0:022 secondsI'm excited about where the HVAC world is and the home performance world is right now. The world went in LA tomorrow and somebody was like, "We're going to
0:1111 secondsrebuild the world at some point in time where everything's moving and and you got all this energy and everything down there."
0:1919 secondsSo, you're going to be able to say, "Hey, we know coming up, Mr. or Mrs.
0:2323 secondsJohnson, you are going to need to replace your system.
0:3232 secondsA building science rabbit hole with Neil Goldman, owner of Less Energy out of Philadelphia. Neil comes at this industry from a pretty unique angle.
0:4040 secondsHe's worked in high performance housing, HERS ratings, passive house verification, construction management, energy auditing, and even large building
0:4949 secondslower door testing. In fact, he recently became Philadelphia's first inspector for blower door code compliance. But
0:5757 secondsthis conversation gets in to something bigger than certifications.
1:021 minute, 2 secondsWhat happens to HVAC when you take a building from five air changes per hour down to around a half air change per
1:091 minute, 9 secondshour? What happens when the heating and cooling loads get so small that finding equipment that actually fits the load becomes a challenge? And how the hell do
1:181 minute, 18 secondsyou properly balance ventilation when you're trying to deliver 6, 10, or 15 CFM to a room? We get into passive house
1:261 minute, 26 secondsenvelopes, ERVs, lowload HVAC systems, big building blower door testing, say that three times fast, airflow
1:351 minute, 35 secondsmeasurement, and some of the new all-in-one mechanical systems trying to solve heating, cooling, and ventilation with a single box.
1:441 minute, 44 secondsBut we also get into one of my favorite subjects, verification.
1:481 minute, 48 secondsBecause you can put whatever certification sticker or rating you want on a house, but somebody still has to prove the damn thing actually works.
1:561 minute, 56 secondsNeil and I definitely have some opinions about that. So, buckle up. This one gets technical. We chase a few rabbits and we probably step on a couple along the way.
2:062 minutes, 6 secondsThis is HVAC ADHD. Let's get into it.
2:102 minutes, 10 secondsHey everybody, welcome to the HVAC ADHD vodcast. I'm your host Jeremy Begley. I got a really cool episode today. I'm
2:182 minutes, 18 secondshere with Neil Goldman of Less Energy and it's spelled out on his hat in a very unique way. So you can let you see it. Neil's a her raider, a pay of home guy, and a bunch of other stuff, too.
2:292 minutes, 29 secondsHim and I have had some really cool conversations. I wanted to bring it to the show. So Neil, tell everybody about yourself and what you do and how you got here.
2:372 minutes, 37 secondsSure. Thanks, Jeremy. Um, excited to be here. Thanks for having me on. I started my career in Louisiana working for Habitat for Humanity doing an
2:442 minutes, 44 secondsAmericanore year there. I did a second Americanore year in Patterson, New Jersey. In both places, they were building energy star homes and I learned
2:532 minutes, 53 secondsa lot starting right from scratch with homes. From there, I worked for the clean energy program in New Jersey doing
3:013 minutes, 1 secondtechnical inspections. I was driving around the state of New Jersey, sort of looking at all these different large rating
3:103 minutes, 10 secondscompanies every day just for the program, making sure they were doing the right thing, doing follow-up inspections and doing my own inspections behind
3:173 minutes, 17 secondsthem. I learned a ton. We're doing inspections of track homes and basically any home in New Jersey that was getting certified, I saw for a 4-year period.
3:263 minutes, 26 secondsSo, I learned a ton about the industry.
3:283 minutes, 28 secondsFrom there, I moved to work with a architecture and engineering firm called Kitchen Associates. So I got a bit of
3:343 minutes, 34 secondsthe design and implementation of the architecture and engineering
3:413 minutes, 41 secondsand from there I moved to work as a builder. I got kind of tired of just looking at things and sort of telling people what was wrong and right and so I
3:493 minutes, 49 secondswanted to learn more about the construction side. So actually while I was working at Kitchen Associates I got my masters in construction management.
3:583 minutes, 58 secondsSo once I completed that, I left and I worked for a few construction companies as a project manager managing a bunch of
4:054 minutes, 5 secondssingle family row homes all the way up to single family high-end residential construction. And then I left that
4:144 minutes, 14 secondsbecause I was a little tired of doing a few bathroom renovations and started my own company 3 years ago. So less energy
4:214 minutes, 21 secondsis a lot of things, but we focus on building energy efficiency. So we do everything from large building blown
4:284 minutes, 28 secondsorder testing to energy audits of existing row homes in Philadelphia. So yeah, we're based in Philadelphia.
4:354 minutes, 35 secondsBig building testing. That's pretty cool. Yeah.
4:384 minutes, 38 secondsSo you are doing big building testing. That is a not something that every HERS
4:464 minutes, 46 secondsraider does. How tell me one thing. How did you get in first? Where did your first bit of big building testing business come from?
4:534 minutes, 53 secondsSure. So, I've done a few big building tests and I'm trying to do more. So, the first one I did was probably back in
5:005 minutes2018. It was on a passive house, 25 unit passive house building, but with a passive house, you don't need that many doors because the envelope is so tight.
5:115 minutes, 11 secondsBut there was like several different envelope sector area.
5:145 minutes, 14 secondsLet's tell everybody, my audience probably doesn't know a lot about passive homes. So, let's go ahead and clearly define what that is and what it
5:215 minutes, 21 secondsmeans from building envelope standpoint, mechanical systems, things like that.
5:265 minutes, 26 secondsAnd then we'll jump back into the building piece of it. Because I think what you're about to describe is something that may a lot of people won't
5:335 minutes, 33 secondshave context for unless we tell them what the actual building construction is.
5:385 minutes, 38 secondsSure. Yeah. Absolutely. So a passive house which is a German term for a very
5:455 minutes, 45 secondsenergyefficient house basically there it is a certification and it is a building practice. There's actually two certifications but we don't need to go into that two different certifications.
5:555 minutes, 55 secondsThere's an international one and a US-based one and we could go down the rabbit hole of the differences between them but it doesn't matter so much for
6:036 minutes, 3 secondsour conversation. So the basic principles of a passive home are five things. The envelope is really well insulated. It's so it's a good envelope.
6:116 minutes, 11 secondsWell insulated, airtight, really good windows that are tied properly and facing the right direction. So that's
6:196 minutes, 19 secondstwo things actually. It's good windows and proper orientation. And then there's really good ventilation which you know
6:276 minutes, 27 secondsto make sure that the people inside get all the air they need. And then without losing too much energy. And the last thing would be low energy load.
6:366 minutes, 36 secondsconsuming as little energy as possible.
6:396 minutes, 39 secondsSo, you know, sizing the systems and the appliances to use as little energy as possible.
6:446 minutes, 44 secondsSo, to break that down a little bit for the people watching, first let's talk about the envelope. You said really good insulation. I think that undersells what
6:526 minutes, 52 secondsa pay of home actually is from an insulation standpoint. Really good insulation means really good insulation.
6:596 minutes, 59 secondsSo typically, you know, what what's a typical wall structure and what's a typical attic structure for for that or what's your what's your overall goal as
7:087 minutes, 8 secondsfar as the thermal profile of the whole entire hand of the whole entire envelope from the roof to the building? Like what's that usually look like from an R value?
7:177 minutes, 17 secondsSure. So, as I said, I'm located in Philadelphia, so for our climate zone, and it would differ, right? You'd want more insulation the colder it was, and
7:257 minutes, 25 secondsyou can get away with less insulation in the warmer climates. There's more implications that come with the warmer climates and the humidity versus dry climates. But as far as insulation goes
7:337 minutes, 33 secondsin Philadelphia, we're typically looking for about R20 under the slab and that's below grade and then it would be R20 for
7:427 minutes, 42 secondslike any other below grade walls, foundation walls. R40 for the walls and that would be with at least like R20 of
7:517 minutes, 51 secondscontinuous insulation, meaning that the the structure is separated from the exterior conditions continuously. The
7:597 minutes, 59 secondsstructure doesn't come through. So, you typically see like a couple inches of rock wall or rigid board on the outside
8:078 minutes, 7 secondsof the building and then the siding. And then for the roof, you'd want to have at least our 60 on the roof.
8:148 minutes, 14 secondsAnd that would be as well.
8:168 minutes, 16 secondsCompare the that to your your code there. What you guys have for code right now.
8:218 minutes, 21 secondsSo that's an interesting question and it's going to get we're going to talk about a little bit later too when we talk about the large building testing but P Pennsylvania just adopted in the
8:308 minutes, 30 secondsturn of into 26 they adopted the 2021 IEC but they did not update the insulation values in the energy section.
8:408 minutes, 40 secondsSo in Pennsylvania generally and Philadelphia did the same thing, but they kept it a little stricter, but it's basically still R20 in the walls and R49
8:508 minutes, 50 secondsin the attic and R10 under a slab. And you probably don't have to do the entire under the slab. It's just like
8:578 minutes, 57 secondsAnd the most important feature I feel anyway is.5 AC50. Oh yeah. Versus what in your area?
9:069 minutes, 6 secondsWe are still at five air changes and.5 versus five. So audience members stop back step back and think about what
9:149 minutes, 14 secondswe just described. So this is a house that's significantly significantly better than code. So we're
9:219 minutes, 21 secondstalking about a 20 R value of 20 difference in roof cavities. It's about double in the walls. It's about double
9:299 minutes, 29 secondsin the slab. It's four times the or four times less the leakage of a typical building. So like this is the building
9:389 minutes, 38 secondsthat he's talking about putting blower doors on for a large building. Now that now a lot of passive home because of the
9:469 minutes, 46 secondscost. It's starting to make sense on single family residential a little bit, but traditionally it's made a lot more sense on bigger buildings because you're
9:529 minutes, 52 secondsspreading it out over a bigger area and the dollar per square foot becomes less for what you're doing. And so it makes a
10:0010 minuteslot of sense and they've been able to implement it on larger buildings first and then make the case for the smaller buildings using the larger buildings.
10:0810 minutes, 8 secondsWould you say that's a fair assessment of what's going on in that market or Yeah, I I would agree with a lot of that. I think that there's a lot of
10:1610 minutes, 16 secondseconomies of scale for this stuff because you know you're building a lot all at once. So you know
10:2310 minutes, 23 secondsthe insulation across the entire face is a lot easier to do than all the little turns of a single family house. the builders are techic usually a little bit
10:3110 minutes, 31 secondsmore savvy so they're able to pick up on the details a little easier. I also think there's a bunch of benefit to using large building systems. So when
10:4010 minutes, 40 secondsyou have an ERV that is serving the entire building, it's a lot more efficient and a lot more cost effective
10:4710 minutes, 47 secondsthan having an ERV in each unit. They should from a design standpoint that's a lot easier to accomplish when there's not a lot of outside air moving around trying
10:5510 minutes, 55 secondsto defeat the air that you're trying to deliver and remove for for ventilation purposes. So like the the fact that
11:0211 minutes, 2 secondsthese buildings are.5 AC50 makes a huge difference in the type of systems and the and the type of flexibility that we
11:1111 minutes, 11 secondshave when it comes to systems. It's also limiting in some ways too, but like there's also a lot
11:1711 minutes, 17 secondsYeah, it gets harder to balance and some other things. But like with as far as systems go, you know, the limitation I
11:2511 minutes, 25 secondsthink is then you and we'll talk about this maybe a little later, but you have to put smaller systems in and it gets a little bit challenging on what that looks like for that type of structure.
11:3411 minutes, 34 secondsNow, absolutely.
11:3611 minutes, 36 secondsBack to the big building thing. Give the give give the audience an idea like okay so how many blower doors for a house like this or a building like this a big
11:4411 minutes, 44 secondsblower door versus what would you expect if you were if it was a code built building and they ask you to do the same exact test.
11:5111 minutes, 51 secondsSo yeah it's hard to compare things sometimes. So one blower door can move about 5,000 CFM of air and in let's say these are very round rough numbers.
12:0312 minutes, 3 secondsPlease don't hold me to this, but in a 3,000T house, you know, 5,000 AC would
12:0912 minutes, 9 secondsbe like 15 or 5,000 CFM, sorry. That's how much air the fan would move out of the building. That would be like 15 AC or something. Something crazy, right?
12:1912 minutes, 19 secondsLike a lot of air. I think this 25 unit, and this is years ago, but if I had to remember, this 25 unit passive house, I
12:2612 minutes, 26 secondsthink, had something like 400 CFM in one just the whole building leakage. So, it's like to you I only needed I I could
12:3512 minutes, 35 secondshave done it with a duck blaster fan probably, but the complication with doing large building testing is there often isn't one zone. Like in a single
12:4412 minutes, 44 secondsfamily house, you know, you could open all the doors on the inside, do one test, it's fine. But with a large building, there's often many different
12:5112 minutes, 51 secondszones. So, you have to use different blower doors in different parts of the building to sort of equalize the entire building as you test it. So if that
13:0013 minutesbuilding was the 25 unit building was code compliant, which it's a different metric, but they're looking for I believe it's 0.5
13:0913 minutes, 9 secondsCFM per square foot of surface area of the exterior of the building. And just to take a little detour of the
13:1613 minutes, 16 secondsconversation, the AC number is about the volume of air in the building exchanging, which doesn't scale properly
13:2413 minutes, 24 secondsfrom a small building to a large building. And so the standards are changing to the amount of leakage versus surf exterior circuitary of the
13:3313 minutes, 33 secondsbuilding. So there's this big shift and it's like sort of happening in the code too. So they're going from things like 3
13:3913 minutes, 39 secondsand 5 AC to three CFM, excuse me, three cubic feet per minute
13:4813 minutes, 48 secondsat 50 Pascals per square foot of surface area. So it's changing a little bit and it scales properly. So basically to meet
13:5713 minutes, 57 secondsthat requirement, you have to get the building. Sorry, we're talking more about the amount of blowners you need per large building. So a 25 unit
14:0714 minutes, 7 secondsbuilding like that trying to meet the current code, I would probably need something like five or six bladors and
14:1414 minutes, 14 secondsit would be somewhere like 3 or 4 thousand or no something like 20,000 CFM of leakage. Yeah. That sounds about right to me.
14:2314 minutes, 23 secondsYeah. They would be spread throughout the building on the top and the bottom.
14:2614 minutes, 26 secondsThere's like all this other stuff you have to deal with with like when the building's tall, there's a real big stack effect and you have to sort of fight that with the fans in the right places.
14:3614 minutes, 36 secondsYeah. And that's another thing. You don't have a lot of stack effect in a passive home either. I mean, it just is what it is. Not at all.
14:4214 minutes, 42 secondsIt's very easy to test a passive house when it's done right.
14:4514 minutes, 45 secondsYeah. Passive building. So, that's sort of like the envelope side of everything that you deal with when you're dealing with a passive house. talk a little bit
14:5314 minutes, 53 secondsabout the HVAC system. It's wildly different even in residential. Sure.
14:5814 minutes, 58 secondsAnd big buildings are going to follow that track to some extent. So talk a little bit about those differences.
15:0515 minutes, 5 secondsYeah, sure. So a passive house because the envelope is so good, it's going to have a much lower load.
15:1115 minutes, 11 secondsThe windows are better, so they're going to have they're being better insulated.
15:1415 minutes, 14 secondsThey're going to have really good solar gain protection. There's even requirements for, you know, solar shading for certain windows that are
15:2315 minutes, 23 secondsfaced the right direction. So, the loads are dramatically reduced. There's not a lot of, you know, controlling the amount of outside air that comes in the building. So, with that, you're going to
15:3115 minutes, 31 secondshave smaller systems and those smaller systems sometimes don't exist. So there's all these requirements like you
15:3815 minutes, 38 secondscan't oversize your system especially on the air conditioning side because it will I'm sure you can speak to much
15:4615 minutes, 46 secondsbetter than I can short cycling and lack of dehumidification. So when you have really small system you know very low
15:5315 minutes, 53 secondsload home you can cool it down really quickly but that's not necessarily what you want. So there's a lot of dehumidification problems I think in
16:0116 minutes, 1 secondsome of these homes. And then I think some of the other issues are since the house is so tight we and people need to
16:0816 minutes, 8 secondsbreathe not buildings but the people in the house need to breathe. So we introduce ventilation and it is typically balanced ventilation meaning
16:1616 minutes, 16 secondswe're bringing in air at the same rate that we're exhausting it. And with that bent up ballast ventilation, we are
16:2416 minutes, 24 secondsrecovering the heat from the air that we're exhausting by sort of mixing it with the incoming air using an RV
16:3216 minutes, 32 secondstypically in this climate zone. So with these RVs, passive house is a very the passive house standard has a very strict
16:3916 minutes, 39 secondsbalancing and supply requirement. They you know something like so first of all all of the air all supply air has to go to all the bedrooms. So every bedroom
16:4816 minutes, 48 secondsneeds to be constantly supplied with fresh air from the outside and all of the kitchen and the bathrooms need to be exhausted from the outside. So that
16:5616 minutes, 56 secondscreates a lot of extra duct work in a house which can be difficult to route through a small house especially when you want that 6-in line hard pipe going
17:0417 minutes, 4 secondsthrough everywhere. But these numbers can be pretty small because it'll be like 15 CFM going to a bedroom and they
17:1217 minutes, 12 secondswant it to be within 10% of the design value which is like 3 CFM or something.
17:1817 minutes, 18 secondsAnd so it becomes very difficult to make sure the system's balanced. So I find a lot of people struggling with dampers in the right places and just like finding
17:2617 minutes, 26 secondsplaces to put the duff work through because it's a lot of extra stuff. Do you see a lot of Zender ERV or what's the main?
17:3317 minutes, 33 secondsWell, there's all kinds of strategies.
17:3617 minutes, 36 secondsZinder is like, you know, the Cadillac of it and God is great, but what I said Zinder's God.
17:4317 minutes, 43 secondsYeah, exactly. So, I mean, there's a few systems that sort of replicate that, but I from a testing and verification point
17:5117 minutes, 51 secondsas a HERS raider, I love to see a Xander system because I'm like, okay, great.
17:5417 minutes, 54 secondsIt's going to work because it's got all these pipes.
17:5717 minutes, 57 secondsBut I see a lot of things. I mean, Panasonic makes good ERVs, but you know, you have to do all the duck work, so you need the space for it. And then a lot of manuair, a lot of all kinds of systems.
18:0818 minutes, 8 secondsI think the interesting thing is the difference between how they're delivered. So often people want to just dump it right into the return plenum of
18:1818 minutes, 18 secondstheir exist, you know, the rest of the duck system and then, you know, for a passive house, you have to deliver the air all the time. So then they're
18:2518 minutes, 25 secondsrunning the fan in their air handler all the time to deliver that air.
18:3018 minutes, 30 secondsWhoever that designer is, I fire it. I mean, that's not that's not a great strategy for for passive. I don't happens all the time.
18:3718 minutes, 37 secondsI I see people trying to I mean, it just Yeah. I I hate it. So, hey,
18:4418 minutes, 44 secondsthe air delivering it into the air system for a passive home and trying to deliver the air. Are you sick? Just let me make sure I understand what I'm
18:5218 minutes, 52 secondssaying. And I hate but the you're saying that it's the the ERV is connected into the return side of the the supply of the ERV. Yeah.
19:0019 minutesThe Right.
19:0219 minutes, 2 secondsBut it's the air handler. They're using the air handler on the house to move the air. Correct. Yeah. Something like that. Yeah.
19:0819 minutes, 8 secondsYeah. That's not great. I mean, it's not my favorite thing for a million different reasons. But one of them is that you don't have the same type of
19:1619 minutes, 16 secondscontrol over the ventilation air, especially when you're getting down to those low those low values and you don't know what the
19:2419 minutes, 24 secondsreally mixing air is when it come when the system comes on. So like I would I preer a lot more control over the design
19:3119 minutes, 31 secondsand I want to be able to control my ventilation especially in a passive head or something that tight like I want to be able to control the ventilation and design the ventilation to get the people
19:3919 minutes, 39 secondson a consistent basis and I want to control the air conditioning the being dehumidification and the cooling systems
19:4619 minutes, 46 secondsand heating systems to operate when they need to operate. Those two things together are not all from a static pressure standpoint, from an airflow
19:5519 minutes, 55 secondsdelivery standpoint, from an order and operation standpoint. Like there's a bunch of different reasons that that system that works okay. It's not even
20:0320 minutes, 3 secondsgreat in a in a code build house, but it works okay in a code building house will almost never work correctly in a passing home situation.
20:1220 minutes, 12 secondsI mean, I I didn't like it. I But I didn't really have a reason to. I'm just like it's good to hear like because I try to push back on that stuff but I am
20:2020 minutes, 20 secondsnot an HBAC designer so I don't always have the best reasons like I don't like it mostly because I can't measure and verify that that as you said that that
20:2920 minutes, 29 secondsair is going to those spaces it's supposed to.
20:3120 minutes, 31 secondsCorrect. It's the same you're saying the same thing. I say I I want to control it. You're the guy who verifies it.
20:3620 minutes, 36 secondsYou're saying it's hard to verify. The control is the verification. Like these are the same you know this is the same same reasoning just from two different
20:4420 minutes, 44 secondsperspectives. But you're 100% right and this reason is the same exact reason that you're saying like for sure.
20:5020 minutes, 50 secondsYeah. But yeah, that happens a lot. And then I mean even when they do duct to the rooms like it is so hard. Nobody
20:5720 minutes, 57 secondsbalances it. I end up being the balancer and it often is really difficult to get the air to go where because it's like the last thing on anybody's mind. The
21:0621 minutes, 6 secondsducks always get crushed. It's always like flex stuck to the end and nobody want you know it's always difficult.
21:1121 minutes, 11 secondsYeah. It's so funny to hear you say that about a pants with him. people imagine and even myself too. like, "Oh, passive hay. Everything's getting paid attention
21:1921 minutes, 19 secondsto, you know, there's there's order of operations. All the trades are working together. Here's no fresh ducks." Like, that is the picture that people picture
21:2721 minutes, 27 secondsthis perfect little thing that's going to work great. But then when we get into it, it has the same face problems that all these other
21:3321 minutes, 33 secondsprojects do for the same reasons because not controlled the way it should have been.
21:3921 minutes, 39 secondsYou're selling me as a verifier. Like this is what I tell people all the time.
21:4321 minutes, 43 secondsmy job like Energy Star certification. I think most houses could reach at a minimum new h new construction houses at a minimum could reach Energy Star
21:5221 minutes, 52 secondscertification if they have a raider because it's mostly the quality control. It's mostly me going out there. It's me reviewing the
22:0022 minutesdrawings, doing an energy model, making sure it's like meeting the thing, and then going out there working with the builder every like all the time. Slabs
22:0722 minutes, 7 secondsinsulated, right? the wall. Every pre-d drywall inspection I go on for Energy Star. I always find insulation issues every time. It's always a small thing.
22:1522 minutes, 15 secondsThis pays missing insulation. I didn't get behind there, but it I'm quality control. And I think that like it's a big thing missing from industry. I think
22:2322 minutes, 23 secondspeople assume that like code inspection is the quality control, but it is not.
22:2822 minutes, 28 secondsYeah, that's my whole entire thing is verified. I don't know if you've been on our website or not, but we have a our whole entire product line is called verified, and that's all I believe in.
22:3622 minutes, 36 secondsAnd I don't care about any of these programs. I grew up in all of them. I worked in all of them. I'm certified in most of them. But like I've seen bad
22:4322 minutes, 43 secondshouses across the board in every single program, every single house that I've been in. Like I've seen [ __ ] not working right. I've seen people crying because
22:5022 minutes, 50 secondsthey can't sleep upstairs in their brand new house. I've seen it all in a quote unquote certified home. So like I don't believe really in any of that stuff.
23:0023 minutesThat's a mechanism for financing as as far as I'm concerned and for trying to create revenue and stuff like that. But like from the big picture,
23:0823 minutes, 8 secondsit all comes down to the guy. It all comes down to you really. Like it all comes down to the guy verifying the project. And so like
23:1523 minutes, 15 secondsfor our perspective, it's like we want to see two things. One, I want to see the building around the system verified and I that it's actually the system
23:2423 minutes, 24 secondsthat's getting that the it's actually the building that the system's getting designed for. So that means if you tell me three air changes, somebody verified three air changes. If you tell me it's
23:3323 minutes, 33 secondsR19 and R5 at continuous and somebody verified that's what it is like all the things that HERS raers do. I mean even our main product which is whole home
23:4123 minutes, 41 secondsperformance verified uses the combination of an ERI or an ERRI rating whether it's hers or BSI and a measure
23:4823 minutes, 48 secondsquick benchmark. Right? Those two things are all that you need as long as the guy doing the verification knows what he's he's looking at and is really verifying
23:5623 minutes, 56 secondsstuff and holding the feet to the fire and all that. Like that's the problem. I I like 95% agree with you because the hers ratings has
24:0424 minutes, 4 secondsgot and energy source certification has gotten a really bad name in the industry over the past 20 years because most of the work is done by these giant
24:1224 minutes, 12 secondscompanies for financing like affordable housing requires energy star or these big builders py or be I don't know the
24:2024 minutes, 20 secondsname Ryan Holmes all these people are building these giant track developments and they use the energy star label and they get these big rehearsating companies to just rubber stamp
24:2824 minutes, 28 secondseverything and nothing is actually dude. And there I've seen some behind the scenes on some of these companies that have gotten in trouble and stuff like that and what they're charging is
24:3624 minutes, 36 secondsabsurd, dude. Nobody can compete with it. They're like $100 for the freaking TBI. You know what I mean? Like they don't drive by and rubber
24:4424 minutes, 44 secondsYeah, dude. They're not even They're not doing it. Why? If you're charging somebody $100 for a TBI, you never even went out there. If you did, you you're
24:5224 minutes, 52 seconds[ __ ] broke and you lost every dime you ever made. Like I swear if that's really what you're doing, you're the dumbest businessman on earth or you're a
25:0025 minutesscam artist. One of the two. Like there's no in between. I don't know how much they're charging.
25:0425 minutes, 4 secondsBut I think that ResNet is the HERS rating body is starting to crack down on some of that stuff. But if you're going to get a We'll see. They're
25:1325 minutes, 13 secondsthey crack down on me as an individual HERS rator. It's so difficult. I have so much QA so much. It's like impossible for me to cheat anything. But those
25:2025 minutes, 20 secondsbigger companies are their own QA and they just can certify things. That's what that's dude that is the whole the whole thing. Once you have the provider, the fox in the hen house, dude, you
25:2925 minutes, 29 secondsmight as well [ __ ] throw the whole thing out. Once the provider sit there like and I don't, you know, some like my best friend, one of my best friends, he the provider and he runs raiders. Like
25:3825 minutes, 38 secondsthere's guys out there that do the right thing, but it's too easy to not do the right thing, dude. You know what I mean?
25:4225 minutes, 42 secondsAnd like at some point in time, it's going to be like we're gonna lose this client or we're gonna do some nefarious [ __ ] for him. And every single time it's like, yeah, we can't lose this guy. So
25:5125 minutes, 51 secondswe got to do what we got to do. Well, this is where code comes in. At least code as it's getting updated. The real 2021 energy code is close to what Energy
26:0026 minutesStar currently is. It has ventilation requirements. It has the blow order requirements. It has the insulation levels. It's there, right? But the
26:0726 minutes, 7 secondsenforcement's the key. So, to go back to we were talking about before, I just became the first special inspector in the city of Philadelphia for blowor code
26:1626 minutes, 16 secondscompliance. So, they're starting to really crack down on these things. And before anybody could be the blow order guy and just show up and it would be the same problem. But now you have to be a
26:2426 minutes, 24 secondsspecial inspection agency and report all this stuff that you're doing. It's like a real thing finally.
26:2826 minutes, 28 secondsThat's pretty cool, dude. I never even heard of that. Whenever it is that that sounds like the FBI of her ratings or something like Well, we have special inspectors in the city for structural reasons or whatever.
26:3826 minutes, 38 secondsYou go to build something weird, you have to get a special inspection from a third party. And so now they've added border testing to that world of special
26:4626 minutes, 46 secondsinspection. So I think I'm the first one and only right now. So I think verification can get easier. I think the technology that we have there
26:5526 minutes, 55 secondsis an opportunity and we'll create something we by the end of this year maybe the first second quarter of next year we'll have our app verified app out
27:0227 minutes, 2 secondsand it's all based on hey you want to do business with us you want to install our services that we designed download this app here's the five things you got to
27:1027 minutes, 10 secondsverify at TBI as an installer here's what we expect from MeasureQuick to see back into the system to verify and then
27:1727 minutes, 17 secondswe're going to keep a record of it with a QR code right on the system like boom here's where it was verified anybody that comes comes in the house can QR scan that and see what the verification
27:2627 minutes, 26 secondswas because that is the only thing that matter benchmarking is all that matters man really that's awesome yeah that's like sort of what energy star and res that was supposed to be you're supposed to be
27:3427 minutes, 34 secondsable to go to the reset registry and check it out but as we were just talking about it's not exactly or you can jump through every piece of red tape that they have and maybe
27:4227 minutes, 42 secondssomewhere how close is your verification thing to the HBAC grading in energy star because I do that a lot
27:5027 minutes, 50 secondsit follow I mean I use that me The ResNet standards are legit, dude. You know what I mean? ResNet is legit.
27:5627 minutes, 56 secondsThere's some issues with the modeling and this thing don't model as good as this thing or whatever, but you got to have something somewhere. You know what I mean? So, like from that perspective,
28:0528 minutes, 5 secondsmodel works. You can use it for a lot of stuff, but you got to have the people and the standards are good. Like the testing protocols and all that stuff
28:1328 minutes, 13 secondsthat all you have to have something to follow. I would never veer away from that. That and the BPI standards for existing lands. I believe in all that stuff
28:2128 minutes, 21 secondswholly, you know, I came up through that existing home BPI pathway. So, that stuff is legit, dude. You know what I mean? But it's all about the people implementing it and the way that it's
28:2928 minutes, 29 secondsimplemented. And I believe that we can follow that pathway and do just pure
28:3628 minutes, 36 secondsverification, none of this other programmatic stuff that goes along with it. And as long as the performance of the hay and the performance of the
28:4528 minutes, 45 secondssystem is verified for real, like everything is really tested and verified, as long as you have that picture, everything moving forward from
28:5328 minutes, 53 secondsthat house gets easy. If something is a thermal problem, a comfort problem, an energy problem, like all you have to do is look back on that verification and
29:0129 minutes, 1 secondsay, "Okay, where were we? What was verified? And what do we need to, you know, what could be causing this problem?" It's a great starting point.
29:0829 minutes, 8 secondsSounds so simple. I mean, I get too bad it doesn't really happen everywhere. I mean, it sounds like your system could work really well. I'll have to check it
29:1629 minutes, 16 secondsout because I get calls all the time from architects in the area that I know that are building a pretty nice house out in the suburbs or something and
29:2529 minutes, 25 secondsthey're like, "We're not going to certify it. We're not going to, but we want you to come and do the inspections." It's like they want the same thing all the time. Yeah.
29:3329 minutes, 33 secondsYeah. They're the thing like people now know they want this stuff. They just don't want to be dealing with bureaucracy to get it. Yeah. I mean,
29:4129 minutes, 41 secondsthey just want a guy that's gonna come out and tell them how to build a good house and make sure it happens. That's what they want, you know? They're not looking for all these stickers on their
29:4829 minutes, 48 secondshouse. That's why some guys are like, I have builders who are inside our program like, can you create marketing and stuff like that to help us differentiate oursel,
29:5629 minutes, 56 secondsbut we can create legitimate like we're basing everything on performance. So we can give you some really great marketing that uses some of the stuff that already
30:0430 minutes, 4 secondsexists to differentiate yourself and stand on our own philosophies as well, you know.
30:1130 minutes, 11 secondsYeah. I mean, I I do like the just inspection thing, but I always suggest Energy Star certification because I think it's possible on most, especially
30:2030 minutes, 20 secondsif it's a high-end home, it's going to be certifiable, right? It's going to be 25% better than code. I could certify it. I could typically
30:2930 minutes, 29 secondsdo all the inspections you wanted me to do all the quality control. A little bit extra paperwork doesn't bother anyone. I do the HBC grading. Nobody needs to be
30:3730 minutes, 37 secondsACA certified. And in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, the two states I work majority of, there's very good rebates.
30:4530 minutes, 45 secondsSo, typically all of my work is paid for when I get it certified. And people love it.
30:4930 minutes, 49 secondsI mean, that's and that's great. That's awesome. Like basically free. Yeah. State of Tennessee. There's no reason.
30:5430 minutes, 54 secondsWe have no down here. I'm in Tennessee now. I was in Cincinnati, Ohio. Cincinnati, Ohio. That's another one.
30:5930 minutes, 59 secondsThere was lead to tax abatement. You could get a half million dollars abated off your fax prop property tax if you did leave platinum, you know, like huge reasons for people.
31:0831 minutes, 8 secondsI'm not a huge fan. I mean, I like green building programs, but I'm more focused on the energy efficient ones because I feel like it's just building science and
31:1531 minutes, 15 secondsefficiency. So the green building programs lead and len building challenge are all really great things and I love that the industry is pushing that way and I want more of it but I don't think
31:2331 minutes, 23 secondsa lot of it's very practical and does it they don't understand the construction industry right there's all these costs and all the pressures and all these things that make it difficult to do
31:3131 minutes, 31 secondsthose things but energy star and passive house they don't care how you do it they just you know there's a billion pathways a million ways to do it it's just mostly
31:3831 minutes, 38 secondsabout quality control and then passive house is just driving down the energy and with that comes durability and health and all these these other huge
31:4631 minutes, 46 secondsbenefits. I don't think they're all all those green building programs.
31:4931 minutes, 49 secondsI agree with all the method like what you're saying the methodologies and even lead for homes has some benefits to it.
31:5431 minutes, 54 secondsThere's a lot of fluff in it. So there's some things that you don't I was in a lead for homes program for years and I know they use a lean on energy star the entire energy star is a prerequisite.
32:0332 minutes, 3 secondsYou got to do the whole entire energy star has a prerequisite so short of getting certified and then you do the green building stuff. All that stuff has
32:1132 minutes, 11 secondsmerit and if it's verified correctly, it turns into a great environmental house.
32:1532 minutes, 15 secondsBut to your point, the energy piece is always the biggest piece of it. The ver the thermal the building science piece, as you stated very very eloquently, the
32:2432 minutes, 24 secondsbuilding science piece of it is what matters the most and is what's going to make a good house. And so being environmental steward is important,
32:3132 minutes, 31 secondswhich is the other part of the lead program, but work somebody that does not have the means because the only people I saw building those lead houses were
32:4032 minutes, 40 secondsmillionaires of people that had a bunch of money. You know what I mean? They were the only ones that were able to take advantage of that program and stuff like that. Nobody else. There wasn't no
32:4832 minutes, 48 secondsmarket rate people get no homes. There wasn't any affordable housing that was done that way unless it was very specific and some kind of weird program.
32:5632 minutes, 56 secondsHabitat prove humanity, dude. Those guys who you got your start with, they're a great example of an organization that sticks to the basic building science,
33:0333 minutes, 3 secondsbuilds people a great home, and does it for really cheap. Man, that stuff has merit. I'm not saying it doesn't, but
33:1133 minutes, 11 secondsthe point is like using passive home is a great example. Well, I have five clients that I did HVAC design for that
33:1833 minutes, 18 secondspeople were gungho and they thought they were going to get certified passing home, but when it came down to the appliance part of it and the way that
33:2633 minutes, 26 secondsthey had to live to get their appliance thing down, the meat, whatever it was to get certified, they decided and there were some other things in the program
33:3333 minutes, 33 secondsthat extremes that they didn't want to go to, but they decided, hey, the passive home shell, awesome. I love it.
33:3933 minutes, 39 secondsI want to do that, but I don't really need the certification. And they stopped short of getting the certification. And every one of them did. Only one out of the six home phones that I've done
33:4733 minutes, 47 secondsactually went all the way to and they all started out they had a pass home consultant. They had a passive home raider. They had all these different designers. They were doing all this
33:5533 minutes, 55 secondsgreat stuff. And then as we got down into the project, they just never got it certified. They did everything.
34:0134 minutes, 1 secondI mean, I'm sure the house is still good, right? I'd love to look at their energy bill, right? Like I'm sure it's pretty good. I don't know if you ever heard of that book like the good home, like the really good home or something.
34:1034 minutes, 10 secondsIt's like pretty good. the house I think everybody should try strive to build.
34:1434 minutes, 14 secondsYeah. I mean I go through so many row homes in Philadelphia that just a little bit of spray foam here seal up some rim joist or insulate the attic a little
34:2134 minutes, 21 secondsbetter would really help. And like people I find so many problems and people are like so happy and it's like the lowest hanging fruit but they have no idea, right? you do a bler test,
34:3034 minutes, 30 secondsyou're just like with a thermal imaging just showing them like, "Oh my god, wow, this is so you really can live in a pretty good house with just, you know,
34:3834 minutes, 38 secondslike it's never going to be a passive house, right?" But there's a lot of things you can do to make it pretty good, I think, is the point. Yeah.
34:4634 minutes, 46 secondsI mean, you can swim towards passive house without going to that extreme, you know what I mean? There's a big gap between the code build house that we
34:5434 minutes, 54 secondstalked about and the passive home house that we talked about. Like there's a thing in the middle that's way better than code but not as good as passive home. That's a pretty awesome place to
35:0235 minutes, 2 secondslive. So the zero energy ready home, right? It's the because there's the that sort of Yeah.
35:0935 minutes, 9 secondsRight. But I can get you there without any name. My whole thing is like I don't need any of those names. I know what a good house is. Like I will come out
35:1635 minutes, 16 secondsthere. I will say this. I'm going to put the credit where where it belongs. those programs, participating in them and going through all of that taught me what
35:2535 minutes, 25 secondsa pretty good home is and taught me what a really great home is and taught me what an awesome home is. Like without them, I know none of this. But I do not
35:3235 minutes, 32 secondsneed or these clients to get certified as long as they have me or somebody like me. I don't need you to go through a certification. You know what I mean?
35:4035 minutes, 40 secondsThat's really my whole point about this.
35:4335 minutes, 43 secondsThe only time I ever see those things you unfortunately it's true. Like if you don't get me, this is my whole point. If you don't get me or they don't get you, you know,
35:5135 minutes, 51 secondssomebody who cares, then they get the other guy who's in the program that got them certified, but they still have a shitty house. So, that is the problem that I have with those programs. You're
36:0036 minutes100% right. There ain't a ton of me and you out there. But guess what? There is a lot of these other guys and they can all get you certified. So, who do you
36:0836 minutes, 8 secondswant? You know, that's all I got to say about that.
36:1136 minutes, 11 secondsYeah. You know how you get a building inspection before you buy a house? Like, why isn't a bladder door a part of that?
36:1536 minutes, 15 secondsYou could when you go to buy a new house, they get you run through Miami building inspectors are doing that. Yeah.
36:2136 minutes, 21 secondsMy buddy Dave works with a whole bunch of different building inspectors throughout the country who he's a provider. He's got a whole bunch of people in his providership that are building inspectors that are now hers
36:2936 minutes, 29 secondsraiders. There's a whole national movement of building inspectors that are tapping on HERS ratings to their services because it makes sense and it
36:3736 minutes, 37 secondsjust teaches them another thing value add to the service that they already have.
36:4236 minutes, 42 secondsYeah, I'm sure those guys were never picking up on the insulation and air sealing problems that we now know cause problems or duct leakage or all kinds of stuff.
36:5136 minutes, 51 secondsI've looked at a million building inspection reports and they're so basic with what they say about the thermal stuff and they're trying to sell a house. Dude, these building inspectors,
36:5936 minutes, 59 secondsmost of them work for the buyer, the seller. They're not trying to trying to really expose every single problem that needs to be fixed to make the house a
37:0737 minutes, 7 secondsbetter place. They're saying, "Will you live in this and die or not?" You know what I mean? Like, I just How can I get you money off your bill or sort of like get you money back off the price of the house sort of?
37:1737 minutes, 17 secondsYeah, exactly. It's good to see that with these other problems, you know, that's what the heck of them.
37:2437 minutes, 24 secondsSo, let's talk a little more about ventilation because that's a very interesting subject to everybody in the world that's in our world anyway right
37:3137 minutes, 31 secondsnow, whether it's HVAC or otherwise. And there's a lot of different ways to accomplish that. We talked about delivering directly to the rooms and the
37:4037 minutes, 40 secondschallenges of balancing it. What kind of flow hood are you using to balance that stuff with? What do you What's your favorite tool?
37:4637 minutes, 46 secondsSo, I there aren't many flow hoods that will register 6 CFM. So, the only one that I know of that does it accurately
37:5437 minutes, 54 secondsis the ASIN powered flow hood. So, it actually has a fan inside of it and it'll balance the flow and measure it
38:0238 minutes, 2 secondsthat way. And so RetroTek sells it from it's like a European thing and badass.
38:0938 minutes, 9 secondsYeah, it's pretty it's nice but it's expensive. And of course you're supposed to get it calibrated once a year which can get expensive as well. But I also
38:1638 minutes, 16 secondsuse for regular exhaust I will use a flow hood or retrotech in Minneapolis make like a box that you put over it and
38:2538 minutes, 25 secondsjust connect the pressure port to which works great for exhaust but for the exhaust box. I mean that thing there's nothing more accurate than that
38:3238 minutes, 32 secondsbecause it's designed to the tea to for that cuz the closer you get to the diameter of the orfice you're measuring
38:4038 minutes, 40 secondsthe more accurate your airflow measurement is going to be. So like that's why that box fits right up on that you know on that exhaust fan it's made for that. So like that thing is perfect.
38:4838 minutes, 48 secondsAnecdotally I have taken the Evergreen Telemetries 8 in hood and it's their smaller hood. damn big 2 by two that
38:5638 minutes, 56 secondsworks for commercial hood, but they also have a smaller one that you can buy in the kit and I've put it side by side with the Retro Tech powered flow hood
39:0439 minutes, 4 secondsand I have video evidence of it. We were getting readings very very close to each other and it's made for exalt lowflow
39:1239 minutes, 12 secondsexhaust and stuff like that. So anecdotally, more than anecdotally, they've done their own testing and they have some independent letters saying
39:1939 minutes, 19 secondsthat it meets they've got it not on a large scale but on a project by project basis. They got it accepted to tab about some big passive home projects before.
39:2839 minutes, 28 secondsSo that is one that I would throw out there that the only other one I know of.
39:3339 minutes, 33 secondsAnd it's passive, too. It's not powered, which is very surprising. But however they have that thing functioned and or
39:4039 minutes, 40 secondshowever they have that thing formed just the size of it and also to the accuracy of their actual instrumentation makes it
39:4839 minutes, 48 secondspossible it seems like to meet the same plus or minus that retroj can those guys retrotech don't like me
39:5739 minutes, 57 secondssaying that you know I my that's great to hear because I don't like the retro tech thing as much because it takes probably
40:0540 minutes, 5 seconds45 seconds to take a measurement, which is super annoying when you're like your hands are above your head trying to hold this thing up where you're trying to measure the kitchen exhaust flow. You're
40:1340 minutes, 13 secondslike holding it out under the thing and if you're taking like a couple hundred measurements in a day, boy, that is some times of your day for sure.
40:2040 minutes, 20 secondsRight. So, I I'll look into that. I mean, I Yeah, I'm honestly trying to get away from, you know, and I do some commercial stuff, too. So, it's nice having the
40:2940 minutes, 29 secondskit. It's the same monometer. It's the same everything for every piece of equipment. And also, you know, their kit comes with a straight pedo, a static
40:3740 minutes, 37 secondspressure probe, temperature probe for hydraulics. Like, it comes with a bunch of different instrumentation. It all works off of the monitor. So, it's a
40:4440 minutes, 44 secondsnice kit to have. You're out there doing inspections and stuff like that. I use it for almost everything. I love it.
40:5040 minutes, 50 secondsYeah, I would certainly look into it because I'm, like I said before, I'm trying to get rid away from ret.
40:5440 minutes, 54 secondsNo, I didn't get paid to say any of that. I'm not They don't endorse me. I always say, "If you guys want to give me money, come on, I'll take it. I love your [ __ ] and I'll let you pay me to
41:0241 minutes, 2 secondstalk about it and him to Neil too. Neil talk about any of it for you.
41:0841 minutes, 8 secondsBut yeah, Retro Tech has it kind of annoyed me lately, so I'm trying to switch away from them. They're like their customer service isn't the best.
41:1541 minutes, 15 secondsAnd honestly, their equipment is a little I don't know. I shouldn't talk too much [ __ ] about them.
41:1941 minutes, 19 secondsLooks like I like Retro Tech. Like they're I I mess with all their stuff. I just found that hood is way more convenient for me than the other one. I
41:2641 minutes, 26 secondsI've used that thing since it's came out. It's a funny story because I'm good friends with Joe Madash and he used to work for RetroTek and he was good friends with Colin, the owner of Retro
41:3541 minutes, 35 secondsTech. So when they were bringing that thing over from Germany because it's their they white label it had their piece of equipment. It's you know
41:4441 minutes, 44 secondsYeah. And they when they were bringing it over I actually saw it probably before a lot of people because they had at a conference and they were like hey what do you think about this thing? But
41:5241 minutes, 52 secondsthe point I'm making is like that thing is made by the Swiss and it's like a freaking Swiss watch, dude. It's one of the best pieces like from a st from a
42:0042 minutesstandard of like the quality of the piece of equipment. It's probably one of the best quality pieces of equipment made. The precision that went into that
42:0942 minutes, 9 secondsis from the Swiss and that is not to be rivaled at all. That thing is a badass piece of equipment from an accuracy and whatever quality of making
42:1742 minutes, 17 secondsstandpoint. I can't give my whatever I'm trying to say. So yeah, equipment is a thing. It's a big expense
42:2542 minutes, 25 secondsevery year for Hers Raider. Every kid you know we're spending thousands of calibration to you know tab we're doing we got a ton of more equipment to get
42:3242 minutes, 32 secondscalibrated. It gets you got $5,000 a year calibration per set of equipment sometimes just depending on what you're doing. So
42:4142 minutes, 41 secondsthat's why people are like can you come out and do this for $500? I'm like well let me think about that. No my
42:4942 minutes, 49 secondscalibration bills to pay. I have this. I have that. The overhead is a lot more than me just getting out of my car and putting the hood in there. Like people
42:5642 minutes, 56 secondsdon't understand that piece of the business sometimes. Like you carry a pretty nice overhead doing all this inspection stuff.
43:0443 minutes, 4 secondsYeah. Insurance too, but there So back to the passive home stuff. So
43:1143 minutes, 11 secondstell me a little bit about the how Philadelphia wound up. Are they incentivizing? Is that in the building code? Like why is there so much passive
43:1843 minutes, 18 secondshome stuff going on? That's a great question. So, I don't know if you ever heard of Onionoflats, a guy named Tim
43:2543 minutes, 25 secondsMcDonald. He about in 2016 went to the Pennsylvania Housing Authority and said, "Why don't you
43:3443 minutes, 34 secondsinclude passive house?" So, let me take a step back. The way that mortgage finance, affordable housing finance
43:4243 minutes, 42 secondshappens in Pennsylvania and New Jersey at least is all I could speak to. The federal government gives them a bunch of money and then they award that money to
43:5043 minutes, 50 secondsaffordable housing projects in the form of tax credits and there's a lot more projects every year that apply for it than there's money. So they have a point
44:0044 minutessystem and there's all kinds of ways to get points, but one of them always was like a a green building thing. So Tim
44:0744 minutes, 7 secondsactually championed to the Pennsylvania housing authority to add passive house as a 10point thing into the QAP
44:1644 minutes, 16 secondsqualified allocation plan. And for a few years they built a bunch of multif family affordable
44:2444 minutes, 24 secondshousing passive house projects in Pennsylvania because they were giving them tax credit points to do it. So people were getting it that way, getting
44:3144 minutes, 31 secondsthe tax credits that way. But then somehow it got into Pennsylvania that like the other green building programs
44:3944 minutes, 39 secondswere equal to passive house and so things like enterprise green communities which is like 10% of the lift of passive
44:4744 minutes, 47 secondshouse also got awarded the same amount of points. So the amount of passive house projects actually dropped off. But since then there's been a lot of single
44:5544 minutes, 55 secondsfamily interest. Like I'm working on four with two different builders, two different like projects, four speck home
45:0345 minutes, 3 secondsprojects that are passive house. So they don't have buyers yet. They're just building them to hopefully sell them for a good price. And then I think there's
45:1245 minutes, 12 secondsjust some interest. There's a pretty good passive house community that was started 15 years ago that group of people that were meeting architects and
45:2045 minutes, 20 secondsbuilders that were interested in it. And it became along with some other groups of living building challenge, green building united. So there's a pretty good green building community in
45:2945 minutes, 29 secondsPhiladelphia. The green building united has a symposium every year. So there's a big conference like a local conference where everybody gets together and talks
45:3645 minutes, 36 secondsabout green building locally. So I guess it's there's a community for it. There's a bit of a spark for it. It is incentivized, but not any more than
45:4545 minutes, 45 secondsEnergy Star. It's not like you get more for a passive house than you would Energy Star from Pico. So, which is the electricity provider?
45:5245 minutes, 52 secondsPercentage of passive house stuff right now that you're doing out of all the work you're doing.
45:5745 minutes, 57 secondsThat's an interesting question. I do all kinds of things. I have like five or six larger projects that are going for Energy Star certification that are like
46:0546 minutes, 5 seconds60 unit multif family buildings and then I'm working on two passive house projects that are renovations of row homes. So, they gutted the inside and
46:1346 minutes, 13 secondsare making them passive houses which is super interesting. I could probably spend an hour talking about that. and then a few new ones and then there's a
46:2146 minutes, 21 secondsfew live proposals out but passive house is not a huge part of what I do. It's a passion thing for me. It definitely doesn't keep me in business but it's
46:2946 minutes, 29 secondslike very if it comes around you'll take it because you like it.
46:3346 minutes, 33 secondsAbsolutely. I mean I don't know if there's any other there might there's other raiders in the area but there's and they do like the larger building stuff for passive house but there's not
46:4146 minutes, 41 secondsmany like single family home passive house verifiers in the area.
46:4546 minutes, 45 secondsSo, so when we talk about we talked a little bit about HVAC systems with tell everybody but what's the most common type what's the most unusual type of
46:5346 minutes, 53 secondssystem you've seen what's the biggest challenge with HVAC that you see let's talk get into that whole nut a little bit there it's such a big range so I see
47:0247 minutes, 2 secondsfurnaces typical furnace ducted systems will you know with like still gas like I'm working on a zeroetti home project
47:0947 minutes, 9 secondsthat still has a gas PTAC in it that's like a through the wall thing so typical systems can work. And then I see some of
47:1747 minutes, 17 secondsthe more interesting stuff I'm working on are like these magic box systems that this one I'm working on right now is epoch epo.
47:2647 minutes, 26 secondsIt's from Italy. It's an all-in-one package system. So it's an ERV and a heat pump and there's no outside
47:3547 minutes, 35 secondsoutdoor like condenser. It just pulls in air and exhausts air like an ERV, but uses that ERV recovery as the condenser.
47:4447 minutes, 44 secondsSo it's doing heat recovery with the condenser but it's all inside.
47:4947 minutes, 49 secondsAre is that like serve the serve units and minotaur and stuffar is another version of that but it's a little it's like bigger than the minotaur. I don't
47:5747 minutes, 57 secondsknow actually I haven't looked at minotaur in a bigger system now but it's a little bigger than that. It could serve another one or there is another one s erv or serve or something like
48:0748 minutes, 7 secondsthat. I forgot the exact there's another American version.
48:1148 minutes, 11 secondsYeah, they're almost the same exact thing. And I've had some experience. I've designed a minotaur before my request. It's not something I chose to specify, but they
48:1948 minutes, 19 secondsasked to use those systems in a path of home job.
48:2248 minutes, 22 secondsAnd yeah, there's some challenges.
48:2448 minutes, 24 secondsWe we had to use two of them in the project we were in just because it couldn't serve the whole load of the even of the passing home just because
48:3148 minutes, 31 secondsthe heat or the cooling capacity of it is not that tremendous really like when it comes down to what it can do. And
48:3948 minutes, 39 secondsthen if you get into different temperatures, I forget, there was a few challenges we came across using things like that.
48:4648 minutes, 46 secondsI think the problem with the Minotaur is that it can only do one or the other. It can't exhaust and cool at the same time.
48:5448 minutes, 54 secondsIt can it'll switch between the two.
48:5648 minutes, 56 secondsIt'll exhaust for a while and then it'll close the damper and cool. And I think there's a bit of a challenge for that.
49:0249 minutes, 2 secondsYou're trying to take a shower and cool the house. It doesn't really work super well. But Oh, interesting.
49:0849 minutes, 8 secondsYeah. I think that with those systems, at first I thought it was pretty interesting, but now it seems challenging to service and to sort of
49:1649 minutes, 16 secondsget right. There's just too much stuff going on in one box that I think it can be difficult.
49:2149 minutes, 21 secondsIt's tempting because you want to be able to serve everything from one box.
49:2549 minutes, 25 secondsYou want the simplicity. You need from a cost standpoint, you get into a few different boxes most of the time. Most of the time we're doing passive home.
49:3449 minutes, 34 secondsit's going to be a Zinder ERV and a couple of duffless units or something like that or other strategy where we're trying to move a little bit of air
49:4249 minutes, 42 secondsthrough a bigger space than you normally would, you know, because you don't need that much heat and cooling in these buildings typically. So, I think the industry has found it's funny because
49:5149 minutes, 51 secondsevery time you try to go away from ducted distribution, ducted distribution back to say, "Hey, man, may maybe there's a lot of benefits to what these
49:5949 minutes, 59 secondsAmerican guys have been doing as long as we can get it right. We know there's some losses, but it does create a different comfort dynamic and
50:0750 minutes, 7 secondsexpectation than you have in other places. If you go to Europe or any of these South American places where they don't have a lot of ducted systems,
50:1550 minutes, 15 secondstheir comfort expectations are not what Americans have come to expect, you know, when it's 90 out, right?
50:2250 minutes, 22 secondsYeah. I mean, and there's corners of the room or corners of the building that aren't as comfortable as the other, but that's okay because that's how those things work. They only throw 50 feet in
50:3150 minutes, 31 secondsfront of them. and they're not really throwing, you know, or 20, not none of them are 50 feet, but 25, 30 feet in front of them. And that's just what it
50:3850 minutes, 38 secondsis. And there's going to be some dead zones. But you get a million-dollar house with dead zones in it because you tried to use duck list the wrong way, you're going to have complaints all day,
50:4650 minutes, 46 secondsevery day for the rest of your life, you know. So, and the other problem is that the refrigerant, and as I'm sure you know, is now flammable. So now in these multif
50:5550 minutes, 55 secondsfamily buildings where they used to have these like heat pumps in each apartment with refrigerant lines running to the roof,
51:0251 minutes, 2 secondsthey have to now do these fire rated chasing. Yeah.
51:0651 minutes, 6 secondsYeah. I got a whole I got a whole case study coming out on man. I had to design new heat pumps for historic buildings in
51:1351 minutes, 13 secondsdowntown Cincinnati and it was right after the A2L switch happened. And so, yeah, we had to deal with, trust me, dude, trying to get an insulated shaft
51:2151 minutes, 21 secondsto the three course brick building that's been there a hundred years is no small feat.
51:2651 minutes, 26 secondsThat's why these systems are so attractive. If you don't have to put a condenser on the roof, you just it's all in one. It's pulling the air, right? It's super attractive.
51:3251 minutes, 32 secondsYeah. From that same, hey, when you start factoring in stuff like that, stuff like that starts making a lot more sense because then you're you have a
51:4051 minutes, 40 secondswhole different thing think about that's costing a lot of dollars over a lot of space, especially in these multif family buildings. Yeah, you got to put the RV in. You got to do the fire rated shaft.
51:5051 minutes, 50 secondsYeah, it becomes a lot more tricky.
51:5251 minutes, 52 seconds84 units, you know what I mean? From a fire rated shaft. It's not the easiest thing in the world to do. You got a lot of line sets running through that one shaft and it's
52:0152 minutes, 1 secondusually not one shaft by the end of the day. So, yeah, tough for sure. It's all that's all fun stuff.
52:1052 minutes, 10 secondsFor sure. I think we're probably pushing our hour here. Hey, couple things. one, tell everybody where to find you. Any
52:1852 minutes, 18 secondssocial media stuff you want to shout out, anything you want to say about to promote yourself, feel free to do it.
52:2452 minutes, 24 secondsSure. Yeah. Check my website out at lessenergy.com. Lesnrg.com and check out my Instagram at lees.nrg
52:3452 minutes, 34 secondsat Instagram. And I'm definitely trying to do more whole building corridor tests. As I said, I'm the the first certified special inspector in
52:4252 minutes, 42 secondsPhiladelphia. So, as the code changes, look me I'll help you with that. And yeah, it's been great being on the show.
52:4852 minutes, 48 secondsAbsolutely. So before we go, I ask everybody on the show this question as parting, if you've listened to my show, you've heard it. If the world ended
52:5652 minutes, 56 secondstoday and they ask you to leave one piece of advice on the wall behind you for the rest of society that comes after you, what would that advice be?
53:0453 minutes, 4 secondsThe best things in life are free.
53:0953 minutes, 9 secondsNeil, thank you very much. It's been great having you and I would love to get an update sometime on your big building testing
53:1653 minutes, 16 secondsand your special inspector status and see how all that went.
53:1953 minutes, 19 secondsYeah, it's been great. Thank you so much for having me.
