S.4 Ep.40 TMH Trey Farmer - Passive House Design
Advances in construction materials and methods are allowing us to achieve amazing levels of sustainable building. Passive house design is one of the latest advances toward net zero and net positive buildings. In this episode, we’ll speak with Trey Farmer, architect and owner of a passive house himself! He’ll walk us through the passive house design approach and demonstrate how it is more attainable than we may realize for residential and commercial applications.
Transcript:
00:11
Speaker 1
All right, it's morning huddle time. Good morning. I'm not saying it works. I wish you'd not speed Godspeed with all of that. I think that's really nice. You know, I'm not sure what kind of success you're gonna have with that today, because the world, my friend, has changed, Right?
00:27
Speaker 2
A Latin American construction workers, they have different needs. They.
00:32
Speaker 3
These awards have a huge, like, criteria that you have to fill out. And they usually have a community service or community relations portion, you know, the most productive with a high performance value. And, you know, sometimes it's 11 o' clock at night.
00:50
Speaker 1
Funny, isn't? Yeah, not for me. Not for me. At 11 o', clock, I am guaranteed to be snoring. So, so foreign. Good morning. It is morning huddle time. We have Trey Farmer with us and of course, Stacy, my co host stadium. How are you today?
01:14
Speaker 3
I'm a little depressed about the Eagles, you know, lost, but I will recover.
01:20
Speaker 1
I am depressed for you. I know. I know how it feels to have your team lose in the championship game. Better than 30 other teams in the NFL, but not better than the one that was off. Man. That was. How about the holding call? Was it a call? Was it a hold or was it not a hold?
01:42
Speaker 3
I don't know.
01:43
Speaker 1
The player said it was a hold. He called himself out. He goes, it was a hold. It was. I, I didn't think it was a hold when it happened, but I respected the player afterwards in the locker room saying, like, no, no, I, I held him. I grabbed. That's what happened. So it was cool. But, you know, yeah, it's a, That's a tough one. I'm on this group text with a group of friends, all from Philadelphia, and yesterday it was like total crickets until about noon, and one guy just texted, and I'm talking like 15 people, and one guy just texted. I'm so depressed. Like, no motivation at all today, you know, kind of thing. And it is, it's.
02:24
Speaker 2
It's.
02:25
Speaker 1
It's tough, you know, it's hard to. Hey, next year. There's always next year. It's hard to rally it up.
02:31
Speaker 3
Yeah.
02:34
Speaker 1
Are you a football fan? Do you have, do you have a team?
02:36
Speaker 2
I. I am a Patriots fan. So, you know, we've just.
02:42
Speaker 1
Many years of relentless celebration followed by the inevitable, like, being okay as opposed to.
02:48
Speaker 2
Yeah, well, it's, you know, like being from New England. Right. It was like were kind of on the other side of it with the Yankees for so long that then you know, it's kind of. It was good, but you could also empathize with the haters, so.
03:01
Speaker 1
Totally. Yeah, totally. Like, yeah, I know what it feels like to feel like there's a team that just has an unfair advantage. Yeah. Yeah. Well, cool. So. So Trey joins us from Forgecraft Architecture in Texas in Austin, Texas. I've had the good fortune of having some exposure to their work in my work in Texas. And I, I haven't worked with Trey directly, but I was talking to one of his colleagues about interesting topics and he said, you know, what would be an interesting topic is passive house design. And I said, well, I don't know what that is, so you're going to have to tell me whether that's interesting or not.
03:44
Speaker 1
And it turns out that Trey not only is Passive House certified and we'll get into what all that means, but also actually lives in a certified Passive house himself and can actually speak to it not just as a design professional, but can speak to it as a homeowner. And so Stacy asked this question right out of the gate, right? Like, is this only for houses? So, you know, we're going to get into that and many more questions. Stacy, I'm confident that the audience, through the course of our conversation, we'll have some interesting questions that pop up, as you always do. I'll leave you to stoke the interesting discussion and we'll bring you back here to get some, you know, audience questions before we wrap up.
04:29
Speaker 3
All right, sounds good.
04:30
Speaker 1
Thanks, Stacy. All right, so. So let's start from scratch. Assume our audience knows as much as I knew, which is absolutely nothing. Whenever we first talked. What is passive house design? Just a simple description.
04:48
Speaker 2
Yeah, it is. So it's a third party certification and it's an above code building code, basically that's looking primarily at energy use. So it's basically the most aggressive above code building certification. So it's Passive House Institute. US is partnered with the US Department of Energy. So they're sort of like Energy Star zero, Energy ready, Home Net zero. And then Passive House is kind of the highest tier of energy efficiency. And so it, depending on your climate, it'll drop your energy bills by 40 to 80%. So the analogy we use a lot is a yeti. Yeti cooler. If you think about those old school coolers versus a yeti cooler, it's more insulation. The main thing though is that it's airtight. Like that airtightness really holds the energy really well. So you get a better building, it's more resilient.
05:43
Speaker 2
When the power goes out, it'll hold your heat in the winter, hold your cool in the summer. And then also you're controlling where all of your fresh air is coming from in your house. So there's no leaks, nooks and crannies, no air sneaking in through the holes in the wall where the cockroaches live. It's all getting filtered through a port and mechanically brought in. So there's all these knock on benefits for health and, you know, no dust, no pests, all that sort of stuff. Really quiet. You know, we live pretty close to a highway and before we renovated, we could hear cars going over the expansion joints. We could hear trains whenever they went by and now nothing. Which is really great.
06:20
Speaker 1
It is great. I live relatively close to a main road as well. And I'm. I was right after our conversation last week, I started like googling how do I go through a passive house renovation? Because just for the sound benefits I like, hey, you know, nice to save money too. But so okay, I've got, I'll start. I'm going to, I'm going to set you up with two questions relatively quickly. I can't decide which one I want to know. First one is what is the, I guess the what are the differences between net zero and passive house? And like, what are some things that make passive house design the most aggressive? What are the things that make it sor of, you know, unique?
07:08
Speaker 1
And then, and then the second question right on the back of that is talk about, you know, just your application and where you are in the world and, you know, what the renovation actually consisted of. And then I'll take exhaustive notes and try to figure out a budget.
07:27
Speaker 2
Perfect. Yeah. So you can have a net zero passive house. They're kind of, you know, net zero is like you use about the same amount of energy over the course of a year as you produce, usually with PV on a single family home. Anyway, passive house is probably the best way to get there. So the idea is you're pulling some of that money out of your PV or out of your utility bill and putting it into your mechanical system and your envelope. So more insulation, more better windows, more durable weather barrier, airtightness is probably the biggest lift, I guess, at least in our climate. And so the whole thing is cost optimized. Right. So it's like we don't want to throw so much insulation at your walls that you're getting these diminishing returns and just burning money. Right.
08:19
Speaker 2
And also, you know, from an environmental standpoint, there's embodied energy insulation. And so we don't want to be trying to reduce our operational carbon. Right. The amount of, you know, fossil fuels getting burned to heat and cool your house by putting too much into your walls. It's all about kind of finding the sweet spot and trying to make a more sustainable house that's also healthier and lasts but, you know, does better in outages. So. So like, for our house, right. We're. We're in Austin, so relatively mild climate, you know, compared to the coasts and New England. So what that looked like for us, our walls are about double code. Our code minimum wall is an R13 wall. So that's a 2x4 with fiberglass batts here. So we have two by six walls and then we use the zip R6, which is.
09:12
Speaker 2
So zip sheathing is pretty ubiquitous down here. It's like the sheathing with an integrated weather barrier, the green sheathing you see around a lot.
09:19
Speaker 1
Yep.
09:20
Speaker 2
And so they make a version of that has poly ISO on the backside of it. And you can get that in various thicknesses so you get your continuous insulation. But you only have to make one trip around the building. So we did that because it was like a little easier and more normal, you know, down here.
09:37
Speaker 1
So this is. I'm going to pause here just for a second as I wrap my head around.
09:39
Speaker 2
Yeah, the.
09:41
Speaker 1
So. So this is an existing structure. It sounds like you're. You're, you know, pulling off the skin of the building to, you know, so that basically gets stripped down on both sides because you also have to go from 2 by 4 to 2 by 6. When you go to 2 by 6, you just fur out of 2 by 4 wall or do you literally, you know, replace all your studs?
10:06
Speaker 2
We. So our house was 105 years old when we renovated it. And were intending to keep the two by four studs and do more. Do a thicker zip system, you know, thicker continuous insulation.
10:20
Speaker 1
Okay, got it. So you would have just done it on the outside.
10:23
Speaker 2
Yeah. And we looked at doing it on the inside and it was just, you know, very expensive and then. But our wall, it was like there were no jack studs, we had no headers. It was all balloon frame down below the floor. The floor was an inch and a half out of level. So we ended up redoing most of the framing. Like there's very little. It's a renovation, but there's very little of the existing wood that was in the house. You know, we thought were going to Be able to keep a lot more of it than we could. It's kind of like peeling away the onion and it's every layer you get to is rotten. So. So were lucky enough to be able to switch to two by six walls which is like, you know, gives us a little bit stouter frame.
11:02
Speaker 1
Sure.
11:02
Speaker 2
We didn't mind losing the X. We didn't mind losing the two inches of the interior, you know, footprint. And then were able to back off of that continuous insulation a little bit. Which also, you know, kind of saved us some money in our window detailing as well.
11:16
Speaker 1
Okay, got it. So we've got the insulation. Now go to the windows. What did you do window wise?
11:22
Speaker 2
So we used Marvin windows and they're triple pane. And we used a mix of. So were like the first shipment of Marvin Modern which is this line that they put out a couple years ago that are very sleek looking, high performing windows. And then we use some of their Fibrex windows, which is the ultimate. And then we use their wood clad windows because it's a historic preservation. So we tried to match the kind of historic facade with new triple pane casement windows but they have sort of a check rail on them so they look like double hung windows from the outside. We're in a protected historic neighborhood.
12:03
Speaker 1
Got it.
12:03
Speaker 2
So we wanted to kind of. So we, you know, redid the detailing, redid the brackets and the roof detailing and used siding that matched the profile and window casing and trim that match what was there before. But now they're new triple pane windows that look kind of like double hung unless you come up really close to them and inspect them.
12:22
Speaker 1
Awesome. Awesome. All right, cool. Anything else that you did to finish yours?
12:29
Speaker 2
I'd say so then. Yeah. So airtightness is a bit, you know, going for here code,irtightness is 5 air changes per hour. Right. So that's sort of the leakiness of your building. And we had to be at 0.5 so 10x code which is quite tight. And so when you get to that level of airtightness, then your mechanical system, you know, we have a ventilator. So we're constantly bringing fresh air in with an erv, which is basically a box that allows you to constantly bring fresh air and without paying the energy penalty. So it's like pushing stale air out and the heat and moisture energy kind of come to equilibrium in that box. So you're not basically. So it's. You're not paying the same energy penalty if you're just like Open a window for all day long.
13:14
Speaker 3
All.
13:14
Speaker 1
All in.
13:15
Speaker 2
If.
13:15
Speaker 1
Can I ask roughly budget wise, what this, you know, square footage and roughly what it costs.
13:22
Speaker 2
So our house is 2100 square feet. And then I'm in a loft right now. So one of the things that's kind of cool is we moved the insulation from the ceiling up to the roo and we got a nice little bonus space. It's my office now, but we also were able to carve into that like in the kitchen. We can post some photos later, have this big, like sort of splayed light. Well, and then our bathrooms have some skylights. So you kind of steal back some of that space, which was just kind of dumb hot space with our AC in it. It's kind of crazy that we run our air conditioner through, you know, the hottest space that's even hotter than outside, you know, so.
14:00
Speaker 2
So yeah, as far as price, you know, I think a typical, you know, like this was a custom home, right. So it's not the cheapest home you could possibly build. It wasn't, you know, ultra luxury either. But were able, we'd say probably like 5%, you know, somewhere in that like 5 to 8% range. Also, like, were learning a lot. We hustled a lot of materials from friends. So, you know, I think 5% is a good target. And what we're seeing in multifamily is you can actually get down to cost parity with this really, with passive house. Because, you know, as you think about like multifamily building a unit only, you know, might only have insulation on two sides right.
14:44
Speaker 2
On the exterior walls, but then it's got all these shared walls and then there's this economy of scale, you know, in your, you're repeating everything so many times. So. Yeah. And then as the markets mature, you know, we see a lot more passive. House in Seattle, Portland, Vancouver, and then sort of like New York, Chicago, Philly are definitely like ahead of the adoption curve. We're still kind of new at it down here, so we're still learning, our trades are still learning, we're still getting our supply chains up and running. But what we've seen in those other markets is that the costs come down pretty quickly when people start doing it all over the place.
15:21
Speaker 1
So now we're getting to that question, which is, you know, it's obviously not only for single family homes. Talk about some applications where this is, you know, currently working in the United States and elsewhere.
15:33
Speaker 2
Yeah. So were talking before we jumped on the first Passive House certified hospital just finished its certification in Frankfurt, Germany. So I think that's about a 30 million euro project. Pretty cool though. You know, like it's a big benefit of this is the healthy air and the comfort and so having hospital is like probably the first place you'd think of. There's New York, there's some, you know, 40, 50 story condo and apartment buildings going up that are passive house certified. There's schools, museums, you know, it's really all, it runs the gamut, you know, single family homes. It kind of started with single family homes and then affordable housing and really like Europe, Pacific Northwest and the Northeast are where things have taken off over the last 10, 15 years.
16:31
Speaker 1
But that's awesome to hear that there are so many applications and I particularly like, as I think about comfort and you know, you think about, you know, health. There's the, to me, a really natural and relatively hot, relatively, you know, hot market in the US right now is senior living. Are senior living projects looking at this?
16:59
Speaker 2
I would think so. We, we do a lot of like affordable and workforce housing. We did one senior living project maybe like five or six years ago, but it's not something that we're, our firm is focused on. I would be pretty surprised if there wasn't senior living. Looking at it, I know of a couple projects like in Maine and Massachusetts that are doing it. But yeah, totally makes a lot of sense. Senior living anything that's, especially with like legacy owners, you know, where if you've got like a senior living facility that's going to be owning it for 10 years, then you know, you're going to pay back the first cost and then after that it's all just gravy. You know, you're getting all of the health benefits and durability benefits and significantly reduced utility bills.
17:44
Speaker 1
Yeah, it's, it does seem a no brainer particularly if you're getting close to cost parity in, you know, in the construction phase. That, that's usually the thing that causes everybody, you know, all the deals to break down this way is like, yeah, well be nice to do.
18:00
Speaker 2
Yeah, exactly. You know, that's, we work with a lot of like supportive housing provider and so they're going to own the project for 50 or 100 years. So it's like why not get out in front of it? And you know, and it's also, it's starting to become code. A lot of areas are setting it up as a reach code. Massachusetts just set it up as a reach code for multifamily, where cities and municipalities can opt into it. And so I think there's five or six municipalities in Massachusetts that are going to start requiring it for anything over six units, which is pretty exciting. So then that'll help that cost curve come down, too.
18:38
Speaker 1
Yeah, it does. I mean, there's always the initial pushback and frustration and, you know, I'm sure plenty of contractors and plenty of developers are, you know, will be throwing their hands up. But, but as you, if it really fundamentally does, you know, bring the cost curve, you know, if the cost is close.
19:01
Speaker 2
Yeah.
19:01
Speaker 1
Unless you're literally building to sell, you're going to benefit from it if you're the owner.
19:08
Speaker 2
Right. And then there's code is there also to help the end user and protect people and things like that. So it's, I mean, the ROI question is like, it makes sense, Right. As a first thing to think about, but it really is, you know, it's just the first cost of the building. And what about the overall cost of the building over 50 or 100 years is going to be in use? And then that's not even considering, like, the health costs of, you know, childhood asthma and things like that, you know?
19:37
Speaker 1
Yeah, if we're going to put dollars on something like that.
19:41
Speaker 2
Right, exactly.
19:42
Speaker 1
Which does have a financial aspect, but it's also bigger than that. What would you pay to keep your kids, you know, healthy?
19:47
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah, exactly. What's the, what's the return on investment on granite countertops versus your kids?
19:55
Speaker 1
I have a formula. I'll run past you.
19:59
Speaker 2
We'll figure it out.
20:04
Speaker 1
So how do contractors react to this type of building standard and how does this actually impact. The majority of our audience are contractors, general contractors, specialty contractors. How do they react to this type of standard and, you know, how can they help or hurt?
20:24
Speaker 2
Yeah, I think it runs the gamut. You know, like, some contractors are really excited about this and will jump at the chance to get involved. You know, like early adopters or people really trying to, like, push the boundaries of what they're doing and then some, you know, we get a lot of groaning as well. So, you know, it kind of similar to how our firm had worked with you on these projects in Houston was like, we want to create a, like a team that's collaborating around the project. So, like, everybody's involved. You know, if it becomes antagonistic thing where it's like we're forcing this down the contractors throw, then that's not going to work.
21:03
Speaker 3
Right?
21:03
Speaker 2
It's not going to be a successful thing. We all need to be on the same page about it. We all need to want to be doing it for the same reasons. And sometimes that means educating contractor, sometimes that means incentivizing the contractor. Sometimes that means working with a different contractor. You know, really, we want to. We want to work with contractors who want to work on the project and are excited about this kind of like, you know, pushing things forward or whatever you call it.
21:30
Speaker 1
Yeah, it's a mindset. It's a mindset. And I. And you know, as I think about it's this case for all. I don't care what standard we're building to or what code we're building to. It's always the case that your specialty contractors need to become good partners for each other out in the field, thinking about the guy that comes before him and the guy that comes after him and taking care of each other through the course of it. But when you're building to this type of standard, especially when it's new, what are the things that contractors would do that, you know, maybe it's cutting corners, but how does a contractor accidentally, or maybe not so accidentally undermine, you know, hitting this type of standard?
22:16
Speaker 2
Yeah, I mean, airtightness is really the tricky one, especially in our market where, like, our existing codes are pretty loose. And so it's not really. There's not a lot of, you know, buffers. Like, there aren't requirements around airtightness testing necessarily that are getting followed. And then just the code minimum is pretty loose. You know, adding more insulation, that's in your spec, that's very easy to price. Right. It's easy to detail. That's kind of, you know, no biggie. The mechanical system, same thing, right. Like, it might cost a little bit more, but the mechanical engineer is kind of dealing with the design and the installer is able to, you know, handle the install and execute. Airtightness is tricky because it's like there's so many trades, right?
23:02
Speaker 2
You've got your electrician, your plumber, your H Vac guy, you know, random, you know, subs who are coming out. And so it's like you've gotta that and that's where it really is on the contractor and where it's tricky and where I have a lot of empathy for the GC because this is a thing where they're. They're already having to, you know, kind of babysit a lot, right? And like, you know, keep an eye on everybody and make sure Everything's happening the way it should be and the way it's drawn and working well. And now they also have to make sure that nobody's poking any holes in the building without air sealing it or that they're. You know, it's like when you're running electrical conduit, you know, it's one whole, one thing, right. With, with air sealing.
23:45
Speaker 2
Because if you bundle all your conduit, put it through one big hole, it's really hard to air seal that. But if you just poke one wire through, you can seal it really well. So just like some different ways of thinking about stuff, some different ways of training. It's really about communication at the fundamental level. Like, like the doing is not too tricky. It's the communicating and making sure everybody's on the same page and everybody understands why we're doing this.
24:09
Speaker 1
Yeah. As the designer on the project, are you actually out there doing any training, you know, helping, or are you training the GC how to train or how does that work?
24:18
Speaker 2
Yeah, we do especially on like the single family stuff. We're a little more involved, you know, on the ground, like with our house, I mean part like as our house too. But we really wanted it to be a kind of like open source case study. Right. Like were have the opportunity to do this thing that was a little new. We were working with a builder who has a friend and who was really into it. And so we hosted, I don't know, probably like 15 sort of open houses where we had Huber come and do a zip install showing how to air seal and detail around windows. We had Marvin do a install. We did a bunch of blower door tests.
24:55
Speaker 2
We rented a fog machine from Rock and Roll Rentals and filled the house up with smoke and then positively pressurized it so you could see where all the air leakage was because there was smoke pouring out.
25:04
Speaker 1
Oh, that's fascinating.
25:05
Speaker 2
It's really fun. And just like bought a lot of beer and barbecue and invited everybody we knew over to see it. So trying to show that it wasn't, it's not too weird or too crazy. But yeah, again, like a lot of collaboration with our builder and with our trades, which was really, it's really fun. You know, as long as everybody is like into it and on the same page, it's like, it's super rewarding for me because I learned a ton from the trades and our GC about how the things are actually getting installed, the sequencing and that helps me be a better designer. And then that all kind of comes full circle.
25:42
Speaker 1
Yeah, that makes total sense. I think so Brought in Stacy. I know we have some questions that we want to get to, but I just want to say before we do that I think you've done a really great job of taking this thing that like a lot of these things, Trey, it's like it's new. It feels a little green or annoying to some people. Right. Like, you know, like if you're not on the, if you're not like thinking sustainably, it can sound just sort of like, oh God, you know, like we're doing more. Yeah, but I think you've done a really nice job of making it easy to understand. And, and like you said, like, you know, making it not weird or scary. You know, like it's. This is not that strange.
26:34
Speaker 2
It's.
26:34
Speaker 1
There are just a handful of things that we're doing here to focus on. I love the yeti cooler analogy. Air tightness and recognizing that if we can focus on that, we can dramatically reduce our energy consumption, which has just that. Who doesn't win? Aside from utility companies when we do that? You know, that's a, you know.
26:57
Speaker 2
They, they win too though, because it's. Then the house kind of acts as a battery and so they're not their peak. You know, it's really expensive for them to have this like really variable load. And so we can kind of squish those peaks with more of these buildings because you can pre cool them or preheat them and then at those times when they'd have to.
27:14
Speaker 1
Great point.
27:14
Speaker 2
Plants that are super expensive. So we see a lot of utilities buying in or some utilities. Some utilities that are a little more forward thinking than others. But yeah, we love it. Our firm is now only doing passive houses for custom homes and we're using it as kind of a sandbox. Those have a little bit more customization and wiggle room, but we can learn a lot from them. And then we can track those lessons learned up to our multifamily and commercial projects and see, okay, we know we can do this easily. We know it's not going to cost a lot. Let's track that up and start getting contractor buy in on the bigger stuff.
27:46
Speaker 1
I can't, I can't wait to start seeing it on some of the bigger stuff that I'm involved in. And you know, if anybody's watching, thinking about, you know, a strong multifamily quality architect, that's the space that I've worked with these guys I've Never personally experienced a more participatory and, you know, stronger partnering mindset from an architect. Just really going out of their way to make it easy for construction to occur and, you know, communicating openly and often. So they're a great pick if anybody's looking for one. So, Stacy, what do we have for questions? I want to try to get at least a couple in here before we wrap up.
28:33
Speaker 3
Sure. Dennis has a great question. How does the design work with the new Covid Air requirements? Most builds are going to more air movement and air changes.
28:46
Speaker 2
Yeah. And Chad, thank you so much. I was getting goosebumps there. You know, we really strive for that and try to. And we've loved working with you and your team and that the whole idea of, you know, like a high trust relationship and everybody being in it for the project has really changed how we think about it, so.
29:03
Speaker 1
Oh, thanks, man. That's great to hear.
29:05
Speaker 2
Appreciate your work. Yeah. So it's essentially like it's perfect with COVID requirements because we know how much we're ventilating. You know, most homes don't actually bring in fresh air. They're just. The analogy I've heard is kind of when you flush a toilet and the water just swirls around. Right. So. So we're actually bringing in fresh air 24 7, meeting our ASHRAE 622 requirements, filtering all that air with. We have a MERV 16 filter box and then MERV 13 filters on our dehumidifier and our ERV. So you're catching all those virus particulate and controlling your fresh air. So your CO2 stays down, you're breathing well, you're sleeping well. So it really pairs well with all the COVID error requirements.
29:55
Speaker 3
Thank you. So what is Source zero? How can you explain that?
30:01
Speaker 2
So Source zero is kind of an add on to the Passive House certification where. So we're doing an energy model, like a 3D, you know, pretty robust energy model that Phius, the Passive House Institute US is vetting through many rounds of review. And within that energy model, if you have more production than use, then you know, and then you execute that in the actual project. Then you get this Source zero tag. So it's basically saying that the project. And so that's. Sorry, it produces as much as your house. And then there's a. Essentially depending on your utility, there's a metric for like how much transmission loss you're getting. So that's why it's Source zero instead of site zero. That makes sense.
30:47
Speaker 1
Got it. Got It, I think, you know, I'm glad that there are people like you and obviously, I'm sure lots of colleagues out there who are, you know, really working to take these, you know, high minded concepts about reducing our carbon footprint and creating more sustainability and you know, reducing overall energy consumption and really turning them into practical application and asking yourself, how do we get it to actually happen? And, and I love hearing that as a firm you're only doing this type of design. And, and you know, that's awesome. I mean that's, you know, with single family. I heard that part of it too. But with single family, this is the only type of, you know, custom single family design that you're doing.
31:40
Speaker 1
And I, I think, you know, that's how you know that there is momentum behind a thing and that the thing isn't so pie sky, you know, cost prohibitive, painful that it won't ever get legs. So I'm sure there are hurdles. I'm sure there are going to be still projects for which this doesn't make sense and where, you know, people push pause and say, yeah, we're not going to be shooting for passive house certification here. It just doesn't make sense for, but if overall it moves the needle in the right direction, I think that's, you know, that's when again, it's a win for everybody.
32:21
Speaker 2
Yeah, for us it was like, you know, we did a handful of them and having lived in one. And then Scott, one of the founders of our firm, lives in a very close to passive house home that he built from his family. And it's just like, okay, this is, there's no other way to do this. It's just got to be our best practice. And so if we just plant a flag then we're, you know, we're hoping that people will come to us who want to do this and really, you know, it's like the energy, we kind of came at it from the energy efficiency and the sustainability side, but after having lived in them and feeling like the health benefits and the comfort benefits, like, that's really where it's at.
32:58
Speaker 2
You know, I think we do it for these reasons, regardless of the other stuff.
33:03
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, no, that, and that was, that's exactly what I said. You know, it's like to everybody's benefit, probably most of all to the occupants of the space, which is, that's how, you know, it's a really, you know, it's not just to meet some code requirement, you know, goal there's, it's just fundamentally better. So it's great stuff. Last question. Do you do. Where will you take on projects? Are you only designing in Texas?
33:30
Speaker 2
No, we do. We do work all over the country. We're primarily in Texas, Austin, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio. But we have done projects in California and Pennsylvania, Colorado, New England. So we'll go anywhere. We love it. I mean, it's all, it's a new challenge everywhere. Working in new climate, new space, and that's the fun thing for us. And then I saw the tax credit question in the chat. So with the Inflation Reduction act, you get tax credits now for Energy Star and Zero Energy Ready Home. So it's, you know, the Zero Energy home is a higher tier. So if you certify with Passive House Institute us, that's safe harbor for both of those. So you automatically get Zero Energy Ready Home, epa, Indoor Air Quality plus and watersense certifications when you certify with vs. Nice.
34:23
Speaker 2
So you're, you can get those tax credits which can really add up, especially in a multifamily or a common lot. Right. Like $5,000 a unit can. Can add up.
34:31
Speaker 1
That adds up fast. No doubt. That's. That's great to know. Very cool. All right, good. Stacy, anything else on your mind?
34:39
Speaker 3
I was just curious, do you have any videos you could share? I'd love to include like a visual for our follow up email to our viewers.
34:48
Speaker 2
Sure, yeah, we can, I'm sure we can dig something up.
34:51
Speaker 1
All right, awesome. Yeah, send it. Maybe post it in the chat here even and you know, send it to Stacy. That way, you know, regardless whether you're so. You know what though? Darn it. People need to be on our mailing list, so please email us to be added to our weekly mailing list. Email Stacy H. Steeltocom.com and we'll get that stuff over to you. The tray shares.
35:18
Speaker 2
Awesome. Yeah, we did a few videos with the build show during construction that I can share. Was pretty fun.
35:24
Speaker 3
Awesome.
35:25
Speaker 2
Nice.
35:26
Speaker 1
All right, cool. Any parting comments, Trey, before we wrap it up?
35:30
Speaker 2
No, just thank you guys for doing this and for having these conversations. I've really enjoyed getting into your podcast over the last couple months. And also, you know, big shout out to Chad if anyone's doing a multi family project, bring him in on the team. Been a huge asset to us.
35:47
Speaker 1
They are not my customer and I'm not paying. Trey. It's. I don't know, I don't know what else. I was brought in by the developer and you know, I've been pretty hard on their guys, but they're, I mean, really, I'm hard on everybody on the project. But, but the project is this team is that we're working on together is really clicking. And, and it's anyway, lots of.
36:08
Speaker 2
Thank you.
36:08
Speaker 1
I appreciate that. Clearly I don't know how to take a compliment. I'll. Trey, we'll have to catch up again soon. I'll be, I'll be in touch next time I run down to Austin.
36:21
Speaker 2
Way great. Appreciate it and be fun. Take care.
36:26
Speaker 1
All right, Stacy, let's do a little housekeeping and talk about next week. So next week, same time, same channel for episode number 41 with Tim Klimchock. Tim is a, I don't know, maybe 25 year or 30 year accountant. He was a partner at an accounting firm for many of those years. Fantastic book of business, all serving the AEC community. And he recently left and started a really his own little consulting gig helping to work, you know, just on the consulting end of getting contracting companies, financial houses in order, which has been, I work with Tim on some of my client engagements. He's doing an awesome job and I really wanted to pull him into this discussion. He's going to talk about the type of relationship that the contractor should strive to have with their accounting firms.
37:25
Speaker 1
And I think there's an opportunity in there to, for business owners, for CFOs and controllers as well as our, you know, obviously anybody else in our regular audience to learn. But this might be one where you drag somebody in the CFO suite or you know, the controller suite into this show and have them listen in because, you know, Tim built an amazing book of business really based on the principles he's going to share with us, which is going to be cool. So, so there's that for next week. Obviously we're always asking you to join our mailing list and be sure to catch us on all of our platforms, obviously live on LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, but then be sure to check out our recorded shows on Apple podcasts, Spotify and YouTube. Every week we get those uploaded right away.
38:16
Speaker 1
So if you missed the show, you will catch it later on same day. Stacy, anything else that I'm forgetting from a housekeeping standpoint?
38:25
Speaker 3
I don't know if we can announce it yet, but we will be attending one A conference soon live. So maybe next week we can see if we can get permission for that announcement, I think.
38:40
Speaker 1
Yeah. Okay, we'll wait till next week. We'll wait till next week. But, yeah, we are gonna do our first roadshow. We're gonna we're gonna be live at a conference this May in the D.C. area. And we look forward to that experience and getting it under our belt and then maybe kind of making a thing of it, doing it on a regular basis and checking out where some of the coolest conversations are happening in the industry and going and joining those conferences for a live show. So I look forward to that. That's a great point, Stacy. And we'll have more to share as those details become formal. So. Awesome. Anything else?
39:15
Speaker 3
That's it. Have a great day.
39:17
Speaker 1
Have a great day. We'll talk to everybody soon. Please tune in next week.
39:22
Speaker 3
See y.
