Materials, Mood, and Heatproof Living

In this episode, Lyssia sits down with Tim Sperry, a material scientist, inventor, and entrepreneur rethinking how the built environment affects the way we live. From developing the first air purifying paint to creating heat reflective coatings through his company CoolCoated, Tim has spent his career asking a question most people in the industry never think to ask: what if the materials around us are doing more harm than we realize?

The conversation breaks down why heat is one of the most overlooked forces shaping how we feel at home and in public spaces, how the colors and materials on the outside of a building quietly affect the temperature inside, and why so much of what we build is designed for aesthetics rather than human comfort. They explore the urban heat island effect and why cities are often far hotter than the weather suggests, how cool roofs went from a niche idea to a $20 billion industry almost overnight, what the average homeowner can actually do to make their space cooler and more livable, and why the conversation around wellness has never properly included the thermal experience of a space.

Tim also shares what years of researching passive cooling technologies has taught him about the relationship between heat, behavior, and the way we connect with the people and places around us, and the one change he would make to how we build if he could start over.

By the end of this episode, you may realize that a lot of what you have written off as the weather, your mood, or just the way things are, is actually a design problem — and one that is more solvable than you think. Not because the technology is out of reach, but because nobody ever told you it existed.

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Transcript

Record Heat And Built World

Tim Sperry 0:00

2024 was the hottest year in recorded human history. As it is progressively getting hotter, this issue is going to become a bigger and bigger problem.

Lyssia Katan 0:07

What do you think people misunderstand about cooling buildings?

Tim Sperry 0:11

The AHA moment came from the cool roofs moment, because cool roofs went from a zero dollar industry effectively in 2000 to a $20 billion industry 10 years later because it made so much sense.

Lyssia Katan 0:25

Is there any kind of proof of how heat does affect our moods, our stress levels, our sleep, or even just our ability to like interact with others?

Tim Sperry 0:35

As you remember things via smell, via touch, via taste, via whatever, you'll remember those experiences too. Like it's a pretty big deal. We're not built to be in oven-like temperatures.

Lyssia Katan 0:46

Can you tell me a little bit more about the urban heat island effect that I hear about? What is it and do we need to be worried about it?

Tim Sperry 0:52

The urban heat island effect is.

Lyssia Katan 1:15

From carbon-absorbing cement to heat reflective coatings, Tim's work changes how spaces feel. In this episode, we break down how heat is quietly shaping your mood, your energy, and your everyday experience. From the urban heat island effect to the materials and colors in your home, Tim explains why we've been designing for aesthetics over function and what we can do differently. By the end of this episode, you may realize it's not just the weather making you moody, it's also your walls. Let's get into it. Hello, Tim. Welcome to the show.

Tim Sperry 1:49

Thank you for having me. Pleasure to be here.

Lyssia Katan 1:51

I'm so excited to have you on. Tim Sperry is a material scientist, inventor, and entrepreneur focused on rethinking the future of the built environment. His work explores how materials can actively improve the way we live from carbon-absorbing cement technologies to heat reflective coatings. Tim is actively changing the world, and I am so grateful to be able to chat with you. Tim, welcome to Room to Think.

Tim Sperry 2:16

Tim such a pleasure to be here. And uh I love the platform and specifically align and resonate with me because my father's a psychiatrist and a psychologist. So as a child, I was exposed to hours and hours and hours of tapes of a lot of stuff within this kind of realm. So I inherently have uh built-in knowledge of some of this stuff. Um, so I'm excited to see what we can talk about today.

Lyssia Katan 2:40

Tim, you're honestly such a perfect guest to have on the show because of your dad's many books that he's written in in psychology, and also because we've worked together and you help develop our carbon absorbing cement tiles, which are just the first of their kind in the industry. And uh, and I've just been so grateful to get to work with you. So I'm happy to have you on the show and talk about what you're working on next.

Tim Sperry 3:06

Awesome. Always a pleasure. Thank

Tim’s Mission In Material Science

Tim Sperry 3:08

you.

Lyssia Katan 3:08

So, starting at the top, for anyone who doesn't know how cool you are, what do you do and how do you do it?

Tim Sperry 3:15

Ever since I was a kid, I just loved inventing things, developing things. Um, and I've always had an inherent love and passion for nature. So I just combined kind of all of the elements of myself and become passionate about finding these new solutions that we use every day, but can technically instead of hurt the environment or hurt you know, society and the people in it, actually create a positive benefit. Anything that creates a positive impact, I dive down a lot of rabbit holes and do a lot of research into uh these different materials, mostly made here, uh, you know, made on earth and natural materials that we can use for these specific properties. So I try to really combine as many natural materials as possible to do environmental and social good.

Lyssia Katan 4:06

Was there a space or a material that really first got you thinking or an experience, maybe?

Tim Sperry 4:12

Yeah, actually the one real kind of standout was as I was doing a lot of research on creating the first air purifying paint, which was with uh my first company uh with functional coatings called Smog Armor, I created an air purifying paint. Um, think of any paint you would paint the inside or outside of your house with, and had these active materials that would attract like a magnet and absorb different volatile organic compounds, odors, essentially pollution into the paint and hold them and effectively store them permanently unless your house burnt down and then they would release. Uh, but that one material that really drove everything uh was called zeolites. And that zeolite is something that NASA used on the International Space Station, on their Apollo space program, to sequester the CO2 that the astronauts would breathe, because uh you're not allowed to open up a window in space. I don't think, I mean, you probably could, but you probably don't want to. And um, that was the first kind of thing that's you know, got me really intrigued that there's this material, like so small amount of this material, it had this massive adsorption surface area. I think one gram has the absorption surface area of a couple of football fields worth of uh space. And that got me really excited to say, okay, well, what else is out there? What else can we do? And that really kind of set me off on this path of developing and creating all these other technologies with other minerals, materials, and other things that uh has uh positive impact and do what they want me to do, do what I want them to do.

Lyssia Katan 5:49

You spent years studying materials at a microscopic level. What first made you realize that heat might be one of the biggest invisible factors affecting how we live?

Tim Sperry 6:00

Yeah, I mean, I think it kind of goes back to when I was a kid and I had a heat stroke running around, and I was living in Wisconsin, not a very well-known tropical place for you know extreme heat,

Zeolites And The Power Of Coatings

Tim Sperry 6:12

uh, but it was hot enough where running around as a kid in the middle of July on a 4th of July party, I passed out in kind of mid-run, mid-stride. And when I came to, I was in a bath full of ice in a neighbor in the uh house at the party we were at for 4th of July, uh, which was quite a ways away. So uh that always stuck with me. And then moving down to South Florida, of course, it's really hot here, as you know, because you're you're down here now too. And because of that, I've seen it getting hotter and hotter. 2024 was the hottest year in recorded human history. As it is progressively getting hotter, this issue is going to become a bigger and bigger issue and problem. Uh, and then when I really dove down the rabbit hole on the kind of psychological space, I realized that, you know, even though we're all accepting of weather and nature is what it is, and if we live in a city, it's a little hotter because of the built environment there. We're accepting of it, but it actually does have a big impact on us from mental, physical, and other standpoints. So as it's getting hotter, I just really see this as adaptation, but also just necessities. And then spending some time in the Middle East with my last technology, we were going around and uh doing a lot of different uh shows as well as meeting with a lot of different customers. It's even hotter there, but a different type of hot than it is in South Florida. And, you know, that's not getting any cooler anytime soon. So I just really think that there's a big need for this adaptation. So we don't, you know, get physically sick, but also psychologically, this impacts how we interact with our homes. And then more importantly, for a business owner, this can impact how your customer perceives you and also how good your business may or may not do as a result of some of these factors.

How Heat Shapes Mood

Lyssia Katan 8:09

It's funny you mentioned the Middle East because I have a theory that everyone there, or majority, not everyone, is always so hot-headed because it's so hot there and just so quick to like ignite. Is there any kind of proof of how heat does affect our moods, our stress levels, our sleep, or even just our ability to like interact with others?

Tim Sperry 8:32

Yeah, I I mean it certainly does. Like I think it's easy for someone, just like when you're hangry, you know, this this gives you this, you know, way of not being yourself or just kind of getting short, short-witted and just kind of being more hot-headed. I I absolutely think that's the case. You know, for us down here, if we're not running from air conditioning to air conditioning spaces from our cars to buildings and we're stuck outside, you know, are we very comfortable like in a, you know, even in an informal setting where we're meeting other people and we're like sweating through our clothes, like, hey, this is so comfortable, it's just so good. And it's like, really, you know, like it just I think you get a just a different mental, you know, you're in a different psychological position, different mental position as you're interacting with people. So even those conversations and those relationships could have some type of stigma, could have some type of, you know, mental um recall. And as you, you know, remember things via smell, via touch, via taste, via whatever, you'll remember those experiences too. Like, oh man, I met this person and I was like sweating and I like had a heat stroke later on that day, like as a bad person to meet, or just a bad situation to be in. You know, so I I do think that there is truly an impact on that too. And also the other part of this is that when things get really hot around the built environment, and we're talking about like paint and we're talking about like exteriors of buildings, not every building is white, like in Santorini with a blue top. You have, you know, all these different colors. Some people pick colors because they aesthetically like them, but those colors could be absorbing way more heat and creating way more radiation of heat than this urban heat island effect. So even the different colors, as I'm I'm sure you guys have talked about this before, how colors, you know, in all sorts and all ways impact you. But the colors can impact you on that side of it as well. But also because of the colors and the colors and the tints and things that they have in them, they can actually get even hotter than another color that's, you know, at your neighbor's house or at the neighboring business. So I think that also creates an impact subconsciously for you

Designing For Looks Over Comfort

Tim Sperry 10:47

as well.

Lyssia Katan 10:47

Going into those colors, like focusing on that, do you think that architecture today is focused more on aesthetics than it is about human well-being?

Tim Sperry 10:56

I do. Uh, I think there's probably some architects out there that are thinking to the contrary, but they just want the coolest looking, coolest feeling, you know, property or building or whatever for you. So let's, you know, match those colors up and do it that way. So I think a lot of this is not for function as as much as it should be. And I think that's where things are going to change. And I think that's where people are going to become more aware. Because again, the whole idea, and when we first talked about doing this, it made me realize even more that I've been so unconscious and unaware of a lot of these things. Like, oh, when I'm walking on Blacktop in Arizona and Phoenix when I'm visiting my buddies, and my souls are melting to the actual asphalt because it's so hot, like that takes a lot out of you. It makes you tired. You know, you get burnt down. Like, there's there's all these different things that happen. I think there's really a big impact that we're allowing to happen because we've always done it that way. And it's just that's the way it is. And a lot of those things are going to start changing.

Cool Roofs That Pay For Themselves

Tim Sperry 12:00

And one of the big pieces that I think most people could relate to if they know about it, they're called cool roofs. Have you heard of cool roofs before? A cool roof is effectively generally on commercial buildings, but are on homes now too. They're like bright white roofs. So, like when you fly into any city and you see these big warehouses all over the place, 90 something percent of them are going to be like stark, bright white. And that's because they're made with this silicone-based or acrylic-based roof coating that's very reflective of the sun. And it actually reflects most of the heat back, doesn't allow for as much absorption of that heat. And it was done out of function because back before 2000, cool roofs were unknown and pretty much not a thing. It was kind of a novel idea. And most rooftops, if you flew into a city then, were all black asphalt roofs or gravel roofs. And then what they realized is a building owner that's paying 100 grand plus a year or even a month for a huge fulfillment facility for air conditioning, you could reduce that 10, 20, 30, 40%. That's meaningful. Like that's a lot of money. So effectively turning your roof white created enough savings where it paid for itself and saved you more money, you know, in an ongoing basis. And all because of that dark color doing more harm than it was doing good, absorbing all that heat and yeah, making it super hot.

Lyssia Katan 13:30

That's fascinating. Whenever I I touch down on an airplane, I always notice that all the roofs are all white. But but is it that we just didn't have as much space? Like not space in that sense, but like we didn't have data centers to the extent that we do today, or like Amazon fulfillment centers.

Tim Sperry 13:51

That was part of it. But the other part that the uh data uh points to is that roofers have just always done it that way. So if, you know, say your warehouse up north, you guys were looking to redo your roof. If you didn't specify to the roofer, hey, we want a cool roof, we want to make sure that it's, you know, as white as possible, use this brand of cool roof coatings, they would put in before 2000, they would just throw gravel, they would throw an asphalt roof on there, it would be black, it would be dark. And in most places still up north, most roofs are those uh shingle asphalt tile roofs, and they're all like a dark gray or a black. And that's you know, to maintain a good look and weather-wise, uh it it holds up. And in wintertime, it actually has a positive effect because it warms your house versus cools your house, which is actually beneficial. But down here in South Florida, if you had that, you would just be heating your house all year long and it would suck. You know, your air conditioning and your electric bill would be very high and you know, not very nice looking. So a lot of it was just that the industry had always done it that way before. And that's how, you know, to your point, are the architects doing this for form or function? You know, that that's pretty much the case. Everyone's doing this because it's an aesthetic thing, not a function thing, right?

Lyssia Katan 15:05

Going into cool-coded, what you're working on now, was there something that surprised you about developing heat reflective coatings for buildings? And and maybe you can tell our listeners what cool-coded

Cool Coated For Cooler Colors

Lyssia Katan 15:17

is.

Tim Sperry 15:17

Sure. Yeah. So um the AHA moment came from the cool roofs moment, because cool roofs went from a zero dollar industry effectively in 2000 to a $20 billion industry 10 years later. Like a huge industry just like sprouted up overnight because it made so much sense. Um, I recently bought a home here in South Florida, and I have a, you know, a wall that certainly faces the sun all day long. And our electricity bill, when the sun started, you know, to shift, you know, one way to the other, changed. And also in the summertime it changed as well. Uh and white paint is always kind of the you know gold star for keeping things cool. So you can anyone can paint their house white, and it's probably the most helpful and coolest color you can have. Uh, but again, not everyone wants their house as white. And I think it would be boring if every single house and every community was all white, anyways. So cool coated was really created so that we could make any other colors cooler as well. But then you can actually make white even cooler than that. And just a simple additive into the paint that they're already using that you're already going to paint with, you add this little, looks like a five-hour energy shot into your paint, mix it in, put it on the wall, and it helps cool your exterior walls and also cools and reduces the amount of heat that goes inside to your home, reducing the potentially reducing the energy cost for cooling. So this was really meant to kind of mimic the cool roofs to keep things cooler around there. So I love to be outside. And if you're outside in South Florida and the sun's hitting you, or even if you have an umbrella and the sun's hitting the walls around you, you have this huge oven effect where the ground and everything is radiating heat at you. So it may be 90 degrees outside, um, but your ground or your walls are radiating 140, 150, 160 degree heat at you. It's a pretty big deal. You know, we're not built to be in oven-like temperatures, uh, you know, and that's that's really part of it is to say, hey, like, let's help reduce the electricity needs, because that's also a big thing with your, to your point, data centers that are coming up, taking all the water and electricity uh that we have available, more or less. So let's reduce the amount of electricity and let's lower our energy uh bills, as well as let's make our homes more comfortable to be in and around. I love to be outside. Uh, I hate to be inside if I don't need to be inside. Uh, but a lot of times it's just so hot and humid you're uncomfortable to be outside.

Lyssia Katan 17:58

Can

Urban Heat Island Health Risks

Lyssia Katan 17:59

you tell me a little bit more about the urban heat island effect that I hear about? What is it and do we need to be worried about it?

Tim Sperry 18:05

Yeah, so yes, you do need to be worried about this. Uh the urban heat island effect, it really there's there's kind of a scale and it really comes from the built-in environment, especially if you live in an urban area that's really well developed, that doesn't have a lot of vegetation, a lot of trees that are around to create shade. So grass, trees, other organic materials, they absorb a lot of the heat. They don't radiate a lot of the heat, they reflect a lot of the UV rays and sunlight as well. So they're actually really good at naturally keeping the areas cool. So let's say it's 85 degrees outside, your grass and your trees may absorb a little bit more heat and be radiating about 90 degrees. So you're still relatively close to what ambient temperature is. And that's kind of what you want. The urban heat island effect is when that heat, those that sunlight and the heat is absorbed into concrete, asphalt roads, concrete buildings, um, you know, wood frame structures, like anything that's built environment paints, coatings that are on top of things. Um, you know, you have your large high-rise buildings. They're not only uh absorbing heat, they're radiating a lot of heat, and it can be 10, 15, 20 degrees hotter than ambient air, and even hotter than that. It can, you know, my I have a um I have a teak wood floor on my back patio, and it was an 85 degree day, they were absorbing and radiating at 140 degrees. So that's really hot. You know, this this can cause problems for young kids. Um, you don't want to have kids, you know, with heat strokes, older adults, uh, really anyone. I mean, you can you can be dehydrated, you can get dizzy, you could pass out, like if you have pre-existing health conditions, like this is not good for that at all. Um, there's there's significant studies on the heat waves that went through Europe, killing tens of thousands of people. You know, these things happen and they happen really quickly, and people aren't prepared for them. They just don't think about it. They're like, oh, it's 100 degrees outside. That's it sucks, but it's you know not that bad. Well, if you're getting the urban heat island effect going up to 120, 130, 140, it can be dangerous. It can be really dangerous for you on a health basis.

Breaking The Air Conditioning Loop

Lyssia Katan 20:29

Do you think we're going about this problem all wrong traditionally? Like, are we just looking at more air conditioning units or more ways to cool off? Like, are we working backwards or because air conditionings do create air conditioning units create more heat, right? It's like we're working harder to stay cooler.

Tim Sperry 20:51

That's I I think you're absolutely right. I I think in a lot of cases we're we're going around this the wrong way, or we're just not doing this as thoughtfully and as as well as we could for the technology that we have. Take, for instance, you know, a building that's got a bunch of air conditioning units that are everywhere, they are radiating more heat. So it's actually exasperating the other air conditioning units, which is crazy, you know, creating more of a strain, more of a need for that HVAC system to keep running and you know, it's just like a it's a negative loop. And that makes it hotter, that creates more CO2, that traps more heat, creates more heat. Like again, like this is just like a really bad vicious cycle that's going the wrong direction, you know, versus some of the things that some architects that are specifically looking to solve these issues with creating airflow, creating, you know, lower windows or different types of windows and the south facing and on the west facing walls, and you know, all these other things that you can be doing that can actually help this without having to revert to more electricity. And more air conditioning. So I do think, you know, cool-coated as an example, using paints that are going to reflect more heat, not create that urban heat island effect, or at least minimize that urban heat island effect, are the answers that we need to be and the solutions that we need to be using.

Lyssia Katan 22:17

Yeah. I mean, we had uh architect, Dustin Ents, on the show, and he uh designs and builds houses out in Utah. And of course, they're dealing with the heat issue. And he was telling me about a building, Frank Lloyd Wright's summer home, that actually was designed in a way where he studied the wind patterns and one is this is before air conditioning and was able to make sure that the wind coming in would go over, sweep over the pond and come into his window in a in the perfect place where he's working. So, like all of this was taken into consideration, where today, like we, you know, like we spoke about, you just slap an air conditioning unit on it and you're good. But very often we're not thinking about it the right way. What do you think people misunderstand about cooling buildings?

Tim Sperry 23:06

Again, I really just think this is done more for aesthetics and more for a home builder that's trying to jam as many homes in there as possible. Let's say if you stagged each property to be slightly offset and you have these, you know, specific wind patterns that would help cool all of the buildings down, but you're using more land to do that. Is a developer going to want to make less money because they want to help someone lower their electricity bill? Probably not. You know, that I think that has a lot to do with it. Your one-offs are one thing. But as you're looking at like mass construction, large developers, you know, people that are driven more by money than other things, um, or just with a mandate to make the most money or squeeze the most houses or the most apartments in there. Or, you know, down here, we love our views, we love big windows. If your house is just all windows, like you're gonna get hot. And, you know, there's just these things that you have to deal with because you want things a certain way. And look, I think ultimately the optimal way to build a house or to build a building or to do other things may not be as aesthetically appealing to those people that want to live in it. So there's probably a healthy balance because I wouldn't want to live in like a windowless like wind tunnel that's you know just keeping me cool. I'd want to live in something where I'm like, okay, I can see the ocean view, I can see trees, like it's bright, it's light, it's not, you know, dark and damping. And you know, I I think though there's there's gonna be also a happy medium and a trade-off there because the whole psychology piece of it too, that makes a big impact on it as well. You know, I uh it just made me think of that show silo. Have you seen the show Silo on Apple TV?

Lyssia Katan 24:46

No, I haven't.

Tim Sperry 24:47

It's it's really good. Um, my wife and I love it. And it's about this effectively, these generations of people have lived in these silos underground, and these silos are self-sustaining. And most people had forgotten how they even got down there or like the story before it, but like the the atmosphere and the surface of the earth is uninhabitable. So everyone has to live in these silos to live. And they're effectively in there, but there's no natural sunlight. You know, there's there's screens of like stuff that's going on or whatever. But you're effectively in this like underground bunker. Like, how bad would that be? You know, heath would start falling out, you'd get rickets, you know, there'd be all these like different things going on that would be bad too. So again, the kind of the extreme other side of this was, you know, we can't all live in bunkers or have windowless buildings that just create good airflow. Um, but I think there is gonna be, you know, there's gonna be an optimal way to build that's gonna, you know, balance out all sides of this.

Lyssia Katan 25:48

Yeah. And based on the conversations that we've been having on this podcast, living in a building with no windows and or in a silo underground would be detrimental to our mental well-being. We need to see nature, we need to see sun. It that's what keeps us happy, that's what keeps us uh us as moving. And and and I'm curious how much of the heat problem is going to be impacting us on a social level? Does it prevent us from wanting to throw a barbecue or invite the neighbors or go outside to play?

Tim Sperry 26:20

I I think to an extent, yes. So, you know, when I was doing a little bit of research, because you know, I I do have awareness of these things here, you know, being in South Florida, because we are impacted by extreme heat for quite a few months out of the year, but you definitely get more rushed, you're more irritated, there's physical uncomfortableness, you know, you become less patient, um, less willing to hang out and and just be outside. Um, and just I I think there's there's also, it was also saying there's less connection, less connected um to like a brand. Uh, if uh if a company has, you know, you're in like a, you know, say for instance, you're in like a brand new blacktop parking lot and like you get out of your car and you just feel this like rush of heat, like that's your first experience before you go in. Like, you know, everyone talks about unboxing as an experience, but when you go into a store or mall or something, your first experience is when you step out of the car and you're about to walk in, like, or how you even got there, the traffic on the way there. So there's a lot of things that do impact you. Um I think there's there's really a lot of psychological triggers and and levers that are at work in all these instances with this extreme heat that most people just kind of write it off as, well, it's always been that way, or that's just the way it is. It could be better, is is effectively what we're working on at Cool Coated. And and what I like to uh tinker with when it comes to new inventions and technologies for passive cooling technology, I call it, uh, which is effectively what it is, uh, materials that help cool things down naturally. And, you know, Frank Lloyd Wright was right. You know, you can do these things that, you know, have the balance of both worlds and that, you know, you get a brush of I would love to have a cool breeze coming off the lake or the ocean coming into the place where I work, like and natural air conditioning. How cool would that be? Like, I don't like to be that's the other thing for me. I love to be outside so much. And I think you know, you've been on many Zoom calls with me. And I was gonna take this one outside too, because I usually take most of my Zoom calls outside, even when it's like 90 and I'm sweating through my shirt. But I was like, well, you know, sweating through my shirt on a podcast where you can see me is probably not the best look. So um I like to be outside. I don't want to be inside. So if I could have, you know, hear the ocean and the waves crashing and get the breeze and smell that and have those, you know, you know, impacts, like I would, I would experience, I would love to experience that more than just sitting inside and turning the air conditioning up. So I'm I'm more at least wired that way to enjoy, to want to enjoy nature.

Lyssia Katan 29:02

Well, thank you for not sweating on the podcast.

Tim Sperry 29:05

Sure.

Moldy Air And Closed Window Tradeoffs

Lyssia Katan 29:06

But also, I think that air conditioning, I have a friend who like she always jokes that like she's allergic to air conditioning. Like this girl, like anytime there's air conditioning, she's sick. Like she's like, it could be 100 degrees, she's turning it off. Oh my God. But it's she's actually right. I don't know if it's an allergy or not, but especially often at hotels or or places like that, the filters are not cleaned very often. And you're getting this like musty smell that comes out of the air conditioner. And that supposedly is better for you because it's keeping you cold. I'd rather crack open a window and get a natural breeze of oxygen, not recycled whatever is going through there.

Tim Sperry 29:48

Yeah, agreed. And that's actually typically mold, especially down here. Most people go into hotels and they, if you can open up a window or a slider, they'll open it up, leave the air conditioning on, and you'll see just start condensing down and like molding into the wall and all around. That's not good for you.

Lyssia Katan 30:05

Yeah. Yeah. So maybe she's right. She is allergic to the mold, but not. Yeah, she's probably allergic to the mold. Yeah. And in a lot of places like hotels and buildings, how often are they really cleaning their air conditioning vents?

Tim Sperry 30:17

Yeah, probably pretty infrequently.

Materials That Trap Heat At Home

Lyssia Katan 30:20

Yeah. Are there certain materials that people have in their homes that are secretly making them hotter and more uncomfortable?

Tim Sperry 30:29

From really, you know, what I've been working on, it's been more on the exterior side. And again, it's more to do with um the colors that you choose for down here. It's your rooftop tiles, because we have bare rooftops and concrete tiles and other tiles that you put on your roofs here. Um, those can really drive the temperature up in your home. So most of what I've been researching and most of what I deal with are materials that actually bring the hot air in or bring the heat through your walls and into your home. And every time you increase, let's say, the heat level in your home, you know, look, you turn your AC off, and at some point the inside of your home will be relative to the temperature on the outside of your home, right? So say it's 90 degrees, you have it at 75, you turn that off and it'll slowly get up to 90 degrees in your home and be very uncomfortable. But with the different dark colors that you put on your walls and even more so on your roof, depending on ventilation and other elements that you have in your home, it's bringing that temperature up, which is why your air conditioning keeps fighting to go on constantly or turns on and off so frequently on hot sunny days, which is battling that heat. For every one degree that you can reduce the temperature from the outside to inside, you can save 3% to 5% on your electricity for cooling. So let's say, you know, you reduce that five, 10, 10 degrees, you could save a big amount of money or a big percentage of what you're spending on your electric bill just by choosing the right colors and having the right elements within your homes. If you need installation, if you have installation, if you have certain things uh that you can be doing in addition to what you're doing with cool-coated or other cooling solutions or a cool roof. Um, so yeah, so I think there is certainly an impact from what you do outside that translates inside.

Passive Cooling Fixes That Work

Lyssia Katan 32:27

So let's say someone has applied cool-coated to their roof and their exterior. What are some other things that they can do that are in the passive cooling territory that can make their space more livable?

Tim Sperry 32:41

Yeah, I I think it boils down to what where do you have your windows? Um, how are your windows like even here in my home when when we got here, the we were heating, we were cooling the outside. We were literally cooling our backyard because there were these gaps in our sliders, you know, not not huge gaps, but you know, enough where the air was slipping in and slipping out. And I just put um like a sealant, like a little um, you know, a weather stripping, and that immediately reduced my electricity like 20%. Because if you have leaky windows and if you have old windows you don't have, because I don't have impact windows, I have shutters here, but that doesn't keep the air conditioning, you know, inside. You can really have an impact there. So if you get weather stripping on your doors, weather stripping on your windows, and then the types of shades that you have too. You know, in the morning, the sun just comes barreling in here and it's just it feels like an oven and it's only 75, 79, 80, you know, low 80s in the morning. Uh, but it feels like 100 degrees in the house because unless we close and we have solar shades, close those, that makes a huge impact. You can actually be in the room without feeling like you're on fire. Um, so a lot of that is is to play. You know, when you see buildings and we moved off of the beach uh and we were in a high rise there, and it was literally all windows, and it looked like a cruise ship when you walked in there. It was really nice, it was cool. But if you look at the building in the morning, everyone's shades are down. You know, one person or two people may have their shades up, and it's got to be really hot in there because it gets super hot super fast because it's just nothing but, you know, magnifying sun coming through. But those shades make a huge impact and really keep the electricity bills down. So, you know, you wanna you wanna do everything you can. I think a lot of it has to do with the color of your walls, color your roof, and then also your insulation and then the shades that you have.

Lyssia Katan 34:42

Well, it's crazy to hear that the shades are down because I mean, even living in South Florida or anywhere, you have this beautiful view of the water, you have a beautiful view of palm trees, and your shades are down. Like that is because at that point, like, where's the trade-off of being hot and having a good view and being comfortable and having no view?

Tim Sperry 35:01

Well, you have some shades that you can see through in where you can actually still see everything, you know, outside of your bedroom at night. You want to have blackouts. So you can you actually get like two sets of shades, and one's like the shear and one's the uh blackout. Uh so but yeah, it still takes away. You're not seeing like the brilliant bright greens and you're not seeing things that the way that you know I would like to see them. But as soon as the sun passes those windows or is no longer directly impacting those windows, the shades are up all the rest of the day. But yeah, I mean, you you definitely need to deal with that. And a lot of people maybe don't think about that too when they're building their house or they're looking at a place, they're like, wow, it's all windows, it's gonna be open all the time. And it's like the first day to get in there, like, close everything. Close it all. It's so hot.

Lyssia Katan 35:47

Yeah, and and plans too. You mentioned, right? Like if you do live in a house, you can have plants and trees and grass and and instead of asphalt that helps cool out the, you know, cool off the general surroundings.

Tim Sperry 36:00

Big time. Yeah, and if you have big enough trees too, like that blocks the sun from coming in too. You have your natural shades outside. You don't need anything else. I mean, there's still like great neighborhoods around here uh where you have these huge trees where the house is shaded all day long. You literally would never have to close a shade unless you're a private person. Um, so so that's certainly an option as well. Yeah. And there was another thought, too, when we talked about air conditioning in hotel rooms and mold and things like that. When I went to the Middle East and I was in Dubai and I think Riyadh 2, in the hotels, when you open the window, it shuts your air conditioning off. So they've actually connected those where you can't open the window and have your air conditioning on at the same time. It's smart there because it's 110, 115 degrees. You have that window open. I mean, it's costing the hotel probably more money than you're paying them to stay there to keep it cool. So I there's there's also little things that can be enacted with, you know, building owners and uh architects and engineers or whoever is going to make those decisions on how do we keep this place cooler and do it in a way that makes sense? Because if you really want the window open and you want to stay cool at the same time, you know, not not not the ideal scenario for everyone.

Lyssia Katan 37:20

Why

Why Wellness Ignores Thermal Comfort

Lyssia Katan 37:21

do you think that the conversation around wellness really doesn't include the thermal experience of a space? We talk about everything in wellness, right? We talk about, you know, people being living to a hundred plus, you know, being super healthy, being, you know, what are they called? The ice baths. We talk about working out, we talk about all those things. Why doesn't include the thermal experience? Is it just because it's something we're dealing with relatively recently?

Tim Sperry 37:48

I think you're right. I I actually do think that that's the case. Um I spoke to a friend of mine last year, um, and they live in Copenhagen, and they're like, no one in Copenhagen has air conditioning, but it's actually now getting hot to the point where we need to start getting air conditioning because it's becoming uncomfortable in the houses. So I think this is really kind of a developing thing. That's we've we've known, you know, let's say 20 years ago, when we hadn't had so much extreme heat and the hottest days on record and breaking these records kind of year after year, it was kind of more understood. Okay, well, if you live in South Florida, this is what to expect. If you live here, this is what to expect. And that's kind of just been, you know, dealt with, and that's how it was. When I first moved here in 2000, there was still properties down here that didn't have air conditioning.

Lyssia Katan 38:41

Wow.

Tim Sperry 38:42

Yeah. So and you know, now every place has air, you don't even think about it. And you, if you're gonna, you know, Airbnb out of place, rent a place, do something in a place, you have to have air conditioning. You wouldn't find a place without air conditioning. If you did, it's it wouldn't get rented and it wouldn't be lived in for the most part. But back then, even in 2000, like there was still enough houses around where I was going to school in Miami shores that didn't have air conditioning. And most of them would have trees around the yard, which we should all have trees. And that helps also keep us cooler, you know, from a citywide perspective, with urban heat island effect affecting kind of large swaths of areas versus just your own bath yard. Um, so I think that, yeah, I I think it's I think it's really becoming more and more center stage. So I think maybe that's been the discount from the conversation until this point.

Lyssia Katan 39:35

I mean, even I know in Europe, parts of Europe and in France too, like it, I know specifically in Paris, there are places where you're just not allowed to have a unit because it doesn't look good aesthetically. And I I get it, right? The beautiful streets of Paris would not be as beautiful with all these wall units. But at what point is comfort gonna come over aesthetics?

Tim Sperry 39:57

Yeah. Yeah, I think you're right. Yeah, and that and that's a shame too, because you know, walking, you know, through through Paris or Venice or somewhere really nice, and you see all these, you know, historic, beautiful buildings that are just, you know, one of a kind and what make it what it is. And then you see this ugly old air conditioning just like you know, sticking out like a sore thumb on the side of that building, that that would suck. You know, that you know, maybe that's another psychological impediment. Like, all right, well, you're seeing this beauty and then it's just being destroyed by this, you know, modern necessity of us keeping ourselves cool in a hotter and hotter world.

Lyssia Katan 40:34

So it's like this building from the 1800s definitely did not have air conditioning on it originally.

Tim Sperry 40:41

Yeah. Back then it was a lot cooler, right? You know, we are we're we're there's just no arguing or denying that it's getting hotter. Like you you look at empirical data from when we started recording it, and like it's very clear it's getting hotter on a very fast basis. Like that's you know, you can't really argue that. Like, it are we gonna go into like an Arctic, you know, an ice age or something? I don't know, maybe, probably not, but like, you know, the way it's trending now, we have to deal with now. We have to deal with how things are now. And I actually started developing, you know, I got really interested in cool coatings um maybe five years ago, six years ago. And it really wasn't as big a problem back then. It was just kind of an interesting technology that Purdue University and a couple of universities and some other, you know, private companies were toying with was okay, well, like this again for the roof thing, keeping roofs cool, but then can we keep other surfaces cool? Um and now I think it's just such a necessity.

Lyssia Katan 41:45

Yeah, absolutely. It wasn't, it was a nice to have, but now it's more of a need to have.

Tim Sperry 41:51

Exactly.

Lyssia Katan 41:52

For someone listening right now, what is the first thing that they should look at in their home if they feel like it's just always too hot? And they're it's just never enough, no matter how low they turn the temperature.

Tim Sperry 42:04

Yeah, I I think I mean, at least for us, we have huge sliders all around our place and some of those two, but they're giant sliders. Um, you know, maybe you don't have the same setup we have, but for us, it was how much air is seeping in and out of those openings. Um, and there was a lot of openings, like a lot. So I think you know, you're looking at are you well insulated? Are your windows leaking? Is your door leaking? Do you have a huge gap underneath your door? Weather stripping and you know, these things would probably be defense number one. And then you look to the colors of your roof, the colors of your walls. Um, you know, can you add some more shade, some canopy outside somehow? Um, that would be that that'd be kind of step three. So, you know, step one, weatherproofing your windows, doors, two, colors on your walls, exterior walls more so and your roof. Um, and then anything else in the yard. Like I've planted so many palm trees and trees here because I just I love you know nature and green. And, you know, I it's it's helped keep things much cooler here. And it's a cheap upgrade and it's a visually appealing upgrade too. And it also gives you more curb appeal as well. So I think there's there's benefits on a couple of sides

Smarter Energy Use And Cooler Cities

Tim Sperry 43:23

there.

Lyssia Katan 43:23

Looking forward, what do you hope that we do more of in our buildings?

Tim Sperry 43:28

Again, kind of revert back to, and I'm sure you you guys have had experience in Europe too, and other places like Germany when I'm there, all the hotels, all the streets, all like the commercial buildings, um, and even like the grocery stores, things like that. The lights only come on when you're there. Um you know, super simple. You're probably saving, I mean, in hotels alone. Like every time I would come out of the door, like in in when I was in Munich, and then Now is in different places in Spain and Portugal and Italy. You know, you come out of the hotel when the newer buildings at least, some of the older buildings, this wasn't the case. The lights would just start turning on in the hallways because you're walking out there and it would be dark when you open the door. And it's it's just different at first, but then it makes so much sense. It's like, how many hotels I've stayed in all around the States and everywhere else where it's like 24-7, 365, every single light is on all the time. How much energy would we save tomorrow overnight if we just interacted these really small things, like the color of paint on the walls, the color of the roof, turning lights, you know, having like a you know a system that would just be motion sensed, uh activated. Even in the streets, there are motion-activated lights, and it makes so much sense. It's like we're we're uh, you know, when I was living on the beach too, like I always loved to see the sky and the stars, and it's like, you know, you don't see as much of that because there's so much light pollution, just because the lights are always, always on. And uh boating out of Miami, and when I had my boat in Miami and taking a lot of cruises, like when you go far enough away from the city on the ocean and you look back, it just looks like a nuclear like uh Holocaust of like this like glowing like green light, and and it's not pretty. I mean, so sure, lights can be pretty, but you know, we do we need to have that many lights on all the time? We're wasting so much energy, so many resources, uh, just because you know, we're doing things, I think, just less consciously. It's just, well, every other hotel's got their lights on 24-7, so we need to have our lights on 24-7. So are we all keeping up with the Joneses and we should be keeping up with the Smiths? You know, what what's what is that?

Lyssia Katan 45:48

Or what you said about how that the roofs, like that was just the way it's always been done. And so no one ever questioned it. Maybe it is time to question it.

Tim Sperry 45:56

I uh I'll bring another case in point. Um, I worked on developing now a coating for asphalt parking lots. Because as you know, you dry, if you fly into these cities, you're gonna see these stark, you know, bright white rooftops. But what are around those rooftops? These black parking lots. It's like you're surrounding lava to a cooling, you know, it's like you're putting, it's like you're putting a cube of ice into a cup on top of a stove. And it's like, yeah, the ice is cool, but it's heating up quickly because of this hot, hot, hot, 160, 170 degree black asphalt. I've created an asphalt seal coating that's a kind of a looks like concrete. It's like a light gray, has a little kind of hint of yellow like most concrete does. And concrete compared to asphalt, it's the difference of if you were having a concrete paved road next to an asphalt paved road and you cracked an egg on both of them, on the black asphalt, it's gonna fry. On the concrete, unless it's really, really hot day, it's not gonna fry. It's it's gonna maybe over time, you know, bake in the sun. Um so, but seal coaters, which are the people that will maintenance every two to four years your asphalt parking lots around your buildings, uh, you know, malls, data centers, warehouses, um, universities, really anywhere that has large parking lots, they're coating them with a black coating. And, you know, they don't need to be black. And that's what I've found. You can make them white, but that's going to show too many tire tracks. So you have to make them kind of a light gray, maybe a mid-gray, which is like a happy medium of reducing 20, 30, 40, 50 degrees uh the heat that's absorbed into it and keeping things cooler. So again, you know, the whole idea of getting to a business, opening your car door on a very black blacktop versus like a concrete colored one where you don't feel the heat at all and you feel comfortable, like there's going to be two different experiences that you have there, whether you consciously are thinking about it or not. So, you know, I think a lot of things that we've always done a certain way are just based on, you know, not to say lazy tradesmen or lazy service industry people, but just that's, you know, that's the mass market. You know, seal coatings are super cheap if you buy them in black for asphalt. If you buy something that's not black, you're gonna pay a lot more. But you're gonna have benefits of reducing electricity requirements, better customer experience. You're gonna extend the service life of the asphalt. You know, there's gonna be a lot of benefits that come along with that too. So it's, you know, there's a lot of things that I think are like that now that we need to start digging more into. And again, we we talked about this. Like, this is kind of a new story because it's getting so hot so quick. We're we're just now, I think, catching up.

Lyssia Katan 48:55

Yeah. And and and often it is a a price thing because I I I recently asked why most roads are asphalt. Like, where do we have cement on the roads? Um, I asked my dad this question because I'm curious. And and he said, airports, airport runways have cement on the on the road because it's it's you know, you need to make sure it's not getting too hot. You need to make sure it's not cracking with snow or ice, no potholes. And I asked, why don't we make all the streets cement? And uh and he said, price really is a cost thing. Asphalt is so much cheaper than concrete.

Tim Sperry 49:33

That's exactly right. Yeah. And that that's the other failure, I think, there too. I think it's 2% of our roads are concrete roads. And in Texas, they're doing it even more so because they've had so many failures with their old asphalt. But if you think about it, concrete's gonna last way, way longer. And it doesn't need to be re-blacktopped every two to four years. It just lasts, but it costs more money up front. So the person making the decision is generally gonna be someone that has a short tenure. Let's say they're a mayor or they're a governor or senator or the president. They're making a decision that's so short-sighted and so short-termed, they're like, oh, you know, we're gonna save $2 billion if we don't do, you know, asphalt if we do asphalt versus concrete on this stretch of the turnpike. Okay. And that will save you money today, but tomorrow it's costing more money and it's gonna cost this problem and this problem and this problem. But today they look like heroes and champs, and that's the next guy's problem. So I think a lot of it boils down to that too, is that we're thinking so short-sighted and we're we're thinking so short term where there's a lot of long-term implications.

Takeaways And Listener Challenge

Lyssia Katan 50:43

What do you hope that someone listening takes away from this podcast? Because we have listeners from all over the world, and uh and they all uh live in different, different climates too.

Tim Sperry 50:53

And I think um really it's just the awareness of, hey, how is our built environment impacting us? You know, is is it that our built environment is making us too hot? Is it that it's overheating our homes? Is it that the colors are actually psychologically causing us distress? Um, yeah, I mean, think about it. Like most people are inside their four walls, whether at home or at work, for 90% of the day, maybe 99% of the day, some people, you know. So you really have to think about how is that impacting you? Because that's where you're spending all your time. And if you can make that better, incrementally better, you're you could be making your life, you know, a night and day scenario better. So I think it's really just, you know, big takeaway is the awareness of how things are impacting us and why. And what can we do about those things?

Lyssia Katan 51:49

That's it. Tim, it's always incredible chatting with you. You are just such a fascinating person. And I'm always so grateful when we get to chat. Um, thank you so much for, first of all, what you're doing for not just just for all of us, not just for being on this podcast. Thank you for actually creating materials that are changing the world and are making sure that the next generation has a comfortable place to live. And thank you for the forethought of being able to say, this is a problem now, let's fix it for our kids and for the next generation. And and and thank you for applying your mind to this, because you know, it's it's not everyone that can do it, and not everyone is as as skilled or capable as you and tinkering with materials. And, you know, I've seen you do it, and and I'm really just so honored and grateful. So thank you so much for your time.

Tim Sperry 52:38

Thanks. Well, I'm really honored to be here again. It really resonates with me what you're doing. And like I think this is, you know, that's the other part of the awareness too, is that you're bringing awareness to things where people just kind of see them at face value. And it's really important for us to be understanding of you know what you know what those implications are and can be. So happy to be here, pleasure to be here, honored to be here. Thank you.

Lyssia Katan 53:00

Thank you so much, Jim. Thank you so much for spending this time with me on Room to Think. If you enjoyed this episode, feel free to follow the show, subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who you think would really appreciate a more thoughtful approach to their space. You can find more design meets psychology insights on social, in our community, and definitely in upcoming episodes so you can build a better life by design. Thanks again for listening. I'll see you next time.