0:000 secondsAll too often, people want to download [music] a checklist. Just tell me how to build a healthy home. Unfortunately,
0:077 secondsit's really never possible to do it [music] that way. There's no such thing as a perfect home. You'll drive yourself to the poor house or the nut house trying to achieve it. It's not worth
0:1515 secondsthat aggravation, but we want to get it low enough where it makes a difference.
0:2323 secondsHey everybody, welcome to the HBAC ADHD vodcast. I'm your host Jeremy Begley.
0:2929 secondsToday I've got an exciting IAQ episode with Andy Pace of the Green Design Center. And I'm gonna let Andy tell you a little bit about his background and
0:3838 secondswhat he does and then we're going to get into some really cool conversation.
0:4242 secondsAwesome. Jeremy, thank you so much for having me on the show. I've been looking forward to this. I'm Andy Pace, Green Design Center and Building for Health.
0:5151 secondsMy background is 35 years in architecture, commercial construction. I started a company back in 1992 applying
1:001 minutewhat I called at the time common sense healthy building materials and I went from the commercial side of the spectrum to residential and I've been here ever
1:081 minute, 8 secondssince and I work with people all around the world who have chemical sensitivities, mold sensitivities, other immune system disorders and I help them
1:171 minute, 17 secondsdesign, build and just live in healthier homes. So, let's just start with a basic definition and maybe it's not so basic,
1:241 minute, 24 secondsbut what is your definition of a healthy home?
1:271 minute, 27 secondsBoy, that's a loaded question right right from the start. It's like 10 years ago or 15 years ago when the question was, "What is a green home?" To me, a
1:351 minute, 35 secondshealthy home is a home that limits inflamm.
1:461 minute, 46 secondsThat's really the whole basis of the book that I wrote called Building for Health, which is our homes are full of
1:531 minute, 53 secondsinflammagens
2:042 minutes, 4 secondsin our life to allow our bodies to heal itself more naturally.
2:102 minutes, 10 secondsJust to be clear about what you do, you you create a healthy home plan. When you're doing a healthy home design, you design it around the person that the
2:182 minutes, 18 secondshome is being built for. Is that sort of the pathway and then you go from there? How's that process work for you?
2:242 minutes, 24 secondsYeah, I would say ideally that's how the process works. All too often people want to download a checklist. Just tell me
2:322 minutes, 32 secondshow to build a healthy home. Tell me the materials to use and I can give this list to my builder and let them follow this list. And they think that's going
2:402 minutes, 40 secondsto be the end of it. Unfortunately, it's really never possible to do it that way.
2:462 minutes, 46 secondsEverybody who has health issues ranging from again chemical sensitivities, mold sensitivities, chronic inflammatory
2:532 minutes, 53 secondsresponse, if they've gone through cancer treatments and they have no immune system left, I have to create a
3:003 minutesspecification set for how their home needs to be built to avoid the typical inflammagens that are used in
3:083 minutes, 8 secondsconstruction. And when I set the goal several years ago to write a book about how to build a healthy home, I wanted to
3:163 minutes, 16 secondswrite a book of here's how you do it a toz. It quickly turned into a book that's about what do we need to avoid in
3:243 minutes, 24 secondsour homes than a book about what do we need to use? And the reason for that is every client is different. If I wrote a book about how to build a healthy home
3:333 minutes, 33 secondsfrom start to finish, it would be good for one reader because I would have to base it on one particular client. And I
3:413 minutes, 41 secondswork with a thousand clients a year. I need to make sure that the recommendations that I make for that particular client are good for them.
3:503 minutes, 50 secondsIt's not going to harm them in any way.
3:513 minutes, 51 secondsSo to your earlier question about what makes a home healthy, understand that a home, a building
3:593 minutes, 59 secondsmaterial, a home good cannot necessarily be healthy for somebody. It's either
4:074 minutes, 7 secondsunhealthy or it's neutral. Building materials aren't designed to make us healthier,
4:154 minutes, 15 secondsbut they can make us unhealthy. Every client that I work with has a different set of standards that we're striving for to make sure that we're limiting the
4:234 minutes, 23 secondsamount of unhealthy materials in their home.
4:274 minutes, 27 secondsInteresting. So, one person's healthy home may not be another person's healthy home. Is that fair to say?
4:344 minutes, 34 secondsThat's very fair to say. And if you think about again the mid to late 90s when green building really took off, the question we would get from a client is,
4:434 minutes, 43 seconds"Well, I want to buy flooring material for my house. Can you tell me what's the greenest flooring material you can buy?
4:494 minutes, 49 secondsAnd my response always was what does green mean to you? Is it recycled content? Is it have to do with where
4:574 minutes, 57 secondsit's made and how close it is? Low embodied energy. Is it safe? Does it contain toxic materials? All these
5:055 minutes, 5 secondsdifferent things. As a matter of fact, I created a program years ago called Degree of Green based around the fact that there are 27 different reasons why
5:145 minutes, 14 secondsyou can call a product green. When you boil them down to three main categories, it's human health, sustainability, and
5:215 minutes, 21 secondsenvironment. Now, I've really focused on the human health side of things throughout most of my career. So, the next iteration of this is really
5:295 minutes, 29 secondscreating the healthy home. And again, what's healthy to one person may not be healthy to the next. And so I have to
5:375 minutes, 37 secondsreally focus on this individual to make good recommendations.
5:425 minutes, 42 secondsDo you have an example of that where like one person would be like this is terrible for them, but then another person could live just fine with it?
5:505 minutes, 50 secondsI have several examples and I'll give you two that are probably most prominent. One is the use of zero VOCC paints and coatings in the house. In the
5:585 minutes, 58 secondslast 20 years, there has been no other that has had this much controversy when manufacturers advertise their products as being low or zero VOCC.
6:106 minutes, 10 secondsLet me ask you this, Jeremy. What do you think that means to you? Low zero VOC.
6:156 minutes, 15 secondsFrom a sensitivity standpoint, if I was a consumer, I would just look at that and think I could buy that and I'm not going to react to it. I will not have a
6:226 minutes, 22 secondsreaction to it. That would be my consumer-based reaction to that labeling. Okay. And that's exactly why it's so controversial because that is
6:316 minutes, 31 secondscompletely wrong. And no offense to you, but this is what the industry has done.
6:366 minutes, 36 secondsA VOCC is simply a carbon-based molecule that's readily vaporized at room temperature that could rise to the
6:446 minutes, 44 secondsatmosphere, react with nitrogen and UV, and create smog. It's regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency because
6:516 minutes, 51 secondsof outdoor air pollution. There is no regulation that states that VOCC's are harmful for
6:596 minutes, 59 secondshumans. Therefore, we need to eliminate them. It's 100% because of outdoor air pollution regulations. So, inside of
7:067 minutes, 6 secondsyour home, whether or not an material contains VOCC's or not is irrelevant to the human occupant. And I'll give you some examples.
7:177 minutes, 17 secondsIf anybody in your life has ever used nail polish remover, which is acetone is a very, very dangerous solvent. You open
7:257 minutes, 25 secondsup a can of acetone in a school and within 15 minutes, every child in that school would have detectable levels of acetone in the liver.
7:347 minutes, 34 secondsVery dangerous. Yet, the EPA states that because it's not photocatalytic, you can use it in paints and codins and not disclose it as a
7:427 minutes, 42 secondsVOCC. Therefore, zero VOCC paints contain acetone, ammonia, butylacetate, and other derivatives.
7:507 minutes, 50 secondsNow, if you were to peel the skin off of an orange this morning for breakfast, you have released 850 g per liter of
7:597 minutes, 59 secondsVOCC's. Doesn't mean it's dangerous. So, a VOCC could be something as simple as ethyl alcohol or orange oil, completely
8:098 minutes, 9 secondsharmless to inhale. A VOCC could also be something extremely dangerous, benzene.
8:168 minutes, 16 secondsSo, it's not because it's a VOC that it's dangerous. It's because it's a dangerous chemical that it's dangerous.
8:258 minutes, 25 secondsThe VOCC moniker was never designed to be used as an indicator of whether a product is safe for users and occupants.
8:338 minutes, 33 secondsIt only has to do with outdoor air pollution. from the day it was developed in the mid '90s until today, it's still being used incorrectly.
8:418 minutes, 41 secondsLike all these IAQ sensors that had VOCC detection in them, is it meaningless? Is it meaningful? Is there any meaning to it? Or how do you feel about that?
8:508 minutes, 50 secondsI'm a big believer that information is very helpful, but you have to know how to interpret that information, right? If you were to tell me that my VOCC levels
8:598 minutes, 59 secondsin my house right now are extremely high, you have to ask yourself, are you the type of person that would get freaked out about that? Or would you say, "Well, I guess we just cooked
9:079 minutes, 7 secondsbreakfast, or my wife was just upstairs putting hairspray on. I get it." Because that's what would cause these VOCC monitors to start screaming at you. It's interpreting the information.
9:199 minutes, 19 secondsNow, if you were to apply a zero VOCC paint in your house, your monitors might be screaming VOCC's, even though it's a
9:279 minutes, 27 secondszero VOCC paint. And that's because it has additives that are not classified as VOCC's and don't have to be mentioned on the literature.
9:369 minutes, 36 secondsSo, this is what I'm talking about. It's like it could be dangerous, maybe it's not dangerous, but it's information and so we have to be able to interpret it
9:449 minutes, 44 secondsproperly. I had a situation where somebody was doing an IQ test in their home. The results come back extremely
9:529 minutes, 52 secondshigh in VOCC's. Turns out because he was a diabetic, he was giving himself a shot during the test. He used a little alcohol swab in his leg upstairs away
10:0010 minutesfrom the test and it spiked the meters and he started freaking out that his house was dangerous. So information is good, but we have to know how to interpret it properly. So, there's some
10:0910 minutes, 9 secondsmonitors out there that will control your equipment based on different IQ events and stuff like that. Do you feel like
10:1610 minutes, 16 secondsif it's a VOC, it's a nice fail safe to have that where it'll activate your ventilation and turn it on or should you
10:2410 minutes, 24 secondshave more information before you even bothering wasting energy that energizing your system and all that?
10:3010 minutes, 30 secondsI'm more inclined to have those types of systems that are activated based upon five numbers than I am with VOCC's.
10:3710 minutes, 37 secondsSure. Because the things we do every day in our homes can create VOCC's whether they're actually dangerous or not. But
10:4510 minutes, 45 secondsPM2.5 is a respirable particulate that is problematic.
10:5010 minutes, 50 secondsSo let's talk about that. PM2.5, what causes that? What should you look for?
10:5510 minutes, 55 secondsWhat do you feel the levels are? Because there's big discussions in the industry around PM2.5, like what level should anything ever be triggered at? And
11:0211 minutes, 2 secondsthere's people that have different opinions on the varying levels and things like that. So, where do you weigh in on that particular conversation?
11:0911 minutes, 9 secondsYeah, I tend to allow better experts than I chime in on this, but I will say that this year has been very eye opening
11:1811 minutes, 18 secondsbecause of the the wildfires bringing smoke into our environment. We're seeing numbers in the 3 to 400 range outside,
11:2611 minutes, 26 secondswhich is unheard of. I think that having equipment that will respond to these things, obviously when the numbers
11:3311 minutes, 33 secondsoutside are so bad, you don't want to open up the windows. You don't want to use your ERVs because nothing can keep up with it within an home environment.
11:4211 minutes, 42 secondsSo, at that point, I would say close the windows, shut down the fresh air intake, but use portable filters to try to purify the air that we do have inside.
11:5311 minutes, 53 secondsSo, that's during a fire event. So, what about things like CO? Do you feel that's important to monitor in the home? I think CO is important to monitor. Yes.
12:0112 minutes, 1 secondI think that everybody has their hot button issue when it comes to a healthy home.
12:0612 minutes, 6 secondsItems like that though, we do know that that carbon monoxide is dangerous at very low levels. We know that fromaldahhide is dangerous at very low
12:1512 minutes, 15 secondslevels. But just the general moniker of a VOC, that's too broad of a moniker to
12:2312 minutes, 23 secondsuse to say whether or not this is a dangerous situation or not.
12:2912 minutes, 29 secondsWhat about CO2? Do you feel like we should monitor that?
12:3312 minutes, 33 secondsYeah, I look at things also like do we have a need to monitor a lot of these things if we are the reason I'm and it's a bunch of leading questions but there's like
12:4112 minutes, 41 secondsmonitors that monitor all this stuff and then it controls your system based on everything that it's bringing in. It's on demand ventilation is like a hot
12:4812 minutes, 48 secondsbutton in green building right now and there's like bunch of different ways to achieve what people are calling on demand ventilation and I'm trying to get
12:5612 minutes, 56 secondsa sense of what is really important to worry about if you're going to literally energize equipment based on a reading.
13:0113 minutes, 1 secondWhat is the important levels we should be monitoring?
13:0513 minutes, 5 secondsYeah, you're obviously a bit bigger expert on this than I am, but I can say that most of my clients that I'm working with, this is something that they are
13:1413 minutes, 14 secondsnot interested in because they don't want to have to rely on technology to do what they should be doing themselves,
13:2213 minutes, 22 secondswhich is taking control of the materials used in their home, making sure that all the calculations for their HVAC system,
13:3013 minutes, 30 secondsthe JDTS are done properly. So then we won't have to rely on a computer to determine when and where the theoretical window should be open into the house.
13:4113 minutes, 41 secondsSo I guess the big conversation here and maybe this is a little bit outside the scope of what you talk about from a ventilation standpoint is ashray 62.2
13:5013 minutes, 50 secondssome type of continuous or intermittent strategy based on that or on demand that operates based on all these parameters that we just talked about.
14:0014 minutesYeah, honestly, Jeremy, that's not something that I get involved in with too much. It's just I think that the high performance home business is, in my
14:0914 minutes, 9 secondsopinion, vastly different from the healthy home business. Is but there's an intersection.
14:1414 minutes, 14 secondsThere's an intersection. And there should be an intersection. And that's really what I'm trying to find out is what is perfect intersection there.
14:2114 minutes, 21 secondsYeah. I mean, perfect intersection to me is if we design and build the home properly, now what do we need to worry
14:2914 minutes, 29 secondsabout from a ventilation standpoint that needs specialized equipment that goes on and off without us having to worry about
14:3714 minutes, 37 secondsit? Again, this is where it's tough because high performance home construction, in my opinion, completely ignores the health of the occupant. It's
14:4514 minutes, 45 secondsall about the metric of the home and how the home operates. It's like that old adage that a house needs to breathe.
14:5114 minutes, 51 secondsCompletely false. The house could care less. Y the occupants of the house need to breathe 100%.
14:5614 minutes, 56 secondsThe home needs to be able to release moisture from the walls. That's not breathing. And so
15:0515 minutes, 5 secondswhen I am involved in a project where let's say the builder is a high performance home builder and then I'm been brought in as a healthy home
15:1215 minutes, 12 secondsconsultant, I can tell you that more than not I'm butting heads with them really because they are so concerned about what
15:2015 minutes, 20 secondstheir AC is, but they don't care how they get to it.
15:2615 minutes, 26 secondsIf we're using acrylic molecules that get pushed all around the house into every little crack and crevice of the house to try to block air infiltration.
15:3615 minutes, 36 secondsAre you talking about spray foam? Like a gel?
15:3915 minutes, 39 secondsAerog gel? I don't even know what that is.
15:4115 minutes, 41 secondsYeah, aerogel is if you were to have a super airtight home, but you're trying to get your AC to even a lower level to be almost a passive house standard.
15:5215 minutes, 52 secondsAerogel is a material that you pressurize the home and you blow in this fogging material of acrylic molecules.
16:0216 minutes, 2 secondsAre we talking about aerosal? Aerog gel and aeros seal. Very similar. Yes.
16:0616 minutes, 6 secondsIs it the home? Is aerosal. Aerogel the home version of aeros seal. Is that what it is? H they put the blower door fan. I didn't know they changed the branding name on
16:1516 minutes, 15 secondsit, but yeah, I'm familiar with that concept. Yeah. So, literally we do this in ducks, too.
16:2016 minutes, 20 secondsAre you telling me you have a healthy home take on that? I'd love to hear that on the product itself.
16:2616 minutes, 26 secondsYeah, my healthy home take on that is to not rely on something that we don't have a lot of information on right now.
16:3316 minutes, 33 secondsUnderstand that acrylics, so maybe we're talking about two different things because the aerosal product that I'm familiar with is made
16:4216 minutes, 42 secondsfrom tree sap. It's a non-toxic product made from tree sap that is a propellant that's blown through the ducks. It's a
16:5016 minutes, 50 secondslighter than air substance and duck work. It seeks out the path of least resistance and seals seals seals seals till it's done. They say they claim
16:5716 minutes, 57 secondstheir marketing, their research claims it's no more toxic than Elmer's glue.
17:0117 minutes, 1 secondThat's what I've heard from their marketing.
17:0317 minutes, 3 secondsSure. I'm not saying that Elmer's glue is toxic.
17:0617 minutes, 6 secondsAnd I'm not saying that aerogel is toxic, but also understand that if it's made from tree sap, are they saying it's made from latex?
17:1517 minutes, 15 secondsI don't know. I'm not a scientist. I'm just telling you the little marketing stuff. I personally, and maybe I should look farther into it, but I've always
17:2217 minutes, 22 secondspromoted that as a fairly non harmful product way to seal IQ friendly
17:2917 minutes, 29 secondsway to seal ducks and homes. From a performance standpoint, it's fantastic.
17:3517 minutes, 35 secondsBut understand that if there is any acrylic in it whatsoever or let's say synthetic material in it, it
17:4317 minutes, 43 secondsneeds to have a biocide in it to keep it from becoming a food source from mold.
17:4817 minutes, 48 secondsAnd that's where you have problems because biocides can contribute to formaldahhide release.
17:5617 minutes, 56 secondsOkay. Interesting. because of just the action of it. If it has any flame retardant additive to it, that releases
18:0418 minutes, 4 secondsfromaldahhide. Maybe at extremely low levels, but again, when I'm talking about an entire house, I don't necessarily like to rely on things like
18:1218 minutes, 12 secondsthis that may or may not have some questionable ingredients that we can't actually verify. I'm a big believer in
18:2018 minutes, 20 secondsverifying material ingredients if possible. And the problem we have is that the companies will not give out
18:2618 minutes, 26 secondstheir materials list. It's considered a proprietary blend of material. They'll say, "Well, look at the SDS." And you'll see there's nothing dangerous in there.
18:3618 minutes, 36 secondsYou understand that an SDS was never designed to be used by homeowners to determine whether a product is safe or
18:4218 minutes, 42 secondsnot. SDS are required for firefighters and first responders to an accident to
18:5018 minutes, 50 secondsdetermine how they need to gear up to clean up the spill or fight the fire.
18:5518 minutes, 55 secondsSo if you see an SDS sheet and there's nothing listed under hazard ingredients, it does not mean there's no hazardous ingredient. That just means that there's
19:0319 minutes, 3 secondsno ingredient that's either more than 1% of the volume or there's no ingredient that's not part of a proprietary blend
19:1019 minutes, 10 secondsthey don't have to tell you about. So SDS sheets are really irrelevant when it comes to determining human health factors.
19:1819 minutes, 18 secondsInteresting. Man, you got me thinking.
19:2019 minutes, 20 secondsI'm gonna have to look into some stuff a little further when it comes to some of that. So I'm curious now. What is the real story behind it? So it'll make me dig a little bit. Let's talk about
19:2819 minutes, 28 secondsanother favorite topic of people. UV lights. You and I talked about this a little bit in residential applications.
19:3419 minutes, 34 secondsLet's qualify because it's a different application when we're in commercial spaces and stuff like that. But let's talk about UV lights and residential
19:4119 minutes, 41 secondsapplications. Does that do anything for the IQ of the home? Let's just start there.
19:4619 minutes, 46 secondsPotentially yes in certain situations. I don't like to recommend the use of UV lights in a residential system
19:5619 minutes, 56 secondsjust as like a general you should put one of these in and it'll help clear your air. That's kind of how these things are marketed.
20:0120 minutes, 1 secondYep. Yeah. They're an add-on at the end of every job for most people.
20:0420 minutes, 4 secondsThey're an add-on and I'll tell you what, they're highly profitable.
20:0720 minutes, 7 secondsYes. which is why everybody loves putting them in and it brings you back once a year to replace an expensive bulb. So, people have to understand that
20:1420 minutes, 14 secondswith UV lights, the two main types of UV lights are UVC and UVB. UVC is basically
20:2120 minutes, 21 secondsa light that only brings up to the C wavelength, and that is considered a sanitizing wavelength. We use this
20:2920 minutes, 29 secondsspecifically if we're in an old HVAC system, older home, where there's been a history of either mold or bacterial
20:3720 minutes, 37 secondsgrowth on the coil and we'd like to put a UV light on there shining directly on the coil. It's not to do anything about the air blowing across, but it's to make
20:4620 minutes, 46 secondssure that we don't have microbes growing on the coil itself. UVV is a wavelength
20:5320 minutes, 53 secondsthat specifically creates ozone, if used properly in a home, can be extremely beneficial for various things,
21:0321 minutes, 3 secondswhether it's for mold or for just general odors in a home. However, ozone is also what's called a chemistry
21:1021 minutes, 10 secondsaccelerator. A chemistry accelerator whether it's ozone or ions these types of energizers that are used in HVAC
21:1921 minutes, 19 secondssystems can actually break the selling point is that they break down chemicals there's chemicals in the air it'll break them down yes what does it break them
21:2821 minutes, 28 secondsdown into we don't know sometimes sometimes it actually gets broken down into aldahhides or specifically formaldahhide so we have seen many
21:3621 minutes, 36 secondssituations where people install a a UV light that acts accidentally creates ozone or an ionizer and they find
21:4421 minutes, 44 secondselevated amounts of formaldahhide in the air because they're breaking down the chemical so much to that smallest molecule of formaldahhide.
21:5221 minutes, 52 secondsI don't like to use any of those types of accelerators.
21:5621 minutes, 56 secondsAgain, I limit the UV light usage to if it's a situation with the coil itself, but otherwise I'd rather rely on a new
22:0522 minutes, 5 secondshome construction, we can dictate the types of materials that are used to eliminate the chemical offging from the start
22:1222 minutes, 12 secondsand then we use really good carbon filtration to get rid of the pollutants in the air. is a UV light that's
22:2122 minutes, 21 secondscommonly sold by the HVAC industry. The biggest brand name that starts with a H.
22:2622 minutes, 26 secondsDo they or an M and whatever you know what I'm talking about. Is that the V light or the other one? Which type is that's commonly sold?
22:3422 minutes, 34 secondsIt's supposed to be the C, the UVC.
22:3722 minutes, 37 secondsNow, I say supposed to be understand that with ozone
22:4322 minutes, 43 secondscreation, there's a limit. A bulb can create a certain amount of ozone but still be classified as non ozone
22:5222 minutes, 52 secondsproducing. It's like VOCC's. If your product has less than I think 5 or 10 grams per liter of VOCC's, you can just call it zero VOCC. So the ozone limit is very similar to this.
23:0323 minutes, 3 secondsThat big company you're talking about, they love to talk about how their technology is used in the space shuttle space station, right? And so inside of
23:1123 minutes, 11 secondsyour home, obviously it's like 1,000th of the technology in your home unit than you have up there. But the bigger issue
23:1923 minutes, 19 secondsis when they're doing testing on their units inside an 18inch x 18in box and
23:2623 minutes, 26 secondsthey have plates in there that have certain types of pathogens or chemicals and they say, "Look, our unit gets rid of this within 20 minutes." Understand
23:3523 minutes, 35 secondsthat in that enclosed space, it's not the light that's doing anything. It's actually the fact that particular bulb
23:4123 minutes, 41 secondscreates just enough ozone that within an enclosed test box, it can get rid of
23:4823 minutes, 48 secondsthose things inside of your HVAC system, it does nothing. And so, one thing too is like the surface area
23:5623 minutes, 56 secondsthat it actually is on, like you're only getting a fraction of the coil itself.
24:0024 minutesAnd the minute the dust gets on that coil, it's doing something different than it was when there was no dust on the coil because the light doesn't do
24:0724 minutes, 7 secondsanything for dust. And once the there's a layer of dust between the light and the coil itself, microbes and all the things that it's trying to prevent can
24:1524 minutes, 15 secondseasily get trapped under the layer of dust and still be there at the end of the day.
24:1924 minutes, 19 secondsYeah, for sure. I think air travels through an HVAC system, what about 20 to 22 miles an hour somewhere around there.
24:2624 minutes, 26 secondsThat means that if you had a UV light in your return air plenum for whatever reason, light passes by to 22 miles an
24:3324 minutes, 33 secondshour, it's basically 2.3 seconds of contact time with that UV light.
24:3924 minutes, 39 secondsYeah, that Yeah, air move. It's useless in the airream. I'll straight up bang that. You know what I mean? Like that. I have no problem saying
24:4624 minutes, 46 seconds100% garbage in the airream. It does nothing for the exact reason you just said. There's no contact. It does not contact the air at a certain point in
24:5524 minutes, 55 secondsenough time enough length of time to do anything effective at all. Like for sure.
25:0025 minutesAnd we also know just based on scientific evidence that you need approximately 137 microwatts of UV energy to break
25:0925 minutes, 9 secondsthrough cellular walls of viruses, mold, spores, bacteria. And you need at least a 1 second contact time. So again, air
25:1825 minutes, 18 secondsis traveling 22 mph. It's got 2.3 seconds that it's within. Let's say your bulb generates at least 137 microwatts
25:2625 minutes, 26 secondsof energy. If you have that 2 seconds of contact time, it's got to go through the system five times in order for anything to happen. Like you said, you don't know
25:3525 minutes, 35 secondswhere that goes after it leaves. And so the ones that are within the the return air side are pretty useless. The ones
25:4225 minutes, 42 secondsthat are on the supply side can be beneficial. I have recommended and sold bulbs that specifically do create ozone
25:5225 minutes, 52 secondsin very certain specific situations, but I wouldn't generally recommend them for everybody because most people don't know how to use them properly.
26:0026 minutesI'd rather rely on using the right materials to start and then using good oldfashioned carbon to filter out the imperfections of the air.
26:1026 minutes, 10 secondsRemember those ozone machines they used to sell? Alpine Alpine machines? There was like a thousand lawsuits for those things and the technology was sound.
26:1826 minutes, 18 secondsPeople just didn't use them and Alpine did not do a good job of explaining the right way to use that particular piece of equipment in your home.
26:2526 minutes, 25 secondsThat's what actually started this whole halaloo about ozone. Alpine was a multi-level marketing company. Most units were sold by people who were
26:3326 minutes, 33 secondseither stay-at-home moms or hairdressers or somebody who just wanted a second form of income. They'd sell these to their family and their family would go, "Well, if a little was good, a lot is
26:4226 minutes, 42 secondsbetter." They turn it on full blast for two hours and wonder why everybody in the house now is developing asthma. And it's because it's producing way too
26:5126 minutes, 51 secondsmuch. Ozone, if produced at levels that are commonly found just in nature, is perfectly acceptable for most people.
27:0227 minutes, 2 secondsBut when you don't know how to regulate that or you don't know how you're using it, I just say avoided it completely.
27:0927 minutes, 9 secondsYeah. people were turning them things on and just leaving them and running them like they were air purifiers or something and [laughter] it correct causing all kinds of problems. That's a
27:1727 minutes, 17 secondsnutty way to do something. So, I guess the bottom line is there are some limited uses for UV lights, but selling them to every homeowner out the door is
27:2527 minutes, 25 secondsnot a great use for them and you're probably just selling something to be selling at that point.
27:2927 minutes, 29 secondsAnd I'll give you an example of a good use for them. So, I do a lot of work with a company called Dynamic Air in New Jersey, and they actually make a system,
27:3727 minutes, 37 secondsa home purification system called their RS4. And inside the RS4, you've got polarized media. It doesn't send out ions. It just charges the media itself,
27:4627 minutes, 46 secondsalmost like a magnet. That's going to be your HEPA. It's like a MV 13 equivalent for particulates. It's got a large carbon block for your chemicals, gases,
27:5527 minutes, 55 secondsVOCC's. But inside that box, there's also a UV light. UV light's not in there to sanitize the air. It's in there to
28:0228 minutes, 2 secondssanitize those surfaces so that when you do get a mold spore or a virus molecule that sticks onto one of those surfaces
28:1128 minutes, 11 secondsbecause there's enough contact time and a high enough microwattage, it can zap those things. And so it's not designed to clean the air per se. It's designed
28:2028 minutes, 20 secondsto clean the box and the filters, which leads to better indoor air quality.
28:2428 minutes, 24 secondsYeah. That's the same way like hospitals use like UV curtains. Well, they'll put them on the wall so that they're UV, you know, to keep like in high OS and
28:3328 minutes, 33 secondssensitive OS and stuff like that, they'll use UV curtains where it's either aimed at a wall or drapes down a wall where it keeps those surfaces
28:4028 minutes, 40 secondscompletely pristine for the surgeries that's about to happen in there.
28:4428 minutes, 44 secondsYeah, that technology is fantastic. That use of UV toilets, they invented years ago a coating that they could put onto
28:5128 minutes, 51 secondstheir porcelain that was a high titanium dioxide coating and it's energized by UV. So they have this high titanium
29:0029 minutesdioxide coating on the porcelain. They have a toilet lid that when it shuts the UV light comes on and it sanitizes the surfaces. So it's essentially self hygienic, self-cleaning.
29:1129 minutes, 11 secondsYeah, that's the real use of this stuff right there. Any type of sanitizing and getting where it can actually be used on the surface area with other materials
29:1929 minutes, 19 secondslike that and make direct contact and keep that area clean, then you're doing a whole bunch. But when you're trying to use it in these and end the way these
29:2729 minutes, 27 secondsguys do it with these air handlers and coils, maybe the juice for the squeeze is there at some point in time, but it's not always there. Like you pointed out,
29:3429 minutes, 34 secondsthere are use cases, but not every case is a use case for the stuff.
29:3829 minutes, 38 secondsThat's correct. It's human nature to want to take some type of technology and then try to incorporate it into another
29:4529 minutes, 45 secondsaspect and hope it still works. And unfortunately, it's just not the case.
29:5029 minutes, 50 secondsSo, I have a client right now that I'm doing a design for and she has sensitivity. She's paying attention to low VOC this and everything she can.
29:5929 minutes, 59 secondsWhat is the best device? I haven't asked her, but I don't know if she has a specific list of sensitivities or things that make her think like where this comes from. The whole thing happened.
30:0830 minutes, 8 secondsShe moved from Texas. She bought a house. They're gut rehabing it or they weren't gut rehabing. They moved in. All of a sudden, she started getting sick.
30:1530 minutes, 15 secondsThey had somebody come in. There was mold in the house and some other things going on. But she said, "I have sensitivities anyway, so we're gonna tear this whole They moved down the
30:2330 minutes, 23 secondsstreet. They're living down the street right now. They're tearing everything in the house out. They want to make it as sensitivity friendly as possible. We're doing a whole entire high performance
30:3230 minutes, 32 secondsdesign. It has dehumidification, advanced filtration, all that type of stuff, but she in practice while they're
30:3930 minutes, 39 secondssealing the house up and doing all that is using the lowest VOC products and everything that she can find. So, is there different advice that would be
30:4730 minutes, 47 secondsgood to give her versus the pathway that she's taking right now?
30:5030 minutes, 50 secondsYeah. The first question I would ask her is, "Why do you want low VOC?" Have her answer that question. And she's going to answer it by saying, "Well, [snorts]
30:5830 minutes, 58 secondsbecause I want the safest materials available." And then I'll say, "Have you ever used nail polish remover, which is acetone? That's zero VOC." So, forget VOCC's. Completely forget about them.
31:1031 minutes, 10 secondsLet's look for materials that have a proven track record with people who have severe sensitivities and we know they can tolerate these materials because they don't have the hazardous chemicals.
31:2131 minutes, 21 secondsThere is actually an EPA classification called HAP which is coincidental. It's called hazardous air pollutants. HAPs.
31:2931 minutes, 29 secondsNow, one would think that if it's called hazardous air pollutants, that would be related to outdoor air pollution. And
31:3631 minutes, 36 secondsVOCC's, volatile organic compounds, would be related to indoor. But it's the opposite. HAPs are actually ingredients
31:4431 minutes, 44 secondsthat are actually hazardous or dangerous to humans. And so, there are products that are marketed now that are HAP free.
31:5231 minutes, 52 secondsThat's far more valuable of information for an occupant in the home. So that information is on the EPA's website and then you would be able to take and and
32:0032 minuteslook at the material that you're purchasing and make sure none of that stuff is in it. That's how you would use that. That's yes and no. But understand that as I
32:0832 minutes, 8 secondsmentioned before with SDS sheets and materials lists, transparency is not the norm for most manufacturers. So who are you going to trust? What it comes down
32:1732 minutes, 17 secondsto? I don't necessarily trust salespeople. If they say, "Oh yeah, you can use this. It's completely safe." And
32:2432 minutes, 24 secondsthen I find out that it's loaded with ingredients that are very dangerous for the occupants. That happens all the time. Let me ask you this a different way.
32:3232 minutes, 32 secondsSomething's going to seal their house up because that's what people do and it's a good thing to do. We want to be able to keep the outside out of the house and the attics and all that. What is the
32:4132 minutes, 41 secondsbest type of product to use for something like that? Somebody that doesn't know anything about anything, but they want to use the healthiest
32:4832 minutes, 48 secondsproduct when they're doing that type of work. Like what does that look like for you? So, are you talking about air sealing the correct like something they
32:5732 minutes, 57 secondswould use caulk for or spray foam or something like that? Let's say sealing gaps in a home.
33:0233 minutes, 2 secondsYeah. So, I avoid spray foam like the plague. I don't think there's anything that spray foam can do that other
33:1133 minutes, 11 secondsproducts and systems can't do without having to introduce essentially 6 in of
33:1833 minutes, 18 secondstoxin into our life throughout the house. In theory or even in a laboratory setting, you can get a two-part spray
33:2633 minutes, 26 secondsfoam to cure out properly with the right equipment, the right temperature and humidity, the right application method, the perfect blend, the perfect tip size,
33:3533 minutes, 35 secondseverything site, nothing is ever perfect.
33:3833 minutes, 38 secondsI have never seen an application of spray foam that went perfectly. It always goes, I don't want to say sideways because even to the lay person,
33:4633 minutes, 46 secondsyou can see them spraying it in. Yeah, it's looking great. But you don't know sometimes until year one, year two when you still have unbelievably level high
33:5433 minutes, 54 secondslevels of toxins in your home because the spray foam never cured out properly and it may not ever cure out.
34:0234 minutes, 2 secondsSo I just avoid it. Why risk it? There are products like I do a lot with the KOF insulation company and working with their Eco Seal.
34:1234 minutes, 12 secondsLove those guys. Shout out Johnny Lang.
34:1434 minutes, 14 secondsShout out Johnny Lang. And honestly, that product works just fantastically.
34:1934 minutes, 19 secondsYou got to have applicators that know what they're doing with most of materials. It, you know, you need to have quality applicators. But there are
34:2634 minutes, 26 secondsother companies. Proco makes a really good product that's hand applied, tel applied. I even use the Handy Foam
34:3434 minutes, 34 secondsproduct, which is a one part canister foam, but it's Greenguard certified.
34:3834 minutes, 38 secondsBecause it's a one part, I don't have to worry about whether or not it's going to properly cure or not on site. So I will use that in some applications, doors and
34:4734 minutes, 47 secondswindows and so forth. I really like the Eco Seal.
34:5034 minutes, 50 secondsThe Eco Seal is one thing. That's a whole system. You got to have an applicator. You got to be in down with canoff and there's a bunch of stuff. I love it for commercial applications
34:5834 minutes, 58 secondswhere you're using their product and putting canoff insulation in there or any insulation really. It's a great first product air sealing to have, but everybody's not going to have that. But
35:0635 minutes, 6 secondslet's go back to the handy foam thing because I am interested in that. I'm not interested in Ecoil, but I want to hear more about the Handy Seal for a minute because that's important. That's a Handy
35:1535 minutes, 15 secondsFoam is a product that's made by DAO, right? Am I right about Dow? I think it's D.
35:1935 minutes, 19 secondsI'm not sure exactly sure who the main man.
35:2135 minutes, 21 secondsWell, it's one of the main big manufacturers makes that actual brand of foam. But you're saying there is a product, a low expansion product that
35:2935 minutes, 29 secondsyou can use in gaps that you would consider a go-to if you don't have something like Eco Seal available.
35:3535 minutes, 35 secondsThat's correct. Yeah. Handy foam comes in a standard version. Comes in a window and door so expands even less. Also comes in a fire barrier version.
35:4335 minutes, 43 secondsYes. Orange. Yeah.
35:4435 minutes, 44 secondsYep. So for penetrating firewalls. So I like that a lot. I think nothing beats either the Eco Seal or the Proco. Uh
35:5335 minutes, 53 secondsagain, it comes in sausage tubes, hand apply buckets, and you're going to have to go to a distributor. You're not going to buy that at Walmart or you're not going to buy that at Home Depot or
36:0236 minutes, 2 secondssomething like that. That is something that only a certain type of distributor sells. And it's could be a roofing distributor, it could be a drywall distributor, it depends. But somebody
36:1036 minutes, 10 secondslike that like Handy Foam you can get on Home Depot's website. I'm pretty sure Lowe's or one of those guys. One Yeah, one of them sell that product. So that
36:1936 minutes, 19 secondsis a very that's key for some members of the audience that want to take care of the products that they're using but
36:2636 minutes, 26 secondsdon't have access to some of these things that you need a distributor or a manufacturer partner or something like that to get to. Correct.
36:3336 minutes, 33 secondsYeah. When it comes to air sealing walls though, I'm not a big fan of air sealing if you're just doing partial walls or
36:4136 minutes, 41 secondssome renovation because it really doesn't make any sense to block the moisture here, but the rest of the house, who cares? In my opinion,
36:5136 minutes, 51 secondsoverall, it really doesn't do much. It's either you air seal or you don't. And so, if you're air sealing, you're doing the whole house.
36:5836 minutes, 58 secondsIt depends. There's a whole process to it. One thing is your high and low bypasses are really the primary ceiling parts because if you block these, you don't really have to worry about the
37:0637 minutes, 6 secondswalls as much. There is some stuff that's going to go this way, but most of it goes this way because of stack effect. If you can get to the attic in the crawl space and get a nice seal there, you're doing a lot of the work.
37:1637 minutes, 16 secondsYou know what I mean? Another thing is like frame cavities that don't have insulation in them. If it's a balloon type framing or like a platform framing
37:2337 minutes, 23 secondsthat has top plates, you could dence back that and use a friendlier material and get the air leakage down a bunch
37:3037 minutes, 30 secondsdoing it that way too. But ideally, you're going to seal the top the high and low bypasses. That's building science 101. That's what we take care of.
37:3837 minutes, 38 secondsYeah. So, this is where you talked about before the intersection of buildings and healthy building is one of the things that I've learned over
37:4537 minutes, 45 secondsthe years is from a healthy home standpoint. I talk a lot about chemical offging. The chemicals that we find in
37:5337 minutes, 53 secondsour homes from the building materials, from our home goods, from the perfume that we put on or cologne or the hand
38:0138 minutes, 1 secondsoap we use, the cleaning materials, all this stuff can create in the air what are called inflammagins. Now, if we look
38:1038 minutes, 10 secondsat this from a standpoint of functional medicine, a tenant of functional medicine is that inflammation is the root of all evils. Sure.
38:1938 minutes, 19 secondsAnd my wife has Crohn's, so I'm super familiar with inflammation and what it is.
38:2438 minutes, 24 secondsSo, my goal is to reduce the amount of man-made inflammate
38:3238 minutes, 32 secondscompletely because I think that's a pointless effort. There's no such thing as a perfect home. There's no such thing as an inflammag-free home. You'll drive yourself to the poor house or the nut
38:4038 minutes, 40 secondshouse trying to achieve it. It's not worth that aggravation. But we want to get it low enough where it makes a difference. And so if we reduce the
38:4938 minutes, 49 secondsoverall inflammagen load in the home, it reduces the amount of inflammation in that inflammation bucket we all have inside of our bodies.
38:5738 minutes, 57 secondsIt allows the body to heal more naturally. And so now it gives us space to combat the other inflamm.
39:0539 minutes, 5 secondsIf we look at the intersection between healthy home and high performance, moisture is one thing that in the last
39:1239 minutes, 12 secondsfive years especially all of a sudden everybody online who 5 years ago they were talking about organic beet juice
39:2039 minutes, 20 secondsand vitamins and minerals are now they've become mold experts and now they're all talking about mold.
39:2639 minutes, 26 secondsunderstand that we all know that at levels 50 to 55% and higher of humidity in the house for a long enough period of
39:3439 minutes, 34 secondstime you can actually create or a mold can proliferate.
39:3939 minutes, 39 secondsWhat nobody talks about though and this is from a healthy home standpoint is high humidity leads to higher chemical offging.
39:4839 minutes, 48 secondsSo again my background is all about chemistry of building materials. We have found time and time again that when you reduce the overall humidity levels in
39:5639 minutes, 56 secondsthe home, you reduce the amount of chemical offging. And that's because as moisture comes out of a surface, it'll carry with it the chemical footprint of
40:0440 minutes, 4 secondswhere it was. So simple case in point, I had a project many years ago with a client here in Wisconsin who was
40:1240 minutes, 12 secondscomplaining of not being able to she wasn't sleeping well. She was having asthma more often in her home. So she
40:1940 minutes, 19 secondswould open up the windows, keep the windows open to get fresh air. It's all about getting fresh air. Finding that by opening up the windows, she was bringing
40:2840 minutes, 28 secondsall that humidity into her house. She lived close to Lake Michigan in South Milwaukee. And so the humidity level in her house was over 60%. And I was
40:3640 minutes, 36 secondsmeasuring specifically the formaldahhide offging from her carpet. And carpet is the worst thing you can have in your
40:4340 minutes, 43 secondshouse. And that's a whole show on its own. I was measuring the formaldahhide being released from her carpeting. Her carpeting was 32 years old. The
40:5140 minutes, 51 secondsformaldahhide being released was over 400 parts per billion. The safe level was 20. She was at over 400. And I
40:5840 minutes, 58 secondsnoticed how high the humidity level level was in her house. So I told her to close up the doors and windows, turn on the air conditioning, put a dehumidifier
41:0541 minutes, 5 secondsin the house, do that for two weeks, and I'll come back and start to do the testing. I didn't even make it two weeks because she called me a week later and she says, "I already feel better.
41:1541 minutes, 15 secondsAnd so I asked her to check the dehue and her dehue was down to 45%.
41:2041 minutes, 20 secondsI came back and checked the chemical offging from her carpeting. It was below 100 parts per billion just from getting
41:2841 minutes, 28 secondsrid of the moisture. So we know that when moisture gets reduced, chemical offging gets reduced. So from a building
41:3741 minutes, 37 secondsscience standpoint with a high performance building, it's all about moisture. It's all about making sure we control where that moisture goes and where it doesn't get locked in.
41:4541 minutes, 45 secondsBut from a healthy home standpoint, from a chemistry standpoint, we also want low humidity.
41:5141 minutes, 51 secondsYeah, that I never knew that correlation before. That's new information for me.
41:5541 minutes, 55 secondsThat's cool as hell that I got to learn something here today. I like that. What do you think about mold tape test these guys? Like this is a big thing right now that's going on. There's guys that are,
42:0442 minutes, 4 secondsand especially for HVAC guys, like the mold, these mold tape test guys are trying to partner with the HVAC guys and say, "Hey, we'll do these tape test in
42:1242 minutes, 12 secondsthe duck work. We find mold. We're going to recommend whatever xyz game plan, but we're also going to have you come in and do some remediation, redo the duck
42:2042 minutes, 20 secondssystem." It's a nice sales tool, but I'm wondering about the validity of the testing method itself. I wasn't that familiar with it, but I asked somebody about it and they brought up question.
42:2942 minutes, 29 secondsThey questioned the methodology is the best way to say it of the testing methodology.
42:3442 minutes, 34 secondsOf course, the testing methodology, it's only as good as the company who's conducting the test. And I'm a believer of a variety of tests. I think that
42:4242 minutes, 42 secondsdoing any one test doesn't give us any definitive information. So, if you do a tape test or like in the mold remediation industry, they do hermy
42:5042 minutes, 50 secondstesting to a Swiffer test and determine mold species that are in the dust in your home.
42:5742 minutes, 57 secondsThe results of that panel do not tell you that you have a current mold problem in your house. It tells you you may have
43:0543 minutes, 5 secondsonce have had a mold problem in your house, but it doesn't tell you if that mold is living or dead. It just says mold exists at this level, but it could
43:1343 minutes, 13 secondsbe from a 20-year-old problem that was never cleaned up properly.
43:1743 minutes, 17 secondsSame thing with your ducks. If you have mold in your ducks, it doesn't say it's actively growing anywhere. It just says that you have the carcasses of mold.
43:2843 minutes, 28 secondsI just had a quick thought. Would it be better to do like you do the tape test, it comes back, it says that exists.
43:3543 minutes, 35 secondsClean your ducks. If it comes back, does that mean something or is it just the same thing? It could be somewhere and it could just be coming back from somewhere.
43:4243 minutes, 42 secondsNo, that's actually that's a great question. I would clean the ducks, make sure the equipment is clean, the fan,
43:4943 minutes, 49 secondsclean everything you can. Then I would do what's called an MVOC test.
43:5643 minutes, 56 secondsAn MVOC tests for mold VOCC's.
44:0144 minutes, 1 secondSo to to bring back VOCC's again, mold in its growth stage
44:0844 minutes, 8 secondsreleases its own VOCC, its own natural VOCC. You can measure that in an MVOC test. And so it actually then it's an
44:1644 minutes, 16 secondsair test, air absorption into collection tubes. and you can see what the MVOC level is. And if it's at a certain level, you can say with great confidence
44:2544 minutes, 25 secondsthere is active mold growth within the house. If you clean your ducks really well and then let them run for a week or two and then you do another tape test
44:3344 minutes, 33 secondswithin the ducks, that might simply tell you that you need to clean your entire house because you have small particles
44:4144 minutes, 41 secondsfrom once living mold from micotoxins that still exist and that needs to be cleaned through what's called a small particle cleaning, an SPC. So again,
44:5044 minutes, 50 secondsthese are all valuable tests, but are irrelevant if we don't know the context of it and when we don't compare and contrast against other tests that will give us more information.
45:0045 minutesInteresting. I like that explanation.
45:0245 minutes, 2 secondsAnd again, the MVOC test, that's something I had not heard of. That's an interesting way to go after cleaning out
45:0945 minutes, 9 secondsor even if you have will that work if you like, I don't know, there's these the mold kits you can go buy at Home Depot or whatever. And is there any
45:1845 minutes, 18 secondsbelief in that? You send them off to a lab. They have you do whatever they do and then people are like, "Oh, I got mold. I did this test. Will you come out and look at it?"
45:2545 minutes, 25 secondsSelf-administered mold tests like that are really tricky because it's pretty much like a a lot of these are petri
45:3245 minutes, 32 secondsdish tests. And if you don't put the collection dish close enough to where the mold is growing, you're not going to
45:4145 minutes, 41 secondscollect anything. So again, it's information. If you look at that information and say, "No, we've done these petri tests in 16 rooms of our
45:5045 minutes, 50 secondshouse." Now, we can get down to more useful information to say, "All right, we labeled them and we know where they all were." Exactly. Exactly. Right.
45:5845 minutes, 58 secondsEven her panels. When people do an Imy or a Hertz me after a miation, you've got to do quadrants of the home just to
46:0646 minutes, 6 secondsmake sure that you can essentially clear areas that all right, it's not this anymore. It's still this. And this is why it's not an exact science. And this
46:1446 minutes, 14 secondsis why I don't like when people just conduct tests that they buy at a store without having somebody to help guide
46:2246 minutes, 22 secondsthem through the process. The MVOC test, you can go to our website and buy what's called an IQ survey. Get sent from the lab, drug to your house, from your
46:3046 minutes, 30 secondshouse, back to the lab. It's a complete chain of custody. When you get the report back, it'll tell you the MVOCC's, the actual VOCC's, and firmaldahhide.
46:3846 minutes, 38 secondsThree different test results. If I was involved as the healthy home consultant on a home remodeling project, for
46:4646 minutes, 46 secondsinstance, or somebody just buys a home and they say, "I need a baseline. Where are we at?" I like to do these tests. It gives me the professional a baseline
46:5546 minutes, 55 secondswhat we're dealing with. And then as we do things down the road to fix, I can conduct these tests again to see how well we've done to make sure that what we've worked on is the correct location.
47:0647 minutes, 6 secondsBut if people just get these tests and they get the report, they'll look at the report and either get scared to death of what they see out of context or they'll
47:1547 minutes, 15 secondssay everything looks good. And then they'll put it in the drawer and never think about it again. Either way, it requires interpretation by somebody who
47:2347 minutes, 23 secondslooks at these day in and day out to make sure that the information was retrieved properly.
47:2847 minutes, 28 secondsYeah. So, it's really about collecting the information and knowing what to do with it with just like any other profession. Even in air conditioning, you talked about the sampling.
47:3747 minutes, 37 secondsEverything we do is based on some kind of sampling. Whether you're sampling a grill to get the right amount of air or if you're sampling a project to get
47:4447 minutes, 44 secondsenough representation of what's going on. That is a true methodology, scientific methodology that can be applied and should be applied more than
47:5347 minutes, 53 secondsjust a oneoff solution of anything. Even in blower door testing, we get a much better result if we do a multi-point blower door test versus a single point
48:0248 minutes, 2 secondsat a certain pressure and then that's it and you're out of there and boom. Tells you something, but it doesn't tell you everything that you want to know.
48:0748 minutes, 7 secondsNo, you're 100% right. 100% right. And then because it requires the skill of somebody who recognizes there are
48:1548 minutes, 15 secondspressure differences within a home already. And if you don't use the right equipment in the right locations, the information you get back may actually be
48:2448 minutes, 24 secondsharmful down the road. If you end up doing something to change the dynamic of the home because you think the result you get was good, you may actually end up doing more harm than good.
48:3548 minutes, 35 secondsThis is the thing here where I've been hitting on talking about specific knowledge with AI. This is one of these things where you might put this crap into AI and get an answer that doesn't
48:4348 minutes, 43 secondsmean the right thing and you do something based on that and you make an adjustment and then all of a sudden you're in some real trouble. This is a
48:5048 minutes, 50 secondsfield where one of the big thought pieces out there right now is now because AI at knowledge is at such not a premium anymore. Specific knowledge
48:5848 minutes, 58 secondsbecomes more of a premium where somebody like you who has all this experience in healthy homes over the years understands that there's all these moving parts. And
49:0649 minutes, 6 secondsjust because they all exist doesn't mean that the order that they're in means what you think it means.
49:1149 minutes, 11 secondsYeah, I've used AI before to check up against somebody's work or even my own work and I'm amazed at the results that I get sometimes. But understand that in
49:2049 minutes, 20 secondsorder to get the right information, you have to ask the right question, right?
49:2449 minutes, 24 secondsSo, how often have you used it just to check and then you ask the exact same question but word it differently and you get a different answer.
49:3149 minutes, 31 secondsIt happens all the time.
49:3349 minutes, 33 secondsAnd so, I'm in the process right now of creating my own AI. It's my own chatbot, but it only retrieves information based
49:4049 minutes, 40 secondsupon the book that I wrote, the 200 plus podcast episodes, the hundreds of articles that I've written and the
49:4849 minutes, 48 secondsthousands of conversations I've had with clients. That's where the information comes from. It doesn't scroll out to others and give you an average.
49:5649 minutes, 56 secondsYeah, I built this very similar thing repository myself. That is going to be the way that's what it's going to be, man. If you have knowledge that's come
50:0350 minutes, 3 secondsfrom work over years and you understand something, that is a super valuable thing and you should do everything you can to protect it. I talked to even
50:1150 minutes, 11 secondspeople, relatives and things like that that work in places that are having them use AI and ways. I'm like, you got to be careful about what you're giving that
50:1950 minutes, 19 secondsmachine because something that could be proprietary to your own knowledge base is going to be owned by them and then it becomes part of what they know and what they do. People need to take steps,
50:2850 minutes, 28 secondsespecially if you've been in an industry for a long time, to protect what you know about what you're doing because that means something that AI cannot tap into unless you let it.
50:3850 minutes, 38 secondsAnd then circling back to the start of the conversation earlier, we talked about how when I help somebody design a home, I need to know exactly what's
50:4650 minutes, 46 secondsgoing on in their life health-wise and how they operate inside the home because I can't give blanket recommendations.
50:5350 minutes, 53 secondsWhen I wrote my book, it started off as writing a book about how to build a healthy home and quickly turned into it can't be a book about building a healthy
51:0151 minutes, 1 secondhome because if I wrote a book about building a healthy home, it will be good for one reader because all my recommendations may change based upon
51:0851 minutes, 8 secondsthe reader. AI treats everybody the same. And that's really dangerous because what may work really well for one client may be harmful to the next.
51:2051 minutes, 20 secondsAnd AI treats everybody the same. So if somebody were to ask me, like you had mentioned before, examples,
51:2851 minutes, 28 secondsI work with a lot of people who have mold sensitivities. So we like to recommend a natural lenolum floor for
51:3651 minutes, 36 secondstheir home. Not vinyl flooring, but true natural lenolium made from linseed oil and pine resin and jute. This is the
51:4451 minutes, 44 secondsflooring that was invented in the late 1800s in Europe. It's still being made today in the exact same places. In the
51:5251 minutes, 52 seconds50s when Armstrong invented plastic sheet flooring, they called it Congolium.
51:5851 minutes, 58 secondsAnd the term lenolium started being used interchangeably like band-aid or Kleenex. But true lenolium because it
52:0552 minutes, 5 secondscontains linseed oil is naturally antibacterial without having to add any chemical to it. People with mold sensitivities works great for them.
52:1452 minutes, 14 secondsWhat if that person has what's called MCAST? mass cell activation syndrome.
52:2052 minutes, 20 secondsMass cell activation syndrome, one of the symptoms that people have is extremely reactive to aromomas.
52:2952 minutes, 29 secondsSo when people say that they get a headache when they walk through the perfume aisle or they get a headache because somebody opened up a can of
52:3652 minutes, 36 secondspaint, we have found now this is because of mass cell activation syndrome. Their system just goes haywire with strong aromomas. Even strong natural aromomas.
52:4852 minutes, 48 secondsMy mom has a strong natural aroma.
52:5152 minutes, 51 secondsMy mom is like one of those people like exactly what you're saying. You could open up something and she I got to go lay down. That just gave me the worst
52:5852 minutes, 58 secondsheadache. I swear. And everybody in the room is like what? That is that's super interesting. That is super.
53:0453 minutes, 4 secondsSo if I said to build a healthy home you should use natural lenolium. I would end up getting sued by people who read the book, took my advice, and their symptoms
53:1253 minutes, 12 secondsgot worse. So, I decided to not write a book about how to build a home, healthy home. But my book is about why we need
53:2053 minutes, 20 secondsto build healthy homes. What are the common toxins, the common hazards, the common inflamm?
53:3053 minutes, 30 secondsWow. All right. So, we're running up on pastor hour actually, but this was a great conversation. I just could talk all day about this stuff. So, a few
53:3853 minutes, 38 secondshouse cleaning items. One, tell everybody anything you want them to know about you. Tell them about your book.
53:4353 minutes, 43 secondsTell them about your website. Tell them about all of it, where they can get it, whatever you want them to know. The book is called Building for Health.
53:5053 minutes, 50 secondsYou can get it on Amazon in both paperback or a electronic version, a Kindle version. My company is called the Green Design Center, the
53:5853 minutes, 58 secondsgreenesigncenter.com. And that's where we sell a lot of the products that I recommend. Products that I've vetted, my clients have vetted over the last 35
54:0554 minutes, 5 secondsyears to be the safest of the safe. It's not the end all be all. This is what you need to use in your home, but it's a really good start. And then from my
54:1354 minutes, 13 secondswebsite, building forhealth.com, that's where you can find links to my consulting, links to my YouTube and
54:2154 minutes, 21 secondspodcast when I have time to do that stuff. I'll be honest, I took the last year off mainly to get the book finished. It's been a real labor of love
54:3054 minutes, 30 secondsfor a long time. I've started and stopped a book for probably 15 years. And I finally decided I got to do it.
54:3754 minutes, 37 secondsAnd when I did it and I started writing it out, like I said, it went from how to build a healthy home to why we need to
54:4554 minutes, 45 secondsbuild a healthy home. So, I think it's very beneficial not only to homeowners, but I think even more so to professionals to building professionals.
54:5254 minutes, 52 secondsIt really gets into the nitty-gritty, the nuts and bolts of all aspects of our homes and why we need to change what we
55:0055 minutesdo and what we use and what your clients are experiencing. So, I really encourage you to pick up a copy. Love it. One. And
55:0855 minutes, 8 secondsso, last thing before we leave, number one, thank you so much for coming on.
55:1155 minutes, 11 secondsYou've been a great guest. This has been an awesome conversation. If the world ended today and you had to leave one piece of advice on the wall for the
55:1855 minutes, 18 secondssociety that came after it, what is that advice? Yeah, don't worry. I have too many clients that are so worried about
55:2755 minutes, 27 secondseverything that the anxiety, the stress causes them to not make good decisions.
55:3655 minutes, 36 secondsIt's my job as a consultant to help bring that anxiety level down. I think all of us need to look at this and say,
55:4455 minutes, 44 secondswe're not striving for perfection. We're striving for tolerance. Our homes cannot be perfect, but they can be perfect for you. And so, let's strive for that.
55:5455 minutes, 54 secondsAgain, bring the anxiety and stress down so we can make really good decisions.
55:5955 minutes, 59 secondsWe can't live in submarines. We can't live in laboratories. So, let's just try to make what works for us the best. I love that very. Yes, sir.
56:0656 minutes, 6 secondsThank you, Andy, for coming on. I'll have to have you back again. There's a million things we could talk about. and I enjoyed your book or and enjoying your
56:1456 minutes, 14 secondsbook and I hope other people reach out and check you out on Amazon and things like that. Thanks again, man. I'll see you soon. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Great conversation.
56:2256 minutes, 22 secondsYes, sir.
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