Unlocking the Secrets of Healthy Homes with Jim Carroll from Sendal.io

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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. John Dudley is out on assignment.

I got him working on another project right now.

But we have got one of my long lost friends in the studio, Jim Carroll from Send All.

Welcome back to around the House Brother.

Thank you, Eric.

It's always great to be on the show.

It's always great to catch up with you, man.

You and I have had a lot of fun, especially when we get thrown into doing seminars together and you and I get up on stage and look at each other and go, what are we talking about today?

And off we go.

And it's always been a great time.

I remember those years ago when, when you and I were first kind of getting to know each other a little bit.

And you have taken something that was this giant black hole in smart home technology and you have created an amazing product to solve a lot of people's problems.

I can't wait to talk about it today.

Thank you.

That's quite the introduction.

I appreciate that we have, I mean when we first met, I think the panel we were on, I was talking about autonomous homes, how the smart home needed to get intelligent.

And people don't want to drive their homes, they just want their home to be responsive.

Right.

And to that end we've done that.

Right.

At Senda, we talk a lot about healthy homes was homes that protect both the people living in them in the home itself.

Right.

So you need both pieces.

It's oftentimes people think about a healthy home and that they start talking about indoor air quality.

Right.

And we do that with a breed service that that manages indoor air quality intelligently.

It controls ventilation at the right time.

It's aware of the outdoor environment.

The indoor environment manages humidity and filtration, delivers high level of comfort, keeping the space cleaner and safer.

But a healthy home also is about the conditions of the home itself.

And to that end, as my dad used to say, you know what the reward for hard work is?

More hard work.

More hard work, Right.

So we've had a lot of Success with Breathed, which has led us to a number of our home services contractors coming back saying, I've got such a population of these homes now, how do I keep track of them?

How do I make sure they're okay?

And so we've just introduced a product called Awareness.

What Aware does, it monitors the home.

It's aware of water leaks, hidden moisture that could result in mold, alert you well in advance that the pipes may freeze, or maybe your H Vac system's performance is lacking for some reason.

Right.

These things can quickly turn a home into being unhealthy, a huge expense, and unsafe.

What Aware does, it keeps you, the homeowner, in the loop, but also notifies the contractor of record.

Right.

Hey, this thing's not going right.

So on everybody's schedule, they can go and address it, Right?

So we think that's a big thing today.

And it goes well beyond just a collection of smart devices in a home.

It's actually making them intelligent.

And there's no reason for you to lean in and drive it.

It's going to make you aware of things, as the name says.

Right.

While simultaneously autonomously be managing the indoor air quality.

So we're pretty excited about it.

It's a lot of work.

Was staying real busy.

So it's good.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

And what's crazy is, is the data is out there, right.

And I'll give a perfect example.

It's June here right now, where we're at, of course, with summer coming in, and about a month ago, I'm walking around the house.

I'm like 74 degrees inside.

Why is that 74 degrees?

When I had at 72, go outside, I walk outside, and the outside compressor on the AC is sitting there going, all right.

That data of that starter capacitor not firing off existed.

That's right.

I just didn't have anything looking at it.

That's right.

And that's exactly what.

If I would have had that stuff hooked up, it would have found it, right?

It would have.

Well, before you go on, hey, I'm getting uncomfortable.

We would have said, gee, the set point's at 72.

It's now at 73.

20 Minutes later, it's at 75.

Make, hey, let's turn it down to 70, see what happens.

It's still getting warmer.

We send you a notification, and just as important, your contractor of record would also be notified.

So that this could be a notification that comes in after hours.

They show up in the morning, they say, hey, Eric's got an issue.

Let's Reach out to him.

Right, so now.

Absolutely.

And if I see them, they chase you.

Right.

Easy.

Oh, yeah.

And if I would have had a home energy monitor, it might have looked and went, hey, that unit's acting funny compared to the way it usually does because it's all of a sudden pulling all this power that it didn't need to.

That's right.

That's right.

And products like Emporia energy monitoring product to plug somebody, they do exactly that.

And we partner with them as well.

Right.

So as I know you're aware, we don't make any hardware.

What we do is we work in the best in class Iot capable hardware that's already in the home in many cases.

Right.

And through the collaboration of many different device types, we deliver outcomes that people are looking for.

Well, it's amazing.

It's like you guys are the language.

You have all these experts and I'm just going to say experts as the products that are in the home that are talking already.

You're just created a language so they can all communicate and then you can control the outcomes with the data that you get.

Right?

That's right.

I kind of think of it more as orchestrating.

Right, There we go.

So we use an indoor air quality product from Earthings, actually their whole suite of products.

And they're the leader in this space.

Right.

So the dashboard information.

So as a consumer, you lean in and you see all these different parameters.

What the heck do I do about it?

And the other thing does so a good job is, hey, high voc is maybe it was cleaning day or something.

But we actually take action.

We see that CO2 is going up.

We'll swap air around the house using the smart thermostats.

Something they weren't intended to do, respond to spread CO2.

Now, they weren't intended to turn on the fan and keep the temperature, but by through our integration, we turn it into part of a healthy home solution.

Maybe it's time to ventilate.

But we also know the outdoor air quality may not be its best, so we'll postpone that.

Right.

Why bring wildfire smoke or what?

You can hear it in my voice where I didn't know pollen on a scale of 1 to 10, be at a level 12.

But that's what we are today.

Everything's green.

I knew your pollen count down there.

We were there three weeks ago where you walk outside and I'm like, who put gold dust on my red truck?

That's right.

And I'm like, holy smokes.

And I saw it Was some.

There was a drag race event there last weekend that I was watching that was like they had people out there on the track just trying to get the pollen off of it so they could race.

And I'm like, wow, that's bad.

That's bad.

What the point is the Internet of things, that data is available to your point.

Right, Right.

There's a treasure trove of it.

Can it be orchestrated and coordinated in a manner that delivers what consumers want?

Right.

Absolutely.

And Jim, let's catch people up to your history with home integration, because you're the old school, as I call it.

You're kind of the OG now.

There's a lot of people that have been in that space.

But where you co founded Savant and former president, this is something not new to you and just another iteration of the next level of smart home tech.

That's right.

But Savant goal was it was home automation.

In those days, we didn't even use the term smart home.

Right.

And it was really rich and famous.

Right?

Yeah.

But it was just strictly for the wealthy.

Right.

They had real problems like, how do I get my tram to go from my indoor bowling alley to my rifle?

We had to solve that file, but with the induction of the iPhone.

And we had a great relationship with Apple, worked very closely with them on a lot of things.

We approached the executive team there about letting us build an app for the phone.

And they wanted to talk to us about using our software on the Apple tv.

And the answer came back that, well, there was no, in those early days, a vision of independent third party apps that they would curate all the apps.

Yeah.

Right, Fast forward.

We were the first company to have a smartphone service where we could control your thermostats well before Nest or any of these.

Yeah.

So where you weren't in the home, now all of a sudden you had this capability.

That new capability was coined, the smart home.

I know to be fair, some contractors in that space hated us for us.

They saw us devaluing what they're doing.

And then all of a sudden there was this plethora Nest as a great example, Sonos.

All of a sudden, all these very expensive things that were only afforded by the rich and famous became available to everybody.

Yeah.

But also at the same time, a lot of things ran to the Internet that didn't need to be Internet connected.

Right.

Oh, my gosh.

You and I have always joked when we were on stage that I had my last house was the test house.

I had 12 different retail level switching systems for light stuff.

Some of it worked well.

And I'll throw out to my friends there.

I don't like talking bad about people, but Lutron had a great product that I used and it worked great.

It was reliable around the house.

We'll be right back with more from Jim Carroll from Cindall IO.

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There were a lot of other products out there that.

Holy smokes.

I had them in for two weeks and I was already in there with my, I was already switching stuff out and it was going in the toolbox because I didn't even want to talk about.

It was so bad, you know, you.

Know, the spotlight switch categories, Lutron's the best, period, full stop.

Right.

I mean, they got it going.

They were great partners at Savant.

We've worked with them here as well.

We've seen a whole list of home lighting control products, though.

$49 Smart switch.

And instead of staying in their lane the way good IoT devices do, they try to become the ecosystem they want to become everything.

And unfortunately, just in the four and a half years we've been working with Sendal here, our rear view mirrors littered with lighting control companies that have gone away.

Instead of focusing on doing what they do best, they try to broaden it out and they, they flame out as a result.

Right.

So it's.

Yeah, there were some that were like, oh, we're doing circadian rhythm.

And I'm like, well, but you're not changing color temperature.

So how are you doing that?

I'm curious.

Yeah, there was stuff like that where they were throwing out a bunch of words that they had googled up, but it didn't actually do what they said it was going to do.

And they're no longer around either.

So there was a lot of that stuff where they had great ideas but they weren't pulling it off either.

That's right.

Well, lighting control, there's like a break even analysis that says we need 10 switches in every house.

Well, it's tough to get 10 light switches in every House.

If it's homes that you and I live in.

Right.

Yeah.

People like their kitchens.

Maybe their master suite, the outdoor lights.

Okay.

Where could five lights.

Okay.

What else do I need?

Yeah.

And when they're 400 bucks a pop, that becomes a significant investor for the typical homeowner.

That's right.

That's right.

Tough to explain.

I always talk about the wife factor.

My wife's been great because all my homes have always been beta homes.

Right.

So it's.

It's what we do.

You spent 500 on what?

We already have 20 light switches.

Yeah, but these were cool.

I had a. I gotta get these.

My girlfriend is the least.

Is the least tech person I've ever met.

She doesn't even use a laptop.

It's.

She's got a laptop.

She hasn't opened it in years.

And I finally, today.

And I mean today, this morning, got her to open up the MyQ app on the garage door.

Wow.

Because she's.

Did I close the garage door this morning?

And I went, I don't know.

Let's look on your phone.

Oh, it's been closed for 40 minutes.

Yes.

Yes.

She's.

Oh, that's cool.

And I'm like, light bulb went off.

Okay.

Awesome.

That's right.

You know.

That's right.

And it's amazing.

The MyQ product.

I love it.

One of my neighbors, an older gentleman, he keeps forgetting to close his garage door.

So he says to me at one point, when you go by and late after, if you see the door open, just send me a text.

So I say, bob, you must have my cue garage door opener, right?

Because, well, I got new garage door open.

I don't know if it's got any of that stuff.

So I go in and look.

Yeah, look.

Just download the app.

I said, now, right here, you can see at 9 o' clock at night, close the garage door if it's open.

Oh, wow.

Oh, wow.

What else could it do?

It's not going to make you like, it's not going to make you lunch, but it could do that.

Well, and it's the same kind of thing.

And again, it's that using the smart home stuff, I freaked her out last week.

She's.

Who opened the garage door?

And I'm like, oh, that was Amazon.

I didn't know if we were going to be home today, so I had it in garage delivery.

Right, right.

They can open the garage door.

I'm like, yeah, they actually can.

And they put it under there so it doesn't get stolen off the porch.

If I'm getting something that's a few hundred bucks delivered out front.

I'd kind of like it in the garage for sitting on the porch if we're out of town.

That's right.

That's right.

I mean, it's, this technology's out there.

It's designed to make a lifestyle easier.

Some people say, oh, it's making you lazy.

Well, it's not making you lazy.

It's not running laps for you.

No.

But it's also keeping people from stealing my stuff out of the garage at 11 o' clock at night when I forgot to close the garage door.

That's right.

And my wife and I, we both use the health apps for when we work out how we're sleeping.

Right.

And it's, it's made an impact in her life.

She's got sleep apnea.

And I keep house where I'm talking to you from in Cape Cod.

It's a newer home.

It's got less than two year changes.

Right.

And read service keeps the CO2 level below a thousand and up in our sleeping chamber, which is really good.

Our Florida house, much older home.

So it has, you can't quite control it as well.

She needs to wear the mask and everything.

Down south up here, she doesn't snore.

She gets a better night's sleep.

Her sleep scores go up.

Right.

So everything about it is just, it's, it's autonomous.

You don't have to lean in and do anything.

But this technology smell a remodel in your future in Florida.

Well, what I have to do.

So we did a, another product, plug the Florida hot humidity.

Right.

So we added a Santa Fe venting dehumidifier to the main part of the house.

Nice.

And that's done a great job and it's proven itself.

So when I get back down for the master suite area, I'm adding a smaller version of that to do the.

Same thing because I think humidifiers have not gotten less expensive out there.

Those things are an investment these days.

Oh God, they are.

And that's why good ones are important.

Right.

And there's, there's multiple strategies.

What I love about an April makes a good venting dehumidifier as well.

It's a great alternative because in hot, sticky climates you need both an ERV and event and the whole host humidification.

The venting dehumidifier can be a bridge gap there.

Right.

So it's more reasonable from a standpoint of cost and it can deliver better health outcomes.

Right.

So it's but they are expensive, but they're well worth it.

Oh, yeah, no, they're worth it.

I mean, just the elimination of the chance of mold and.

And all the other things that go along with high humidity in your home.

That just.

That is just the wrecking ball to a house when it talks to.

When you're talking about low quality indoor air quality.

That's right.

The data across all our homes says solve for moisture first and then think about ventilation and filtration.

Right.

Because if you've got an environment and it could be too dry or it could be too moist, all the filtration and ventilation doesn't help.

So you got to get that under control to start with.

Right?

Yeah.

I think about being a kid working in the hardware store and how many rebuild kits I sold living in the desert for swamp coolers back in the day.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

And now I think back about it and go, oh, gosh, that's nasty.

Because it was this.

Let's be honest, it was a fan blowing through mildewy fabric that had water running through it.

It was now going all the way through the home trying to cool you.

But talk about just a bio experiment got wrong.

If I would have gone back and tested some of that stuff.

Oh, you know, you get microbial growth.

You know, that was that 100%, right?

Yeah, yeah.

In the ductwork.

Everywhere else.

When in.

80% Of the US population lives in a climate zone where dehumidification is required.

Right.

Yeah.

The last 20 years, we've gotten wetter.

Right.

Don't want to get into whole environmental thing, but we've seen the glaciers recede, polar caps getting smaller.

Ten years ago they were saying, oh, the city of Boston is going to be underwater.

New York should be underwater.

Florida will be gone.

Well, it didn't.

Right?

Yeah.

All matter.

The frozen state didn't test three states, liquid, gas or solar.

Right.

So went from the frozen solid state to a gas state.

It didn't turn into a liquid state and flood us out, but as a result, we live in a much more humid environment.

Yeah.

It's really crazy.

And molds king.

It's ruining a lot of homes and hurting a lot of people.

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Yes, I should have all that stuff automated.

I should have a dehumidifier for those days.

It's something we're not going to stick in this house long enough to do that work.

But I'm.

I'm forcing it to do the things that I want it to do.

Right.

And that's.

That's a solution.

But we see people chase comfort with the thermostat when what they're really after is trying to get rid of humidity.

Right.

My.

My installation with the Santa Fe Venting Dehumidifier in Florida, we used to, during the day, keep the main part of the house around 72 degrees.

And the humidity was always marginally too high.

Yeah.

And the master suite at 78.

And then we would swap them at bedtime and swap them back.

We just keep doing that.

Right.

And you.

There are days where you're chasing comfort, trying to turn it down a little bit.

My wife was like the thermostat police.

This is down to 71.

What are we doing?

Well, it's kind of sticky in Aaron.

We got the venting dehumidifier now, pretty much, we keep the Both thermostats at 75 degrees all the time while we're there.

And humidity is at 47, 50%.

At least once or twice a week, my wife will jump up and accuse me of turning down the AC.

Did you turn this down?

She looks at 75, but the DU is running.

So now the humidity levels dropped a point or two.

And she feels cold.

Yeah, it's 90 degrees out, 80% humidity, and she's cold at 75.

I've tried to explain humidity to people so many times that your body feels humidity the same way as it does temperature.

And that's why it can be 72 in your house and you're dying and sweating, or it's 72 degrees and you're grabbing a jacket.

Well, really, the discussion's about dew point.

We won't go there.

No, we're not gonna.

That doesn't make for great radio, but I'm just trying to.

I'm trying to keep this at fourth grade level here for.

For me and for our listeners, because they're super smart, but they don't want to get in the weeds.

Well, the simple answer always is when there's so much moisture in the air that your body perspiring doesn't help, meaning there's no place for that moisture to go.

Then you start overheating.

Right.

So dry or indoor air environment, you can perspire and the water will evaporate off your skin and you cool down.

Right.

It's just that simple.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So how is that, I got to ask you?

It's interesting.

And I learned this doing sitting up on the stage.

I mean, it was so great the last time I was up on stage.

And it was a good time.

I don't miss doing all those seminars.

Let's put it that way.

Those were a pain in my butt, but.

And it was just the setup that was the worst part of it in those situations.

But I loved getting out there.

I'll never forget.

This was probably four years ago.

I think that was about the last time I did the show over there at the International Building Show.

And I stood up on the stage and it was the first seminar of the day of smart home stuff.

And I went, how many people know what an integrator is?

And I've got 200 builders and designers out there.

And I had two hands come up and I went, holy smokes.

I now have to, in my head switch my entire discussion from a 201 class to a 99 class in college to get people up to speed.

But there are a lot of builders out there that to them, anything smart home is the stuff that they leave in the hall closet for the homeowner to put in.

And then there's some great ones out there that are building integrated systems in and know what they're doing.

How are you guys navigating that?

Because that's all over the board, it seems.

It really is.

We were having a lot of success with the high performance builders a couple years ago, Right?

Yeah.

And when we first brought the platform out, we had some MVP1s across energy savings, an early version of Aware, which we thought would be big.

And almost every builder, as we talked our way through this at some point, would lean in almost sheepishly and say, what are you doing about the real problem?

When you said, what's that?

They said, indoor air quality.

Current building code has us build toxic homes.

There's got to be a way.

And so these builders were already having high performance filters.

Most cases ERVs.

Right.

So I've already put the expense for all the equipment they thought they needed smart thermostats, but they were still having bad, healthy outcomes.

Yeah.

And that's really where breathe was born.

Right out of that necessity.

Right.

To go fill that gap with intelligent ventilation.

We did a lot of work with Mandalay Homes up in Prescott Valley, up in Arizona.

Yeah.

And very high particle matter challenge from the outdoors in a very dry environment.

So continuous ventilation meant people walking around their homes getting zapped every time they touch something.

Right.

And continuous ventilation over time you've got high levels of particle matter.

So just by adding our software to their existing systems, where we improve the humidity level, actually brought it up without a humidifier and drastically reduced particle matter.

And everyone reported back that felt more comfortable.

And these were net zero homes and we reduced their energy consumption in a home that was already net zero.

Yeah.

So that's awesome.

It's pretty amazing from that perspective.

Yeah.

So the builders have been good.

Eighteen months ago, everything came to a full stop as inflation maybe two years ago now.

Yeah.

Inflation of building materials and interest rates.

It's tough to sell a high performance home.

Right.

They're already.

Especially when people are just trying to get into the home.

They're just trying to get in the door.

Yeah, that's right.

That's right.

But I was just at Home Depot last week and I'm walking around or Lowe's.

I think it was Home Depot.

And it was like, oh, it's 10 bucks a sheet for OSB now where it was 28 bucks where you needed to.

You didn't take your trailer to go pick up a unit.

Osb.

You took the armored car.

The cash up for you.

Absolutely.

A piece of it.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

So I think we're seeing that.

We're seeing more homes get built.

Right.

So it's, it's definitely positive.

We had a pivot away from that back then and that's where we started leaning in with the home services folks.

Yeah.

And we're seeing some good results with the private equity roll up of home services which across.

I just talked about that.

That has been a fascinating.

I talked about that here probably.

Oh, a month or so on the show where that is an interesting one because for somebody like you it is perfect because it's higher service reoccurring revenue and it's really meant for that consumer like that that is going to get into a service contract or something like that where people are going to be working back and forth.

I think it's brilliant for that.

Yeah, that's it exactly.

And it builds customers for life.

Right?

Yeah.

And that's really where the need for aware came from.

So now they have all these customers.

They know if they don't answer the phone in the first ring, person's going to hang up and call the next guy in the.

In the phone book.

Right.

Yep.

Now I'm going to double a H vac.

Exactly.

There's aaa.

So if you get out in front of it.

Right.

And you're servicing them before they know it, take, move it from a service call to a maintenance call.

Now it's actually a profitable event for everybody, not just you, but also the consumer.

Right.

So yeah, it's very, very powerful.

The recurring revenue, customer retention, shifting workload.

Right.

A lot of these home services folks, during the extreme environment times when it's really hot or really cold, they don't sleep, they're working seven days a week, 14 hour days and then they have these drought periods, could be three to six months.

They're doing everything they can just to keep their team together, trying to make payroll.

It's 70 degrees outside for two months and no one, if the AC doesn't turn on, no one even notices.

That's right.

That's right.

And it's, it's the beauty of the aware.

It will point things out that need to get addressed before they break.

Right.

Yeah.

I was talking to an H vac contractor the other day and he spent all this money on social media and he doesn't get a lot of great results from it because when something doesn't work, they're going to pick up their phone and call somebody.

It's not, oh, what was that commercial?

What was that ad?

What was that thing I saw on Facebook?

Right.

Yeah, it doesn't work that way.

So he's actually looking to provide a wear for free and stop spending marketing dollars on social media because he thinks the lost leader of rolling a truck for $100 to do your maintenance program.

And they know it costs them 350 bucks to roll a truck.

Absolutely.

So let's shift that thinking to aware where we're proactively out in front.

The consumer's been made aware of what needs to get done.

The system's not performing.

Maybe your filters need to be changed.

Whatever it may be.

And before they call the contractor, the contractor is reaching out to them to schedule something.

Let's address this under a maintenance event versus a crisis event in three months.

It's funny, it's going to be 57 degrees here today.

And I know this show's airing this weekend, but on Sunday it's going to be 99.

Yeah.

And I know that all of my H vac friends are not having a good weekend because they're all going to be on call, they're all going to be out there, it's going to be Absolutely.

We never get that here in the Portland metro area in June.

That's an August thing.

And here it comes.

It's like same kind of thing.

That's right.

And then there's just enough, not enough resources of people to go around.

No, but if they would have seen that, come up earlier with a warning now you're.

Now you don't miss a day of AC in your house and comfort.

That's right.

That's right.

Because it doesn't take long for mold to grow.

So it's like when they say, oh, it's going to be four or five days before we can get to you.

That's more than enough time under certain conditions for mold to start growing.

Right.

So when they say, hey, we see the system's not responding the way we would anticipate it to be, that's good.

We'll come out, take a look.

And then you're way out in front.

Because the mold never gets a chance to start.

Right.

Yeah.

And mold shows up in amazing places.

I mean, I, I can't tell you how many times I have.

There was one that was to me that was.

And I actually have a pretty severe mold allergy that I know it.

I can walk into a house and I am the canary in the coal mine.

Oh, really?

I can walk in the house and go.

And I'll feel the chest tighten up just a little bit.

And I go, where's your mold problem?

What are you talking about?

Where's your mold problem?

And I did that at a lawyer's office one time here in Washington state.

I walked in and I'm like, wow, you guys got a bad mold problem in here.

What are you talking about?

And they almost were offended.

Well, they're lawyers, right?

So they have to.

Yeah, exactly.

So they're like, oh, he's gonna sue me now.

So that.

Yeah, they see that as a. Oh, now I'm liable.

Get out the door.

That's right.

But we walked.

I'm like, hey, can this.

It was an old house, like a 20s house that had been converted.

And I'm like, can we see the basement?

I walked down there with him.

We pulled some boxes back and it was a black carpet of mold between.

There was two inches between the file boxes and the concrete wal.

And it was a black 2 inch carpet of mold on a 16 foot wall.

It was just in there.

And I'm like, yeah, you guys got an issue in here.

I'd call somebody and holy smokes, that building was shut down for a bit as they tried to Clean that up.

Because it had been going for years.

Yeah, well, people don't appreciate that all these surfaces in our home are porous.

Even when they're painted, they're still porous.

They act like sponges.

Yeah.

You.

You.

I was working with an HOA group down in Florida, and they were having a massive humidity problem in their.

Their clubhouse.

It would be 80 degrees and 80% humidity, and the AC is running, and it.

It didn't take long of looking at everything.

ACs were way oversized, replaced relatively recently.

Well, why did they get bigger?

And one of the board members says, oh, he said, bigger is better, more power.

Well, so they're not running that long.

They're cooling, and now all of a sudden, they got this humidity problem, which they first recognized as new hardwood floors starting to buckle in.

The general purpose room, when you have.

That, that humidity is high.

Yeah, that's.

It was.

So we simply, as an experiment, I shut off one of the three units.

So now the whole space.

There's a gym.

There's a.

Like a central area where there's a library and some meeting rooms, a COD room.

Then that.

The general meeting space.

Right.

We shut the middle system off, left the doors open.

Humidity came back down to 55% while it was still 80.

Right.

So the systems had to work a little harder.

Right.

But it removed the humidity.

Yeah.

Well, this is the horrifying part.

So they have me reach out to the H vac guy, and I say, it looks like, see, things are significantly oversized.

Oh, no, no.

You look at the code, it says.

I said, well, that room should only have so many people in it.

We start getting into this.

I go, anyhow, what do you use for whole building?

Dehumidifier.

He says, we don't have a humidity problem in Florida.

What?

I'm like, what?

He goes, if we did, every garage would have molded it.

Oh, holy cow.

I'm like, okay, thanks.

I get off the floor.

Wrong guy.

Yeah.

I'm talking the hoa.

But I'm just like, well, there's two choices here, right.

We keep one of the AC units off, and we find someone that can put a whole building dehumidification system in.

Well, by shutting off one of the three systems, it's proven that's the solution, right?

Now, we did put some air things product in.

They actually went in this week, and they're adding some sensi wi fi stats that we can control the set points.

So they'll be able to schedule it, and we'll be able to use the data to keep the spaces as comfortable as possible with less humidity.

And we're hoping with these oversized systems we can get through it.

Right, yeah.

That we can get to an outcome.

Pretty confident we will.

Yeah.

And it's.

But it's just, it's never ending.

Every project you get pulled in on, you just walk away shaking your head.

Well, we have that problem here.

I mean I can go around on one of our rainy days and drive around the neighborhoods here because we've got some builders that are, let's say in the Portland area here.

I don't want to name names and, and have their attorneys getting a hold of me.

But let's put it this way.

If they're building homes in that one to $3 million space and one of their looks is they do the glass garage doors like the glass clope garage doors that look really nice.

Problem is, is when two cars pull into this three car drive into this garage and shut the door that are wet from the rain or whatever else I can go by a little bit later.

So you've got no ventilation.

You've got an insulated and sheetrocked garage that is attached to the house.

And I can see the water running down the inside of the cold glass like it's a summer lemonade out on the patio.

Next day I go by, the garage doors are open.

I can see that they've got the boxes of the Christmas stuff and the sports stuff and Darn.

Well, that is going to be one massive moldy mess in the garage.

Absolutely.

And at some point they'll take those walls down for some reason and the back of them will be full of mold.

I forget exactly about a building science guy was explaining to me a eight foot tall piece of sheetrock.

So eight foot by four can hold two and a half gallons of water.

Yeah.

So if you open your doors and windows early in the morning, which we often do here, we kind of burp the house every day even though we have breathe.

But you get the fresh air in and everything that humidity starts to climb if you don't close the house up.

It's just your walls and your woodwork and your sofa and your carpets.

Everything just starts drinking all that water.

And I learned through flora with the denti dehumidifier, it can take days to reach back to a reasonable equilibrium.

Two hours of an open house can turn into days of drying out.

Right?

Absolutely.

So it's.

I'm almost to the point they should make windows that don't open.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's.

It's crazy.

And I do love how other companies speak of that.

The skylight companies out there that now have smarter skylights that will open up that you can control and, and it'll go, wow, your CO2 is pretty darn heavy in the house right now.

Let's.

It's.

And it knows, hey, it's not raining, let's open that up.

Which I love.

Some of the new technology that we're seeing with that stuff, it's been around for a while.

I mean, it's been around for, I think, seven or eight years out there.

But I like how that stuff's getting smarter and makes it easier to control for the homeowner.

Yeah.

But even with that, there's got to be better decisions being made.

Percent I don't disagree.

CO2, is that a reason to open.

And let the smoke in?

Yeah, well, yeah.

What's the rest of the outdoor environment?

What are we exchanging?

That's, that's my, that's my biggest things with, with ERVs and HRVs and that kind of thing is, is when out on the west coast, when we're in August or this year, probably going to be June, July, August, when you look outside and go, wow, the air quality in Beijing is higher than we are today.

Right.

Maybe I don't want to bring that stuff in the house.

And Maybe that little 4 inch by 4 inch filter isn't going to handle what I needed to do to get indoor air quality cleaner.

Yeah.

Inaugurably, that's the huge benefit of breathe.

Because it knows the outdoor environments.

Right.

It will, because we see it here in the Cape, kind of unique maybe, in that the system, by keeping track of outdoor environmental data, can see the wildfire smoke approaching the home.

It will proactively start ventilating while the outdoor air is clean.

And then it has somebody, a nice woman that one of our customers says, it's like you make the household its breath till it's over.

And it does, it literally stops ventilating informs the homeowners who have done this.

It will circulate the different.

Like in this home, we've got four or five zones.

So it circulates the air around the home by simultaneous running different zones at the same time.

Yeah.

So it helps mitigate everything's passing through the filters and all that.

So it's really got a level of intelligence to it that you just don't get with a Senate or forget it or say, oh, let's ventilate just because CO2's high.

Yeah.

The system will make the decision.

Very high particle matter outside CO2 is on the rise.

Let's circulate the air first before recirculate the year before.

We.

Because we know no matter how well the home's built and aggravate some passive home builders there, we got data that says, no matter what it is, you start ventilating your pulling in stuff.

There's still cast, there's stuff going on.

It's.

It's coming into the home.

So build tight, ventilate.

Right?

I like to say that rhymes, but I like to say build tight and ventilate intelligently.

Yeah, right.

It's funny here in, in the house that I'm living in now, this builder, big national builder, not going to bash him.

They didn't understand air movement inside the house.

They built these doors to be hermetically sealed between rooms.

And I mean, and I literally had this discussion last night because Elisa was complaining about how the dryer just didn't dry things right.

And I said, well, your problem is, is you're shutting the door to the laundry room when you turn the dryer on.

She goes, what are you talking about?

I took the door, the dryer was on, I took the door right to it being latched and it pulled this door eight inches wide.

Oh, yeah.

I go, you're pulling in so many cfm and there's no place for it to go.

So your dryer right now is trying to drink a shake through a coffee straw and it's not working.

That's right.

That's right.

So breathe.

When it's hooked up to energy monitoring, we'll see the dryer turn on.

And today we will turn on the ventilation.

Now, it's, it's not complete balance when you're doing that.

And I shouldn't talk way out in front of stuff, but we're, we're down the road with Panasonic, their new ervs, the new fan products where they've got integrated WI FI control capability.

And with the erv, we're going to be able to dynamically see that turn on and turn the ERV into a supply only so we can match the same thing you turn a bathroom venture able to match.

So make it supply without playing the game with all the thermostats, we can just put the ERV into recirculate mode.

So all the home balance.

Yeah.

So it's really.

We're heading towards a BMS system that costs millions of dollars and the commercial space doing that.

Make it available for every home in America.

Right.

Get that type of high performance out of it.

Yeah, we're pretty excited about that.

We think that's going to make a huge difference.

I love Panasonic.

I've used those guys for probably 20 years.

And for ventilation, there is just nothing that compares to that product out there.

They do a great job.

They make all sizes and.

Right.

So it fits.

And I love their whisper quiet bathroom fan products.

I mean, it's when you turn them on in the middle of the night to evacuate VOCs or it wakes nobody up.

Right.

It's great.

No, I remember when I first started using those 20 years ago in my designs as a kitchen bathroom designer, the biggest complaint I had from people was I couldn't tell if it was on.

That's right, that's right.

And I'm like, well, it's on a timer.

Don't worry about if it's on.

Turn it on and walk away.

Let it go.

When we're building this house, I was there, was spec'd in for the master suite, and there's two exhaust fans, there's a water closet, and then over the shower and the electrician reaches out, he goes, we're gonna do the ones with the lights in them.

Even though it's well lit in the bathroom.

Yeah.

I'm like, why is that?

He goes, because you won't know if it's on or not.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

So you turned the light on to let me know the fan came on.

Yeah.

I always joke that Panasonic single handedly killed the heated mirror medicine cabinet market.

That's probably true.

That's probably true.

I never thought of that.

Mrs.

Customer, as a designer, if we put in the right fan, you won't need to spend another $500 on heated mirrors for the bathroom.

That's really, really.

So I always joke about that because it just had changed that whole space.

But I like, though, Jim, it's so fun to talk to you about this stuff because I just love how you've taken kind of all these, what I call the mismatched kids of Smart home and you made them all sing together.

It's the orchestration.

It is, it is.

I mean, and I will say that things are playing along better than they ever have.

Companies are now going, oh, I need to integrate.

Where before seven, eight years ago, it seemed that everybody just had their death grip on.

I'm not sharing any of my information with you.

And we're not going to let my system talk to your system.

We're seeing companies at least play together a lot better than they used to.

That's right.

I think we're seeing on the continuum of connected devices and IoT devices.

The IoT devices are winning the rising up to the.

And our platform without getting geeky.

We have many different APIs.

Right.

So we can engage it.

There's a company that's got a new product that can actually sense mold and mold types bringing a product to market.

Right.

So they want to integrate with us.

They don't have an API, Right.

But they have an app.

So we've got a pretty straightforward API that third party developers tell us it's about the equivalent of integrating with Alexa or Google Home.

It's a couple of days worth of work testing and you're ready to go.

So probably a third, maybe more of our devices we work with, they've integrated against us, but then we also have APIs we can integrate against other people's products, right?

Absolutely.

So it's a.

You have to be flexible and capable.

But you know, I'm pretty confident these folks we're talking to about the mold detection that they're never going to try to be what breathe is.

They know who they are, they're going to stay in their lane.

Ear things knows who they are, they're going to stay in their lane.

Panasonic knows who they are.

They stay in their lane.

Right.

With some other products in those categories as we work with them, all of a sudden they try to be something greater than that, right?

Absolutely.

And it's.

And they almost end up in a solution space compromised.

As soon as you make your own hard way of compromise yourself because you're going to start leaning that way.

Okay, how do I influence buyers to use just my version of that thing?

Absolutely.

And now all of a sudden you're behind the curve.

Instead of lining up behind the best ventilation company, the best indoor air quality sensor company, the best lighting company.

Now you're, you're mismatched and you're, you're out of sync with what the customer needs.

Right.

I always joke that that's always.

To me it seems like it's the, it's the new management team member that doesn't understand how things work in the space that goes, we're going to take over the entire marketplace and everybody else that actually knows it well goes.

You're insane.

Stay in our lane.

Yeah, stay in your lane.

Everybody stay in your lane.

In your lane.

Because like we talked about earlier, there's always, there's dozens of companies in, in our rear.

Our rear view mirror that it didn't work out so well for when they.

Did that that's right.

That's right.

And I think the, the problem they're faced with is, oh, to be competitive, the marketing people say, we need an app.

We got to be connected to the Internet.

And so they go do that, whatever the widget is.

And then the CFO says, have you seen our cloud expense over the last three years?

We have to somehow make money out of this.

This is.

Yes.

Is there something on the bill of material that says 10 years useful life, here's the cost, let's build it in.

We can still make money.

So they start dreaming of other ways to make money.

Right.

Yeah.

It blows my mind when a device will say to us, oh, you have to pay us to connect you.

Really?

That you really not.

You should be paying us connect to you.

And some of our technology partners do.

Right?

Yeah.

They say, hey, we're willing to give you a commission for the attachment.

Right?

Yeah.

Because we know associated with you our product is a lot more.

They know the value and you can talk to their competitor and say, oh, no, we want.

Right.

You want.

That's crazy.

How do you justify that?

RCF says, oh, says we have to.

Yeah.

Oh, okay.

Got it.

Okay.

Yeah, got it.

Yeah.

So you're the low man on the totem pole that's got somebody tapped on the shoulder.

Go, your turn, go talk to them.

Yeah.

Right.

Well, the reality is this wasn't such a good idea at the end of the day.

Why did you do that?

Right.

And those, those companies I tend to classify as connected home devices.

Yeah.

Versus, like when you first start talking to a business, some will jump right to that.

And you go, we might as well end this call.

These are connected home people.

Right.

At some point they're going to tell us they're making their own.

Whatever.

Yeah.

It's way out.

They're not going to do it.

Well, no.

And then when you tell you what there are in the home space out there, there are some apps from name brand companies out there that are awful to use.

It's.

And one of them is a competitor to Panasonic.

And I'm not going to say anything about it, but it's just awful to use.

Yeah, I think I know.

You mean it's.

I'm caught off guard how often, especially very large companies, you start talking with them and at some point, pretty early on, they say, oh, we use a third party app company.

And when you start talking to this company, what they have is a full stack that they don't change.

Right.

So they're going to connect the company Wise all their light switch or their relay or something, and they have to take what they give them and this is what they get.

Yeah.

And it's just a generic horrible experience.

Right.

It's not very specific to what they do.

And it's.

It done in a way that the manufacturers all of a sudden is held hostage by this app company.

Right.

And it's embarrassing for them to go, oh, we got to start over.

That's right, that's right.

That's right.

So it's.

But when you start talking to Iot brands, immediately the upfront discussion turns to data privacy.

SOC 2, how are we going to protect the data?

What about our customers?

What data?

What are we going to exchange?

How long are you going to hang on to it?

What are you going to do with it?

Those are all the discussions we'd love to hear.

Right.

Because we've obviously built an environment that checks all those boxes and we're confident that by integrating with them, we're not compromising our end consumers, private data.

Right.

So that's a discussion you had 25 times before last year.

So.

Yeah, that's right.

That's right.

So that's easy.

So, Jim, I know there's a lot of people in the audience.

We're running out of time.

I want to make sure people find you guys because our healthy homes that we see out there, that people are trying to create and are maybe struggling, trying to get all these things to work together.

And you guys have just the ultimate solution, I think, for that.

How do people find you guys and start down this path of making everything work together like a symphony?

The webpage is probably the best way.

Right.

There's information there.

It will guide you through things.

And it's sendo S E N D A L I O.

So it's, it's.

And there's a.

Send me more information.

I want someone to reach out to me.

So we, we have all those, those typical things, but we find it's an easy discussion if you start there.

Right.

Yeah.

That is who has become educated.

They can see what other customers have said about the product.

And so just a great path.

If you're in a market where we have home services folks, they're available.

If not, we'll work with whoever you have.

Absolutely, absolutely.

Jim, my friend, thanks for, for coming on the show today, man.

It's always fun to banner with you and talk about what's going on.

And I always learn something new, which is cool.

And it's always fun to catch up, my friend.

I had a blast.

I'm shocked how quickly this time went.

It goes fast.

It does go fast.

It's always a pleasure.

Let's keep in touch.

Absolutely.

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

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