The Most Important Parts of a Home May Be the Ones You Never See

DuPont’s Alan Hubbell talks with Green Builder Media CEO Sara Gutterman about durability, building science, trust, and why the housing industry needs to get better at recognizing long-term value. 

Countertops, flooring, lighting, and square footage are easy to see—and easy to sell, but many of the things that determine whether a home is comfortable, durable, healthy and efficient disappear behind the walls before a homeowner ever walks through the door.

That disconnect is at the center of a wide-ranging conversation between Green Builder Media CEO Sara Gutterman and Alan Hubbell, North America residential marketing leader for DuPont Performance Building Solutions.

Hubbell brings an unusual perspective to the discussion. A mechanical engineer by training, he began working on Florida’s hurricane-impact window market in the 1990s and has led residential marketing for Tyvek since 2006. His career has largely focused on products and systems that do their jobs best when homeowners barely have to think about them.

A weather barrier, flashing system or wall assembly has to perform long after it disappears from view. Yet the industry still struggles to assign value to durability and avoided problems—especially when a higher-performing solution costs more upfront.

Hubbell and Gutterman dig into why that is such a difficult equation for builders. One of the challenges is structural: The person making a product or assembly decision today may never see the cost of a callback or repair that occurs years later. These costs can sit elsewhere in a company, making the connection between first cost and long-term performance surprisingly difficult to see.

The conversation also gets into a harder question for an industry under intense affordability pressure: How do you make the case for better performance when price matters so much?

For Hubbell, the answer isn't simply specifying a better product. Performance depends on design, detailing, installation, field support and ultimately getting the entire system right.

It’s a discussion that moves from hurricane resilience and building envelopes to callbacks, affordability, builder decision-making and the growing effort to shift housing away from a narrow focus on price per square foot toward a fuller understanding of value.

And after nearly four decades in the industry, Hubbell has some thoughts about where building science—and housing—goes from here.

Watch the full interview here.