Building for Health: Your Home’s Dirty Little Secrets Revealed!

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Welcome to the around the House show, your trusted source for everything about your home.

Thanks for joining us today.

I'm Eric G. This is going to be one of those episodes, so keep your hands inside the ride.

Keep the belt fastened.

We're going for a ride with Andrew Pace, my green building expert.

Welcome back to the show, brother.

How you doing, my friend?

Always good to see you to talk green building.

Maybe a little whiskey.

We're just going to have some fun today, including your new book.

Fantastic.

Sounds like a great plan.

Sounds great.

So tell me the story.

Building for health.

What's actually inside your home and how to change it?

Designing, building and maintaining a healthier home.

That's a big one.

It's a big one.

I'll tell you, it's been a labor of love for 30 years.

Plus, as I was never a building science guy, I was somebody who was involved in helping people build healthier homes, helping people remodel in a healthier manner.

My clients are people with allergies, asthma, chemical sensitivities, mold sensitivities.

And in the last 30 years, I've been asked to write a book, maybe, I don't know, two dozen times.

And I've always said, no, I can't do it.

First, I'm not a writer, although I write for a number of national publications, I'm not a book writer.

And B, the bigger issue is if I write a book about how to build a healthy home, that book's going to be for one person, for one client.

Because the way I operate, my consulting is I ask all the questions about how they live, what their sensitivities are, what works for them in the past, what hasn't worked.

And I put together a comprehensive program on what will work for them in their house.

So writing a book about that doesn't really help anybody except for that one client.

And that's really been the problem with books written about health up until this point.

So I decided to take a completely different approach, tact to this, which is I wrote a book on what is in our homes currently, why it's a problem, and here are some suggestions to make it healthier, understanding that I'm not looking for Perfection here.

I'm looking for tolerance and just something.

That's better, that makes sense.

It'd be like writing a book about, okay, how to cure cancer.

Right?

Okay.

What direction you take in that direction.

Well, that's it.

And so it's easier, I think, and more effective to write a book about what could possibly cause cancer.

And so we avoid then these things in our lives.

And that's really the perfect description of this book is here's why we're in this mess.

It's because all these building materials that we've been subject to for the last 50 years, including the synthetics and the chemical off gassing and the materials that are a food source for mold and it's caused this problem in our homes.

And so the goal of trying to build energy efficient to trying to build more sustainable is actually making things worse from an indoor air quality standpoint.

So I'm just pointing all this out to say, here's what we need to avoid.

Let's do better.

Well, that way in 60 seconds after you hit publish with the book, it's not outdated 100%.

Exactly right.

Which is always a tough with a book because it's like, okay, well you want to come in eight years later and do a second edition or something like that.

You don't want to be doing it two months later because one little thing of technology changed.

Well, and the way social media is these days that I could write, and in the book I do mention a couple of manufacturers, mainly because they're tried and true for me for decades.

So I have it in there.

But if I mention every product that I love and as well as anybody on this planet, you get inundated with materials and systems from manufacturers and there's some really cool stuff out there, but we may not know the ramifications of long term effects for quite a while.

So I don't want to be caught in a situation where I recommended something and we find out three weeks later, you know what, it's also really bad for you for these reasons.

And so I just talk about the best ways to avoid the toxins, to avoid the pollutants, and understand that nothing is perfect.

So let's just make the best choice we can.

That makes perfectly good sense because man, I only have a few brands that I kind of will put that trident in the ground for and say, okay, this will work.

And it's like one of mine and these guys have never paid me a dollar.

But Panasonic ventilation is usually pretty solid.

It's been that way for Decades, other companies kind of hit and miss.

It's good today and tomorrow I go, what happened?

Yeah, exactly right.

And I feel the exact same way.

I talk about the use of AFM Safecoat paint, for example.

AFM Safecoat, very small manufacturer in California, but they make paints that are designed for people with chemical sensitivities and allergies and asthma.

Is it the best paint made for all reasons?

No, of course it.

There is no such thing.

It's.

But it's the best paint in certain situations where I'm trying to block chemical off gassing and not contribute to the overall IAQ problem that we have in this house.

And so I know that when it's recommended and it's used the way it's supposed to be used, it is the best product for the situation.

That makes perfectly good sense.

I was literally last night over the house looking at it because I'm going to have to do an inspection on it.

And I'm not a house inspector, but it's my girlfriend's kid and his girlfriend buying a new house.

Major national builder.

It's the perfect starter home for them.

But at the same time, I'm walking around, I'm looking at the systems, I'm looking at what's going on, and in my head I'm going, can we use something besides plastics inside?

Because everything is plastic inside.

Yeah, yeah.

It's all about creating the price points, creating the feel, the look.

It's kind of like buying a new car.

Every manufacturer has not only different esthetic of their vehicles, but also a different smell.

And large national home.

Those are the same way.

You walk into one of their homes, it smells like one of their homes.

Yeah.

So they create this overall experience and they do that because it makes people fall in love with their homes.

They're not.

I can't say that their, their homes are built poorly.

It's just they're built to a certain level for a certain price point, for a certain aesthetic, a certain aroma, a certain experience.

And if you know better, you know what to look for and you know what not to be excited about, then you're going to search for something different.

But you're right, it's like for a starter home for a, for some people, this is the best way to go.

And we have to start somewhere.

And like out where I'm at in Portland, Oregon area, west Pacific Northwest.

For me, it was like, okay, I want them buying a August home that is going on the market versus one in March.

Because an August home for a national home builder Traditionally here means that concrete was going in probably March, April and the framing started.

And now a lot of the framing was done in the summer months in what I would call the dry season versus when it's over the winter.

That house had 45 days of water going through it before they got it dried in.

Yeah, yeah.

And that's where I get nervous on new home construction because, and that's, and I'll throw this out to the manufacturer, to the factory site building people, they have a distinct advantage for affordability.

And with that, because their lumber is not been soaked in water for a month and a half waiting to get the roof on it.

And I do this question quite a bit with clients.

What's the best time to start my construction?

And obviously it depends on where you are in the country.

But even if we say there's problems with every season.

Right.

If the construction team works in enough time to make sure that everything's dried out properly when you go from the framing stage to dried in.

Now at that point we're doing moisture checks of the wood to make sure we're at that.

I like it 15% or lower before I insulate drywall.

If you're working with a custom home builder into the contract that it has to be at this level and that's what we have to do.

But in production home building, there's just, there's no time for that.

And it's just, it's got to get things done.

And while most times it's like you say a March home, that's your best time to do it.

But you never know what mother nature is going to throw at you.

So in my world, I would want to monitor all of that to make sure that it's good enough for the next step.

And that's how you alleviate these long term water damage and mold issues.

To find out more about the show, head to aroundthe house online.com around the house will be right back with a lot more about healthy building materials with Andrew Pace after these important messages from our sponsors.

Welcome back to the around the House show.

We are in the middle of talking with Andrew Pace about healthy building products and his new book, Building for health.

What's actually inside your home and how to change it.

Designing, building and maintaining a healthier home.

Now let's get back to the conversation.

Yeah, and it's interesting too because we've got a couple issues out here on the west coast, for instance, and I see this, depending on the market you're in, whether I'm in the middle of the valley out here where Portland is right at the coast.

I go by and see new construction out there.

A lot of them aren't even using killed dried lumber because it's so wet.

They don't use KD lumber.

They use green lumber and they frame with it.

Whoa.

Yeah.

Which is a whole other issue because I guarantee there's some kind of mold growing on that from the beginning because it's not been kiln dried.

Yeah.

And so then you say, well, there's a problem with just using wood in general.

Because the problem we have, let's say in working down south, is the woods.

Kiln dried, it's put on a rail car for two weeks, finally gets to the lumber yard.

Sits in the lumber yard outside.

Supposed to be covered, but people take boards out and then they rip the covering.

By the time it gets to the job site, it already has mold growth on it.

Sits in the job site.

They actually cover it properly and treat it properly on the job site.

Not all the time do they do that.

So wouldn't we be better just completely replacing the wood with something else that doesn't have this problem?

And then they say, okay, what about using metal studs?

Then you have your own set of problems with metal studs because of the lack of familiarity with the trades and with the noise that it develops in your homes.

So these are things we have to work through.

I think we build with wood here in North America because it's plentiful.

They build with more with stone and concrete in Europe because it's plentiful.

Yes.

And so I understand why we build with wood here from a standpoint of material availability and ease.

But long term, it's not a good solution.

And so we need to start adopting other methods of construction that is more long term.

I am not against our lumber industry out there, and I want to say that to start with this, but there is a product now coming out of Poland that I met this guy four or five years ago, maybe six or seven, actually, system 3E.

And what he's doing, he's making Lego blocks that are couple feet long, 18 inches high, probably 16 inches deep, would be a gas.

I don't have the dimensions in front of me, but it's made out of compressed perlite.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Hydroscopic.

They snap together.

You can plaster right over the top of it, no drywall needed.

You can route it out, mix up some.

Some, basically some mortar with the perlite, fill it back in the hole and plaster it over the top of it on the inside of the wall.

Where all utilities go and you have a house that is kind of waterproof and fireproof.

Yeah, I love that type of construction.

I think there are many different materials or alternative methods.

And I actually write about this in the book a little bit.

I talk about what's called the sensible wall assembly, the sensible roof assembly.

This is traditional stick frame.

Again, I am all in favor of the US lumber industry myself.

However, the way that it's being treated in the field is.

It's not helping the situation.

I think you can use a combination like using concrete block and then doing an interior stud wall that's 8 inches off the block that we can use for our electrical and plumbing and whatnot.

There's just ways to do it better.

But in the advent of convenience, cost expedients.

Our traditional stick frame is the way we typically do it.

And even that is not being done correctly.

So we do have to make these changes.

Yeah, and then you got to put seismic in there as well.

Because out here on the west coast where we get 8 and 9.0 earthquakes from time to time, that's a whole other issue.

When you're dealing with concrete, stone, that kind of stuff, that runs into issues.

So it's complex.

It is.

It's depending on where you're at.

What can work very well in Florida won't work well in the other side of the country over on the west coast because of climate, environmental factors, safety.

Well, another reason why I've never written a book about how to build a healthy home, because every home is different no matter where you're located.

And so that's why this book is not about how to build a healthy home, but why we need to.

Yeah, one of the biggest things I've noticed too is and I took pictures of this maybe 18 months ago and I put them up on social media and boy, I got some strange looks when I went back into that Lowe's store.

But I had, they had unbunked a bunch of lumber that was sitting there up in the overheads in this air conditioned store, heated and cooled store.

And I tell you what, they pulled that thing off and this thing had a fur coat on it.

There was so much mold on this, it was white, black, brown.

There were pieces that looked nothing like wood.

And I mentioned to the guy, I go, hey, can you pull down another unit?

Because I'm not buying those.

Oh, they'll be fine.

Just scrape it off.

I went, I left.

I'm not buying lumber here.

Well, no, I mean, okay, so can you scrape it off?

Yes, do you want to.

No, nobody wants to do that.

It's mold remediation, essentially.

And so you're gonna buy a bundle lumber and then have to put in what, a hundred hours to.

To essentially make it usable.

No, that doesn't do anybody any good.

Throwing that lumber away and going to buy another one than it is to go through and treat it correctly.

It's way cheaper.

And so I left, went down to the other box store down the street, grabbed some lumber because it was on a weekend where my lumber yard wasn't open.

And I was just trying to grab a fistful of 2x4s and those don't go in any of the.

I think it was even going to my shop.

I'm like, I'm not putting that inside there.

Yeah, it's a problem.

And again, I think there's a lot that goes into looking on social media and following all the influencers that are out there talking about.

In the last two years, everybody, everybody has become a mold expert.

Oh my God.

Social media is amazing for that.

Right.

Two years ago they were experts in Covid shots and now they're experts in mold remediation.

Right.

And so they're saying, here's what you got to do.

All right.

We've existed on this planet a little longer than this.

We've built with wood before.

Why is it getting worse than it has been in the years?

Well, a couple of reasons.

Number one, because we're going through more.

It's being used faster with construction.

Also, it's just being pointed out more.

And it used to be that when you hired a builder to build your house, a lot of times builders didn't let people go onto the job sites.

It's until it was like drywall phase.

Because they didn't want to see you see what's in there.

It's like you don't want to be told how to make the sausage, you just want to eat the sausage.

Amen.

And that's the thing.

And there was some thought to that.

And I get that.

But the problem though is too, is if we.

If you're Talking about a 70s 60s home, when it was being framed up, it was being framed up.

It was old school, but it was working.

But the house breathe.

Yeah.

I mean, there was so much airflow going through that everything did have a chance to dry out.

Yeah.

Because you didn't have this big moisture sandwich that you're building.

And even though we've got some great building technology, I think one of the biggest issues is you have builders that don't understand it and how it works.

And they haven't educated the crews on the ground.

Because I can tell you what, I can drive down the street and look at homes and go, well, that window's not flashed right.

That window's not flashed right.

And clearly things are being done backwards.

And the building inspectors for the city, county, state, whatever, aren't calling them on it.

They're just letting it fly to that point.

That's a great point.

Talk about windows.

It's that all new home construction, you should be doing water testing of the windows, but it's not done.

And what this causes is we have these building assemblies that are very high tech for energy efficiency and then you throw into this window flashing leak.

To find out more about the show, head to aroundthehouseonline.com around the house.

We'll be right back with a lot more about healthy building materials with Andrew Pace after these important messages from our sponsors.

Welcome back to the around the House show.

We are in the middle of talking with Andrew Pace about healthy building products and his new book, Building for health.

What's actually inside your home and how to change it.

Designing, building and maintaining a healthier home.

Now let's get back to the conversation.

What this causes it when you have these building assemblies that are very high tech for energy efficiency and then you throw into this window flashing leak.

Now moisture gets stuck in that wall and it does not have a chance to get out before it becomes a problem.

And so you're right.

It's the fact that all the trades in the job, all the materials in the job, it's like they're not part of a team.

Everybody's operating independently on that job site, but they're not working together as a team.

How would that work?

If you had a football team or a basketball team where every player on that team did their own thing and didn't coordinate with each other?

It wouldn't Raiders for the last couple seasons, but yet.

Exactly.

Exactly.

So on your job site, it's very important for the painter to know how is the wall assembly built?

You would think it's not important, but it is important.

I just ran into a situation, a job in San Francisco where all the new paint in this house has this yellow streaks coming down the wall.

Oh, no.

Why does that happen?

It's called surfactant leaching.

That happens when you have really high humidity during application, you have no ventilation during application, or.

And, or you have somebody who is taking long hot showers in a bathroom before the paint had enough time to Fully cure and wasn't using a bathroom.

A Panasonic whisper sense.

Right.

And so it causes what's called surfactant leak.

It looks like orange or yellow tears coming down the wall.

If everybody knew what was happening in the project.

If everybody knew that, if the painter knew that.

Well, actually the H Vac isn't turned on right now, so we can't run air conditioning.

Nobody was walking around doing humidity checks or moisture checks of surfaces.

If we had all this information, we can alleviate these problems.

But because everybody is doing their own thing with their own tunnel vision, things like this happen.

And then what happens is I, as the paint supplier get a call.

Why is your paint failing?

Well, it's not the paint that's failing.

It's the environment that failed.

And the paint is taking the brunt of it.

Yeah.

Well, here's my concern.

We're getting more technical now with our building code where we're talking about having to put, for instance, two inch Rockwell panels around the outside.

We've got to do that exterior.

If we can't get simple flashing around windows.

Right.

It scares me that we're putting on three other layers with rain screens and everything else out there that if that's not done right, we're just making a bigger sandwich to soak up moisture.

If I can just go on a soapbox for just a minute.

Take it.

This is 100% caused by the code officials.

100%.

I deal with certain municipalities around the country where you have to do R60 up in the attic.

How are you going to do that in the cathedral ceiling?

Well, you have to use spray foam.

Yep.

So now we have all these issues with the toxicity of the spray foam, the long term off gas and the fact that it divorces from wood after a period of time causing moisture issues.

There's so many factors that are going into play here.

If we weren't in this mad rush to meet energy codes, we would live in healthier housing, full stop.

This is the problem.

We are in this mad rush to get these homes that are so energy efficient, we're poisoning the occupants and we're making these homes actually degrade faster because of those energy codes.

So that's my.

So I agree with that.

I'll add to it.

If we spent that energy building healthier homes to make people healthier.

Yes.

With a sidebar of let's be more efficient as we do would be a generational shift in how we build homes.

Exactly.

It's I think of where do I want my resources being spent?

I'm paying to build this house.

I'm paying to live in this house.

I want the home to be built healthy.

And if I have to pay a little bit more in energy to heat or cool the home, that's on me.

But I also want my family safe.

My family is not going to be poisoned and not going to be subject to mold infestation because I'm building wall assembly that breathes.

Now that old adage that a home needs to breathe, it's not really true.

The occupants of the home need to breathe, but the materials that are used to build the home need to be able to release moisture.

So that's what I'm talking about for breathing.

So if I'm going to build my home might be slightly less energy efficient.

I don't care.

My family can live comfortably in this home and not worry about chemical off gassing and mold infestation.

That should be my choice.

But we are being pushed in this direction of we have no choice.

And that is a very, very dangerous direction.

Yeah.

If you go look at the side of that unit outside the compressor that you see for your heat pump or AC or whatever out there, there's a beautiful little flame signal on there because guess what, that is a propane based refrigerant.

Are we putting propane sensors in our home?

And if I've got a here's my theory.

And again, I don't have science to back this up, but it's just registering it as a concern already.

If I have a gas furnace and that leak is right next to that and it's propane based, what am I doing adding a flammable gas right next to a burner that could be lighting off and maybe pulling in air out of the garage because that's not pulling air from the outside, it could be pulling air from the garage.

What are we doing?

And we're not even putting a sensor in the house to check that.

So I talked earlier about how the trades don't talk to each other on a job site.

The code officials and the manufacturers, they are all operating off of different languages and different set of criteria.

And I think what happens is the unintended consequence of trying to do the right thing makes things worse actually in some other direction that we're not thinking of.

I just wish we got back to simplicity.

I'M not saying we should live in clay huts with strong roofs, but I'll guarantee it's a lot safer than what we're living in now.

No question.

No question.

And I think that's.

I think that's part of the thing.

And we've got to get the.

The Department of Energy and the EPA and these guys kind of twisted back around to focus on that, because every single municipality out there, we have building codes.

Like in my state and some of the ones around it, they're statewide codes that at least they're adopting and they're paying attention to.

You get out closer to your area out there, and there's states out there that don't have state codes and their city codes or county codes or township codes.

And you got a whole different code book to walk across the street.

And that gets very confusing for builders, remodelers, and even homeowners that are trying to do the right thing but get led down the wrong direction because, well, they're trying to follow the book, but they just don't know which one to follow.

And so I had a question yesterday from a client.

They said, if you had a choice of these states to live in, which one would you live in?

Okay.

There's a.

There's a variety of answers to that question.

Right.

But the simplest answer I can give is I would find out what the state building code is, what they're following.

But then do they actually have code officials to inspect projects under construction?

Do the drawings have to be stamped by a licensed architect?

There are states where you don't need an architectural stamp.

There are states stamp here, but I don't have to have an architectural stamp.

See?

And I find that to be somewhat ridiculous.

I think that if you're going to have building codes in place, and every state has building codes, but they just don't have the enforcement of them.

Oh, yeah.

It just seems irresponsible.

It's funny, I was sitting there walking through that house yesterday, and there were clear code violations that I saw.

And I'm up on the 20, 26 code that they missed.

And I'm like, okay, I'm going to be doing the inspection on it because it's family, and I'm going to do way more.

And I'm not trashing the building people out there, but to the inspectors out there.

But I know I'm going to have to fix it if it's broken.

So outside of the warranty.

So I'm going to be doing a deeper dive.

And one of my best friends is the realtor.

So him and I can go through and both be on the same page and knock this out pretty quick.

To find out more about the show, head to aroundthe house online.com around the house will be right back with a lot more about healthy building materials with Andrew Pace after these important messages from our sponsors.

Welcome back to the welcome to the around the House show.

We are in the middle of talking with Andrew Pace about healthy building products and his new book building for what's actually inside your home and how to change it.

Designing, building and maintaining a healthier home.

Now let's get back to the conversation.

It is what it is.

We're in a pretty big crisis here in this country with housing.

First, we don't have enough affordable housing.

That's a whole, that's another two hour topic.

But the fact is that the homes that are being built, that can be purchased are being built maybe just barely to code.

And code is the bare minimum on how we build our homes to get.

You out of that class to the next one.

And so we need to just have a conversation.

The home Builders association, the other trade associations, we need to get involved in more discussion on making sure these homes are being built for the long term.

Not just get people in a house, but long term 20 years from now, 50 years from now, 100 years from now.

Can these homes still be used like they do in Europe and other parts of the world where they're building out of masonry and stone?

How do we get to that point?

And it's.

There's no simple answer to that.

There's not.

And I wonder sometimes too.

They have all these natural building products over there, but they also don't have air conditioning either.

So that usually leads making some blind assumptions here that there's probably a lot of ventilation in those buildings because.

Oh yeah.

And have air movement.

Otherwise you're in a pizza oven.

And air conditioning is the root of many evils as well.

I mean, yes, it saves us.

Look at happened just recently with the heat wave in Europe.

Here in the States we can flip on the air conditioning.

But using air conditioning is also the downside is that we're cooling surfaces that can now condensate and cause moisture damage and cause mold.

And so the H Vac industry, and I mean no disrespect to the H Vac industry, but a contractor are not scientists.

They're, they are skilled laborers that do really good work, but they're not scientists.

And so you can't expect somebody like that unless they have the training as an mep and they know how to do all the manual calculations to figure out the heat, the cooling load and the duct size and locations and all that.

But we need to have that done on every single home to make sure that the AC units are sized appropriately because all too often they're oversized so that it feels nice and cool in the home.

But then we're not actually dehumidifying or we're creating cold spots for condensation.

Yeah.

If it's undersized and we're not cooling the home properly, but we're really doing a good job of dehumidification.

Not feel as cool, but it's actually a healthier environment.

So, yeah.

There again, this is another part of the equation that needs to be dealt with.

And any.

I feel bad about the H VAC companies out there, the trains, the carriers, all those different guys out there, because they're having to spend all of their R D research just trying to stay on top of the next government.

Yeah.

For them to be more efficient.

They're not saying, let's build a healthier home.

They're going, well, we got to drop a billion dollars to figure out how we're going to make this next refrigerant work on our systems and meet these new standards that are two years from now instead of them going, all right, we've got this dialed in.

Let's make it better.

They're just chasing their tail, trying to stay on top of the moving ball.

That's exactly right.

And I just heard somebody talk about this on a podcast a few weeks ago about how governmental regulations, not just federal, but the local and state, have increased the cost of home building by something like on the average, like $120,000 per home.

And that's just like in the last 10 years.

And some of that, you know, Oregon is probably one of the worst states for this where I'm at, because we have a urban growth boundary, which the, you know, in the land of great intentions that creates these fails is that they don't want to have urban sprawl.

Well, the problem is only 3% of our land in the state is in the urban growth boundary.

So now instead of a quarter acre lot being a hundred thousand dollars, it's $450,000.

And then when you go down to the city of Portland and pull your building permit and they've got $90,000 of development fees on it because you got to pay for urban forestry, the transit, the water hookup, and these are all ten thousand, eight thousand, four thousand dollar Fees that they put on there, the schools, you got all these things.

Now in their defense, the last 12 months, they finally went, hey, let's our building has stopped.

Let's stop that for a few months and see what happens.

But we see that all around and all of a sudden you're $500,000 and you have an turned the excavator on to, to break ground yet.

And that's not how you build affordable housing.

Right?

It's completely killing the industry and more importantly, keeping people out of homes that they can afford.

And right now we're dealing with older home stock that need to be replaced with healthier homes, with more energy efficient homes, with more technologically advanced homes, especially homes built like through like the 70s, 80s and 90s.

I mean, to me, if those of all those homes just go away, that'd be fantastic.

Kind of like the old cash for clunkers with automobiles, there's certain things you just want to get, get rid of.

But you know, unfortunately those are the homes that, the only homes that people can afford these days.

And so you're asking if you work out the extrapolation of this, people who have little means to buy a home, that they can just get into a home, they're usually buying a home that needs a lot of work, which means they're buying a home that's 40, 50, 60 years old, that probably has decades of people putting coats of paint on walls and just doing all these fixes with plastics and so forth.

So you're asking people who have the least amounts to work with to start who probably have the worst health insurance as well because they can't afford good health insurance.

It's kind of like the idea of Habitat homes.

I've always argued that Habitat homes need to be the healthiest homes to build because you're asking folks who just don't have the means to have a custom home, and they probably don't have good health insurance either, and they don't take, they don't have good health care available to them.

So we're asking them to move into toxic boxes.

We just need to look at this thing a little bit differently.

Like everybody's home deserves to be healthy, it deserves to be safe.

But those who can't afford to build a custom healthy home, they're being put into homes that are just unhealthy to begin with.

And that's just not a sustainable solution.

No, Andy, it's so true.

It's got tar paper wrapped in around it.

It's got T111 siding here that's made out of a mixture of probably cedar and fur in that.

In the.

It's like the hot dog of sidings.

It's the hot dog of sidings.

Right.

It just is.

But it's got plastic on the inside before they put up the drywall because they wanted to stop humidity.

It's got version one of Tyvek on the outside with that composite wood siding out there that's all swollen up.

Yeah.

And a ventilation system that's not designed to breathe.

That's a hot mess.

Compared to the 70s home in the 90s, it doesn't get any better.

And then keep in mind that every time that home is sold or every five to 10 years on the average, the walls are painted.

Yep.

Every coat of latex paint becomes a little bit more of a vapor barrier.

And when you get latex paint that is 5 to 10 years old to begin with, and then you add several layers on top of it, you now have a vapor barrier that's over the drywall.

That didn't have plastic in the drywall.

Now the paint becomes a vapor barrier.

And moisture that comes into the cavity wall, which we know it's going to get in there, it's stuck behind the paint, gets stuck in the drywall.

And after the 70s when drywall being used more than plasterboard was used, right now the paper becomes a food source for mold.

So you're just asking for problems.

So the more we just fix up these homes to make them look good, the worse they become.

Well, it's interesting here.

Girlfriend's got a major house builder here that I moved in with her.

Sold my house.

We talked about on the show a lot.

She's got a seven year old, almost eight year old house here that was built.

Major home builder.

Nice place.

But I could see the problems.

Right.

The doors for ventilation in the house are a 16th off the carpet upstairs.

So each door, the carpet now is a automatic air filter down below it.

So that carpet gets so quick when air is moving between the rooms.

There's no way for air to pass from a bedroom into a hallway from a bathroom.

There's a maybe a quarter inch under the bathroom door.

Same with the laundry.

So I can sit there, turn on the bath fan, take the door shut and it kicks the door wide open because of the vacuum it's creating.

Yeah.

And I've had conversation with her going, lee, if I'm not going to cut the door down, let's leave the door open to the laundry room.

Because you're hurting your dryer.

Yes.

Because you're not giving enough air to breathe.

Now you're gonna be sucking it in out of the attic, wherever that spot is.

And it's not efficient from just a door sizing issue, let alone the other problems with the place.

Oh, right.

And again, this all comes back to making sure all the trades are coordinated and talking to each other about this.

If you have rooms that have closable doors and they don't have both a supply and a return, you're going to have a problem.

Right.

You talked about this.

You and I talked a few years ago about the.

The vertical louvers that you put indoors.

Right.

Those are fantastic.

Yeah.

Van air door.

Great guys.

Yeah.

Stuff.

Cool stuff.

And so that's a very elegant solution to that problem.

Or putting in transom or something to get air movement between rooms.

But trans.

Little transom vents over the top.

And.

And the kids were going, oh, I don't like those.

I'm like, you like those.

Trust me, that's important.

You do like.

Exactly.

And again, you know, it's not the.

Best in a fire.

I totally get that.

But that's why you have smoke detectors and things like that, to get out of that before that happened.

Yeah.

And I always tell folks, because people will say, is this flammable?

What happened to the fire?

Listen, if my house has a fire, the least of my concern is that it's.

I want to get the hell out of my house.

And that's why I have all the alarms.

Spray foam insulation.

Somebody just asked me today, isn't spray foam an accelerant?

Well, yeah, it is, but if my walls are engulfed in flames, I don't really care that the spray foam was releasing cyanide gas, because I'm.

I got to get out of that house anyway, so.

Right, exactly.

And it's funny.

And when you look at that, that's why I'm a big mineral wool fan.

I like that.

For insulation.

There's a lot of insulations out there, and not all mineral rules are the same.

I've played with a couple brands out there, and some of the newer ones I'm not as much of a fan of because they're really not as cool.

And they tend to be a lot more fibers that tend to be able to be released.

And now you're getting into a dangerous spot of insulation of, okay, am I, am I causing.

Now when the house is breathing, am I causing another PM 2.5 issue with particulate matter?

Yeah, true.

Again, there's pros and cons to everything we use in our homes.

The biggest con to mineral wool is the price, honestly, and availability because everybody's starting to use it now.

Right.

But gosh, there's very few things that are like it when it comes to insulative R value.

Sound deadening.

Fire resistance.

It's moisture resistance.

It's a great product.

Yeah, it's great.

And, and I'm a supporter of that.

At the same point though, you just, oh my gosh, there are a hundred different versions of insulation out there, from natural fibers to made from jeans to all these different things.

But you also have to look at that and say, okay, what are these things treated with?

What's in it?

And again, so many issues with that stuff.

That just makes me nervous.

The more kitschy we get with that stuff, the more I go, ah, is that even the right move?

Yeah.

And that's, honestly, that's kind of another reason why I wrote the book the way I did is because I want to give people the information they need to make their own educated decision.

Understand that there's trade offs for everything.

And the way certain materials become moisture resistant or fire resistant or what have you is the chemical additives that are used.

So how do we deal with that?

Through ventilation, through sealing, using chemical blockers and so forth.

All these play into the equation of how do we build a truly healthy home for you and I.

And everybody kind of has to make their own decisions on this.

Yeah.

And there's so many different ways to go.

It's, it's, do I want to use plywood in the construction?

Do I want to use osb?

Now you've got homes that are using the, the, you know, the timber strand studs which are glued together studs.

Are they easy to work with?

Yeah, because they're never warped.

But now you're adding another glue adhesive component to this, that could be an issue.

And yeah, it gets interesting.

Yeah.

And I'll be honest, my personal opinion is that when it comes to engineered wood products, I mean, we're at a point now in North America where the engineered wood products have to meet certain requirements for formaldehyde release.

And so the high quality that are used in either engineered lumber, in OSB, plywood, it's going to be either a phenolic resin or it's going to be a PMDI resin in my educated belief of this is that these engineered wood products are better than using solid lumber in most situations because the benefits do far outweigh the downsides.

And you and I are on an island by ourselves at times on this one, because.

I agree.

Because I tell you what, I see it here.

I'll go buy a building that has got CDX plywood on the outside of it and it's rained on it as they're framing it and it's absolutely black.

Yeah.

But I'll go past a building right next to it that was sheathed at the same time, that's in the same stage where they used OSB and the water sheeted off of it so it's not sitting there soaking it in.

And then if you get up closer, you'll notice that the top veneer layer is starting to come off the plywood.

And I don't want to hammer either industry, but there's so many people out there that just go, everything engineered is garbage and I'll never use it.

And those fast brush strokes can get dangerous in this world of construction.

100%.

And I think my opinion this is any product, good or bad, can fail if it's not installed properly, if it's not treated properly.

Even the.

The worst type of sheathing can perform really well if you have crews that understand how to work with it and they detail it properly.

Now, longevity wise, structural wise, you're better off doing other things, probably.

But my point is that we can't rely on technology alone to do the job for us.

Yeah.

Amen.

Amen.

And that's why they call this building science, because it's a science.

And like all science, it's evolving.

But I think we're at a point right now, like, we almost bring this a little full circle.

We need to have energy efficiency come way down on the scale and that swap with healthiness.

And I think we're going to make some big progress because right now everybody's getting paid, everybody's getting the bonus round for energy efficiency, and it should be healthy.

Yeah, I will.

I'll tell you.

So this is the organization that created the lead program.

And I actually co authored the Wisconsin Green Built Home program.

Years and years before that, I resigned in protest because U.S. green Building Council could care less about the human occupants.

It was all about energy efficiency, sustainability, global environmental concerns, which I'm not saying those are bad concerns, they're obvious concerns.

But we also have to factor in the health of the human occupant.

And they didn't care about that.

And so I couldn't have my name associated with it anymore.

And I think the entire building industry was still on that trajectory of energy efficiency was most important or green energy efficient things until Covid.

And when Covid came around, when people were forced to live in their homes and say, well, I should probably paint this and fix that while I'm here, all of a sudden people who didn't care about the health of the occupant, the homeowners themselves didn't care about it, started to care about it.

And now all these years later, we're finding that healthy home building is a far more popular Google search than is green or sustainable or energy efficient.

Everybody understand energy efficiency means I'm paying less hopefully every month from my energy bills.

Yeah.

But energy efficiency doesn't solve why my son or daughter has asthma or why my child has mental syndrome caused by mold exposure.

Yep.

And so we're starting to figure this out that maybe it's the fact that we spend 90% of our lives indoors, maybe it's the indoor environment that's causing these problems.

And a lot of research dollars have been put into this and there's a lot more that needs to be.

But I think we're finally at that point where the average consumer, the average homeowner or occupant understands that our indoor environment is much more important than we thought it was.

I tell you what about the time that you were leaving that group there.

I, I've got 35 years of kitchen of bathes on in my background was about the time they were coming out with the latest green material to build cabinet boxes with.

And it was that strawboard.

Oh yeah.

Came out there was basically particle board made out of straw.

And I'll tell you what, there was a manufacturer in the Pacific Northwest that was promoting that as the latest green building stuff.

I made more money when I was out hitting job sites, seeing the truck, calling up that builder a week or two after installation.

I sold more cabinets to those people because they couldn't deliver the cabinets without the corners breaking, the hinges coming out of it because it was like you hand pressed particle board together.

It was like trying to build cabinetry out of rice cakes.

Just didn't work.

And I had four or five builders that not only said, hey, they sent the cabinets back.

They turned around and said, Eric, how fast can you jump on this development and take it over because I need these four houses to have their cabinets pulled out and I need something put in here.

And that was just about the time that we started seeing the Knoff plywood.

The no, you're added urea, formaldehyde, plywood.

Come on.

I went, well, let's go with this.

And you'll never have a problem with it.

And it was less money, it was way healthier and it would actually hold up if you put granite on it.

And so again, the unintended consequence of trying to do the right thing is sometimes puts us in a situation.

Right.

You ended up with mold because bamboo had to be glued together and the glue was mold prone.

I hated it.

Yeah, I understand wanting to try to improve things, but we have to take a better look at this stuff, make the decisions.

Not on marketing, what sounds good eco friendly wise, but it actually works long term.

Amen.

Anyway, we're running out of time and I don't want to make this a Joe Rogan three hour episode.

I do.

But we all have stuff to do as well and our audience wouldn't be prepared for that and the radio wouldn't work.

So how do people find your book?

This to me is so important for people to grab.

If you're going to be starting a remodeling project and I'm talking even your kitchen remodel or you're doing a bathroom model, find out about this before you start, let alone a remodel or a new house project.

Yeah.

Thank you.

So you can actually buy the book right now on Amazon.

Building for Health.

I offer it in paperback and a Kindle form.

You can go to my website, buildingforhealth.com and I do offer even a free version of this book as a PDF download.

I don't want to make the price of the book a reason why you didn't get it because people need to read this.

And this is 35 years of writing in my head and finally put onto paper about why we need to live in healthier homes and how we can achieve that by eliminating most of the dangerous materials that we find every single day.

But again, download the free copy, buy a paperback or a Kindle version if you buy the version.

Actually helps me a little bit because I'm trying to write version two of this book which is going to be on specific materials And I hope to have that out with next year.

But either way, I just want you to read the book and utilize the information that's in there to you and your family's benefit.

All right, guys, if you listen on the podcast, I will have those links right in the podcast notes.

You can go there.

And if you're driving around listening on the radio, you can just go to the around the House online site where you get all your other information.

You can look at the podcast there and it'll have the information there as well.

So we'll have it all linked up.

And ready to go.

Andy, so great having you on the show, brother.

And I love your expertise and I love that you're fighting out there for the people just to have a house that isn't going to make them sick.

Well, I appreciate it, my friend.

It's always good to be here and to speak with you.

And maybe next time we'll talk about whiskey again.

Well, maybe we can do a little after hours episode here for a few minutes and get listen for a podcast.

We might be putting that out.

We'll see if we can make time for that.

Thanks again, brother.

I appreciate it.

Thanks, Eric.

I'm Eric G. You've been listening to around the House.

To find out more, head to our website ataroundthe house online.com.

We will see you next time.