat. You're gonna break a sweat, you're gonna accomplish what needs to be done, and you'll get up the next day and do it again. Um so all really good at the same time, it is can be and is an incremental process, and is a process where you're not gonna hit home runs all the time, and you're not going to end up like doing all the projects the way you know, dream projects and the way you want it to turn out. Um because ultimately it's not for the client to do it. Yeah, yeah, no, and it's life, it's messy and it's construction, my God. I mean, I the the biggest thing, everybody you know, everybody has a passive house story about this problem or that problem, and oftentimes, almost without exception, once you unpack it in conversation, you're like, yeah, what you're talking about is construction. It's not passive house. Um, this is just the issues that projects have day in and day out. Um and passive house, I think, in some ways really compensates it because it does focus the mind and really gets people to um execute on what matters the most. Um and and so you know, if buildings aren't getting certified totally fine as long as you know they're doing the best they can and and and you know hopefully getting to that that performance level. I kind of end it by saying, you know, it's really interesting, Wolfgang Feist, um who you know did the initial experiments in Darmstadt and helped lead the development um of the methodology through the Passive House Institute you know, set it all up and you know, he is the most chill person about this stuff. He's like, you know, you do the best you can. And full stop. That's you know, I had a German and I forget about all this other stuff.

SPEAKER_01: 7:02

I had a German grandfather, and and so I and he was an architect and a builder. Uh-huh. Okay. And it was it one of his favorite sayings was you can't let perfect be the enemy of good. And Germans have a tendency to go perfect, you know, and and and so to hear about a German engineer who says it's okay, it's kind of like, who got to him? You know, it's but it's it's good.

SPEAKER_00: 7:33

Yeah, no, but it's the whole culture. So at the same time, it's this it's with this kind of wonderful creative tension. Because at the same time, you're kind of like relax, you know, you're you're working, you're trying to do your best, and you're getting a good result. Um, but you're also saying, like, we are trying to hit these rigorous targets, we are working hard, we are being rigorous. This isn't like an excuse to, you know, um just slouch off. And so it's that combination, which I think is a is a wonderful way for people to bring out their best work. Um uh and uh it we need the challenge because if we're not challenged to hit like a something that's really tough, you know, we're not gonna we're not gonna move the needle.

SPEAKER_01: 8:24

On the same token, though, we've got a situation where FIS and PHI to some extent is is advocating very, very heavily for code enforcement uh of this kind of science. And it's always going to happen incrementally, it's always going to happen with resistance, and it's always going to be where we have this high region up here where everybody's getting certified, and it's like that's the only thing to do. And then this region down here where, you know, okay, the town of Osopis just decided to go with stretch code, so they're going by the 21 2021 energy code. And now, okay, we require external insulation. We only require an inch or two, but you know, it's it's it's it's external insulation, it's continuous insulation. Oh, we need better windows, but we don't have to get view values below, you know, 20 or you know, 21 or something like that. So it's better, it's better than it was, but it's it's it's going to happen incrementally. I mean, most of the towns around here are still on 2018 code, you know, building code, which is, you know, come on, it's terrible. But I agree with you and I disagree.

SPEAKER_00: 9:36

I mean, we're doing we're actually doing disagree, right? We're doing both. Right. Well, and I would say that what it shows and what you see with the teams that get it, the the the folks that aren't fighting it or have like you know, have um have come around or who are enthusiastic, whatever it might be, that there isn't such a gap separating the worlds. And so when we're talking about incremental steps, yeah, I agree. It's like, do we really need to take five incremental steps, or is it just like two or even just one disagree because if you break it down, it's so it's not yeah, it's not that much further.

SPEAKER_02: 10:20

I agree in many ways.

SPEAKER_01: 10:21

I agree. You know what it is? Here's what it is as an estimator, okay? My client comes to me and says, I want to build a house that has these features, and I say, Well, we're gonna do certified passive house. And their first response is, How much does that cost? All right. Now, I'm not just gonna say, Oh, it cost$1,000 for a modeler. I'm going to, as a professional estimator, as somebody so detail oriented, I'm gonna break this down. And I'm not just gonna be that, but I'm also gonna be, what does it cost to go back and forth more with the architect? What does it cost to go back and forth more with the with the with the codes guy? What does it cost to train the people on the site? What does it cost to fix mistakes? What does it cost for the guys to stand around while there's a blower toward test that's going late? You know, that kind of thing. And when you come right down to it, when you say to a client, well, on that$750,000 house you're building, it could be$15,000 to$20,000 in additional costs. And you know what they say a lot of times? Do I need to right, exactly. That's if you're really tracking your costs. They say, Do I need to do that? Honestly, I have to say no, you don't. But here's the benefits. You get independent this, you get you know, confirmation, you get this, you get that. And here's the next question: Can I do that without getting certified? Yeah, all the certifiers are independent, so of course I can. What was what's the benefit to me? The benefit is you get all of the stuff that you're promised. You're not gonna get a certification, all right, but we can do all the testing and everything else. What's that gonna cost me? And I go, oh, well, to get some modeling done so we know what we're doing, so we're not working in the dark, and to get the testing done and to get independent blower door tests and all the other stuff, we're gonna spend two or three thousand dollars. And they go, wow, that's a lot less. So when you're dealing with people that aren't building$10 million homes or even$5 million homes, you're dealing with somebody who says, I've got a budget of a half million to build this house. Right. You're chaving and you're trying to chew it everywhere you can. So my point for that is that that that group, that cohort, is so much larger than the cohort that we have that are designing and building passive houses. And so why are we in in sales parlance? It would be called the long tail, okay? Why are we not servicing the long tail? Entire industries were built on the long tail. Why are we not servicing them? That's my question.

SPEAKER_00: 12:46

And supporting them. So well, I think culturally, so it's interesting, you know, conundrum and and um how do you tackle it? I think the way Passive House Institute um out of Germany um really fundamentally, you know, pins it, which I think is the strong way and the right way to go about it. Um, although it can be frustrating and there are arguments in the other direction which you're making. But what it is is you are identifying what quality is, what um how these things come together in an integrated way, and what targets ultimately make the most sense scientifically in terms of resilience and long-term durability and comfort and health and all of it. Um I don't disagree with you. But so you put the stake in the ground, yeah, nothing could controversial yet, but you put the stake in the ground, and then it's about moving the market to you, yes, not you moving to the market. Yes. So, and you know, it's been a a point of tension, like where is the slippery slope? What can we cut corners on, and what can't we? Um, and what do where do we need to hold the line? And I don't think there are any like you know red lines per se, or you know, clear, you know, and every situation is different, but to the extent that you can hold the line and you do have certification, one of the one of the biggest arguments for certification, as opposed to just building two passive house and and doing the calculation and everything, is you know, you can have it's not un un unknown, I don't know, um, you know, the frequency but uh or un uncommon where they've not gone for certification, you you have a performance gap, right? And people are saying, oh, well, it doesn't actually perform that well. And we've spent this extra money, it may not be as much as they would have spent, but they're not getting the the performance that was ex advertised. And what's really been shown is that certification, this is a big commercial for certification. I need to I need to put that hat on. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 15:20

I'm letting you run, buddy.

SPEAKER_00: 15:22

I'm letting you run.

SPEAKER_01: 15:22

Go ahead.

SPEAKER_00: 15:23

Yeah, thank you. Um that with certified projects um that you don't have that performance gap, and that goes away. And so it's a real insurance policy. We don't have the possibility.

SPEAKER_01: 15:37

So culturally, what's that you don't have the possibility of it? There's not necessarily guaranteed that you're gonna have it. You don't have the possibility of it. Right. Right. Right. There's I mean it's possible, but it's only a potential, right? Having a gap, the performance gap is only a potential. Right?

SPEAKER_00: 15:55

Sure, right. But there there are things you do to avoid that potential from being realized, right? Right, I guess.

SPEAKER_01: 16:05

But but so back to my point though, Ken, if you have if you're building the same way and you're getting all of the same independent tests, but not under the banner of PHI or fias, if you're still getting the independent certifications, the blower door test, uh, the the the modeling, you know, all the stuff. If I run this thing through Woofy or PHP and it comes up right, and I get somebody that's independent to confirm it and all that, if I'm still doing that, because here's the other cost that we don't talk about, okay? The other cost we don't talk about is that in order to get a passive house, it's almost always exclusively designed by an architect. And now you're adding 10% to the cost of the house minimum. You know, so now instead of 10 or 15,000 or 20,000, it's 110 or 115 or 100,000. No, no, I'm serious. There's a problem here, there's a barrier.

SPEAKER_00: 16:56

So no, no, no. So this goes back to my other my initial point of putting the stake in the ground and moving the market. So what we've seen is, you know, when PASOS first came to America, uh you know, heads were exploding about the airtightness. Oh, I know, I heard about it. Outrageous. It was unbelievable. I wasn't gonna breathe. Yeah, and well, and just but even the building scientists that knew better about that, like the leading lights of American building science said, you know, you know, we went from you know, from three to one point five, and one point five is good enough. Um, and you know, if we were gonna go further down, you know, 0.75 maybe, but that seems too extreme. And 0.6 is just ridiculous, and it's dumb, and we don't need to do it. A lot of pushback. And um, and the windows, and there's still pushback about the windows. Like the windows are too expensive, we don't need this, um, it's you know, crazy, yada yada, yada. No one's gonna change that, don't you?

SPEAKER_01: 18:02

You know who's gonna fix that? Well, the big three it is being they're getting back into passive house windows now, and they're coming up, and they're they're coming with a lower price point.

SPEAKER_00: 18:12

Yeah, so but the price point has been going lower the whole time. So, you know, 14 years ago, they were you know 40% more, 50% more, you know, it depends on what you're you're ultimately buying, but a real markup. Uh now, you know, you can get passive house certified windows for you know 10% better than Marvin has them.

SPEAKER_01: 18:41

Marvin Windows has them now.

SPEAKER_00: 18:44

Yeah, they don't have real.

SPEAKER_01: 18:45

Yes, they do. They're certified.

SPEAKER_00: 18:47

They're certified for a mild climate. They're not certified for I think they're certified in the city.

SPEAKER_01: 18:54

You would not put them in Hudson Valley. They're certified to five, not six. One side of the Hudson's five, the other side six.

SPEAKER_00: 19:01

I can't believe. Send me the spec. I can't believe that they perform for climate zone.

SPEAKER_01: 19:06

Yeah, they I've got I could send it to you. I'll send it to you. It's it's on their website.

SPEAKER_00: 19:09

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll look it up.

SPEAKER_01: 19:11

Uh the U on them is I think 19 or something like that. The frames aren't the greatest, but um, but but my point is Well, the frames No, but this but this is the point. That's where it is.

SPEAKER_00: 19:20

The frames I'll circle back around. So the frames are that important.

SPEAKER_01: 19:23

No, I know.

SPEAKER_00: 19:24

No, no, I didn't say they weren't. And um, well, right, but but they can't be a good window if the frames suck.

SPEAKER_01: 19:32

They could they can be an okay window, they can't be a passive house window.

SPEAKER_00: 19:36

Right, right. So so the market's moving though towards that, and what we see is we want to normalize high quality instead of having high quality become the lowest common denominator, that's better, right? Um, and so it's a really about managing expectations and and so as and it is painfully incremental, it's way slower than it needs to be. Absolutely, 100%. How do we scale this uh more quickly? Um I don't think you can have a couple of things.

SPEAKER_01: 20:09

I don't think you can, to be honest with you. So so my well, my thoughts are is that you pour a ton of money into it, and that ain't gonna happen either. Um the my my thoughts are I compare this to lead, okay, in in some ways. LEAD was a great system when it came out, it didn't catch on, and it didn't catch on in residential in particular, okay? And it didn't for a lot of different reasons. Most people looked at it as added expense, most people looked at the specifications and went, I can do that. You know, there was a lot of different reasons for it. But the biggest reason was it just couldn't scale. All right, and I think the it can't scale because of its high quality. Lead for homes. It can't scale because of its high quality. And so I'm I think putting a stake in the ground is excellent and put a flag on that stake and say, this is the goal, this is where we got to go. But in the same token, I think we should throw a whole bunch of practice balls out there and say to everybody that's out there, look, this is the general principle here. External installation, ceiling, ERV, windows, this is our general thing. Have at it. And I think that that gets the 95% of the people that aren't doing it yet. That's how we get this to scale. Now, are we going to wind up with a whole crap load of buildings that aren't done quite right? Yes. But the alternative to that is a whole bunch is a very few buildings that are done perfectly and a whole bunch of buildings that are done to 2018 freaking code.

SPEAKER_00: 21:36

Well, I would change right. Well, I would say I don't necessarily disagree with your narrative there, but I would say let's write a different narrative. Okay. And so that would be let's go back to Occupy and to Extinction Rebellion. Oh, you're getting me where I live here, buddy. Okay, go ahead. And and Bill McKibben and, you know, it's structure change, you know, back it is, you know, we are not going to Organic food, our way out of it, we're not going to recycle our way out of it. We're not going to behaviorally, you know, change our way out of our predicament. We need massive structure change. And the fact of the matter is, is there's more than enough money to build what we should be building. It's just being held by about 10 people. Um, and you know, so like how do we as a society invest in it? You know, let's not even talk about new homes, right? Retrofit. How do we retrofit everything that's being done and uh another magnitude of expense just for regular construction, let alone trying to do passive house retrofit? Um, and the only answer is incentives. There needs to be serious government money coming down, you know, and we have you know Do you think there's the money is there? The IRA is a nice down payment. The IRA is a good start kick down the road. Good start. It needs to be, you know, the the the the Marshall Plan, the the the New Deal, the Green New Deal, the everything combined, you know, um just massive investment.

SPEAKER_01: 23:15

And then we could scale properly. Do you think, honestly, do you think that scaling just from the top down will actually accomplish this? So you talk about retrofits, okay? Do you think there's enough architects to do all those retrofits in passive house?

SPEAKER_00: 23:29

Right. So I do think, I mean, this will be even more like heresy. I mean, you know, the single family home is the cornerstone of our built environment.

SPEAKER_01: 23:40

And the worst possible way to live, I know.

SPEAKER_00: 23:42

A million, right. And there are million new homes built a year or something like that. Just staggering numbers. Um, but we're not gonna single family our way out of the problem either, right? So it's multifamily. Uh again, you can't you can't multi-family construction.

SPEAKER_01: 23:59

We're never gonna corral Americans into multifamily, they're just not gonna do it. We we're too ingrained in this. A portion of them, yes, definitely. You know?

SPEAKER_00: 24:08

Yeah, and and in terms of density, you know, it's all part of like urbanism and and living next to public transportation, having a bit more density, you know, all these reinforcing things, you know. Um, you know, walkable neighborhoods and lives. Um not for everybody, but there's a huge bang for the buck there. And that is for every it is for everybody that wants it. So affordable housing is a huge driver of passive house. And you know, for those that aren't aware, passive house really scaled through social housing, through multifamily social housing in Europe and continues to this day. Uh and so that is for everybody and is a way that is um a really economical way and efficient way to bring high quality housing to the masses. Every castle, you know, being every every every person's single family home castle is a is a tougher, tougher job. I don't disagree with you. We need to bring down the costs, and it's it's really a struggle, even you know, the efforts around panelization, which are awesome, and the and the you know, Sears kind of home education of some of this, uh, where you can get theoretically scalable savings out of it anyway. They're still expensive at the moment, and it's a long-term play. And hopefully, you know, we will have factory-made homes in a big way. Or components at least. Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, panelized. I do think I'm a big fan of panelized, not not true modular. So am I. Uh modular is interesting, but it's not as it doesn't seem as it has its it has its specific applications. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 26:00

It's not as universal as panelization, though. It's panalization is very universal. Which is where I'm going with the AAC at some point, too. It's panalization.

SPEAKER_00: 26:08

Uh-huh. Uh-huh. So, you know, you have these huge, you know, uh construction firms who are building the vast majority of the single-family homes, right? There's probably a handful of companies doing 90% of what's in California, for example.

SPEAKER_01: 26:27

And that's only been in the last 20 years. Up until before then, the vast majority of single-family homes were built by independent contractors. The the the the big, like, I'm not going to mention names, but the big commercial single-family home builders are is is a fairly recent, you know, uh uh uh introduction to the market. You know, it there's still a large portion of these houses that are built by independent, small independent guys. And and that's the kind of grassroots stuff that I'm talking about, is getting these guys. If you really educate these guys, they're look, every one of them doing it has got a brain on them because they wouldn't be in business if they weren't. Every one of them's got a brain on them. And if you show them what the situation is, I've shown, like I've shown other people, uh builders, they realize it's just best practice. And they go, Oh, oh yeah, I'd like to do that and this and this.

SPEAKER_00: 27:21

And so Well, not only that, if if you can show them that they can make money and make more money. Exactly. Um, and that's where the incentives come in, too. I mean, what I could see, you know, how to scale it is you regulate it, you mandate it, and you give them a bucket of money at the same time. I mean, we do that with all sorts of industries and and you know, certainly agriculture and the rest of it. Um why, you know, why not do it for these builders? I get it. Um so that the consumers getting it at basically no extra costs.

SPEAKER_01: 27:56

And we don't realize the value of doing these things to our society 10, 5, 10, you know, even five years down the road, you know, of paying for somebody to look, I'm I'm renovating my home. Oh, okay, we'll pay for the installation. Just install it this way. Then you go, you know, you say, Well, you know, yeah, I'm gonna do it in code, but then you got all the inspectors out there. And I gotta be honest with you, there's a person who deals with inspectors every single day of his life, okay. 50% of them are get them talking when you're on the site and they don't look at anything. It's like, forget about it. You know, it's just, you know, hey, look, guys, we got we didn't pass this. We don't want them testing the concrete. Okay, we're just gonna yap at him while he's here and it's just completely forget about it and walk away. So it's not just builders, it's inspectors, it's towns wanting to do it. It's you know, it's a big, big job. Yeah. So a shout out to our award-winning design build company, LDR Group, in the beautiful Hudson Valley in New York. LDR is the evolution of my journey as a building into high-performance housing and passive house. We design, build, and renovate homes that are more comfortable, healthier, and cost far less to operate and maintain than the typical code minimum house produced by the large national builders and even multiple companies. We invite you to visit our website at LDRgroup.net or give us a call to discuss your project. Whether you're building new or doing a deep energy retrofit on an older home, we would be happy to spend some time helping you understand the science, the process, and the cost of creating your high-performance greenhouse.

SPEAKER_00: 29:33

So speaking of that, though, if your listeners aren't aware, um I'm sure many are, but you know, in Massachusetts, they have adopted an opt-in stretch code that mandates passive house for multifamily buildings. They're not single-family homes, but multifamily above 12,000 square feet. Um and uh they also Massachusetts has huge incentives for insulating, for you know, doing airtightness, for getting energy off.

SPEAKER_01: 30:05

Heat pumps.

SPEAKER_00: 30:05

They've done a lot of investment, heat pumps, a lot of investments across the the um the spectrum. Now, Massachusetts is a special case, and you know, not much of the United States looks like Massachusetts, but uh it's it's possible, and uh we can scale it.

SPEAKER_01: 30:27

What what Massachusetts is gonna prove in five years or so is that it it's it's gonna save them money, and it's gonna be it's gonna be a better state for it. And then other states look New York and New Jersey, you know, they're already looking at Massachusetts, Vermont. You know, we're already looking, and and the whole New England area with virtual power plants, everything else, it's all it's starting to show up, and people are starting to turn around and go, hmm, that's interesting.

SPEAKER_00: 30:52

So yeah, no, I I completely and and interestingly, the utilities are in some ways driving that too, the conversation. Um, and you know, it was a big reason for Massachusetts being able to adopt it because the utilities could see as they're electrifying, their peak loads are moving to the winter, um, and they need to push towards renewables, and they've got a real pinch on their hands, and they've got all this new construction that needs to happen. And very clearly, if you build it to passive house, you're crushing the heat demand, and all of a sudden you're removing this massive wintertime load, the peaks off. And they don't have to build power plants, they don't have to build the infrastructure that they would need to deal with that. They save a ton of money. Um, and you see Excel out west in the Midwest, and you know, Excel really picked up the flag and and gave uh you know an incentive for the martial fire victims to rebuild their homes. Those that would do to passive house got a$37,500 incentive from the utility to to build the passive house. And that's real money. Yes, you know, and on top of that, the another$10,000 for electrification. Um they could top out over$50,000 in incentives pretty easily. Unfortunately, many of the people are underinsured or not in a position to, you know, take the time to plan the way one would like to.

SPEAKER_01: 32:25

Or in Colorado, they're not even bothering with up the upping the codes or building the houses back in the areas exactly the same way they were built before. You know? Yeah. I mean that's one of the reasons that that Enrico, who's going to be our third guest um in a in a couple of weeks, is so interested in this Ustacko product because it's refractory. It's it's actually at one inch thick, it's it's it's fireproof on a wood structure. And so it's like an ethus. That's great. Yeah, it's like an ethos that you can put over your house, put a metal roof on, change your venting, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And all of a sudden you've got a house that's pretty damn durable and resilient. You know, so that's awesome. Yeah, there's there's solutions coming from all over the place. We are at an hour and 26 minutes here, my friend, and I could probably go for another hour and 26 minutes. But I wanted to ask you a question. Because, oh yeah, once we just start nerding out, I mean, you know, it's just turn the lights out. I'll shut the music off on the way out. Um, if you had one thing that you wanted to tell the general public, uh, you know, that was passive curious, that that one thing they want to be informed about, what would it be?

SPEAKER_00: 33:30

I well, what I would say is find a passive house near you and visit it. Um, there's nothing quite so transformative as stepping inside a passive house.

SPEAKER_01: 33:42

There's some of them on Airbnb, you know.

SPEAKER_00: 33:45

Yeah, yeah, there are. Um and we will have uh there's international passive house open days uh all around the world. Folks open up their passive house buildings uh to visitors, it's gonna be in late June. Uh so it's a little ways out, but it's a great opportunity, and we try to get as many people as possible to open up their their homes and their buildings, whatever it might be, um, to allow visitors because it really uh bit between the thermal comfort and the acoustic comfort um and and the sense of there being fresh air inside the house, um it is a game changer. Um, and then it's really just a matter of how um you're gonna do it, not you know when or why. Right. How do I get how do I get here? You need to do it as soon as possible. And it's the goal.

SPEAKER_01: 34:44

The first passive house I was ever in was Dan Levy's house in Woodstock. And I went up there to visit him, and I was with my wife, and we had lunch, and we it was a cloudy overcast day, and I'll never forget this. We're sitting there, and and I'm facing away from the door, and my wife goes, Wow, it's really raining out there. And I turn around and it is absolutely pouring, downpour like deluge. I never heard it. Yeah, it was like so quiet. Wow, that's a little odd. It was almost like spooky. It was like watching it going, I mean, I'm getting old, but uh, you know it's so nice.

SPEAKER_00: 35:20

Yeah, it's and it's either I like to say either the the cities can be noisy, but the country can be noisy as well. And uh to have that option of just peace and quiet, it's lovely.

SPEAKER_01: 35:34

Full disclosure, I don't live in a passive house and I live across the street from a fire department. And I and they still blow the whistle every day at noon, every fire, at three in the morning, it doesn't matter. And I gotta be honest with you, every time it happens, and I have to hold the ears of the cat and I go, oh my God, I can't wait till I build my passive house. Of course, it won't be across the street from a firehouse at that point, but um yeah, uh yeah, I I there's not enough good things you can say about it. Um I just my only my only bone of contention, my only point of disagreement with you is that I think that needs to be democratized faster. I think that we need to drive this down and not let perfect be the enemy of good. Right. Um Right.

SPEAKER_00: 36:17

No, I don't, I'd well, I would just say my answer to that is massive investment. Money is not, you know, we need public subsidies.

SPEAKER_01: 36:26

The problem with that is that it needs to be managed correctly. The last time we did this, and I'm waiting to see what happens this time. The last time we did this, it birthed spray foam. Okay, so think about that. Okay, I'm not a big thing.

SPEAKER_00: 36:38

Well, there are unintended consequences, but yeah, yeah, no. You don't need to, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 36:43

No fan here. Wait, wait, wait. But let's go over that because just briefly, because the reason neither one of us are a fan of it is because the passive house community has been testing this stuff on again and off again for years. And what we found was that the sh the foam and the wood have different coefficients of expansion, so that over a period of five or ten years, as they move, they delaminate. And the whole product, the whole reason to use spray foam was to seal as well as insulate. Right. And if your wind up, your blower door test starts getting worse and worse every year, what did you gain? Right. You know, so anybody who's in passive house, almost nobody uses spray foam anymore for just that reason. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 37:28

Yeah. And I mean, and there's also just a confluence. It's not required. You know, you can build a passive house out of anything, but just culturally, I think a lot of the people that are doing passive house that are interested in it are also interested in less toxicity in the environment, sure, more natural materials, less processing, less embodied carbon, you know, all of these things. Um, and which all points away from spray foam.

SPEAKER_01: 37:56

Well, it's also got a really horrible freaking vapor profile. So I mean it's you know.

SPEAKER_00: 38:00

Yeah, yeah. I still use fall my own. We like to say, you know, is do you really want to have a uh chemistry project on a construction site? Right. You know? And it's like it's kind of insane. You know, all the different things that can go wrong. I remember sitting in uh a lecture up at Better Buildings by Design in Burlington, Vermont years ago. And this guy who was a forensic engineer, and it was a whole lecture, it was kind of mind-blowing on like all these spray foam jobs that had gone bad. And like, and you to get the spray foam out of the house was just take the house apart, a monumental task.

SPEAKER_01: 38:45

Um and just I saw a documentary once about a spray foam that had gone bad, they mixed it wrong and it was smelling and melting, right? Which is not that hard. Oh, yeah, no. You know what they did? It was in the roof, right? They pulled the roof off and replaced the entire thing. Wow.

SPEAKER_00: 39:04

Yeah, no, there's all kinds of stuff. Yeah. We did uh 475, we kind of like took it on um the the spray foam industry in one form or another. Um because our you know, fibrous insulation and membranes and tapes was you know a more sound alternative course to hit passive house, more durable passive house performance. But you know, we we're like you know, we need to throw some hand grenades around here to you know, we're nobody, no, nobody's gonna listen to us unless we're like picking a fight with big companies.

SPEAKER_01: 39:39

Full disclosure, I spend fifty, sixty thousand dollars on every house with you guys. So full disclosure, you're indispensable now. So hand grenades not needed. Hand grenades are not needed.

SPEAKER_00: 39:52

It's so nice to hear that. Yeah, well, it is it is nice, and and so the um uh that's very nice. So um the uh uh um what was I gonna say about it? Um hand grenades. You had to yeah, just uh picking the the fight and um uh I think that's well you were successful at it too, though.

SPEAKER_01: 40:15

I mean, I don't know anybody that's doing passive house that doesn't use a lot of your products, you know. I mean I'm not yeah oh I know what I was gonna say.

SPEAKER_00: 40:24

Sorry. Just um what happened was when we were like basically very upfront about this, um we had this series on like why foam fails and all these different reasons, and um uh and unfortunately over the years we had links to the original sources. I didn't copy the information and reload it on our own site. So as the companies got smart to what we were doing, they like took everything down, and so the links went away. But we had homeowners contacting us um and different people who were you know having problems, or they were in the middle of lawsuits, or or were trying to get like legislators to pass laws and do stuff, and we had all these amazing con conversations, and I s I kid you not, one by one over several years, they one by one they went silent and they stopped returning emails and phone calls because they settled with the companies, or more than likely, yeah, yeah, yeah. When that's the only explanation, and there these were some pretty pissed off and full bore like.

SPEAKER_01: 41:33

Well, you really did throw hand grenades, didn't you? Good lord. You have a good lawyer?

SPEAKER_00: 41:36

I mean I'm surprised. Well, the you know, the truth is a good defense, you know. This is true. It's not um doesn't protect you from getting sued though. Yeah, no, no, it doesn't. But we're small potatoes and you know, they still have a huge industry. I it you know, and the fact is you can do passive house out of anything. You can use spray foam, but you don't want to use it in certain ways and think it's going to work, you know. Um you need to be careful.

SPEAKER_01: 42:11

Right. No, I agree. I completely agree. You know, I I I still use a tiny bit of it. Sometimes I'll use it on a on a on a um a rim joist or something like that, you know. Right. I I still use a tiny bit of it. And the rim joist stuff I usually use open cell because I need the permeability. You know, I don't want to I don't want to block it at the at the rim joist, right? With a cold, it was, you know, it's that's crazy. But um, yeah, no.

SPEAKER_00: 42:33

Yeah, I don't think we can't be too too rigid about stuff or too um too uh religious, you know. It's uh it's life. Life's messy.

SPEAKER_01: 42:42

Yeah, yeah, I agree. You've got to be flexible. Um look, I uh we're now at 135, so I'm definitely gonna end this here. Um I I just want to say keep an eye out for the next one because I know you know Enrico and I know you like him. And um Enrico is going to be on our next podcast, which will probably go two hours. Um, but um so and if you think of anything that you want to ask him, uh write in and put him on the spot. It'll be a good time. I look forward to listening to absolutely. At some point I'm gonna get a hang of this thing and I'm gonna start actually like inviting more than one person, you know, at some point. I just have to start opening up Adobe Premiere and reteaching myself Adobe Premiere because none of these other oh my god.

SPEAKER_00: 43:26

More software thing, right? All of a sudden you've got to learn all these skills.

SPEAKER_01: 43:30

And just find me a sponsor or two so I can hire a producer. That's all I want. I just want to hire a producer. It's like, hey, I'll do the interview. Here it is. There you go. Knock yourself out and make yourself a star, you know. I interesting, I I wound up talking with, and I'm waiting to hear back from a guy in Philadelphia, a kid there, um this local kid who avoided all the street crime, had a good mom and everything, and did everything right. And at a very young age, got in the middle of a got shot and paralyzed. And he's a graphic artist and and apparently pretty talented at it. He's been two and a half years almost recovering. And I've kind of been I've been kind of lightly corresponding with his aunt. Um I donated to his to his GoFundMe at one point and just basically said, I said, look, I don't, I I've got, you know, stuff if he's willing to do this. I I if I can give him a job, let me know. Because he had never had a hope of work walking again. And so I heard from his aunt recently. He's actually starting to walk, and he's having trouble finding a job. He's a black kid, you know. It's really hard to find a job when you're physically challenged and everything else. And I and I wrote back to her, I said, hell yeah, I'll f I'll figure something out. Let's get him back. So if he's got some talent with graphics and stuff, I might just have a producer. We'll see. I'm gonna have run my app and do all the stuff in the background, too, you know, with my clients and do all that if you if he if he can do it, you know. But having somebody like that, I think that's the graphic motivated and a lot of stuff might work. But it makes it so much more productive. And I'd like to be able to do something like that for somebody like this, a kid who really had it all going for him and then had to take it away. Absolutely. You know, it's just like why else do we do what we do if we can't do stuff like that, right? Definitely, you know, I'm not trying to be a savior, but God, if I'm gonna hire one guy or hire another, no, why don't I hire the other? We all need to all need to do our part. Exactly. Ken, it's been a pleasure, man. Yeah, you too. Thanks for listening. If you like what you heard today, please subscribe and share this podcast. The more people that understand this science and are passionate about it, the better. Don't forget to visit our episode website for more information, links, and bonus materials. Oh, and leave us a review and tell us who and what you'd like to hear about in future episodes. Thanks for listening.