Building Better: Energy, Climate, and Construction with Christy Love, Energy and Climate Specialist at RDH Building Science

Christy Love takes us behind the scenes of deep energy retrofits that transform aging buildings while residents continue living their daily lives. As an energy and climate specialist at RDH Building Science, she brings both technical expertise and a human touch to complex sustainability projects.

What does it take to modernize a 1970s high-rise without displacing tenants? Christy reveals the painstaking process—from creating digital models of buildings with no existing plans to orchestrating window replacements that happen in a single day. The results are transformative: triple-glazed windows eliminate siren noise from nearby hospitals, heat recovery ventilators provide clean air during wildfire season, and some units barely need heating at all.

Christy's passion for measurement and verification shines through as she discusses monitoring projects tracking energy use across dozens of buildings. She's particularly excited about hybrid heat pump technologies that combine efficiency with reliability across temperature ranges. 

From its origins fixing leaky condos to its current work on climate-responsive buildings, RDH exemplifies how construction expertise must adapt to changing environmental realities. Tune in now to learn more.

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Transcript

Introduction to Christy Love

Speaker 1 0:00

Welcome to the Site. Visit Podcast Leadership and Perspective from Construction with your host, James Faulkner, Recorded live from the show floor at BuildX Vancouver 2025. All right, I'm here with Christy Love. That's Christy, not Christy, correct? Oh yeah, Christy, Christy good, Can't get that one wrong. That's true. A lot of Christys that I've known over the years.

Speaker 2 0:33

Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, and a good. How are they spelled?

Speaker 1 0:37

I-E-Y.

Speaker 2 0:38

Some Ks.

Speaker 1 0:39

Oh yeah, but I always get tripped on the Kirstie. Oh yeah, oh, they're like it's Kirsten or Kristen or Kirsten. It's like oh cheers, kirsten. I know it's just so many macerations of the Krip. You can call me Christy, christy, that's an easy one.

Speaker 1 0:55

Okay, so you are the. Oh, hang on, you are A I have to be careful on putting the label of the specialist but you are an energy and climate specialist at RDH, that's correct. So RDH, great organization. As we were chatting offline before, this got its start in the old school fixing the problems of the rainforest we live in the pacific north coast of the leaky condo thing originally and sort of invented that screens that you would see in these high rises and fixing the envelopes and making sure nothing fell on anyone's head and uh, so yeah, it's pretty cool. That's right. Yeah, and now, how many? How big is the organization now?

Speaker 2 1:42

I think we're about 350. If I had to guess and like nine offices nine offices don't? I think we're about 350, if I had to guess and like nine offices Nine offices. Don't quote me, but we're across North America. We've got Vancouver, victoria, a few people in Courtney, toronto on the Canadian side, oh wow, seattle, portland Is.

Speaker 1 1:58

Toronto recently new.

Speaker 2 2:00

Not that new.

Speaker 1 2:03

The company's gone for what? 20 years or something? Yep, yeah, I think 20 years or something.

Speaker 2 2:06

Yep, yeah, I think early 90s when they started.

Speaker 1 2:10

Interesting. So you're working on a number of projects. You were talking about FortisBC, one that you were doing, and you also mentioned on the team side of things which you're very excited about. Now, in terms of the structure, I was looking through the website of RDH and it seems like there's a lot of principles. What is the organizational structure? How does that work? Are you considered a principal in Victoria? How does that all work?

Speaker 2 2:42

Yeah, so there are somewhere around 40 principals. So the general business model of RDH, that's 11%.

Speaker 1 2:50

A lot of principals.

Speaker 2 2:52

Yeah, somewhat unusual for our industry. We're very broadly owned, so we're obviously a private company. Yeah, so anyone who's been with the company for a couple years and we've sort of judged that they're aligned with our core values and they are a long-term asset. They're offered shares so you can start buying just like 25 shares or whatever and just get your foot in the door and then, each year that there are shares available, you can kind of buy up and then, as you progress in terms of responsibility, you have the opportunity to become a principal. So principals do have like a minimum floor of the number of shares they have to own. It's sort of a yeah, like we're. We're the people who are really responsible for the success of the business and so you know, being a share owner means you can. You're also things go belly up.

Speaker 1 3:40

You're on the hook, so there's accountability there.

RDH's Unique Business Structure

Speaker 2 3:43

Yeah, You've got to have that accountability accountability. So yeah, it's broadly owned and yeah, from what I've heard of other consulting firms, it's a fairly unusual model, like a lot of consultants are more tightly held with a very small group. So that's one of kind of the core founding principles of RDH since the beginning was that they wanted it to be broadly owned and it shows in terms of just sort of, I guess, pride in the company and that sense of accountability and ownership and like I've had a lot of freedom to develop according to my interests and skills and basically create my own sort of business area within the company. That's something I've really appreciated about being at RDH.

Speaker 1 4:26

So you being so, what's your background then? So how did you get into? How long have you been with the company for? About 11 years now 11 years, okay, and what were you doing before this?

Speaker 2 4:37

So I worked at two different mechanical consulting firms. So I did a civil engineering degree Okay, an arts degree before that, but we probably don't need to talk about that. But when it came to like what am I going to do for a career, I actually feel like my arts degree has probably served me better. It makes me a better consultant, probably, than the engineer. I mean, the engineering stuff is critical obviously.

Speaker 1 5:03

Less of an insult and more of a consultant. Sure, that's my favorite one. I've used that many times. I like that. I hadn't heard that before. An consultant.

Speaker 2 5:12

An consultant yeah.

Speaker 2 5:16

Yeah. So I did a civil engineering degree at UBC and I was pretty open about civil engineering. Civil engineering is very broad and I was pretty open about civil engineering is very broad. So transportation, structures, materials, water and wastewater treatment, plumbing it's kind of endless, and so you just touch on very lightly all these different subjects. So I was pretty open when I graduated about what I wanted to do, except that I knew I wanted to be involved with sustainability in some way. That was the big term at the time. I wanted to make a difference in the world. So initially my dream job was I was going to work for the city of Vancouver. They have a transportation, engineering and community planning joint department. I thought that's great. I didn't get hired, okay, and all the funding for transportation had been cut by the province.

Speaker 1 6:12

Was it the arts?

Speaker 2 6:13

degree that did it Right when I graduated.

Speaker 1 6:18

Like wait, she's way too creative.

Speaker 2 6:21

Well, no one would even talk to me if all I had was the arts degree. This is great.

Speaker 1 6:24

This is great. You was the arts degree.

Speaker 2 6:25

This is true, you needed the engineering degree to get the interview, and then they're like oh cool, you have an arts degree.

Speaker 1 6:29

Yeah, exactly the icing.

Speaker 2 6:31

Yeah, so I was just casting about. I actually got a one-year job with engineers and geoscientists, bc, as their sustainability researcher. So I worked for their sustainability committee and met a whole bunch of people in different sectors who are doing cool things, and so I got kind of keyed into the green building world and at that time the mechanical engineers were really driving things. That's when, like, lead was becoming kind of a thing, yeah, and the mechanical engineers were really driving it. So I got a job with a mechanical engineer, despite the fact that I'm a civil. Yeah, I actually did marketing for them for the first couple of years weirdly.

Speaker 2 7:10

And then, yeah, and then sort of switched back over to the technical side, worked for that firm for five years. And then I actually moved to Portland, oregon, and worked for a different mechanical consulting firm for five years and always just finding the sustainability projects, sticking my hand up for those. You know you had to do. You still had to do like the duck sizing and all the, because there wasn't really enough at that time to just do sustainability related stuff. But I did some cool projects. And then I met RDH. They were looking for someone in Portland. I just had my daughter, so I wasn't really looking for a big change. But I thought, hey, I looked up the website. I hadn't even heard of RDH. I'm like, oh, they have a Victoria office. So I thought, well, if I could use this as an opportunity.

Speaker 1 8:00

So were you American then, or not?

Speaker 2 8:02

No, I'm Canadian.

Speaker 1 8:03

Okay, yeah, you had a green card to work in Portland, obviously.

Speaker 2 8:06

A TN visa actually.

Speaker 1 8:08

Oh, okay, cool.

Speaker 2 8:09

Yeah.

Speaker 1 8:09

Anyway, so you moved back to the homeland.

Speaker 2 8:11

Yeah, so it was an opportunity to move back and, as I learned more about the company, it was a pretty exciting opportunity.

Speaker 1 8:16

Yeah Cool. Yeah so it's been 11 years now 11 years, and so you are a principal now.

Speaker 2 8:21

I am yes.

Speaker 1 8:22

Wow, Pretty exciting, huh it is. That's pretty cool. So I would think that having 11% of the population of a company being principals, that level sets a really great understanding of a family kind of I don't want to say family but a group of people of similar interests.

Speaker 2 8:45

Yeah, but when I say interests, I don't mean hobby.

Speaker 1 8:47

I mean similar career interests in terms of moving the company forward and getting great projects, hiring people that are going to uplift everybody, etc.

Speaker 2 9:00

Yeah, it's still a very diverse group and I do think that's one of the strengths of RDH, but there are definitely principles that I think I've met almost all of them, but maybe not all of them at this point.

Speaker 1 9:12

And some of them do completely different things. Do you have a big summit that you guys go to?

Speaker 2 9:16

We used to do that. We're a bit big now and well, covid kind of kiboshed that, but there used to be like we kind of come together once a year.

Speaker 1 9:23

Is it kibosh or kibosh? I always say kibosh, I say the same as you, but that sounds like food. It does. Would you like some kibosh? I have some in the back of the truck. No, no, it doesn't really resonate.

Speaker 2 9:36

I already had lunch, did you Okay?

Speaker 1 9:38

I don't really like my kibosh, or kibosh it does. Yeah, it sounds like baba ganoush. Anyway, we digress. Okay, so you were saying that obviously the team is too big now to have this kind of a thing, but you guys have, culturally, how do you all sort of come together in that way?

Speaker 2 10:01

I think it's something we're still evolving because we're also very conscious of, you know, the impact of flying around North America just to see each other in person, as valuable as that is. One of my most enjoyable things I've done in the last couple of years is the women principals have gotten together and it was quite organic. It was just like one of the women principals from Toronto was like hey, I'm going to be in Seattle, let's hook up. And then, well, I'm just in Victoria so I can just pop over and end up being like eight of us.

Speaker 1 10:30

Yeah.

Speaker 2 10:36

I think there are about 12 of us now. Total um yeah, so it's just nice to connect with the woman. Principal experiences is sort of it's.

Christy's Engineering Background

Speaker 1 10:41

It's a unique thing, so it's just nice to find your people right in a way I mean it's uh, yeah, there's, there's certain challenges that in every it's just it's human nature Can't get away from it. I mean we can try, we can try our hardest, but the reality is that it's great to be around people, that you have, that see things in a similar light.

Speaker 2 11:12

Yeah, I mean, it's a shared experience. Exactly, and being a woman in a male light. Yeah, it's a shared experience, and being a woman in a male-dominated field and a male-dominated company is there are just things that we have all gone through together to be recognized.

Speaker 2 11:29

The company's come a long way but, we still end up having similar struggles and everyone has struggles always obviously in life um, but it's just nice to be able to connect like, oh yeah, you just kind of nod at each other like, yeah, I get it do you know what I find is actually, um, very interesting.

Speaker 1 11:47

Um, is that the from observing many, many construction companies you know. You know, via CYMAX I find this is specific to women in construction is that many, most of the women are this connective tissue critical person that is holding companies together. I find A lot. I mean you have the. You know a lot of field crews, you know they're doing a lot of. I mean you have the. You know a lot of field crews, you know they're doing a lot of the work but a lot of planning, a lot of the things there. It's just a different vibe there and I think that that kind of gets lost sometimes on how important that aspect is. I don't know what emotional intelligence or something, but it's pretty cool.

Speaker 1 12:33

Yeah, something like that, something like that I know this is all radioactive conversation, but um, but I mean it's a good thing you probably found that with your, with your rdh, do you have like a little group name for that, the rdh?

Speaker 2 12:50

oh fire, I think this I can't remember what it is. Well, it stands for something and I can't remember what it was. So, yeah, it didn't stick. It didn't stick, at least not with me. Didn't get the T-shirt, yeah.

Speaker 1 13:03

That's cool, all right. So can we chat a little bit about? So you're working on this project, project and um with um. Can we chat about that? Sure, yeah, yeah, so this was um with um fortis bc, so you would go into um. You said you had to perhaps recruit some of the projects, did you? Do you have to get involved in that part to get projects to sign on, to be able to do this and for for, uh, the energy project yes, well, I mean, it depends on the project, but if we want to talk specifically about the pilot, yes, the pilot.

Speaker 1 13:39

How did that work? Where did it start? What was the impetus of it? And then, how did you guys get involved?

Speaker 2 13:44

Yeah, so Fortis is always looking to develop new programs. They have a commitment to reduce emissions, like BC Hydro. So the two utilities are regulated by the BC Utilities Commission. And they're required to have a plan for reducing emissions, and so part of that plan is incentive programs.

Speaker 1 14:03

So when you say emissions, how does that manifest itself? Just for people who don't? What do you mean? Well, emissions, so obviously on Fortis BC.

Speaker 2 14:12

Burning fossil fuels yes.

Speaker 1 14:13

Yeah, burning fossil fuels, but in BC hydro, hydroelectric power, there isn't any, is there?

Speaker 2 14:19

There are.

Speaker 1 14:20

Okay.

Speaker 2 14:20

It's just much less carbon intensive than combusting fuels, but there are still emissions.

Speaker 1 14:28

There are still emissions from creating power From hydroelectric. I'm just trying to level set that. Yeah, I totally get it. When Fortis BC, if you're burning your fireplace all the time you're burning fossil fuel, get it Easy. That one slammed up, but it was like hydroelectric power turning a turbine, water is coming through creating electricity from generator. There's no emission there. I don't know, I'm just trying to figure it out, but I guess what you mean is so also it used to be really focused on energy efficiency, right?

Speaker 2 15:02

So I guess, yeah, basically the concept is that BC.

Speaker 1 15:05

Like leaking energy.

Speaker 2 15:07

Yeah.

Speaker 1 15:09

Inefficient buildings yeah yeah, Because that's really where you guys get involved is like how do you use less so you can have less of a footprint? That's right.

Speaker 2 15:19

Okay, regardless of their fuel type.

Speaker 1 15:21

Exactly.

Speaker 2 15:21

So it's just been. It's shifted a little bit in the last few years to be more focused on emissions.

Speaker 1 15:26

Okay, just to meet, like the province's climate commitments and whatnot, and this comes from that commission that you're talking about.

Speaker 2 15:31

But there's still an efficiency element to it.

Speaker 1 15:33

For sure.

Speaker 2 15:34

So, yeah, the utilities have to come up with five-year plans that get approved by BCUC and that kind of sets out how they're going to spend their money to save energy and or reduce emissions, right, so one of the things that Fortis is investing in is deep retrofits of existing multifamily buildings. Right, okay, and they're like okay, so how do we do this? How much can we save and therefore take credit for, as we're reporting back to DCUC? So this is kind of how, like, their incentive programs tend to develop. So the pilot project is really informing the eventual development of a incentive program.

Speaker 1 16:12

I see yeah.

Deep Retrofit Projects with Fortis BC

Speaker 2 16:13

So the recruitment comes in. We want a diversity of building types, ideally like high-rise and low-rise, and different climates represented. So something in the interior, something lower mainland. Different ownership types, possibly like affordable housing or market rentals. These are all rental-focused programs, so they put out a call. So Fortis puts out a call and says, hey, you're interested in being part of this pilot and basically Fortis is going to pay for everything. So a bunch of building owners apply and then we as a team evaluate the applicants for what we think the potential savings are.

Speaker 1 16:52

So you guys are like the American Idol judges?

Speaker 2 16:54

Yeah, sort of Are they going to be easy to work with? There's a bit of that.

Speaker 1 17:00

So what was the application volume versus how many people got?

Speaker 2 17:09

I think we had about 20 buildings long listed and then we selected four. Okay, One of them ended up dropping out for various reasons Pretty invasive right. That wasn't the reason they dropped out. Okay, yeah.

Speaker 1 17:23

So would it be a similar thing to? So what did that? Obviously, it's a multifaceted project, but so when you long-list and then you the short list and then you get to the four, so with the four of those, those different types of structures, then one high-rise one and then the different areas as well yeah, we had, um, the ones that went ahead.

Speaker 2 17:47

We had a high-rise concrete rental building built in the 1970s in the city of Vancouver, okay, and we had an affordable housing four-story wood frame building, also built in the 70s in the city of North Vancouver.

Speaker 1 18:00

Yeah.

Speaker 2 18:01

And then we had a market rental wood frame low-rise building in Kamloops.

Speaker 1 18:05

Okay, yeah, okay. So you're going through. So you do an estimate of what you think you can save by doing x, y and z. So how do they determine what they're going to do? So do you guys have to do the feasibility there? Study on on exactly what the what you could do yes, exactly yeah.

Speaker 2 18:24

So we started out as part of the recruitment phase. We kind of did an initial like really spreadsheet based, sort of like okay, here's how much energy they use now and emissions, and based on the systems they have and the retrofits they've done over time. So, for example, the best candidate in terms of savings would be a building that has original single glazed aluminum framed windows right very little wall insulation. Um, Really old boilers. One of the stipulations of the program is that they had to be gas-heated buildings and they had to remain gas-heated buildings.

Speaker 1 19:01

So that's just one of the particularities, Otherwise why would they pay Exactly? Yeah, Makes sense.

Speaker 2 19:08

And then, yeah, so old mechanical systems that are due for replacement. So, yeah, so we do a full modeling, we create a digital model of the building, we take all the utility bills, we calibrate the model so that it represents how the building's actually functioning, and then we test. I mean, we're a consultant team. We all have a lot of experience with retrofits, so we of have our our list of things that we know are going to be impactful, based on what we know about the building. And then we also have the requirements from fortis for what what we can do. So gas-based systems means we're going to replace the old boiler with a gas absorption heat pump oh yeah, or a gas engine heat pump.

Speaker 2 19:55

So then we model all the measures, we put together different packages of measures.

Speaker 1 20:00

Can I just ask you a question on the? So it's built way back then. Obviously, the cities have the original plans.

Speaker 2 20:11

No, they almost never do.

Speaker 1 20:13

They didn't Okay, so they don't have any. So how did you guys, did you guys actually build like new 3D models?

Speaker 2 20:22

Yeah, we often do have to do that where we Holy, that's a lot of work, don't it?

Speaker 1 20:25

So you have to, like, get every measurement right and every floor and Like you, basically, are rebuilding the plans.

Speaker 2 20:31

Yeah, most. I mean they're fairly simple structures, like they tend to be rectangles with some articulations. So you know, you can kind of take. Sometimes there are hard copy plans that we can get from the city and we'll basically trace the floor plans and sort of build it. That way we can use, like through Google Earth.

Speaker 1 20:54

Take measurements off.

Speaker 2 20:55

So there's a number of ways we can do that.

Speaker 1 20:59

So you end up with an actual visual model before the work starts.

Speaker 2 21:04

Yes.

Speaker 1 21:05

Wow crazy.

Speaker 2 21:05

And then we use that to create the drawing sets that are then going to be bid and built.

Speaker 1 21:10

Jeez, that's a lot of work. Pre-work Jeez, yeah, that's a lot of work.

Speaker 2 21:12

Pre-work, yes, and that is, I think, one of the most important things with doing a deep retrofit, or like a holistic retrofit, when you're affecting multiple systems with people living in the building. So, they have to live in the whole time. We never kick anybody out of the building. We do a lot of work from the exterior, so like adding exterior insulation.

Speaker 1 21:32

That's a very Gen X thing to say. By the way, kick, we do a lot of work from the exterior, so like adding exterior insulation. That's a very Gen X thing to say, by the way, Kick you, is it? I am Gen X. I know Well, I can tell. Yeah, we're both Gen X.

Speaker 2 21:40

So what is? Is Renovix Gen Z or what?

Speaker 1 21:45

No Displace. Oh, okay, right You're supposed to be kicked out.

Speaker 2 21:48

I guess yeah, kicked out is kind of the yeah, the sort of opaque terms to veil the real meaning.

Speaker 1 22:02

Yeah, so we don't kick anyone out.

Speaker 2 22:05

We can replace windows from the outside. We usually build scaffolding around the building.

Speaker 1 22:09

So you can replace yeah, because they do come from the outside right the windows from the outside Mostly.

Speaker 2 22:17

Sometimes you have to do it from the inside but, usually we can do most of the work from the outside Because you're doing the frames too.

Speaker 1 22:23

That's the hard part.

Speaker 2 22:24

Yeah, yeah, and all the detailing, so that we have a proper air barrier.

Speaker 1 22:28

Yeah.

Speaker 2 22:28

All that good stuff, so yeah. So in order to execute all that while people are living in the building it does take one you have to really plan the work well, yeah, and then we often construction manage these as well. So there's that whole like. We have like a very detailed schedule and we phase things so that you can minimize the entries into any one person's suite.

Building Modeling and Planning

Speaker 2 22:50

So we've got it down so that the day of window replacement it all happens in one day. The old window comes out, the new window comes in, the tenant's happy, they're like super comfortable, and then they do the finishing later. Um, but yeah, so that kind of retrofit takes. I think you, when we initially undertook the project fortis had a schedule in the rfp and they'd sort of swapped things where it was like eight months of design and 18 months of construction and we're like no, no, okay, well, we need to spend probably a year planning and then we can get construction down to 10 months, minimize the disruption, but you've got to do that planning up front.

Speaker 1 23:29

So you're ready, nice. So it's an exciting project to do.

Speaker 2 23:33

Super exciting Part of it was that we kind of got to do all of the scopes of work that RDH does so building enclosure, consulting structural engineering like shoring up rotten framing and all that good stuff reinforcing the roof to add new equipment, energy modeling, which is sort of my bailiwick.

Speaker 1 23:54

Bailiwick is another one.

Speaker 2 23:56

That's not Gen X, I don't know. That's like Boomer, maybe. Yeah bailiwick. I don't know where that came from. That's like Boomer, maybe. Yeah, baileyway, I don't know where that came from. And then monitoring as well, which is one of my favorite things to do. Let's actually measure the impact to air quality energy. What?

Speaker 1 24:13

about the air quality? Are you changing carpet materials?

Speaker 2 24:17

No, mostly ventilation.

Speaker 1 24:19

Oh ventilation.

Speaker 2 24:20

So these older residential buildings, the way they're ventilated, is you open your window?

Speaker 1 24:27

Okay.

Speaker 2 24:27

And then you have a manual bath fan and you might have a range hood fan.

Speaker 1 24:32

What the hell is a manual bath fan?

Speaker 2 24:34

You turn on the fan when you go in the bathroom.

Speaker 1 24:35

That's manual, so you're not cranking it with your hand.

Speaker 2 24:38

Yeah, if you push something with your finger, that's manual.

Speaker 1 24:41

Oh, I'll get you what would be automatic.

Speaker 2 24:43

It just happened If it was on a humidistat or something it just would ramp up All right, or what we actually have done, which is heat recovery ventilators, so yeah, and then you have some corridor pressurization just to control smells and smoke, yeah, so it doesn't work. That system doesn't work very well for providing adequate ventilation.

Speaker 1 25:06

Right.

Speaker 2 25:06

And then what happens when there's a wildfire, smoke event, where you live in a really noisy street, where you don't want to have your windows open, or there's security concerns for leaving your window open. So we actually did address ventilation as part of this project as well. So we monitored, like we put sensors in like five suites in each building to kind of get a baseline before the project, and then we added these little heat recovery ventilators that are continuously ventilating, whereas before there was just the bath fan and the windows and then we'll monitor it for a year after the retrofit and see what the change is and hopefully we see an improvement.

Speaker 1 25:46

Nice, that's cool.

Speaker 2 25:47

Yeah.

Speaker 1 25:49

But you saw an improvement pretty much right away. Right, you were saying that there was.

Speaker 2 25:54

Well, the windows are very noticeable.

Speaker 1 25:56

Yeah.

Speaker 2 25:56

Like yeah, I walked into one of the suites where they had just done the window and there's still like holes in the wall because there's other stuff we were going to do. But they put the new windows in and I always like to talk to the tenants when I see them like what you know, how is it? Like it's amazing, and like they comment on the quietness too. Like we did triple glazed windows on this one building and they were the building's close to a hospital, so they got lots of siren noise and stuff.

Speaker 1 26:23

It's unbelievable.

Speaker 2 26:25

Yeah, so it was like quiet, yeah, and some of the suites probably need very little heat now. Yeah, it's also a big building, so there's some internal gains and stuff. Yeah, that's one of the things I like about the enclosure side of things is that it's so simple and effective and it's immediate and it's done Like we're.

Improving Air Quality and Ventilation

Speaker 2 26:48

You know, with these projects. The enclosures have been done for many months now, the mechanical systems have technically been done for many months and we're kind of getting into the verification phase now, except that we're still trying to get the mechanical systems working how we want them to yeah and it's surprisingly complicated, like just like back and forth, like the controls are just getting the outputs to be able to understand how the systems is work. Is working?

Speaker 1 27:15

yes, they're going from floor to floor to floor like all the controls, heat, I mean.

Speaker 2 27:19

It's very difficult to do setting temperatures for return water loops and yeah, it's kind of endless yeah, and then you've got to probably keep. You got to keep on top of that over time too. So there's a big education component. The building owners yeah when we hand over that, so that they maintain these savings as well. So the enclosure simple, just works yeah.

Speaker 1 27:39

So that's it pretty interesting that you guys went from sort of leaky condo mitigation all the way to this very complex. It's basically built environment monitoring and optimization basically.

Speaker 2 27:57

Yeah, I would say I think from day one RDH has had a research bent. Yeah, I would say I think from day one RDH had a research bent, because I think the whole development of the rain screen approach to solve the leaky condo crisis was a bit of an experiment in testing. So there's always been that kind of philosophy and bent. Like we do a lot of material testing and stuff, so it sort of naturally lended itself to. Like when I came on on board, I was really interested in heat pumps and so I kind of took it in a different direction. But we already had a lot of great relationships with funders, like people like cmhc or bc housing, who are always looking to improve buildings and looking for research projects. Um, so it's kind of a natural extension tailored to the interests of an individual.

Speaker 1 28:43

Yeah, it seems like there's a pretty good opportunity moving forward. A lot of buildings with the extra heat from the summers we're seeing like I know from being involved with my strata we have the west side of the building basically gets baked and then the east side of the building gets moss, it's green and the other side is like bleached Just because of the way that and seals are getting baked out and there's. I mean, are you seeing that that amount of work is just becoming way more prevalent than it ever was? A building's 20 years old, more than 20 years old, that kind of like they're realizing they're not lasting as long.

Speaker 2 29:36

I don't know, I'm not so much involved on that side of things, okay, but I think we do see differential wear for various reasons. Yeah, involved on that side of things, but we, I think we do see differential wear for various reasons. Um, one of the interesting ones was, um, like there's been a lot of work in vancouver to like just the buildings that have sort of degraded over time because of just how wet it is, yeah, and then we look at a very similar building in Victoria where I live, and they're fine, like the same vintage of building is fine, and we think it's because, well, we do get a bit less rain in Victoria, but then we also have a lot more wind.

Speaker 2 30:12

So there's just more opportunity for the building to dry out, like after the wet season. That's a theory anyway Interesting. Every building, kind of, is different, that's a theory anyway, interesting Every building kind of is different. I guess it's sort of unfortunate in a way, because everyone wants to have the magic bullet that's going to fix every building. But the reality is that every building has something unique about it, Some weird thing. When you take off the cladding you're like, oh that's surprising. And then you've got to deal with it.

Speaker 1 30:39

So what are you excited about moving forward with RDH? And then you've got to deal with it. So what are you excited about moving forward with RDH? What are you looking at that gives you more zing in your step? You're like, oh, I can't wait to do that. Or maybe there's new technologies, new things. What gets you excited?

Speaker 2 30:58

I would like to do a pilot. I'm always excited about the monitoring studies. We're just wrapping up one where we've monitored hybrid heat pump retrofits in like 40 homes across BC. So another forest project actually, where so?

Speaker 1 31:12

hybrid heat pump. What does that mean?

RDH's Evolution in Building Solutions

Speaker 2 31:13

So hybrid heat pump is where you have a heat pump air to water or an air to air heat pump that's doing the primary heating, but then, once it gets below a certain temperature, you switch over to a gas furnace. Okay, so it's got a combined thing, I see, yeah, and then the controls have to be integrated so that all works, and there's all kinds of things that can go haywire or be done differently with just how homeowners operate things.

Speaker 1 31:40

The good old heat pump. That's just like I had. People were putting air conditioning our building's not air conditioned and they had people putting air conditioning and they needed a heat pump and they'd take up like a third of their balcony with a heat pump Like bloody hell. It's like is that going to evolve at some point to be a smaller footprint? I mean?

Speaker 2 32:00

They already have evolved to be smaller.

Speaker 1 32:01

I would say You've seen those big?

Speaker 2 32:04

like. I call them jet engines, like the really old, the older generation heat pumps. Yeah, with the big fan on the top, yeah, and they just sound like a jet engine when they turn on.

Speaker 1 32:13

I mean, these ones are more quiet, but they're still not that small.

Speaker 2 32:15

That's true, yeah.

Speaker 1 32:17

They've got to get there somewhere.

Speaker 2 32:23

If we're trying to populate Mars, we should be able to get a heap on smaller People are all excited about these. They're called packaged thermal air conditioning units what's?

Speaker 1 32:28

that.

Speaker 2 32:30

Well, it's all in one unit. The compressor and evaporator are all in one unit, so you have to install it on an exterior wall and then it has sort of two openings and then it sort of runs the air through the unit and it does the same thing, but it's has much lower capacity than traditional split system does so.

Speaker 1 32:54

The applications are somewhat limited by comparison yeah, and punching through the envelopes, not that, yeah, you have bigger holes in the enclosure and then a lot of these units are quite leaky.

Speaker 2 33:05

So we've been working with some of the manufacturers to just make a better box so that when it's not on the manufacturers must love you guys. Eh, Some of them do Some of them do on the other hand, that's pretty cool, alright, chrissy.

Speaker 1 33:19

Well, this was very informative and it's nice to get to know you.

Speaker 2 33:24

You as well, yeah it was fun.

Speaker 1 33:26

You're an iceberg. Thanks for having me on.

Speaker 2 33:28

I'm an iceberg, oh, okay.

Speaker 1 33:29

Yeah, a lot of information under the water there, so that's pretty cool. At least I got to dive down a little bit, so that's pretty cool, all right. Well, thank you and enjoy the show. How do people get a hold of you? Do you want people to contact you?

Speaker 2 33:41

Sure, yeah, you can go through the RDHcom website. Perfect, also on LinkedIn.

Speaker 1 33:48

And if people want to work on your team. Maybe You're all looking for great people, oh yeah, we almost always have active job postings.

Speaker 2 33:55

Perfect, reach out. I like to meet with young professionals in particular, and young women professionals, if they're wondering about how to develop their career and, um, yeah, always make time for people perfect, okay.

Future Projects and Heat Pump Technology

Speaker 1 34:09

Well, enjoy the show and thank you for spending some time with me, appreciate it. Thanks so much, james. All right, thank you, ciao. Well, that does it for another episode of the Site Visit. Thank you for listening. Be sure to stay connected with us by following our social accounts on Instagram and YouTube. You can also sign up for our monthly newsletter at sitemaxsystemscom slash the site visit, where you'll get industry insights, pro tips and everything you need to know about the Site Visit podcast and Sitemax, the job site and construction management tool of choice for thousands of contractors in North America and beyond. Sitemax is also the engine that powers this podcast. All right, let's get back to building.