SPEAKER_00: 0:08

Welcome to Passive Aggressive, the podcast that brings you, the average citizen, the information you need to answer the questions you have about high-performance housing and electrification. Like what is Passive House? Is it the same as net zero? And what's the deal with all this talk about heat pumps and electrification? We'll meet and get to know the people that design, build, renovate, and test these homes and the systems that they use for easy to understand explanations about how all of this works and how this can actually help us save our planet. I'm Jeff Eckis, founder of LDR Group, an employee-owned high-performance and passive house home builder in the beautiful Hudson Valley, New York. And I'll be your host in this ongoing journey to discover why climate change is very much about housing and how we can all make better choices and have a much larger impact, reducing our own carbon footprint than we ever thought we could. Okay, we're here with Enrico. I need to get the name of your because I always get your name, your last name wrong. It's Bonalori, right? That is Correct. Look at you. I've been practicing. You know, it's funny because um full full disclosure here, I am a wild emu, and and and and rico was my my professor and my my instructor. And I gotta say, for for it was COVID. Was that your for was that the first one that that emu did, or was it the second one?

SPEAKER_02: 1:46

Um that is, dude, don't test anybody like that. It was one of the first ones, let's put it that way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it was.

SPEAKER_00: 1:55

It was one of the first online courses that you guys had, and it was it was you guys did great, and I enjoyed it, and I got a lot out of it. Um so so full disclosure, uh, I've known Enrico for a long time. I'm I'm a I'm a I'm a an alum of the course and have nothing but great things to say about it. And Rico holds two master's degrees. One in ag architecture, I keep wanting to say agriculture. My my grandfather was in agriculture and architecture, a dual major. Um architecture is the University of Parma in Italy, and one in sustainable design from the University of Sydney, Australia. As a registered Italian architect and certified passive house trainer, designer, and PHI certifier, he's worked in Australia, Europe, and North America. He specializes in building envelope analysis, informed by thousands of hours spent on construction sites, speaker experience, including conferences in Germany, Austria, China, US, Canada, Spain, Australia, and New Zealand. So you took two breaths to get that all out. He's the co-founder of EMU, as previously mentioned, and has been a s and has been a scientific curator of their passive house training curriculum, teaching American builders since 2017. You were teaching in Europe before that, or did you just start that here?

SPEAKER_02: 3:13

Uh we started that here in the US. Uh we emu used to be an architectural practice back home in Italy. And it's so the teacher was more like me showing up on site and showing people what to do, pretty much. But we started doing that more formally ever since we moved to Denver.

SPEAKER_00: 3:33

Interesting. So I have to ask you, because I've always been curious, why emu? Why emu?

SPEAKER_02: 3:41

So we were looking for a name that was short and would be the same across different languages, Italian and America, English first. Um we were also wanted to keep the routes and or a blink uh to the routes in Australia. That is where uh myself and my business partner uh first met. So uh it was a late night, it is a cheap Chinese restaurant in Italy with some cheap Chinese beer, and that is how emu was created on the napkin. That is a true story.

SPEAKER_00: 4:20

Well, there you go, and I think you predated uh the Limu emu, too, didn't you?

SPEAKER_02: 4:26

Yes, totally.

SPEAKER_00: 4:26

We we were first So how did that did that surprise you guys that somebody like like like shanked your meme? I mean, that's you know.

SPEAKER_02: 4:34

Oh no. I don't actually know because we were this is we're talking like 2008 uh give or take. 2009 is when we started using it uh regularly in our business practice, but yeah, so we're talking 15 years. I had no actual knowledge about IMU Limu or whatever it's called, but yeah, we literally were sitting at a uh Chinese restaurant in the outskirt of my town, Rajumilia, and we were thinking of different acronyms for how to make it like social, sustainable, blah blah blah. And then like, what if we just think outside the box? Because there's a lot of like architecture firms that have some weird acronyms that have all the meaning and no meaning at all. So we so we went like, what if it's just a bird? You know, because someone may think, oh, it's Enrico, Mariana, my business partner, and you, but it's not. That's why. So it's not an acronym, it's just a bird. It's just a bird.

SPEAKER_00: 5:39

Yeah, yeah. I I I I've heard that um in other contexts as well. So, Enrico, tell me something, okay? And and we we have contact once in a while, but it this is kind of nice getting to know you, um, which is one of the things that we like to do if we can. So, my question to you is what what are you passionate about right now? What sets you on fire?

SPEAKER_02: 6:02

That's a good question. Well, on one side, um I became a father uh less than a year ago, so our baby is nine months today. So that is literally the best thank you, the best time of the day is when I go pick up my baby at daycare. So, like picking her up, that is literally the best time of any day. Um, and I'm on the other side, we are um growing our curriculum. I'm always excited about doing more research, and I love getting questions from people that attend the course because with new questions I I get a chance to learn and think of things differently. So that is something I'm gonna I get very excited about.

SPEAKER_00: 6:43

One of the things I love about about what you do is your research. Um I am kind of blessed to uh be starting up a project with you. You guys are gonna do some of the consulting for us um and this and and some of the advising um with some new new uh wall assemblies that we're doing. But you are actually a prodigious researcher. I mean, you do some, you take big chunks out of some pretty big uh pretty big mandates, you know, and and I'm really kind of um I'm kind of in awe of you in that regard. You you did something recently where, and it was really kind of needed, um, you did something recently where you compared all the different uh high efficiency building methods or building brands or flavors if you want. And you actually came up with some pretty surprising conclusions. I don't want to get in really deep here because you know most of the people here that are listening to us, first of all, the ones that do understand what we're talking about can find out somewhere else. They're all professionals. And two, because you know, I don't want to bore a general population with this, but most folks like you know, under want to understand that you know who somebody is. And the fact that you took something like this on and tried to give an objective measure to it um is is kind of impressive as far as just people and just doing things because it's not something that you I don't know that you really gained anything out of it, you know. It's just uh it's a ton of work, and other than credibility and and and gravitas, what what'd you get out of it, you know?

SPEAKER_02: 8:18

Well, um it was a lot of work, it was two and a half years of work. Uh and and five or six hundred energy model over 50 different actual projects that came through our doors from consulting side, which we then used to uh develop our research and compare different building standards. And we did that out of filling a void, as you said, like it was needed, um, in a systematic way, looking at how a building performs not just for energy but also for comfort and indoor equality in different climate zones. And that is part of our commitment to delivering our own curriculum that is independent. We we don't get sponsors, we don't get donations from uh product manufacturers. Uh we are bootstrapping it, but that piece of work was very needed, so I set out the time to do it. I mostly was able to finish it because I was on paternity leave. Uh literally, like that I was like, oh baby, baby snapping, let me finish up some.

SPEAKER_00: 9:24

So we've established that your your number one passion right now is is baby, and that's terrific. And I have fond memories of that. My kids are in their 30s now. Um but um so outside of babyhood, okay, with your as you as a professional, what is that passion project right now? What is that one thing that you think about in the shower and you can't let you let go of it? What is that one passionate thing?

SPEAKER_02: 9:51

Uh this may blow your mind. Um and I don't think I've shared this with others yet. We're breaking news. The yes, yeah. Uh and I may actually have told you because I started talking and I don't know where where I end up. But in the in our industry, uh, you know, we have uh label performance for windows, or labor performance for thermal insulation, or labor performance for heat pumps. And all of those are very important because that is how an end user ends up picking product A versus product B. And if you start looking at how windows are rated, you will find that they are rated at zero degrees outside temperature, which just take it as a number, right? Zero. Thermal insulation is a lot more optimistic in a way because their design temperature is 75 degrees. So, in a way, like windows are from Mars and insulation is from Jamaica, right? Something like that. And and you know, it's it's unrealistic to find a scientifically single point to do that, but once you factor in that these are products that are sold to people, we can factor in okay, there's 8 million million people living in New York City, there's 2 million people living in Denver, Colorado, there's I don't know how many living in LA, California. So, my what I think of in the shower, because you asked.

SPEAKER_00: 11:21

Well, let's not get too graphic now, it's a family show.

SPEAKER_02: 11:25

I'm just saying just because finding a um set of uh common testing points that make sense not just for the climate, not just for the changing climate, but also for a population that is not uniformly distributed across the country. So just weighing that uh rating in a way that makes sense also for the population.

SPEAKER_00: 11:50

You named three different climate zones right there when you did it, yeah. So, what do you mean by by by a uh a central point? It's like are we talking about getting everything rated in U or everything rated in R? Or are we look talking about one set temperature? What are we what are you kind of thinking about here?

SPEAKER_02: 12:05

Well, a set temperature for windows, that zero degree temperature outside that is used in rating windows, that is not representative of almost any actual conditions. It's extremely rare. Even in Denver, Colorado, even in for my house up in the mountains of Colorado, that 8,800 feet of elevation, it's maybe 20 hours a year that is actually zero degrees. And something that is mind-blowing is that Europeans use 36 degrees for that exterior temperature that is actually much more frequent, even in cold climate zones. I'm not saying that that is the right one, but finding a uh more rational, a more justified exterior temperature, because otherwise we have products that are rated for unrealistic conditions and they never perform that way. The way I describe that is think of rating the brakes of a car. You know, they can you can rate them at 200 miles an hour, you can rate them at 100 miles an hour, but if you are really only allowed to drive at 60 or 80 miles an hour, you know, the 200 miles an hour rating is kind of irrelevant. You will never drive. Even 100 miles. Correct. So that is when you the zero degree exterior temperature is extremely unrealistic and may lead to a systemic underperformance of pretty much every single window sewed in the country too. Interesting. So finding that finding that sweet spot is is gonna lead to a better understanding of how of how products are per performing. Where do you think that sweet spot is?

SPEAKER_00: 13:43

What do you think it is? I mean, average temperature would probably be too high, if I'm not mistaken.

SPEAKER_02: 13:50

Correct. It would be it would be uh well for it depends if you're looking for median, so if you're looking for energy performance as opposed to peak load. Because if you're optimizing for energy performance, that is how we uh reduce carbon emissions, kind of trying to keep that end goal in mind. Um so that is something I'm working on, and I'm working on with I I've reached out to PHI in Germany to see what they'll think about how to process climate data uh just to get some third-party support in this, just to and to set the architecture of the analysis uh right from the get-go.

SPEAKER_00: 14:34

So this is what I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm gonna keep my eye on that now that you now that you gave me the skinny on it. Um so tell me something uh uh a little bit about what you do every day, your job, and what is I know you do a lot of different jobs, and everybody I talk to seems to wear a dozen different hats, and I and I get that. It's I think it's a thickness in the industry, well, maybe not a sickness, but a condition. Um so what do you do every year? What's your average day look like? What do you do?

SPEAKER_02: 15:04

Well, I try to be very uh organized with my time because otherwise I have so many calls that I don't actually get to do my job. What I believe is is my job, although looking at the number of hours, being on calls is most likely the better definition of my job. Uh, we are growing we are growing our team. We just brought down a couple of people, so training them, setting goals uh for training mostly. Two-thirds of what we do as a company is training, one-third is consulting that is functional to a helping projects get into passive hours or implementing passive hours science, as well as we want to keep the boots on the ground in developing in working on actual projects so that our curriculum is current and alive. We we are very aware of issues of actual project. Hey, product X is not available, is Product B or Z or D a good option? Things like that, or hey, we messed up the sequencing for that air scene in detail, what do we do next? So I'm a strong believer that us as a training provider and curricular curriculum developer, we need to keep a foot on the job side. Just like I like to describe our company as a teaching hospital, like we need to have that everyday ER practice to then be able to uh take a bigger picture and look at um, you know, even just this study that you mentioned, we had 50 different projects from the actual consulting life, and we use that for the uh research. But my actual day-to-day is like a lot of teamwork and then a lot of client calls. I uh work on a lot of consulting projects where someone else on our team does the modeling, and then I go over the results with the project teams to see what the what it actually means because you know we're talking U values, R values, and that's not English. So I try to convert that to English so that people can understand and can prioritize uh for the budget and for the conditions specifically. So that is one side, and now we're in a transition stage where my business partner is taking a step back from uh daily operations, so I'm I will become the CEO of the company. Oh, you got another hat to wear. Yep, yeah, or other six. So let me ask you a question.

SPEAKER_00: 17:37

You said you hired some people recently, okay? So what you're describing, my my daughter is a professional geologist and a consultant. So what you're describing is almost the position of anyone who manages consultants. Um it's somewhat universal as far as the business goes. You said you just hired a couple of people, and so one of the things that we like to do here, if we can, is to kind of like give an education to to people that might be coming out of high school or going into college and looking for something to do, some way to make an impact. And so, what kind of people did you just hire? What what what what was their background? What did they do? How did they get there?

SPEAKER_02: 18:12

So we hired a couple of modelers uh to help with the 3D modeling that is at the base of our uh Passivos Consulting. These are people that uh one of them is an environmental engineer that is doing this during school actually. Uh very smart guy, and just wanted to have some job in the industry of sustainable design. Um, and the other one is an architect, also very smart and wanted to get he graduated last year, so wanted to get the first job in architecture-related uh industry. Um, so they take out of the 3D modeling uh in SketchUp and Design pH before we do the uh number crunching in PHPP, the Passive Owes Energy Modeling Software. And then the the third person we hired recently is um a person that is in charge of uh relationship networking and sales.

SPEAKER_00: 19:08

Yeah, I think you told me about that a few months ago. Good, good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So at some point you really need somebody to do that because now you're wearing another hat that needs to be, you know, a leader, a leadership hat. Yeah, and and it's the same with just about any other kind of company. You know, you're going to eventually kick yourself upstairs because you find that's your highest best use, you know, and supporting your employees and getting the the results coordinated correctly, you know. So interesting.

SPEAKER_02: 19:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 19:36

How many employees do you have now? How many people work for you?

SPEAKER_02: 19:41

That's a good question. I think we are about seven or eight at the moment. Interesting. Give give give or take. Some of them, uh part of the time we just built a couple of people in. Uh we had a uh training program administrator in the summer, so we are growing the team. Um, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 20:03

So so so your other hats now, you said so. Those are your that's your leadership hat, and then what other hats are you wearing right now? I know you're you're still doing a lot of some of the modeling yourself and and stuff like that, especially the stuff in your research, right?

SPEAKER_02: 20:17

Well, the research is um really something that we do to fill in gaps uh in between, because even just a little piece of research that I did, very small, in in the past month or two, uh, was comparing, for example, the heat losses of through air leakage in a window to the heat losses uh through conduction in a window. And you know, if you work with the average builder, which we do, uh windows equals air leaks, and there seemed to be a complete misunderstanding of everything else. So I and I couldn't find anywhere how do the heat losses from air leakage in a window compare to the uh heat losses from therma conduction in a window. So that is a little bit of a research that I did, and it turns out that the air leakage is only 2% of the losses in a whole window compared to the heat losses that you have through the glass, through the frame, and the thermobridging between the window and the wall and between the window floor.

SPEAKER_00: 21:25

So you're talking about for a for a well-installed window or just any window? High performance window. Well-installed, high performance window, right. Because it's just because those numbers are just the opposite if you're talking about an old low performance window.

SPEAKER_02: 21:41

Correct. We are lucky that we work pretty much exclusively in the high performance and passive house arena. Even for projects that don't want to be certified, we are asked to do to apply the same science and do the same analysis as if it was certified. And so that is how we help a lot. lot of project make decisions between window package A or window package B. It may swing twenty thousand dollars but it's gonna swing also significant aspect of thermal comfort or energy performance. So um but that's some something that we did uh as piece of little piece of research and then the other part of my job is the more intricate um kind of analysis like moisture transfer between a basement wall and the ground or you know that kind of more uh intriguing and a little bit more difficult analysis.

SPEAKER_00: 22:37

We don't do that you start talking about this stuff and my my inclination is just to sit here and geek out with you and and question you and like oh really really what'd you find out so I'm gonna I'm gonna resist that because it's not going to interest most of the fucking people most of the people watching this show it's not gonna interest them. But the fact that you're there doing this and the fact that that the jobs that are available in this industry are like this. They aren't pounding nails as often as they are in science. In fact there's less and less pounding nails these days with factory built homes and and and modular and SIPs and everything else and there's more and more science um I know it is in my practice you know we we spend when a client comes to me and says well what do I expect what can I expect and I go if you really want to do this right we'll spend a year in planning and a year in building and and the more we spend in planning the less we spend in building oh and by the way it's a lot less expensive too you know it's easy to change a photon it's not that easy to change a um a a lock or a window so um yeah so let's talk about the kind of testing stuff that you do all right so so you're doing consulting you're out there you know every day looking at the projects that you're working on and so and I and I'm kind of thinking about one of the things that you came up with recently that I that I actually happened to see on LinkedIn was when a um a piece of aluminum got trimmed got put in between behind a door casing and and then brought through the door casing to the inside now most people look at that and go well it's a little piece of aluminum what the heck you know stick a piece of caulk out of that'll seal it and the the findings on them were findings on it was quite spectacular actually um yeah that is that was for a project in Idaho so chromosome 5 uh similar climate to Denver uh not terribly cold but it can get cold plus uh you know this it's all relative you know aluminum conducts heat maybe 4000 times more than insulation so even a very thin sheet of metal stuck sticking through your thermal barrier which is the connection between your um door frame and your wall that is a delicate detail to begin with plus you put this elephant of an issue which is an aluminum continuous sheet and that is something that you know there's also the practicality of the door is already installed with they just got dried in so the client the last thing that the client wants is to remove that door and cut that sheet you know so I did that analysis to kind of you know on my end that's a huge risk for molding condensation forming at that weak spot you know and when people want to work with us they don't like mold and condensation so I and that is something that based on the thermal bridging analysis we did we were able to just tell them how much to insulate the interior gem of that detail to avoid just that you know so but that is something that building science allows you to do and building code is decades away from actually getting here. 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 builder 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 linen house produced by the large national builders and even most local 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 costs of creating your high performance greenhouse yeah you know it's it's you oh God you you said the C word um I'm gonna I'm I'm I'm gonna make sure that I keep that soapbox on the other side of the room here. Yeah codes um are interesting things. Oh c word for you is code to me it's condensation. Oh well you know to a building scientist yes it's condensation but but you started saying codes and I was like yeah the between the codes getting there so that's a big that's a big part of of what part of what we do in in high performance housing is we advocate for the codes to get better than they are now not because we want to force people to do things our way because it's best practice and it's just which what what's interesting is when I have real conversations with guys that actually build and they they realize what I'm doing and they go my God you must have wealthy clients and I go no I have educated clients and I have clients that that want to be comfortable and they want to make sure things are done correctly and it's just science. And it's interesting because I come away from these meetings with foot with these guys and I'm sure you have the same experience where they kind of start you see the wheel starting to turn in their head and they go well that's also the best way to do this. And if I can do it huh if I think about it wow if I do it beforehand yeah and oh you just see the the wheel start turning and then I may see somebody six months later and they'll go hey you know I'm I'm doing continuous exterior insulation now with all my siding jobs because you know it's why not?

SPEAKER_02: 28:23

And I'm actually making a little more money with the client by the way I'm like oh you've discovered it yeah yeah I think we are uh we are used to building codes giving us a recipe of prescriptive measures um and that is by the way they are not based on actual science they are based on politics of how much one side wants to progress and the other side doesn't want to progress yeah and I mean I part of the same study that you mentioned earlier that we completed one of the most shocking or not shocking really outcomes was that the from the 2018 energy code to the 2021 energy code the average energy efficiency of buildings was improved by about seven or eight percent but from the 2021 code to to the 2024 code the improvement was actually zero so just like shuffling things shuffling different requirements but not actually making things better it's actually one percent worse so there is why is that worse what happened what what what where is that did you locate that well it's so it was windows uh are supposed to get better but not really there was there's a lot of clauses that you can uh apply an exception for windows to become better and oh I have this exception so I don't have to do that then um there are there were some more strict requirements for air ceiling probably because they saw that that was cheaper to do and then they went backward from some insulation R values at the ceiling so kind of like okay we're gonna build a little bit tighter take away from the insulation and the actual outcome is one percent worse with the 2021 energy code compared to the 2020 sorry with the 2024 is one percent worse than it with the 2021 well we both we both know where that came from but we won't we won't we won't name names here tonight um it's it's it's a shame it's interesting because I don't know I it's it's one of those things where you you look at the science and you say well the science says this and and and you in especially if you get into town meetings you know because codes are let's get this let's get this out there codes can be set nationally and internationally but they're adopted on a local level very very local level so it they can be adopted on a they're adopted on a very local level I have I have been making um friends hold on Arthur I'm gonna have to call you back in the middle of the podcast right I'll call you tomorrow okay you know I I I've occasionally met people um really interesting people um and I just kind of become friends with them.

SPEAKER_00: 31:44

I bought a filing cabinet from this guy a couple of years ago and he's um he's in his late 80s he grew up in a place upstate here and married the girl down the street he went away in the in the service and and did some things and he got an education stuff like that married a girl down the street from another farm who had never been off the street in her life married 56 years she she passed away recently and he's you know he's one of those guys he's just he he got a philosophy degree when he was in school he was a philosophy philosophy what do you call it a philosophical farmer you know a farmer philosopher and one of the really nicest guys to talk to so he calls me up occasionally and we bull we bullshit for an hour or two and and it's like it's fun um but he's also persistent which is good call three times um so um I forgot where we were at here I think we were talking about codes um so adopted codes are adopted on a on a local basis hyperlocal by town um so that a lot of times in almost every town that you're in the local builders have been there most of their lives the people that are on the town board and the planning board have been there most of their lives they know each other most of their lives and so when there's a chance to to have a better code and somebody says oh we need all exterior insulation you know one talks to the other and says yeah we don't really need insulation so let's stick with the 2018 code because it's it's easier and I can make more money oh and by the way housing prices are going up oh and high performance housing are dragging them up as well but we're gonna sell our houses for the same price as a high performance house because we can it's crazy so this is part of the mission of this podcast is to help educate people that are wanting to buy a house or maybe buy an old house and renovate it or thinking about it or planning on it so they can actually see the road ahead of them and and and where the have some bright headlights so they can see where the the obstructions are too I have a good example of a light bulb moment I had talking with a client a few years ago this client was a homeowner CPA her background she was building a house for herself in the mountains of Colorado Climazone 7 so very cold mountain town and her and I were going over the analysis that we had done and I was trying to explain the um why to get better windows and um she was you know CPA so she wanted to talk about return on investment payback blah blah blah and my dad is a CPA so I know exactly how how the brain works so like I got it and it's somebody I had a light bulb moment where like wait a sec you are comparing a passivo level window so for Clamazon 7 for Mountain Town triple pane very good frame very good insulation uh you're comparing that to a code minimum double pane poorly insulated window and she was like yeah how much energy do I save and what's the payback on the energy bills and like yeah you're thinking of that wrong you you're gonna either get the triple pane high performance window because you need it for your climate you you don't always need that but for your climate in the mountain you do need that uh New York Chicago you do need that um or you're gonna get a cold minimum double pane window you're gonna be cold what you're talking about yeah you know if if it is outside if it is I don't know 15 degrees outside if it is cold that window is so poorly insulated that you're gonna be cold what you're talking about it's a new window I'm not gonna be cold and that was a misplaced expectation right energy code is not designed around comfort is not designed to make buildings comfortable and I explained to her the science that is all the U values blah blah blah but you can calculate the interior temperature that you're going to have with window package A versus window package B.

SPEAKER_02: 36:12

And you know with a code minimum window double pane in her climate you will get 40 degrees on the inside of the of the window. So no matter what temperature you have in your room you have different temperatures you're going to feel cold. She bought high performance windows no no questions asked you know just because she understood value value which was not exactly right it's value and value is not always dollars and cents there's a lot of subjectiveness to it well if you're buying something like a window which is expensive you expect that to do a job if you're buying a wheel and you find your wheel to be square your expectation of that wheel is disappointing.

SPEAKER_00: 36:52

You know why windows have been able to hide in this this poor performance? Because they've been hiding behind radiators. Because the way we used to build houses was we put all the radiators on the outside walls under the windows with the idea that the whole cold air coming in we'd heat so that it would rise and go up over the ceiling across the room rather than the other way which was cold air coming down and going across the floor. We don't build houses like that anymore most of us well so it's very true one of my uh emails and like and I was like talking about you know regular windows and and then the person I was talking to like what you're talking about yeah regular window like oh you're talking about passive else in the yeah dude that is not normal I oh oh yeah you're right so I was just in that conversation assuming that you know why would you get anything else you know right because why and this is what I mean when I'm saying that that that the passive professionals are all up here at 30,000 feet talking to each other you know and when you talk to somebody that's that really doesn't know much and they go triple pain versus double pain you go how much can a painted glass really do? Well it's not just the painted glass it's the pain it's the coatings it's the gas it's the way it's the frame is made you know the whole thing and this is why the study the the release that I gave you about the what I think about in the shower the temperature because you you can have a triple pane window that you paid the price you pay the premium that underperforms severely and a double pane is actually better than that.

SPEAKER_02: 38:38

So so the the pane itself doesn't do anything it's the gap in between the counts and the way we design the gap is important. So that is why under the shower I think of of that.

SPEAKER_00: 38:51

Well it's also you know it it it's also the um you know it's the way the windows adjusted so if you have a badly adjusted or poorly adjusted triple pane window passive house window and a very well adjusted say high performance Marvin window the Marvin window very likely can outperform the the triple pane in that regard because I've seen triple panes that well I won't say this because if you pull that lever on a triple pane you do squeeze it down. But I've also seen some Marvin's that have some you here's the thing too what's interesting is this U values is how we measure um windows and a lot of things. And U values I'll let you explain the just between a U value and an R value and then why windows even the U value ratings on Windows really isn't everything it's cracked up to be either so did you ask me to explain I'm gonna let the teacher do it the R value the U value and the R value what's the difference? Simple difference.

SPEAKER_02: 39:56

Okay so the R value is the amount of insulation that you have in a wall for example versus a a ceiling so it's how beefy it is but that does not really tell you about the actual heat losses that go through that assembly. That is what the U value is the U value is one divided by the total R value and we care about the actual U value because of the law of diminishing returns. So you may think that and if you have 10 inches of insulation at your ceiling you you're gonna have an R40 at your ceiling. If you double that you're gonna have an R80 at your ceiling but you so you just spend twice as much in the insulation and you think or you hope that you cut those heat losses by half because you double the amount of insulation. Unfortunately physics doesn't work that way so it's actually one divided by the R value which I cannot do that on the fly by hand but the the U value for each R value there is a corresponding U value and the actual heat losses of the R80 ceiling are not half of the heat losses of the R40 ceiling they're a bit higher. So there is diminishing returns for every additional insulation that you add once you start stacking them up it does not you have some diminishing returns.

SPEAKER_00: 41:29

Now does that which is why we model houses um because the modeling actually gives us the the optimal place that we want to be that it that we we we we do it what we need to do without overexpending our resources and not invoking the law of diminishing returns and not not triggering it.

SPEAKER_02: 41:53

Correct uh and plus think of this you are when you uh when you hire a structure engineer you hire them to do a job which is your house hopefully is not going to collapse right that is why we hire structure engineers now when we do when we hire someone to do the or we or when we look at the energy performance we often go by pre-determined recipes that is the prescriptive values that a building code has or there are some grain building organizations online that give you oh in this climate you need to use an R50 or R and those are they don't actually know what your building is so it's just like going to the doctor no doctor sees you and you come up with a a prescription but nobody actually looked at you you don't actually nobody actually saw what your problem is. So you may be overly over medicated for your liver but your problem is that you have a broken wrist you know so that is the actual what's happening for the energy part you know so the whichever the energy performance goal may be the having a an energy analysis is how you actually get a diagnosis of what your building needs before you jump and jump in and start spending thousands of dollars on a window package versus insulation package I liken the the the modeling to a blood test.

SPEAKER_00: 43:20

You know you you want to you want to go and you get a want to get a blood test because you can look at something and you can say well I think it needs that but a blood test really does give you the numbers you know so you can so you can figure it out. So let me ask you a question. So I'm gonna get away from a little bit of the science stuff because I'm sure half of our audience has fallen asleep at this point. What I do want to leave you with is this and I think you completely agree with me. It's more important it's it's more today to buying a house or building a house than going to see a real estate agent in a builder. You need to actually have a consultant you need to have somebody that can do this kind of thing that can help guide you in The science. So what would that be? That would be a passive house consultant, right?

SPEAKER_02: 44:09

In my opinion, in our project, it is. And this is someone that can look at the at your needs, identify your goals first. Just like having a personal trainer, you know, you may go to the trainer saying, I want to run a marathon, or I want to lose 20 pounds, or I want to recover from an injury. Those are all goals that are all valid. The equivalent for that in the building would be meet passive house certification, doing a thorough retrofit, removing mold, you know, getting those are the goals that we have for the building, but I was just trying to draw an analogy with you know a personal trainer. And once you set those goals, that sets uh in motion the decision making. So when we do the analysis, we try to inform our clients so that they can make informed decisions for what they're spending, and that is something that is the elters don't really know builders hardly ever now.

SPEAKER_00: 45:09

Right, exactly.

SPEAKER_02: 45:10

Once in a while, so we're working, we have over a thousand alums trained, thousand builders trained across the country, you being one of them. Um so, well, that is one of the reasons why we got into education in the first place. We used to be architects and we found that working on a few awesome projects a year was not swinging the needle fast enough. So we switched, we decided intentionally to switch to providing education because A, you understand what you're doing and why, and the impact that you have on people living in those houses, and B, it's a significantly faster and better way for the donor amount uh to provide value to the market. Again, value trying to form the minds and and uh the hearts of people working.

SPEAKER_00: 45:56

It reminds me of the adage you give give a man a fish and he will eat for an evening, or you can teach a man to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime. And I I I'm I'm I'm glad you did. I'm glad you do, um because I've benefited from a lot. I I would only add one thing to that for for a um for somebody who for for somebody who wants to build or renovate in this in this way, I would add not just a passive house consultant, but get your builder and the passive house consultant together early. Um because it will benefit both of you. Even if you don't have a passive house builder like we are, if you have a builder, you've chosen him because he's willing to do what you want to do, but he's going to learn from the passive house consultant. And you know what? The passive house consultant's gonna learn from him too. Um because builders are always sensitive to conditions, budgets, things like that. Whereas sometimes consultants aren't always. Um so it's uh it's a good idea if you're building a passive house that that's what you want to do. So let me ask you another question here, and I'm I'm gonna basically I'm gonna kind of go off, like I said, go off the reservation a little bit. I have the people that I've met in this industry that are passionate like you are tend to be really creative people. And so obviously, your early creativity, your creativity found its way into architecture. What did you do something creative before that as a kid? What did you like to draw? Did you like to build models? What did you do?

SPEAKER_02: 47:33

So I something that maybe no one in the industry knows is that I used to do a ton of travel sketches. Travels, travel sketches? So really, yeah, yeah. So yeah, and so on Flickr, I am that old. There's a whole section, I have a whole page. Flickr is old. So dude, you're talking to somebody from the LySpace generation.

SPEAKER_00: 47:57

Come on.

SPEAKER_02: 47:58

Yeah, yeah, totally. So on Flickr, you can look for my name and Vicovonila. On Flickr, you will find a ton of trouble sketches which I used to do.

SPEAKER_00: 48:07

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_02: 48:08

Um, yeah, and literally, yeah, literally, you know, back back in my early 20s, back back into Europe. And granted, that for my town, Austria was three hours away, Czech Republic was five hours away, so it's pretty close. But I would go do long weekends with my friends, and I I would park it in a corner of a square sketching, and I would meet them at the brewery later on after I was done. So that is something I did pretty consistently for a good 10-12 years. Do you do it at the end of the day? Now, now I I no, I don't have to. Have you sketched your kid?

SPEAKER_00: 48:46

Oh, really? No. So what do you do for so what do you do for creativity now? So people that are creative don't just stop being creative, they do something, even if they're really busy company owners like you are. What do you do now?

SPEAKER_02: 48:59

The research part is where I geek out and where I'm creative. So that study that I mentioned, the study that I mentioned in the future for the design temperature is how I geek out right now, and I I enjoy that more than sketching, honestly. At least in this stage of my life. So uh yeah, I like that. And um yeah, so that that that is how I am treated.

SPEAKER_00: 49:23

I've not met a person in this business that's like nine to five and don't talk to me afterwards kind of person. There uh everybody I know in this business is obsessed. You know, obsessed with something or other, you know. Um, so it's it's uh you know, Ken Levinson. I talked to him last uh last week, and he's gonna be the next right before you, he's coming up as a once we get it edited. And I'm like, Ken, what what's your passion project right now? He goes, I go and I protest and I get uh with climate panic and I get arrested. And I'm like, Ken, Ken, you bad boy. And it's like, who knows, who knows this about Ken Levinson? I mean, everybody knows Ken. He's like a really mild-mannered Clark Kent kind of guy, you know.

SPEAKER_02: 50:06

Um I mean, I did see him in handcuffs once, but I thought it was something I'm not even gonna go there, I'll be honest with you.

SPEAKER_00: 50:18

Um just kidding, Ken. Um I love it, I love it. So let me ask you a question, another question here. Where do you see where do you see high performance housing going? And as far especially with the general public, where do you see it going in the next five years, maybe ten years? Where do you see it happen? What do you see happening here?

SPEAKER_02: 50:43

So I see that we see we see pockets forming where you know there's some couple of pioneers working on a couple of projects, and then you get local interest groups involved, you know, uh with doing tours and getting that uh awareness out, and that snow slowly snowballs into it's a very flat-field snowball, right? Very slowly a little bit of pushing involved. Yeah, yeah, but you know, I was I was just uh working on a map for us to use internally to grow our our network. We do we do a lot of in-person training in different cities of the of the country, so we're trying to grow our local networks to support that. But also in doing the training, we try to build communities. You know, if we if we start adding, oh, now we we have a workshop with 20-30 people, there's 20 or 30 more people locally that are interested in pushing this and working together. So once we in Denver, we came, we moved to Denver in 2017, and there was no passive houses in Metro Denver, there was one in the mountains, and now there's like dozens of projects that you can actually take people to and schools to, and you can start working with hey AIA of Denver Metro, let's do a tour of this uh six, seven, ten buildings that you can go visit. So my hope is that this is growing to into a more rooted awareness, which then leads to cities and states having funding for workforce development and uh green building uh code that allows for fast tracking. So there's a lot I see a lot of momentum, it's still by pocket. There's a lot of uh going on in Minnesota, in Pennsylvania, New York, Denver is catching up. Um so Colorado is catching up, but you know, this leads uh the conversation across the country, and then you know, more conservative areas are slower to follow.

SPEAKER_00: 52:47

Um, but this is how they say one of our listeners, I I think is one of our senators' assistants. So if if I I'm gonna ask you to to help me out a little here, what kind of money does Colorado have for passive house? Uh there's there's power from your power company, the state, etc. etc. What kind of benefits can you get if you are remodeling a house with Panath House? How much money is there generally?

SPEAKER_02: 53:13

So this is I'm not the one at the company that uh addresses um policy and incentives, so I'm my number may be off. The state of Colorado has 10 grand for you to uh purchase a heat pump or a heat pump water heater or to switch your cooktop to electric uh moving away from gas. That is one incentive at the state level. Um, again, if you Google the information on the uh Colorado state, you're gonna find better information. Then there is there are incentives from the local utility company for new builds in their um in their area where they supply electricity, and that is for any new build. We had a big fire where Excel provided substantial incentives for the rebuild if you were to go passive house. Like we're talking$37,000. Amazing on top of the that's a lot. Yeah, this is thank you so much. Uh Rob Buchanan was at Excel was the main uh author behind this, so we need more of uh people to talk about the colour. So are you are you listening?

SPEAKER_00: 54:24

Are you listening, New York power companies? Because Colorado's eating our lunch here. And uh state incentives too that you're eating our lunch. We're not getting anywhere near what you guys are getting.

SPEAKER_02: 54:37

Yeah, yeah. And that that is, you know, if you want to swing the needle and and make a difference, that is that is it. Uh other ways to do that, I was just told that uh I think Minnesota may have passed a an incentive um so that if a builder takes high performance of pass or passive house uh training that is fully covered, just like I think Massachusetts does the same.

SPEAKER_00: 55:02

Yeah, that's a big thing because it really does put it on the map because now all of a sudden you're spreading it in the people that actually do it. You know, it makes a huge difference.

SPEAKER_02: 55:12

One one big obstacle obstacle that we see in the industry is that it's a conservative industry because it's very easy to make mistakes that cost thousands of dollars. And so and so I completely understand builders that don't want to change because the the liability of not knowing what you're doing, and oftentimes if they've never done uh a high performance or passive house project, then they tend to overcharge or quote too high because they don't know, and so they're gonna protect themselves with assuming some extra cost, you know. And a lot of the what the training does is we work with uh off-the-shelf products, we try to stick to the what is already available at your lowest or home depot so that you don't have to retrain uh your entire crew. Um and just you know, clearly there's better and better and better options like uh AAC versus penalized system modular, but really we try to focus on any project. We do a lot of site-build projects, and a lot of time it's about uh agreeing with the team about sequencing, about using products in a timely manner, and we mostly build we mostly work with builders that have never done a project of this level before. We are even in our consulting, we take on what we call through our pilot program, we take on projects with builders that have never done anything like this.

SPEAKER_00: 56:46

So, do you find yourself doing a lot of training with that when you take on a builder that's never done it? I mean it's got to be part of the budget, right?

SPEAKER_02: 56:52

Well, it is. Our consulting is basically an extension of our training program. That is, we focused on, so if you if you Google now, you'll find a bajillion different perfect wall assemblies, and everybody on the internet have their opinion about the wall assembly that is best and best. But who cares? What is actually making a difference is having the details developed so you actually know when to tell your framework to air seal what and you know move on with that, you know. So we we do not do custom projects pretty much because uh we want to focus on training and providing guidance to our abilities. Oh interesting.

SPEAKER_00: 57:33

So you're not you're not you're not doing any kind of like like unique wall assembly stuff stuff like that. You're trying to stick with more traditional assembly methods, more traditional construction methods.

SPEAKER_02: 57:43

Yeah, we if an actor came to us and like, oh, we designed this wall assembly, that's not for us. You know, uh that's that's we we are trying to scale the implementation of Passives. Um even for projects that are not pursuing certification, but I don't want to spend time mingling with oh, I got a zip R, I got this amazing product from Canada, like I don't care. I want I want to be there with the information needed when you need it for the sequencing of your project. You know, that to me, the conversation online that I see on Instagram and whatnot about the perfect wall assembly, that's kind of a waste of time in my mind. Like this, you can get you can get to very high performance with a bajillion different type of wall assemblies, not one is better than the other. We're just trying to focus on streamlining and helping build us a lot of it.

SPEAKER_00: 58:37

So we're kind of dragging you out of your comfort spot with this AAC system that we're doing, aren't we?

SPEAKER_02: 58:42

Well, it's actually taking back to my roots, to be honest. Back home, I did uh may serve dude. I I was brought up at bricks and mortar literally. My like well, my grandfather was a carpenter in Milan, you know. Carpenter means concrete formwork carpenter. So like, and he ended up uh being a site supervisor for you know residential high-rising and stuff like that. Uh, but my entire background is immensely and concrete. So uh we use the first time we used AAC was 2009, 2010.

SPEAKER_00: 59:20

Well God, it was invented in 1923. It's been around for a while for sure.

SPEAKER_02: 59:25

Well, I have not been on that.

SPEAKER_00: 59:27

Well, no, neither have I, to be completely honest with you. I may look that way, but I'm not. Um but it's been around for a long, long time. And it's been used, honestly, in Europe, especially Eastern Europe and Asia for a long, long time. Um, in fact, in some jurisdictions in Europe, you can build with a 12-inch, I think a 12, maybe a 16-inch block and have no other insulation whatsoever. Um so it's it's interesting. Well, that's interesting. I'll keep that in mind then when when I start hitting you with these challenges. Um because I'm gonna hit you with some challenges.

SPEAKER_02: 59:58

So I yeah, basically it's fun. It's like it's going back to my loose, honestly.

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:04

Uh so have you ever done a masonry on the inside of a wall and not the outside? Have you ever done that? What we're doing right now, we're kind of flipped the we've kind of flipped it around.

SPEAKER_02: 1:00:15

Well, back home, and I'm from Italy, Southern Europe, uh you have the you have the fired clay bricks that are your wall that has basically no insulated properties. You just it can be load-bearing, but with the seismic regulation that is probably not smart. You probably end up with a concrete frame, and then on the outside of that, you have an E-Fi system with your big insulation boards, and then your stuck on the side. So your mastery, that's that's I was a baby little act with my pencil. I would go around, and that that is what I studied. That is, we did not just what I studied, our first eight years as a company, email, we were liked it, and that is how we used to design buildings. Wow. Interesting. Yeah, I have plenty of pictures. Uh, in fact, some of the photos in our curriculum, those are our projects from back.

SPEAKER_00: 1:01:13

Oh, really? Yeah, I don't know which ones you're talking about, too. So I'll tell you what, I'm I'm gonna we're gonna wrap this up because I don't want to take your time more than I have to. It's late, it's late here. Um, and I wanted to ask you one more question, okay? If there was one thing that you wanted the general public to be informed about, to know about right now, what would it be? One thing that you would want the general person on the street that was thinking about building or buying a house or renovating one, what would you want them to know about right now?

SPEAKER_02: 1:01:48

Keep in mind that if you don't ask questions and if you just build to the code minimum level, your house is gonna be most likely unhealthy and uncomfortable. That is based on science. Like we live right now in a house built less than 10 years ago to code minimum. We are in the process of building our own passive house, but that's a few years out. Indoral quality is very poor on radon, uh CO2, particular method, pretty much every which way you look at it, indoor quality is very low, it's very uncomfortable. And so keep that in mind there may be an expectation that buying a new house, just like the new window that I mentioned earlier, that you're going to be comfortable and that you're gonna have a healthy with building with good indoor quality, and that expectation is wildly misplaced. In other words, we can do better now. That is we can do better. We can do a hundred times better, and that is not an overstatement. God, it reminds me of that.

SPEAKER_00: 1:02:56

Remember the old six million dollar man? Were you watched? Did you get that kind of stuff over there? You know, we can rebuild him, we can do better. Yeah, we can. It's that's the thing. Yeah. And so, you know, the six million dollar man really is our housing. Because half of our energy goes into building, maintaining, and heating our housing, our buildings.

SPEAKER_02: 1:03:16

It's not just the energy, it's about the air that we breathe. Is it's very poor in even in the even in the top-notch energy code and uh residential code, very poor air quality, and very um like in the study that we did, the California Tatua 24 as a code was looking better than the others just because it only has California-based projects. So the climate is milder. That energy code is still very poorly performing, just by chance, the exterior conditions were better. So there's an expectation that you may buy or build a new house, and that is gonna be energy, not as energy efficient, also, that's gonna be healthy and comfortable, and if you're sticking to code minimum level, do not expect that. That is a misplaced expectation.

SPEAKER_00: 1:04:10

We've been talking with Enrico Bonalari at Emu Systems, and I'm going to put in the page in the show notes and on the website um some uh contact information for Enrico at EMU. And if you are interested in this kind of education going into this kind of career, I highly recommend that you give them a call and and start there and and a few other places around the internet. We will publish also any um websites of interest that Enrico might suggest. Um, so he has his own little imprint on that uh page, because I'm sure Enrico always has a lot to say and a lot to teach, and that's one of the greatest things about him. Enrico, thank you so much for your time today. Looking forward to uh getting this on the air and getting your word out.

SPEAKER_02: 1:05:03

Thank you so much for having me. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00: 1:05:09

Thanks for listening. If you liked 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.