Award-winning master builder, and owner of Clay Construction, Larry Clay, and Luke Dolan, energy advisor of Capital Home Energy explore the choices we can make to improve the air quality in our homes for healthier living environments.
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Co-Host: Mike Freedman, owner, AI Technology & Design
Co-Host, podcast editor: Jennifer-Lee Gunson: jPod Creations
About the Speaker
LARRY CLAY, Founder, Master Builder
As founder and president, Larry is the visionary for the business and is a consistent motivator for his team. To our clients he is a creative, authoritative and reassuring presence throughout the building process. His expertise and commitment to premium customer care has earned Clay Construction top awards in customer service. He is an industry leader serving on local, provincial and national home building boards and has been a featured speaker coast to coast. He is passionate about building healthy, comfortable, efficient and durable homes.
LUKE DOLAN, Energy Advisor, Certified Home Inspector
Luke Dolan is a CEA (Certified Energy Advisor) with Natural Resources Canada and a Certified Home Inspector. Luke also started the trade association for Energy Advisors – CACEA (Canadian Association of Consulting Energy Advisors). He is now acting Director of CACEA.
His extensive background as an Energy Advisor EA began in 2008, and since then, he has evaluated over 6,000 homes in the Vancouver Lower Mainland and Whistler Sea-to-Sky corridor.
Luke also performs third party New Construction Home Inspections for the Holmes Approved Holmes program for Mike Holmes Inspections and also teaches building science with CHBA.
Luke has a passion for sustainable building, the environment, and a healthy active lifestyle. Luke has over 25 years of experience in the construction industry, including 15 years in Whistler BC.
Luke’s passions include outdoor sports such as skiing, cycling, and windsurfing. He is also an avid gardener. Luke’s lifestyle and up most respect for the environment have shaped his business model and have contributed to the success of Capital Home Energy. The service he provides with his energy evaluations and home inspections leaves home owners, contractors, developers, and real estate professionals with a feeling of satisfaction after the job is complete.
Other certifications include:
– Net Zero Homes
– R-2000
– EnerGuide for New Homes program
– Built Green Canada
– ENERGY STAR® for New Homes Initiative
– Infrared Thermography 1
– TECA Ventilation
– HRAI Ventilation
– HRR Utilities program
– PQEA
Listen and like for your chance to win a gas BBQ compliments of our Podcast Partner FortisBC.
Here's the Full Transcript of this Episode
Jennifer-Lee:
Welcome to Measure Twice, Cut Once, the podcast from HAVAN, the Homebuilders Association Vancouver,
Mike:
It’s Season Three, and we’re exploring how our homes can improve our wellbeing.
Jennifer-Lee:
We’ll be looking at the impact of the air we breathe,
Mike:
The water we drink and
Jennifer-Lee:
The acoustic levels in our homes,
Mike:
Smart kitchens,
Jennifer-Lee:
award-winning designs
Mike:
And leading edge building construction.
Jennifer-Lee:
We ask the questions.
Mike:
So you know how to make your home work for you.
Jennifer-Lee:
I’m Jennifer-Lee Gunson.
Mike:
And I’m Mike Freedman. Now that you hear why not hit subscribe and you’ll never miss an episode.
Jennifer-Lee:
Hey Mike, here we are back in the studio with Measured Twice, Cut Once.
Mike:
Hey Jennifer-Lee. It’s always a great day when we come to the studio to meet with builders and industry professionals, I’m learning so much this season as we look at homes through a healthier lens.
Jennifer-Lee:
I know there is so much to take into consideration. It is easy to overlook the intrinsic elements in our homes, such as light water and today’s conversation. The air we breathe.
Mike:
Thinking back to when we had Brett Stenner on episode 19, this season, he mentioned something really interesting that we spend on average 91% of our time indoors.
Jennifer-Lee:
Yes. And he said the air outside is typically five times cleaner making me think. We need to look at how our homes are built and how we operate in them to ensure we have better standards with better air quality indoors.
Mike:
I agreea hundred percent. So with that in mind, let’s bring in today’s guests. We have Larry Clay of Clay Construction and Luke Dolan of Capital Home Energy.
Jennifer-Lee:
Welcome everybody.
Larry:
Good afternoon, Jen and Mike. Perfect.
Jennifer-Lee:
Okay, well, let’s get started. Okay. So Larry, Mike and I have known you for quite a few years, but of course the audience out there doesn’t. So can you tell us a little bit about yourself, uh, the Larry’s story as I like to call it and all about your company, clay construction?
Larry:
Sure. Wonderful. Thank you, Jen. I would be pleased too. So I am Larry Clay, founder and president of clay construction. We are master builders being in the business for about 19 years. Uh, my first career was a as a teacher taught high school and, uh, with a large family, six kids, it was just difficult to, to make ends meet. So I was always in construction while I was teaching and I would work for a framer, a general contractor or electrician, a painter, an eventually in the nineties. I said, let’s start building my own house. So that’s really what got me into the building. Eventually I had some friends say, Hey, Larry, you’re an expert having built two homes. Why don’t you build me a home? Then I had others join us. And I was still teaching at a small Christian school making 20% less than my colleagues in the public school. It was just tough with a family of eight. And so I had eight houses to build that year and I was still teaching. And that’s when I decided to make the move into the building back in around 2003.
Jennifer-Lee:
That’s so cool. I always love learning about people who have had careers prior to the one that they’re currently in and six children. That is a lot. How big is your home?
Larry:
Well, we squeeze ’em in.
Jennifer-Lee:
We squeeze them in. Probably a few of them are sharing rooms and not their own room.
Larry:
No, the house is fine, but we are looking, we live on a beautiful five acres in South Langley and we’re looking to take the house down and build a net zero passive step five house in the near future.
Mike:
Well, Luke, wanna welcome you as well. Uh, let’s turn the lens on you a little bit more and let’s learn a little bit more about Luke. Who are you? And tell me a little bit more about Capital Home Energy.
Luke:
Okay, great. Yeah. So I’m the owner of Capital Home Energy. We are an energy design firm located in Vancouver. Although we do work up and down the Sea to Sky corridor and on Vancouver island. Started up the business back in 2008. I’m an energy advisor and we are energy advisors. We’re an energy advisor company, meaning that we get our registered or certification from Natural Resources, Canada. We primarily work in the residential sector. So most of our work is part nine of the building code. A little bit about myself. I mean, I’ve been in construction most of my life, most of my adult life. Throughout summer jobs in high school and university grew up in Ontario, played varsity football for McMaster. Back in the day, I was also a competitive ski racer race professional for a few years, lived in Whistler since 92. I did a full ski bum thing there for quite some time. I’m a father, about to be to have a daughter. My wife, she’s due next week, so exciting days in my life.
Mike:
Congratulations.
New Speaker:
Yeah. Thanks.
Mike:
So Luke, you talked about being passionate about sustainability. What does that mean to you?
Luke:
You? Yeah, good question. So that’s kind of why I got into this business. I mean, sustainability, that term gets it gets floated around a lot in various industries. For me, it’s, it’s a full life cycle, kind of it’s a full lifestyle, I guess, sustainability, but when it comes to construction, it’s incorporates energy efficiency is a big piece of it, but it also incorporates other things like being more responsible when it comes to material selections, trying to buy local, trying to reduce your waste on job site. Things like that. Energy efficiency of course is a huge part. Like I said, how you live in general, I guess is my definition of sustainable. You know, like I, we grow food. We try to eat organic food as much as possible. That to me incorporates sustainability.
Jennifer-Lee:
Okay. Luke, for anyone out there, including myself, because I always get confused by this role on the job site now, but what does an energy advisor do?
Luke:
So we’re registered by Natural Resources Canada, for one thing. We do energy evaluations on new and existing homes. We use energy modeling software to help homeowners builders, meet energy codes and, or make their houses more energy efficient. We work in what’s called the Energuide for homes program. Energuide is a program that’s run across the country. It’s essentially how we measure the energy efficiency of home. So it’s a standard that’s used across Canada. We’re, part-time in front of a computer doing computer energy modeling work and we’re, part-time out in the field. You have to have a very well-rounded skillset become an energy advisor because we’re on job sites. We’re giving advice to builders and homeowners on how to make their houses more energy efficient. We do a lot of work with the BC Energy Step Code, which is a performance based building code, which is relatively new, been an enforcement since December, 2017.
Mike:
We’re talking about higher performance home here, and I’m gonna start with Larry for this part because the design of the home is one part, the execution or the building of the home is another, not everyone can do this. You’re very much a pioneer in this field. And you just had a leadership role for a long time. Based on that, what would you say are some of the questions that you’d want to ask someone if you were interviewing a builder or a contractor to build a higher performance home?
Larry:
Well, as a builder, we find that when I get from the energy advisor, the items that we have to put in to achieve the step level, there’s some things that are really easy. I have to put in HR-V I gotta put in better windows. Doesn’t take any skill to do that. There’s two other elements we do. One would be, we often will do insulated concrete forms and exterior rigid insulation. Again, that takes a select trade who knows what they’re doing and how to achieve this, do it properly. But the last one that takes the most skill is going to be your air tightness as Luke has already alluded to. And the air tightness really is a skill you have to learn over, do trying to achieve great results over many years. And for us, we’re finding that we have to be sequencing, using the right products and testing, and we’ll do mid construction door tests. And we will, we’re aiming to get our homes all below one air changes per hour. So you could ask a builder, what are your recent scores on the homes? You can ask them how do they achieve that? You can ask them what type of wall assembly do they prefer? Because I can tell you not all wall assemblies are created equal. Some have some inherent dangers in them with unintended consequences and some wall assemblies are going be excellent. Not only for long term durability, but for achieving less thermal bridging, et cetera. So these are some of the questions I’d be asking a builder and some are going be, I don’t have a clue what you’re asking about and, you know, right away they are off the list and some are gonna be very knowledgeable and will be inspiring. And I would focus my attention there.
Mike:
Well, we’ve learned about how to figure out the questions to ask someone like yourself. Larry, I wanna shift gears a little to airtight buildings themselves. Beciuse you mentioned that and you talked about some terms and some methodology. Luke, can you talk to us a little bit more about specifically, what is an airtight building? Does that mean no air can get in or out at all? What does that mean for me as a homeowner? What does that mean for anyone considering a new home?
Luke:
Air tightness, so that, you know, it’s a big focus nowadays with construction. So, we’re essentially trying to build as airtight as we possibly can think of it. Like you’re building a spaceship or you’re building a submarine. Okay. We want to be able to control the amount of air that comes in and out of the house. So, we want to be in control. So we are trying to build is absolutely as airtight as possible. I often joke around when I’m doing like an existing home evaluation and there’s little kids or something and I’m doing a blow door test and they’re like, well, we’re gonna be able to breathe when you suck all the air outta the house. And I don’t know, you might have to hold your breath. We do want to control the amount of air that comes in and out of the house to
Larry:
Achieve an airtight building. We have to have air barriers that are continuous and they can be on the outside or the inside of the building. So, we just want to have a continuous air barrier. And for us to have success, we have to make sure that all of our trades are, have bought into the program. And that means that our electricians understand there’s one wire per hole. Plumbers realize that. Our framers, probably one of our biggest allies in achieving an airtight building because we’re trying to sequence before the skirt roof goes on before, the joists go on. We’re making sure the air barrier will be wrapped around the joy. So my, my framer is very involved in achieving an airtight building. And so it’s where we’re moving towards. When all homes have to be one air changes per hour, everybody’s gonna have to get on board with this.
Luke:
Yeah. One way to think about it. So if you were to, if you had your set of architectural plans and you go to like your section drawing, where you have a picture of the house, you should be able to take a pen and put the pen on the, on the home and draw where your air barrier is without that pen coming off the paper and it should be a hundred percent continuous. So, what Larry was saying is you have to have pre-planned an air barrier strategy, right? We have to have a strategy going into the build. Everybody on your team needs to know what that air barrier strategy is. Especially, like the framers, don’t just expect to show up on a job set one day and ask the framers, Hey, why haven’t you? Pre-stripped your top plates or something? The framers gonna be like, well, I don’t know I was supposed to, so everybody needs to be on board with, with a strategy, an airtight strategy when it comes to construction.
Mike:
Okay, well we talked about testing it earlier and you mentioned something called the blower door test. Some of our listeners may not know what that is. Can you explain number one, what that is? And two, how we use that to test the air tightness of a structure.
Luke:
We have a contraption called the blower door fan. We have this big, it’s a big fan with a collapsible door frame and we use digital pressure gauges. And we set this up, this contraption up in a door, an exterior door of the house. And what we typically do is we depressurize the house. So then we’re, we’re basically sucking all the air from inside the home out causing this causes negative pressure. So as we’re pulling all this air out of the house, what’s happening is air from outside, wants to come in. So we’re creating a vacuum. So we’re pulling all the air out of the house. Therefore we’re pulling air in and you’re probably thinking, well, where is this air coming in from? Well, it comes in from all the natural air leakage points throughout the house. And that could be around your windows around penetrations mechanical penetrations could be light switches, plugs, attic catches around fireplaces, kitchen range, food fans, all sorts of areas where we have air leakage. So we’re pulling that air back into the house and we want to determine how many air exchanges you have in one air in one hour. And that’s so that’s the metric. So we’re basically sucking all the volume of air out of the house we want. And we want to. See how many times does that volume of air come back into the house in one hour and what we’re doing another way to think of it is we’re simulating a 40 kilometer an hour wind on all four sides of the house. So we’re simulating a, a situation that would probably never happen, but in order to get a, a reading, find out how airtight or not very airtight your house.
Jennifer-Lee:
What are the benefits of having an airtight home ?
Luke:
Energy efficiency is one, one big thing, right? So we’re trying to keep the heat in. So we don’t want heat escaping because you’re losing heat and then you’re having to reheat air up and that’s gonna, you know, that’s gonna cost you more money to heat the house. It’s gonna use more, um, more energy to heat the home, but another big piece, uh, for air tightness, which often gets missed with the general public and even with builders is the durability piece too. So arguably even more important have an airtight building for dur durability sakes. And the reason is because we’re trying to prevent warm moist air from inside the house, getting into our walls or our ceilings condensating and causing damage. So we’re trying to avoid rot, mildew mold from inside our walls. So we’re trying to protect the building as much as we can. So it’s a big piece. And of course, so we’ve got energy efficiency, we got durability. And then that leads to other things like improved comfort in the house. The house is less drafty, it feels more comfortable. You’re gonna reduce your utility costs. There’s also a big, healthy component too. So healthier home, clean, fresh air. Since we’re controlling the amount of air that comes in and outta the house, we’re helping to prevent pollutants like, you know, pollen, dust, smoke from your neighbors. Or, if you live in an area where there’s a forest fire danger, like we’ve seen so many times in the summers in BC, right? If you’re in, you know, like let’s say you’re in the interior and you’ve got smoke. I mean, it always drifts down into the Lower Mainland every summer, right? So that’s another thing too. So, an airtight house can help keeps a lot of these pollutants from entering the home. So these are all, some of the benefits of controlling the amount of air that comes in and out of our houses.
Jennifer-Lee:
It okay to just go with the what we need to do now? Like I know people wanna always strive for more elements, but maybe you don’t have the money at the moment. Is it better still to do some things than rather do nothing at all?
Luke:
Well, if you’re buying a new vehicle and you don’t have enough money for the leather seats, it’s probably gonna be cheaper for you to get the leather seats right up front when you buy that car, as opposed to like five years down the road, you try and get leather seats put in. I don’t know if that’s a good enough analogy or not, but, um, one thing actually is pretty cool. With the Canadian Home Builders Association, they have a program called the Net Zero Homes and, you know, the province has sort of their messaging with the BC Energy Step code has been that all homes in BC will be built to a net zero ready standard by 2030, 2032 in that zone. So the Home Builders Association has jumped out in front of, in front of the government and they developed their own program, which is a phenomenal program. And it, it actually goes to your point of they have a program called net zero and net zero ready homes and a net zero ready house is a house that is built to the net zero standard. And a net zero home is a home that produces as much onsite, renewable energy as it consumes on an annual basis. But a net zero ready house is a house that is built to the net zeros standard without adding the renewable energy. So let’s say back to your point, you don’t have the budget to install solar panels, for instance, um, well you have the option that in the future you could add solar panels and then that build that home will net out, which is kind of cool. So, you know, sometimes the budget doesn’t allow it. Then there are some things you can do at the beginning or when you’re building a house now that’ll help, you know, you in the future,
Mike:
Do you foresee with the higher cost of resources that we’re experiencing right now, more people who have existing homes are gonna retrofit their homes to at least come up to some of this specification, or do you think it for an older home like mine that was built in the eighties, is it worth starting all over again? Is there something I can do to do some of these things at home?
Luke:
Well, the great thing about getting an energy evaluation on your house, let’s say you, you’ve got your 1980s house. Is that what we can do is we can help homeowners put their sort of renovation plans into perspective when it comes specifically to energy efficiency. Unfortunately it is cost prohibitive to take, uh, an existing home and make it super energy efficient. Like the, the payback isn’t quite there, but there are steps you can do to make that house reasonably better. There are government incentives, which is, which are nice and they, and they help. There might be certain things that you might wanna do to your house that might be just unrealistic. So it’s a tough question to answer, really, and it’s house by house, and it depends on when your house was built. I would say it’s more beneficial to take an older house and make it energy efficient that it would be a, not so old house, like a 20 or 30 year old house and make it energy efficient, because there’s not as many things you can do, you know, to a, to a two thousands home or a 1990s house, then you could then to a 1930s house or 1940s house,
Mike:
We should talk to an expert. Should it be you who we engaged first or should be someone like Larry, who we engage first, if we are thinking about bringing our home more energy efficient,
Larry:
I would be saying, see an energy advisor and get their recommendations on where would be the best way to spend your money then engage the builder. But it really has to be hand in hand energy advisors and builders should ideally be working together. But the first one you’re gonna be highering is gonna be the energy advisor.
Jennifer-Lee:
So we recently had Brett on an episode and we were talking about air monitors and actually your daughter came up in the story and he was talking about a little incident that you guys had
Larry:
Sure. We just installed air monitor in it. Uh, monitors, carbon monoxide, and some other pollutants in the air. I was talking with a couple at a restaurant and um, I get this notice on my phone and the air quality has gone into dangerous levels. And so I phone home and asked my daughter, did you start cooking? And she’s uh, <laugh> uh, yeah, dad, uh, how did you know? And she’s checking the ceiling for cameras now. I don’t really know what the, the issue, why the air quality went down. Was it because she did not have a hood fan? Was it the gas stove? Was she burning something really badly, but this air monitor that monitors, the quality of your air really is helpful in us starting to understand the air we breathe. Yeah.
Jennifer-Lee:
That stuff is crazy to me. Like it’s really helpful because like my parents have bought some of the newer fans and, and especially over the summer when we’ve had a lot of the fires, they’re able to tell you too, like if you’re in the red or the green in your air,
Mike:
Well, it’s interesting how this is also all coming together because one of our previous episodes, we talked about smart kitchens and smart appliances. So having a fan that automatically kicks in when the stove is on, is viable technology that you can have right now, would’ve avoided this issue. But the second best thing, if you don’t have that opportunity is to put a monitor in. So you always know what’s going on.
Larry:
Yeah. And we have the technology to monitors in every room. Like you said, Brett was talking about that on an earlier episode and we can put monitors in every room and they can tell areas of the house to ramp up the ventilation.
Jennifer-Lee:
So great. We have much more to talk about. Uh, this is such an important conversation, learning about airtight buildings and how the building envelope impacts the air we breathe and the importance on our health and wellbeing. It is so inspiring to hear how building standards are improving for the benefits of the homeowner. I wanna get into the actual operations and considerations when planning your home. But first we are gonna take a quick break to thinker sponsors measure
Mike:
Twice. Cut once is grateful for the support from our podcast partners, Fortus, BC, their support helps us share expert knowledge and resources like you’re hearing today from Larry Clay and Luke Dolan to help design and build the right home for you.
Jennifer-Lee:
Speaking of resources, the BC energy step code program is a provincial standard that is moving the entire home building industry forward to build homes to better energy efficiency standards, which means better comfort, health, and safety. Be sure to check out better homes, bc.ca, where you’ll find a variety of rebates for construction materials, home, energy evaluations, plus mortgage and tax refunds.
Mike:
Now let’s get back to Luke and Larry, when we’re using an HR-V unlike having a window open that treats the air, as you mentioned, one of the things we talk about are humidity levels inside the house, too high. Stuff’s gonna start growing too low. You’re gonna feel really dry. How does an HR-V balance that and keep us comfortable in our home. We, while maintaining fresh quality air coming into the home at the same time,
Luke:
We’re concerned about moisture levels in our house, relative humidity levels. So relative humidity levels in a home should be between 30% and 60%. That’s kind of where humans, that’s the sweet spot, where, where humans feel healthy and, and like that zone on the, where we live on the lower mainland Vancouver island, we typically have, we don’t have moisture issues. We, or sorry, we, we’re not, we’re not having to humidify our air in the winter, inside our houses. We usually try to pull moisture out of our homes. So an HR-V for instance, um, will help pull that moisture out of a house. Um, if you were to move the into the interior, for instance, or north, you might install something that’s called an energy recovery ventilator or an RV. And an RV is a, is a same ventilation system. As ANV accepted, actually is able to return the moisture.
Luke:
It’s pulling out of the house, back into the home to keep the humidity levels, um, at a reasonable state. So in your house, you could have sensors, um, humid stats that’ll sense, the relative humidity levels of the home that can be connected to your HR V or your bath fans. And if the relative humidity levels get too high in the house, like let’s say, you’ve got it set at like 65 or 70 degree or 70%, the HR-V will automatically kick in and turn on. And the CFM, the power of the fan, the cubic feet per minute of the fan of the HR-V will actually go into high mode and it’ll start pulling air out of the house. It’ll start pulling that, that warm, moist air out of the home. So that’s a way of controlling the amount of humidity that comes in and out of our houses.
Larry:
These RVs will pull air from bathrooms where they’re most likely gonna be higher in humidity, and they’re gonna then bring in fresh air from outside and dump them into other areas of the house. Humidity is really important to control. I had a call from a friend who said, I think I got leaky windows. Can you come take a look at them? And this house is pretty new, probably about two years old. And when I got there, I was surprised to see the amount of mold caked on the frames of her windows. And after analyzing the, the windows and her house situation, I asked her about her HR-V. She says, I don’t have an HR-V. And so I said, what about your bath fans? And because they were so loud, they dis disconnected them and they should have been running for two, four hour cycles a day at a minimum. And the lack of ventilation was causing moisture buildup in the home. And it was just mold on the inside of the window frames. It was awful.
Jennifer-Lee:
Larry, I know as we’ve talked in the past before you had a story about a client that needed a house that was purely clean for them because they were allergic to a lot
Larry:
Of things. Yeah. We had a client that had multiple chemical sensitivities and it was crazy. She couldn’t have poly vinyl in her house. So when we were choosing the boiler, we had to find one that had no PVC piping in it. When we had to do her plumbing, it had to be copper. It had to be soldered. So we had to check the MSDS sheet, material, safety, data sheet, every product that came into the house. And just to let you know how serious it was when cabinets arrived, they were delivered into a detached garage and they sat there for a month and they off gased. And we did that for a number of products. But at one particular point, we had the mirrors installed and I was at another site and I get this phone call,
Speaker 5:
Larry, what did you do to my house? You wrecked my house.
Larry:
And so I went running over there, like horrified, what happened? Because she was going to now I wouldn’t hear for her for two weeks while she had to detoxify herself. So I go over there. I phoned the company that installed the mirrors. I said, did you use the adhesive that was specified? And he says, yeah, Larry you’ll look in the garbage can. You’ll see ’em there. And I looked and yeah, that was the approved adhesive. I asked the same question for the silicone same answer. We just said, uh, well, if you discover something, let me know. And he calls me about 30 minutes later, he says a ha, I found it. The guy said before they left the house, they use a glass cleaner and they wipe the windows down with ammonia. And she came in, smelled that, and she needed to take two weeks off, not see anybody and detoxify. So for some people and I’ve had a number of people call me and say, we want a healthy house because I have multiple chemical sensitivities. And this is more common than you would know. And there is a way to solve this and build a home that is healthy. There’s lots of steps. It’s a lot of work, but it certainly is possible.
Mike:
So, if we’ve decided we wanted to build a higher performance home, a healthier home, how do we get started on the design process?
Larry:
One of the things I would recommend is you really have to look at your wall assembly. What’s happening now with the Step Code is we have to be building walls that are effective R 22. That means when you consider the amount of wood in the wall and the insulation, it has to net out at R 22. There’s various ways of achieving it. Unfortunately there’s builders who don’t want to change their methodologies and they’re gonna move to a two by eight wall with lots of insulation. Unfortunately, this approach has a propensity for mold and mildew and moisture in that wall assembly. So, you have to be smart on the wall assembly you want to use, or you may think you’re doing good because you’re putting more insulation into the wall assembly, but you’re getting unintended consequences and moisture, mold, mildew in that wall assembly. So step number one, I’d be really considering how you’re gonna build these wall assemblies and little things as well as in a, in a basement. We stopped doing bat and poly in basements about eight years ago. That’s a horrible practice. That’s going, that’s going to be at some point, I’m sure it’s gonna be excluded from the code. But we had clients who we were designing a house for them. They said, we don’t want a basement. And I asked, well, why don’t you want a basement? Well, the current house, we live in an older home. When my grandchildren go into the basement to sleep, they come back out in the morning, coughing and hacking and their asthma is acting up. And so because of that, we don’t want to have those health issues. So we don’t want a basement. And I replied that, you know, you certainly can have a healthy basement. There’s steps you have to take and let me step you through it. And we ended up building them a house in Berny. That was, um, that was healthy and they just absolutely love their basement. They’ve had zero issues.
Jennifer-Lee:
Another misconception that I think is around this is a lot of times people think that high performance is gonna impact the design of the home.
Larry:
Yes and no. If you have lots of money, you can overcome any design. We built a house in Burnaby and it was fairly boxy, gable roof, pretty simple. And to hit Step Fve, this house required a certain amount of rigid insulation on the outside insulated concrete forms. A certain, I think we aim for one air chains per hour, high end windows, HRV. And with that, we were able to hit Step Five, but we were building a very different house in Langley. That was quite executive. The design was complicated. And so when we, I asked them, would you be interested in a step five house, a net zero house? And they said, yeah, that’s kind of sexy. Yeah, let’s go with that. So, when the house got designed, we gave it to the energy modeler and we said, well, we’re thinking of doing the same stuff that we did on this Burnaby house, on this Langley house. And we should get really close and we’ll just tweak it to make it work. And when they got back to me, they said, you know, if you do the same thing on this Langley house, you can’t even hit Step Two, and I went, holy cow. That’s crazy. So it’s really important that the energy advisor be involved early on in the design process to make some recommendations. So the clients don’t fall in love with the house before the energy modeler has their, their hand in it giving some advice
Luke:
What the whole industry is realizing is that if you go a simpler design, it’s going to be easier and less. When I say easier, easier to build easier to detail your air barrier and that equates to cost savings as well too. And I think the misconception is that simple is ugly or doesn’t sell. And I think that’s wrong. I think you can still dress up a box and make it look pretty. You know, I talk about this when I teach my building science course to my builders. And we talk about why you want to go to a more simple design because it’s easier to meet the building code. I mean, building a box is a lot easier than building a, a home with a lot of bunch of bumpouts and corners like the complex home that Larry was talking about in Langly. We can, we can make the, and also the, on the flip side of that, the benefits of a performance based building code, like the step code is that we can make anything comply. Just how deep are your pockets, right? It’s at the end of the day, like we’re doing massive houses in west Vancouver that have a 50% window to wall ratio and we can make them hit Step Five.
Jennifer-Lee:
Perfect, and again, I think a lot of people think right away, like you said, simple is gonna be like, oh, it’s not gonna be like the show stopper on my street, but it really can be like a lot of people don’t realize that sometimes simple design is more eye catching. So thank you guys so much. We’ve learned a lot of great things today. Uh, Larry, Luke, thanks for joining us again today on Measure Twice, Cut Once. Taking a breath to learn how to improve the homes we live in is an incredibly important topic. And one that every homeowner needs to be aware of.
Mike:
I agree, a hundred percent. And as a homeowner, considering a, either new build or renovation in the near future, learning about the importance of indoor air quality and the health of my family has been incredibly eye opening, so many great conversations we had definitely the important role of an energy advisor is something I didn’t really understand before. And I hope our audience understands it better as well. Questions you want to ask your builder, understand their level of competence, building high performance homes, the value of benefits to the home owner, keeping in mind that 10 to 20% of households have at least one family member experiencing respiratory issues, such as asthma, the importance of exterior wall assemblies to create an airtight building, the necessity for proper ventilation. Noting that opening a window will not create enough circulation to recycle air in your entire home. And most importantly, high performance homes impact design. So it’s important to get an energy advisor on your building team ASAP.
Jennifer-Lee:
And before we go, Larry, do you have one tip to share with our listeners?
Larry:
I would say, get excited about this new age of building. Your operating costs are gonna be less. You get so much more, you’re gonna get health, you’re gonna get comfort and you’re gonna get durability.
Jennifer-Lee:
Thank you so much, Larry and Luke, what is your tip for our listeners?
Luke:
Get an energy advisor in as early as you can on the project. If you’re doing a renovation, good place to start, takes away the guesswork and helps you lay a plan forward, gets a roadmap for that house for the foreseeable future.
Jennifer-Lee:
Thank you both so much, getting a basic understanding on how the home is built and the benefits to the homeowners air quality and quality of life is immeasurable
Mike:
Agreed. Larry Luke, it’s awards season, and I believe you’re up for some awards. Can you quickly share some of your finals nominations?
Larry:
Well, at the Havan awards, we are up for best renovator of the year, best builder of the year and the Georgies, we are up for best renovator of the year and best custom builder of the year as well, along with a host of finalists for different homes.
Jennifer-Lee:
Congratulations.
Mike:
Congratulations. Yeah, that’s, that’s no small measurement in our industry. So best of luck in the upcoming awards, gentlemen, to our listeners, if you enjoy this podcast, please consider liking, following sharing with your family or friends. The more followers we have, the more people will find our podcast and the excellent resources our guests are sharing. If you want to check out the other award finalists and winners, head to www.havan.ca/awards
Jennifer-Lee:
And for notes and links to everything mentioned on today’s episode, go to www.havan.ca/measuretwicecutonce. Thanks for joining us.
