It's around the house. In this episode we've got one of my favorite interviews we just did with my buddy Andrew Pace, green building expert. And this is gonna be a lot of fun. But here's the thing, it can't all fit into the radio show cause it was over an hour. So make sure you hit our premium membership over there where you can catch the whole thing commercial free and ten days free for that. So head over to aroundthehouseonline.com and sign up there. This is an interview you don't wanna miss.
And we even talk whiskey around the house shows brought to you by pyramid heating and cooling serving in Oregon, the Portland metro area and Bend, Oregon. They are your one stop shop for heating and cooling and indoor air quality. Head to pyramidheating.com Oregon CCB 59382. When it comes to remodeling and renovating your home, there is a lot to. Know, but we've got you covered. This is around the house.
Welcome to the round the house show, the next generation of home improvement brought to you my friends over at monument grills. To find out more, head to monumentgrills.com. and we have a fabulous show today. One of my good buddies that every time he comes on here, we get off on sidetracks. We have a lot of fun talking about everything, healthy home and maybe a little whiskey, even if we can slide that into the conversation. Andrew Pace, Andy Pace, my friend, welcome back to around the house.
Thank you, Eric. I'll tell you what, I've been looking forward to this conversation since I found out about it again because, yeah, you and I always get into these great conversations. A little bit of some side tangents that are always enjoyable. But this is fantastic. Great, great to see you again. Ah, great to have you on here. It's been way too long. Let's talk about you for a minute. For all the new people out there, you've got the green design center.
You are one of my probably two people that I reach out to and I'm like, okay, I got to figure a healthy solution out here. And usually get my emails or LinkedIn messages going, what do we do about this? And it's always something strange. Yeah, thats actually my career has been made on answering those tough questions quickly.
I work with people all around the world who have allergies, asthma, chemical sensitivities, mold sensitivities, pretty much anybody who has an immune system disorder that doesnt allow them to live in the current state of our home buildings. And so anything that could cause a reaction to for somebody would be chemical, off gassing, mold, bacteria, you name it. So I help folks remodel, design and build healthy homes.
And there are so many, I'm going to use this because it's politically incorrect and I don't care because that's my style. But there are so many old wives tales out there of how to deal with things that are completely the wrong answers, only answer to do stuff. And it's shocking where people are like, oh, go do this. And it's like, what are you talking about making that worse? Like that?
Its funny you mentioned this right away because the hot topic lately has been if your house has a lot of chemicals coming from the building materials, what you should do is do whats called a bakeout where you heat up the house and that excites all the chemicals and the materials and it allows them to off gas faster.
And ill tell you folks, thats the absolute worst thing you want to do in your house because yes, you will get more chemical release, but you also get new chemical compounds being formed that wouldn't be there unless you heated it up to that temperature. Not to mention this is only effective if you do this at 100 degrees for two weeks straight. And by that time, you have now voided every warranty for every building material you use. So that's good on the list, right? Exactly. Exactly.
And the funny thing is, is maybe all of those plastics in your house that finally the oils on the outside have finally off gassed and they're slowed down, you are hitting the control alt delete restart on those as well. Right? Common sense says that for sure.
We know that a lot of building materials that are used, let's say materials that finish or cure on site, paints, stains, adhesives, caulking materials, those can off gas anywhere from about two and a half to four and a half years after they reach a full cure. Other materials like plywood and plastics, the off gassing never really is fully complete, but the majority of it will release within those first few years.
If you now expose it to this new temperature that its not supposed to be at, it can then start the process all over again. So, yeah, I hear that all the time from customers. I think there was an article written about 25 years ago by a scientist named Hal Levin, wrote this article on how you can do a bakeout, but then he came back out with an article right afterwards saying, but don't do it because you can't do this effectively in a home without causing a whole host of problems.
So don't even try, Evan. I think the only thing you might do is kill some bedbugs, and that's probably. You might do that. Yeah. It'll certainly increase your energy costs for a while. It just. It's a bad idea, Evan. Oh, man. I can. I just. I'm thinking of the. The different systems in your house that are gonna go sideways with that, and that's just not good. Not good at all. But it's the same thing about.
On social media posts out there, people just going, oh, yeah, just take that bleach and wipe down all the mold, and you'll be good to go. And you can cover it right up and go right over the top of it. And I'm just like, I don't care what you're using, guys. Let's just put the bleach away. I don't really have a good cause for bleach to be used. There's so many better products out there, even if it's on a hard surface. Right.
I think that we get to the situation where, because somebody does something for a living, they can call themselves an expert. I hear this all the time. To your point, contractor says, oh, yeah, just bleach the wood. It'll be fine. I've been doing this for 30 years. I've never had a problem. That's my favorite line. Okay. My response always is, I've been golfing for 30 years, and I'm still absolutely horrible. Just because you do something doesn't make you an expert at it.
Just because somebody gives you money for something you do does not make you an expert. There are so many of these old, as you say, wives tales that people just assume work, otherwise they wouldn't be still saying this. There are so many of these issues that keep on getting perpetuated, and these ideas, they do not work. They cause bigger problems. Bleach especially makes mold worse. So do never bleach mold, Joe. Yeah. And what's bad is there's some.
I think there's even some EPA documentation out there saying, oh, it works good on. On non porous surfaces. But I'm like, why make it worse? Maybe it does kill some of it. There's, like I said, so many better products, and I just wish the government would take that page down, because it's misinformation in my mind. It's just information in today's consumers. And this is not to rip on anybody in particular, but generally speaking, people skim information.
Yeah. So you download this sheet on how to get rid of mold. Oh, it says, I can use bleach. Okay. I can use bleach. It says you can use bleach on non porous surfaces. You didn't read that next line. Yeah. And so I would rather err on the side of safe, and let's just not talk about it at all. Let's talk about what works in everything, and you don't have to worry about it, Evan. Yeah. And there's so many good preventative measures out there.
Stuff that you got me lined up with out there in the past with. With stuff is. Is okay. You got the problem fixed, but you're still going to coat something over the top of it. Don't run down, and get the hardware store primer that says it's good for mold. Go get something like call well or something. And I got that from you. Yes. Yeah. And that the Callwell product has been an absolute lifesaver.
The. The true method of remediating a mold situation without going down into a deep rabbit hole here. But the true method is to. They open up the wall. They do containment. They open up the walls. You're vacuuming, you're scraping, you're sanding, you're cleaning. Then when it's dry, you encapsulate, you put a coating on so that this situation can happen again. Call well is a little bit different. Call well.
After you encapsulate and you vacuum to get rid of the loose material, you literally paint two coats over the moldy wood, and that's it. You're done. It saves 75% of the labor. And the way it does, it's not by using some toxic science, scientific, noxious chemical. It uses lime. It uses calcium hydroxide, natural mineral. And it raises the ph of the surface so high that it kills mold on contact, and it stays active for a minimum of five years, which is unlike anything on the market.
Yeah. PH is science. And when it gets to point where it's gonna not. Nothing's gonna grow on it, you've created something without off gassing and sending in your healthy air off into the. Into the stratosphere with bad contaminants. And we've got. We've literally have hundreds and hundreds of years of. Of experience using lime. Farmers use lime lime wash the barns to get rid of the mold. Villages throughout Europe since the plague have been using lime on their.
On their homes to essentially stop the spread of. Of disease. So we know it works. So that. Another old wives tale, if it's not broke, don't fix it. I believe that one. This works. It's a natural material that works. Let's just stick with that. Its basic science. Lets go ahead and use it. Its something we learned in fifth grade. And it works. Its so smart.
And I think topically, because its not been a bad hurricane season for most, but weve had a lot of storms on the east coast and across the south that have been really hitting people that maybe have been in homes for five years that have never had to deal with water intrusion issues, whether its in a first floor, a crawl space, or a basement.
And these are some really good tried and true ways to deal with it because so many people, I see it on social media, hey, I had 18 inches of water in my basement and it's finished. So I'm going to take the drywall out and put new drywall on. Am I good? And it's just like, you're not dealing with this correctly. And it's, it's one of the things that we see here in the Pacific Northwest because we have a lot of basements and crawl spaces.
House flippers go in and take an unfinished basement that's been unfinished for 30 years because of water intrusion issues. And they go in there and say, cool, let's go add another thousand square feet to the house. They finish it off incorrectly, and people move in and eight to ten weeks are going, why am I coughing? Why am I not feeling well? Right.
And then you go down and start peeling back some drywall and see, wow, white on this side, black on this side, and it starts to get to be a hot mess. It comes down to that we just talked about before, this is the way we've always done it. So let's just continue to do it this way and everything will be just fine. Whichever side of the coin somebody is on about climate, the climates, the fact of the matter is we realize that weather patterns are changing.
And then areas of the country that used to get a lot of rain may get less, may get more. And this has a cyclical as well. We see this every ten to 15 years. I know here in my state here in Wisconsin, about every ten to 15 years, we get these summers of absolutely torrential rainfalls. And then a summer like now, which we haven't had rain for two weeks, it's just, it's, this is what happens.
But it's always safe to err on the side of, let's protect from the moisture because at some point in the hundred year existence of this home, moisture is going to be an issue. So why wouldn't you protect against it? Evan? Yeah. So simple. And the science is out there. The materials are out there to do this correctly. And I just like to see people doing it right because depending on the location as there are some crazy rules for basements and stuff across the country.
What is that in Colorado where they get frosty and they've got to have an adjustable floor by six inches on the. There's a lot of weird things that happen that all of our friends down in Florida and California are going, what are you talking about? Right? Really? There's not one rule that fits everything, but there is one rule for controlling moisture, making sure that that is a dry space down there and not growing mold.
Preston and then you throw into this whole equation the fact that in every state you have a different set of building codes, energy codes. You bring up Boulder, Colorado. Im working with a customer in Boulder right now, a large contractor, and the things he has to do just to meet the energy codes, literally causing health issues for his customers because there's the unintended consequence of trying to do the right thing.
And this is what we're in right now, in the middle of code officials around the country trying to make our homes more energy efficient. I understand that everybody loves energy efficiency. Our bottom line, our wallets love energy efficiency. However, if it's happening in a way that's making the occupants less healthy, let's reevaluate what we're doing.
And so why would we use spray foam throughout the entire house if we know spray foam is problematic for a majority of people who have asthma and then others who just don't like chemical off gassing. And so let's look at these things and say what makes sense, not for necessarily just the environment, but for us who live within the environment. We should be working this together. Yeah, it's almost backwards right now.
It's like the energy efficiency right now is graded higher on the scale of building officials than the health of the human living inside the house by like four to one. And then people like, you have to go back and go, okay, we have this mess that was created, that was building code was followed in this construction process. But how do we go back in and get fresh air? How do we get this stuff cleaned up? How do we make this happen? And that's a tough battle. It's 100% avoidable.
And when you ask the code officials if we can do something different because we're dealing with health of the occupant issues, they'll say, yep, sorry, it won't meet the code. So there are builders now that I work with around the country. And I won't name names, but they're looking at this. They're saying, we're going to submit based upon the codes, but we're going to build what we know works. What we know was healthier.
And you got to be careful with that because you don't, certainly don't want them to cheapen up the process to pad their own pockets. But they're the ones who have to deal with the angry homeowner when they come back and say, listen, everybody in the house is getting sick. We're not getting enough fresh air. The material that are supposedly eco friendly are all off gassing toxins. And then now it's the builder's fault. Why did you put us in this situation?
So the builders are trying to nip that in the bud and say, here's a better way to do things. Most importantly, I want to give you a home that is aesthetically pleasing, meets the budget, it's going to last a very, very long time and is healthy for you and your family. Yeah, amen. And that's one of those things. And it's one thing that whenever I've been teaching seminars as far as home tech and healthy home stuff that I do, and I haven't done as many over the last years.
Cause I've been doing the media thing like this. But I always brought up a thing. When you're dealing with contractors and you're building new homes, you should be doing air testing before and after. Before you hand it over to your consumer, to that end customer so they know where you left it. So there's a baseline. And quite frankly, if you start seeing some bad air results, you go, oh, what product is causing this?
Because when misses Smith comes in with her cheap wayfarer couch or whatever that came from, wherever that's all filled up and off gassing for the next two years, it's not on you, it's on them. And you can help. You have at least a baseline to protect yourself, at least when the house was handed over. It's one of those things where some of the builders we work with will say, if what we don't know can't hurt us. And the more you want to know, the more you need to know.
And then it opens up a whole Pandora's box of issues. Sometimes it does. But I'll tell you, if there was a way, and there is a way, using different methods of error testing, to actually do it at certain steps of the construction process, to say, at this point, we're good to go from this point back, everything that we've done is good. And now we know between this checkpoint and this checkpoint, something has caused this massive raise in the VOC levels in the house or the formaldehyde levels.
We can then look back through the construction schedule and the materials to say, it must have been one of these two or three things. And then those are obviously things we'll avoid on the next job, of course. But I've been involved in houses throughout the country where I get brought into somewhat remediate the chemical issues in the home. And, well, look at these air tests.
A house thats just been completed before the family moves in is testing out between seven and 15,000 grams per liter of vocs. Wow. And these are supposedly homes that are built to green built standards. So people say, how can that be? Understand that all these greenbuilt standards are predicated on the EPA requirements for vocs. Vocs, or volatile organic compounds, are chemicals that can contribute to outdoor air pollution. This is the definition of what a VoC is?
Yeah. Inside of a home, there's not enough nitrogen uv to create low level smog. So you look at vocs and say some are dangerous. Yes, some are dangerous for humans. A lot of them are completely harmless. But if you use materials that might be considered zero VoC to meet the regulations, it doesn't mean that there's zero toxin there. There are over 92,000 chemicals used in the production of building materials and home goods. Out of that, a couple thousand of them are considered vocs.
The rest of them are either not regulated as vocs because they don't contribute to outdoor air pollution, or they're not volatile organic compounds at all. They're other things. And so I don't understand why we just, why do we strive to do low VoC when if I peel the skin off of an orange for breakfast, I've just released 850 grams per liter of vocs. It's not going to poison me, it's not going to hurt me. Yeah. It's nourishment.
So we need to stop chasing these numbers and actually look at the details, how these materials are made, how our houses are built. So we're not relying on some esoteric score to tell us thumbs up or thumb down. Yeah, I was doing some research the other day and I saw that there are eleven. I think it's current. It's within a year or so current, which is always hard when you're doing research. But it looks like there's eleven states in the US that don't have statewide building codes.
And so they're more city or, or county or township or whatever. And that's part of the problem, too. Like, I got a buddy being, having a house built down outside of Phoenix, Arizona, and I've been watching this thing get built, and I've been, just because he lives up in the Pacific Northwest my way, and I'm watching this thing get built and I'm like, are you kidding me? We couldn't do that. So great example.
The house has been open air outside in Phoenix, and for the last four weeks, they've had this crazy windstorms and stuff that's been going on down there. There's no windows or doors in it, but they've already got the drywall and it's textured but not primed. It's just been sitting there soaking in whatever. Yeah. Oh, boy, that is, oh, that's scary. And I know people say, yeah, but Arizona, it's a dry climate, folks. Mold exists everywhere.
It doesn't have to be just in the Pacific Northwest or, or in Atlanta, Georgia. Mold is everywhere. And so once it gets onto a surface like plaster or an acrylic based texture or what have you, that becomes a food source, and eventually that mold will come back and itll come back very, very strongly.
Its interesting because, yeah, there are a lot of locations that dont have building codes, and then theres the other, on the flip side of the coin, theres a lot of locations that have building codes, but they dont have code officials to actually enforce them. So its like, what good is having them? And we all know building code is basically the bare minimum. Absolutely.
That's what you need to hit just to get your permit and to make sure you can get a certificate of occupancy that you built to those standards. It's the bare minimum. And if there's nobody there to actually do any inspections, then why even have them? Yeah, it's been interesting. I've been working on a few projects around here. I'm not going to say what part of the state where it's at.
And, and I did helping out some friends and my brother and knocking stuff out and inspector walks in and goes, looks around, looks good, and heads out. And I'm like, you didn't even walk in the room that I went. I'm following the rule of the lock. And that's the thing with building codes, right? You're like on section this, it says this, but four paragraphs later in my instance, it actually goes against that. So you have two rules. Which one are you going to use.
And this is international building code and it's like absolute insanity. So it's hard to navigate. But we sent, we had to literally ask five or six questions because we're below the right permits on this. And the building department had to come back and say, let me get with the rest of the people in the office because I don't actually know that answer. So you are probably one of the few people who wants to ask those questions because you want to know for sure.
There's a lot of the people in the industry would not want to ask the question because it's like calling the IR's instead asking them about your taxes. I don't want to open up that Pandora's box. And so if nobody, hey, if it's not mentioned, if it's not notated, I guess we're good. Move on. Yeah. These were all just conflicts within code where you're like, ah, that says that. But that says the other thing. Which one is it? Yeah, yeah.
And then look at an existing home when you're going to be buying an existing home and hiring a home inspector. I've had two situations now just in the last couple of weeks where people have come to me saying, we hired a home inspector when we bought this monumental dream home. And within a year of moving in, everybody got sick. I have one in particular where her kids developed these very rare neurological issues because of mold exposure.
And it's all because the inspection never, never dug deep enough to figure out if there's a mold problem in the place. Like the Carolinas, where mold is prevalent. But also they're building methods. Absolutely stink. And sorry to my South Carolina friends. You need things like vapor control barriers, people. Just because you don't do it doesn't mean that it's the right thing.
Yeah. So in any event, I think that we could avoid all of this if we just had a way to educate the professionals themselves so they know what to look for. Yeah, yeah. Such a great call because it's crazy. Like great example out at a project I've been working on, my brother, out on the Oregon coast out here, building code said okay, its an old fifties house we went through and we removed most of the material that was moldy because it had literally had water leaks for 20 years inside of it.
It was known as the Blue Tarp House in there. And so we went through and probably reframed 50% of that just to start over in that. But going through it, when we put stuff back in, we did vapor barriers in the right spot. We put in a rockwool insulation in the walls when we reinstallated just to do stuff that was going to be as durable as we could moving forward, we used five, eight drywall inside instead of half inch.
Nice. Here's the thing, and this is one of the things that I've noticed with new drywall, for instance, and this is the light drywall that we're seeing. If you talk to firefighters and people that are out there testing this stuff, this new lightweight drywall drops down on a fire about ten minutes earlier than it ever did because they've aerated the drywall mixture so the screws don't hold.
So technically, the fire departments are saying, hey, when you're putting up drywall on a ceiling, you should either be using glues and adhesive or twice the amount of screws. Wow. Just to keep the ceiling up there. So. And this is the problem that exists. How does that information get disseminated to the trades and then make it into a set of plans and have to be dealt with by the code officials? Because we also see the same thing with TGI choice.
And firefighters will tell you, I don't want to enter a home that's fully engulfed if we know it's TGI because it's going to collapse. Same with trusses. Trusses where you have the metal plates. Five minutes of flame contact on those plates, and they go curl, curl, curl. And then you've got all these sticks there and you see these now in new construction where they actually built those truss joists for four systems.
And I've talked to a few firefighters here on this show where they walked into a room. They're walking to a room and they could see that the carpet was holding up and it was the tax strip that had still held on the outside, but the center had floored. So they were basically going to walk into a room that was a trampoline, that the tax strip was still holding the carpet, but that had actually fallen in.
Wow. And so, and the crazy thing is, and again, this comes down to building code, that if those trust manufacturers put two screws in those joints, holding them together, you wouldn't have that issue. It would still hold together during that time. But that would be such a simple code thing. And take a trust manufacturer an extra two minutes of trust and put those in there. But it just doesn't happen. Doesn't happen. And this always makes me think about the way homes used to be built. Right.
With. With full cut dimensional lumber. Yeah. And why these homes, some of these homes still exist today is because of how well they are built with such good materials. Yeah, they had to deal with, with lead and asbestos and so forth, and we know how to deal with that now. The methods of how they did things and the materials that they used last so much longer than what we have now. I think part of it was the homes were insulated, they could breathe, they could dry out.
We weren't trapping everything in. I think that's where we started to go sideways. If I was going to make a guess on this, and I'm not a scientist by any means, but it seems like as soon as we started throwing up tar paper in places and plastic on the inside, and before we put the drywall up and started making all these mold sandwiches, trying to be more efficient, thats when these house things tended to go sideways.
Yeah. When I give presentations on this subject, I always talk about how the industry really changed vastly in the early seventies with the OPEC oil embargo, and it caused commercial buildings and residential builders to start tightening up spaces to save energy because energy costs were so high in the early seventies. In the eighties, we had that mentality of keeping things nice and tight. But then was the explosion in synthetics and plastics. Yep. And so through the eighties.
So side note, if you're gonna be buying an existing home, I would avoid homes built in the eighties. Yep. That's just, that's a general thought. Yeah, there are exceptions, but that's generally speaking, and that's because at that point it was like a science fair. Like what are we gonna do to make this home better performing and using all these new, exciting plastic materials? They don't breathe, they bend in the wind, they bend with temperature, sway.
They don't have the same characteristics of what we've known for hundreds of years. And then in the nineties and two thousands, with the energy codes really starting to push builders into getting rid of every leak in the home whatsoever. Now we have these toxic boxes that we've built that the, that stale air can't get out, and you wonder why people were getting sick.
So now finally, we're to the point where the healthy home is starting to take off as a talking point now nationally, because I think we are learning from those mistakes. Yeah. So I got a question for you here, and this is a great one, and I have my opinions, but I'm curious to ask the expert here, what do you think about OSB versus plywood, for instance? Boy oh boy, I know it's right. It's like one. Is it right? So OSB. If you're just looking at regular OSB, not like zip wall systems. Right.
For sheathing. But if you're just looking at traditional OSB, the big downside to it is that because there's so many exposed edges of the wood and there's a lot of adhesive used to, when they apply this back or push this back together again after shredding it, that there's much more of a chance, especially of the edges of moisture getting in and swelling. And then it turns into a, a structural issue, it turns into a mold issue. And then you use a CDX plywood in lieu of that.
And that eliminates a lot of that problem. But then its double the cost. And so then I look at it and say something like a zip wall system, which has that WRB built in, that green coating thats built in, which if thats done correctly with the tapes and so forth, is probably double the cost of OSB as well. But in any of these situations, this is just one part of the, of the entire system. It's one component. So one. It's one, it's one cup of water in the lake. Right, right. Exactly.
And so what you do on the outside of that, on the inside of that, this is where it makes a difference. If you have an air gap or rain screen between the sheathing and your siding, that's going to eliminate 95% to 99% of the moisture wicking from condensation and wind driven rain. So then it doesn't matter what you have back there in the sense of water damage, because you've now stopped it and you've given a path for the water to go. Evan. Exactly.
And then also keep in mind then, from a chemical standpoint, whether it's OSB or plywood, they still have to use adhesives to push them all together to glue it together. These adhesives that are being used now for moisture resistance exterior grade use are not urea formaldehyde based, urea formaldehyde base adhesives can only be used interior because they're not moisture resistant. For moisture resistant OSB and plywood, they use what's called phenyl formaldehyde or phenolic resin.
And this resin is about 200 times less likely to ever become airborne. Matter of fact, in the 30 years of, in this business and testing materials, I have never had a phenolic resin based panel ever off gas formaldehyde. Nice. So I recommend it all the time. Yeah. So great example I just made for my around the house northwest tv show. I just made outdoor, for my outdoor kitchen, I made countertops out of paper stone. Nice. Love that stuff. It's awesome. It's great. And that is.
That's the original phenolic based panel materials. This is, if you remember, if those of us who are old enough remember bakelite from way back in the day. Bakelite. These for handles for pots, too. Yeah. And then, like, what's on top of the electrical poles, the wires wrapped around. Yeah. So basically it's layers of paper soaked in a phenolic resin. And this is what is done now for paper, stone and rich light and all these other companies that make wonderful products.
Yeah. It's completely inert. It's incredibly dense, very durable. You can cut directly on it. And while you might scratch the surface a bit, that could be renewed. No big deal. Yep. But it won't dull your expensive knives. Yeah. So it's a great product. And I can use it outside. It's heat rated, so I can use it up to, I think it's heat rated up to like 375 degrees. So if I put it next to a barbecue or next to my outdoor pizza oven, I'm not ruining it. It's just so good.
And I can cut it like wood so I don't have to have a fabricator do it, which I think is the other part. And the thing I liked about Paperstone is the stuff I got was FSC certified. So it's clean. It's clean. And I've used that material for exterior cladding. Yeah. Commercial buildings. It's unbelievable. I got a piece outside my office window that is a cutoff from one of our jobs. It's been there for, I think, twelve years in the rain, in the snow.
I'm in Wisconsin, but 20 below zero in the winter and 100 in the summer. It hasn't changed at all. Yeah. If you want it to look really good, throw some of that spray wax on it. Wax wax on it. And man, it looks like it's brand new. Day one again. Exactly. Yeah. Beautiful material. Yeah, it's great. It's great. So what do you think now? Heres my question for you. How do we deal with this today and were getting so much new information as far as healthy air inside our homes?
I think people woke up about indoor air quality a little bit when they were home during the COVID years here and people started paying attention. But it seems to be a little bit of the Wild West. I put an air scrubber in my house. I'm not going to say the brand name because I'm going to say something bad about it, but what I don't like about it is when my wife is going to go bake, I have to go turn it off and unplug it because it will actually kill the yeast and her dough will not rise.
Evan, that's wild. So I'm like, wait a minute. And it's giving. It's one of the hydroxyl type systems. Right. But I'm like, health wise for me, I'm like, wait a minute. How healthy is that for me? If that yeast thats sitting there in a bowl on the countertop, we just did wont rise. And if I take it outside right away and put it outside on the outdoor kitchen counter and its the same temp, it does great. Evan, again, this is like the unintended consequence of trying to do the right thing.
Were trying to make our indoor air quality cleaner, but theres no, I should say theres very few ways right now that we can filter what we want to filter. It's like an ro system for water, right? Yeah. A reverse osmosis system for water. Takes everything out of the water. Yeah. It doesn't just take the bad stuff, but it takes the good stuff out, too. And I think like these, these hydroxyl type cleaning systems, they sanitize so well. Then it sanitizes out the good yeast.
Yeah, I can definitely see that. And I think that this is where having a good, healthy home consultant in the project to say, to ask those questions, it's like having a good interior designer, to me, I love working with really good interior designers because they ask the questions that an architect won't answer or ask or a contractor doesn't necessarily ask. They ask, how do you live in your house?
So if you told me, we like to bake bread, okay, I can't use an air purification system that's going to kill off all the good yeast as well. So, yeah, it's, it's. But we're learning this as we go. And you're right, it's the. Because of COVID healthy home topics are now top of mind. Yeah, I think that it was a big awakening. Our homes can be the cause of a lot of our problems. Not Covid, but all these other things that are happening that.
And also in the last five to ten years, there has been so much research coming out about our. About genetics and about how there are, there's about 25% of the population that has the genetic predisposition to have mold sensitivity. And mold sensitivity is what leads to chemical sensitivity and electromagnetic sensitivities this is all just coming out in the last few years, I think were on the tip of the iceberg. Evan. Absolutely.
I can walk into a house and being an interior designer, kitchen and bath designer for 30 years, I could walk into a house because of my mold allergies. I can walk in and go, wheres your mold problem? Yeah, I can. I am like the canary in the coal mine. I can walk in and go, you got a problem in here? Let's not talk about the kitchen. What's rotting? I smell mold. Where is it? You're the human mold dog, right? Yeah. I can get it in 5 seconds. Literally. I just do that.
And so when I was out looking at homes to buy. It's bad. I can walk in and go, nope, don't want to deal with it. Don't like the house that well to even go farther. We're out. No. What do you mean? So it's interesting, you, you probably are then in that 25% where you have, um, mold sensitivity. But you probably also have a very good immune system where it doesn't necessarily affect you quickly. Yeah, but I I'm noticing more great example and this is something sawdust.
If I'm out cutting hemp for lumber all day working on a project and I get it all around my collar and stuff, my neck is all red from broken out. So I'm noticing different sensitivities now at age 53 that I didn't have before. Yeah. Because I've exposed myself to that enough. Right. So that's it. And somebody becomes sensitive to these things usually by long term exposure. A little small exposure, but long term or it's a massive exposure.
You walk into a house where they just sprayed pesticides or you've been exposed to something at work or whatever the case was, even something like a massive health issue like major surgery or a car accident or childbirth, it can change the body chemistry. So these things can actually change how your immune system responds. And so yeah, at 53 myself, Im finding that I am now sensitive to things that I never thought would be a problem.
And Im in this business, Im surrounded by healthy materials all the time. And maybe thats one of the reasons why. Cause I'm not inundated myself with the garbage all the time. That when I do come in contact with the real lousy materials, it instantly hits me. It's wild. It's wild. And it's just one of those things. You go, oh, okay, I'm seeing this and it's getting interesting too.
We have so many things going on and there's so many things out there that you can solve too, like how many moldy bathrooms are there out there? But at the same point, you can go in and these days and put in one of the good bathroom systems behind the tile. That's going to do a much better job of preventing it with less errors. Traditionally, there's shower drying systems. You don't have to have a wet, moldy shower when you're in there.
There's so many different things out there that are solutions to these problems. But we really have to, when we're designing these spaces, really work with that and try to figure out the best solution for everybody. Yeah, I think that's the, that's the biggest thing is, is making sure that we're planning for this. Like I said earlier, just assume there's going to be a moisture issue at some point. So let's plan for that. And we know we can't avoid moisture in a shower. This is what a shower is.
So how do we, how do we get rid of that moisture properly so it doesn't become a problem down the road? How do we get rid of the moisture between the, in the cavity walls of our homes so it doesn't sit there and then, and cause a festering mold problem? Yeah. So we know it's going to get in there. Let's just understand that and agree to that. Now. How do we get rid of that? How do we alleviate that as a problem and we don't have to worry about it down the road?
Yeah. And how do you put instead of insulation, maybe, maybe not doing spray foam, maybe doing, you know, a rockwool or something else like that that's going to be much more resistant and maybe not going to sag down if it gets moist. Yeah, exactly. 100%. That's the cool stuff. So what are you seeing in technology now? I know we're running a little bit out of time here before we talk some whiskey, but I wanted to see where do you see science going right now?
We see a lot of air sensors now in people's homes where they're all of a sudden looking at PM 2.5. I can look over, I've got one of the bro newtone ones in my living room that I look over and go, huh, I wonder why that's yellow. So it's trying to figure stuff out, but it's, you're always learning with this stuff. But where do you see science going right now? Because there's been a lot of different materials out there.
Look what happened to lumber liquidators ten years ago with their urea formaldehyde problem. And now where they're at today, we're seeing a lot of things changing out there with people's eyes getting opened up to building materials. So for the longest time, we saw a lot happening with, like, smart home technology. And now we're finding that there's a marriage between smart home technology and health.
So all these air quality testers that you can install into your system that it basically just pops up on your, on your cell phone to say there's a problem at home. Information is always powerful, information is always needed. But its how you interpret that information. I do see that it causes a lot of anxiety, a lot of stress, when people see that their PM 2.5 level is up, but they fail to remember that maybe a window is open and somebody was burning leaves down the road.
And so I will be honest with you. 50% of most of my consulting calls deals with stress control and understanding that the stress reactions that we get from all the potential toxins and so forth can actually cause the exact same adrenaline release and the exact same symptoms as if you were being inundated with a chemical with mold. So there's a lot of stress relief happening in these calls technology.
I think right now, 95% of what I read in the trade publications, what I see at the trade shows, deals with health of the occupants in one way or another. And I think this is where we have a chance for a complete paradigm shift in our industry to now start building and remodeling truly healthy homes, not just because we're trying to do our best to save the environment, but because we have to exist here in this environment.
What good is saving the environment if we're still poisoning out of the human occupants? And I think we're finally starting to get that as an industry. I've never been more excited. I've been in this business for over 30 years. I have never been more excited to be in it than I am right now. That's awesome. Yeah. There's three things I've been screaming from the rooftops on home tech for inside the homes.
One is I want an erv system that's measuring the incoming air quality and comparing it to the indoor air quality. Yes. And if the outdoor air quality is worse, he shut her down for me. How hard is this? It's not simple. Simple, you know, go. Now's not the time to run that. Yeah, can't be that hard. I've been screaming for that one for like, three years now, because for me, it's in it. It's for everybody out there.
But for me, when we have western wildfire smoke, I tell people, hey, go turn that unit off for a couple of days, but make sure you set an appointment on your calendar when you're going to be home to remind you to turn it back on again. Right. Exactly right. Yeah. We have a technology, folks. We have the technology to do this, so let's just get her done.
Yeah. The second one is, I want, when you turn a cooktop on in the kitchen, I want it to automatically turn on the vent fan to the setting of the cooktop down below. Mm hmm.
So you're speaking my language, Eric, because people always ask me about the differences, that we can talk about this between gas and electric cooktops, but I tell them that no matter what you end up doing, the process should be, when you go walk into the kitchen to start preparing a meal, the first thing you do is turn on the range hood. Then you start mixing your ingredients. Then you turn on the range because you have to start creating this current.
Yeah. If you only turn it on because you smell or see smoke, it's too late. Too late. And then the other thing. I've said this, and I've said this to now four different appliance manufacturers. I said, you got all the smart stuff. Why don't you have a temperature sensor that's in the hood that automatically turns off the cooktop when it gets too high? How hard is that? Oh, that's a smart one. I love that. Right. And it's so simple. It's so simple.
Like, this is like 20 years ago, I was trying to convince H vac contractors to tie in with the ERV, tie in the range hood, the bathroom fans, and even windows. You can put sensors on the windows. If any of that triggers the ERV, then makes up the air properly. Yeah. It's very simple to do. But it's like, people look at me like I have three heads. Yeah. Yeah. I've said this to some major companies, and they look at me like, oh, that's interesting.
I'm like, but you're going to, you're going to put out on the market a rice cooker that gives me tomorrow's weather. But you can do this. I don't care. Yeah, it's just, it's. That's the crazy stuff. And it's so simple to do. And hopefully we'll get there and you guys out there listening, I'm talking about you that I've been talking about. Yes. Please listen to this show. And make these changes. It's so simple. It's so simple.
And the other thing I want to talk, before we get into whiskey, talk here for a minute, is I want to talk about just. We didn't touch on it, but just measuring your humidity in your home and making sure that you've got that under control, that can be one of the biggest problems, even if you've got healthy materials inside. Yeah, boy, that's. That's definitely something that we preach.
Raising the humidity in a house not only causes us to be in a situation where mold growth is going to be more prevalent, anything above 50% to 55%, but we've also found that it drastically increases the amount of chemical off gas. So when moisture enters into a surface and then eventually evaporates back out, it's going to carry with it the chemical footprint of where it was. So we have tested numerous homes over the years where people complain of high vocs or high formaldehyde.
And then we look at the, at the humidistat, we go, it's 62% relative humidity in here. What I want you to do is close the windows. We talked about this before. If it's worse outside than inside, right. They have the windows open the middle of summer to try to get fresh air, but all the humidity is coming in. So close the windows, turn on the air, turn on a de hue. I'm going to come back in two weeks. I'm going to test the home again. I'm going to test the specific surfaces again.
We've done this, and every single time, all that off gassing goes down more than 50%. So this makes an enormous difference in your indoor air quality. And, guys, don't go try to deal with your basement humidity issue, please. With a little target dehumidifier, please don't just go get.
I don't care if it's one of the main brands, there's no commercial here for this, but get a built in unit that actually has a drain line that goes where it's supposed to go to meet code in your area, and get the humidity out of the space, and it'll save you money in the long run, because you're not going to have to go buy six of those things and you'll be throwing them away. Every two years, 100%. And if you.
If you have it in a basement that was never designed to be a livable space, but you're trying to treat it as a. As a family room, understand that that basement is probably not waterproof the same way that a new home would be knowing that it's a livable space. So you might be fighting Mother Nature throughout those humid months, but it is what it is. You just got to deal with it.
Yeah. Look at the older homes that we see in certain parts of the area in the twenties, thirties, and up to early forties, where there were significant concrete problems that maybe they weren't washing the sand, or there was just these mixture problems that they had.
Where I can go into Portland here, and I can take the key from my vehicle and lightly scratch and not hurt the brass key, but scratch through and literally go through the entire foundation because enough moisture has come through that has taken just enough lime out of the mix. Right. And calcium and everything else that you have literally compacted sand. Evan. Wow. That's amazing. Yeah. And so the. The. That thing, they don't build them like they used to. Doesn't always apply in that situation.
But that is true. That is true. All right, man, we got to talk whiskey here real quick, because. And then we're going to talk about how to find you and all that stuff. But let's talk about your whiskey career here, because you have some other massive gifts here besides healthy homes. Ive always been somebody who loves to research, and I love learning new things.
And many years ago, I had a friend of mine who got me into scotch whiskey, and I always liked it, but I didnt really know much about it, and I started learning about it, and I just went head first. When I do something, I guess I dont do it just. But I really dug deep. I ended up traveling to Scotland, became a certified scotch whiskey. I spent time in Kentucky, became a bourbon executive steward. I really love it's chemistry to me, it's. And it just so happens it's something that I enjoy to.
To consume and to taste. And so I actually spent a lot of my free time when I'm not healthy, helping people with healthy homes, conducting whiskey tasting events, and teaching people all the fine points of whiskey. So it's been a lot of fun. This is what I just did. I did a tasting event just a couple of weeks ago. Okay. For a good customer of mine who has hired me several times for parties, this time I did anything aged in oak. Oh, we did scotch, bourbon, rum, armagnac, and then port wine.
Oh. And it was phenomenal. I was a little afraid about all these different flavor profiles, but the fact is that every one of them tastes like they've been in oak because they have, and everybody there absolutely enjoyed it. Oh, that is amazing. That is amazing. That is cool. Hadn't thought about that, but, yeah, because that oak gives you that commonality between all those. Exactly right. And we even did a 35 year old balsamic vinegar be. And as a in between palate cleanser after the rum.
Because the rum, folks, it was good. But it really. Something here to just to try to change something. Yes. Yeah. And I had a lot of people in the group who weren't necessarily whiskey drinkers, and so when I brought out the balsamic vinegar, they're like, yeah, finally something. But 35 years in oak, and again, you definitely taste the yolk. You taste those tannins, the, the vanilla, the cinnamon, the, that that particular profile from oak, it's just amazing how they all work together.
Oh, that is wonderful. Yeah, that's, that's, that's so smart. And I like that. It's like, wait a minute. Now you got me thinking on that. So what's your favorite, and, uh, let's say, what's. What's your favorite thing that you're tasting right now out there, whether it's scotch whiskey or whatever? So, actually, my favorite right now is because of this tasting event, I had to do a lot of research. I'm using the air quotes right now. Research, which is basically research this afternoon.
So sit at home with my, like, Glen Caron glass and, uh, fill it up a few times. So, Armagnac, which is cognac, it's essentially brandy from a very specific region in France. I have fallen in love with armagnacs, because, again, if you love the big, bold flavors of wood in a spirit, most armagnacs are going to be 20, 30, 40 years old. Even though it's made from distilled wine, essentially, because it's in oak for so long, it starts to impart this flavor of a highly sherried scotch whiskey.
So, if you like McCallan, for instance, which I love. If you love McAllen, you will absolutely love armagnacs. Oh, yeah. Okay. I'm gold on those right now. It was so funny. So a couple of cognac stories real quick. First time I really got to sit down and pay attention to cognac. I was in Chicago for one of the builder shows when they did the builder shows in Chicago back then. And we went over to buddy guys, blues legends placed in there.
Ended up sitting in there on a Wednesday after our dinners with a buddy. Ended up sharing the table with Buddy guy. Wow. And he was buying Cognac all night. And when buddy guy hands you a glass of cognac, you say, thank you, buddy. Or Mister Guy. And you drink it. And I'm like, yes. Oh, this is pretty good. This is not bad, right? Also, having a rock and roll hall of Fame guitar player sitting next to you handing you drinks, also a nice thing. But I was like, oh, okay. And then I was.
This was about nine years ago. I was up in Vancouver, BC, visiting a flooring company up there. They were giving me an architectural tour. We were doing some stuff with them up there, which is totally fun. And what was that? It was the rare cast cognac. Is that the Louis XIII? Oh, yeah, yep. And the rare cask with the whole. That hold that crystal vase and the. Wood box and all that. And I'm sitting at the bar waiting for restaurant reservations.
Cause there was a bunch of us, and this guy gets up on the ladder with white gloves and pulls two crystal glasses down and starts flaming the glass with a match. And I'm like, hey, we're on something here that I've not seen before. So. But I had to ask the bartender, I'm like, what do you got going? He goes, oh, I'm pulling this out, and I google it up, and I'm like, oh, that's a $50,000 bottle back then. Yeah, it's quite amazing. Am I going to spend money on that?
But it was cool to see him serving up to two glasses for a guy. Yeah, sure. When I win the lottery, I might try that. Yeah. And I'll probably find out that it's probably just as good as the $100 bottle that I just had. It's the experience. It's the fact that you can live the rest of your life going, I had a $50,000 cognac. Yeah. And I can say, and I'm not bragging here, but I've had a $40,000 scotch whiskey that I got to try at the Belveni when I was there many years ago. And it is remarkable.
Absolutely remarkable. If I didn't have a hookup, I probably wouldn't have tried it. Sure. No, because I can't afford it. But it was a special thing, and I was able to try it, and it is. I don't know, it's something about. It's like you said you were having a glass of cognac. Buddy guy, he probably could have given you a glass of ten w 40. You would have loved it. Absolutely. So here I am at the belfeni with the distiller, the head distiller. I'm drinking a $40,000 whiskey.
Yeah, I felt pretty good about it, and it could have been anything, but it was tasty. Yeah. And to your point, he could have been handing me an old style beer and I'd have gone, sweet. This is great. Best beer I've ever had, ever. Adds. It's so much of that. As far as that goes. What are you liking in the. Just in the. In the whiskeys out? Is there a drinker that you're in right now that's just a regular, something like a guy like me would drink versus royalty. Yeah. So a couple things.
So we have. We have a really good bourbon distillery here in Wisconsin called Jay Henry. Okay. Jay Henry, I believe, makes the absolute best in the midwest. I can't. I can't say of all of Indiana, because of MGP, that produces 50% of the bourbon for the country. Yeah. But when it comes to craft distillation, they do it right, and they do it with this rare old red corn that they brought back for. For this. Their bourbon is something special. And I'm not necessarily. I'm not a bourbon drinker.
If I'm going to sit down and have a whiskey, it's going to be a scotch. Yeah. I'm a bourbon guy more than I am a scotch guy, so I'm the opposite. Yep. So you're going to. You would love the Jay Henry. Okay. Absolutely. Fell in love with that a couple of years ago. They did a five year old cognac cask. Oh. And so I like the cognac cask whiskeys because that means they're using a type of wood called french limousine oak and. French limousine.
Yep. And it imparts this really interesting creaminess to the spirit. Yeah. So I'm a sucker for anything aged in french oak. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. That's good. That's good. There's that. There's a really cheap whiskey out there that's selling across the country that. That I'm laughing about because I know the history on it, and it's so funny and it's big out there. It's that redneck Riviera, the bigger stuff. Yep, yep. For the price point, I'd rather have that than old crow, in my opinion.
I think it tastes better, but. And it's really inexpensive. But here's the funny story, is that was invented here in Portland, Oregon. And what's funny is that there's a guy that I met at the radio station eight years ago. He had this double barrel stone whiskey that he was doing here with that same distiller. And the more I talked to him, the more things got a little sketchy and things all of a sudden he just disappeared.
So I dont know what the whole story was, but he changed his name off Facebook and everywhere else and just went into hiding down south someplace. Not sure what happened. Im sure people were owed money if I was to guess. But whatever happened, happened. Im speculating. Preston. One of my favorite whiskeys is actually not from Portland, but up in Seattle, the Westland distillery. So here's what I'm a huge fan of. Their stuff. Their stuff is spectacular. Yes it is.
A year or two later that stuff comes out from the same distiller. It is the exact same recipe. Wild because I still had a bottle and did a side by side taste test and I had my wife doing it. I'm like, same exact whiskey. So if you'd have played his cards right, he'd have had that thing going off. And after liquor stores across the country. Like those guys do, I'll tell you this, I did a tasting event a couple of times in the last few years where we do a blind, blind tasting.
We'll do, and I'll do usually very, very small pours because we're not drinking to get snackered here, we're drinking for the experience. And so I'll do five different pairs, very small steps of five different pairs. And one of them is always a really inexpensive bourbon up against a poor man's papi. A well or twelve. Yeah. Still great. Yeah, it's great. Every single time I've done this, everybody's always chosen the cheap bourbon. It's the caramel ness, it's the taste, it's just easy drinking.
Right? Yeah. And so the one that always scores the highest is Jim beam black. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Which is amazing. It's what, $20 a bottle? Yeah, there's a, that I drink out of Texas that's just my little, my personal house whiskey at home and it's a TX out of Texas. Oh, okay. I've not had that one. I've had the balconies quite a bit. Evan. Yeah, but TX is, it's just caramelly easy drinking.
Just, just have something that's tasty that you could just drop over a drink it need or drop it over one of the big rocks and just a sipper that's enjoyable. And for $25 for the bottle, you don't care. Right, right. And if friends come over and they block. Right. Yeah. It's not in the cabinet that nobody knows about with the other stuff like my, like my cuban embargo, Havana club rum and some of that stuff that I may or may not have in that cabin. Ah, yeah, yeah.
No, I think that there's a lot of good ones out there. Honestly, when I do these events, I try to pour, like, two or three that are hard to find. Almost impossible find. Might be expensive. And then I'm going to pour a couple that you can go down to the liquor store and get, but you never would because there's a thousand bottles and you don't know what to pick.
Yeah. Amen. So I did one last year where out of all of the ones that we poured, and there were ones anywhere from $15 a bottle up to $400 a bottle. Everybody chose a $15 bottle. Yep. It was mellow corn. Wow. $15 a bottle. It's corn whiskey. It's yellow. It is. But I'll tell you wouldn't want. No, it's smooth as silk. It's. It's a great dessert whiskey, if you're into dessert whiskey. Yep. That makes sense. So, Andy, we're running out of time here.
You and I could do this, like, for the next 6 hours, which would be like this big Joe Rogan double fest thing, which we're not going to do today, but we're going to do it again here soon. But how do people track you down? Because the green building is such a thing. That should be a normal thing out there. And for people remodeling, there are people that are building homes.
They need to know how to track you down for this kind of stuff because you're such an amazing resource nationwide for people. Oh, thank you. Best way to find me is our website, thegreendesigncenter.com dot. From that, you'll find links to not only the products that I've curated over the years to be the healthiest of the healthy, but also links to consulting to.
I do a podcast called non toxic environments, slowly trying to figure out YouTube and get videos up on YouTube so that's linked on there. And then I also have a private, what's called a circle community, which is made up of customers and clients that are truly trying to find answers to how do I make this aspect of my home healthier? What do I do in this situation? It's not like social media where somebody can come on and basically blast you for whatever opinion you have.
This is actually people helping people, and I absolutely love it. I do that as a free service for all my followers. Nice, man. I appreciate it, buddy. Thanks for taking the time today, Mandy. It's been way too long and I'll have to do this again soon because I think we just scratched the surface on this today. Exactly. Thanks. I appreciate it, Eric. All right. All right, guys, go back and make sure you listen to this one again because there's a lot of information here for you.
I'm Eric G. And you've been listening to around the house. That was a fast part. Good work. That was fun. Somewhere unseen and undiscovered anywhere beyond the me love is a love song let's be lovers. We're all over the radio. Take mine down. You with you? Ral.