DuPont Shelter Solutions global sustainability director Shawn Hunter joins Green Builder Media president Ron Jones at VISION House Las Vegas to explain how Tyvek and continuous exterior insulation combine into a durable, airtight, high-performance building envelope. He also covers the UA trade-off path to code compliance and DuPont's push to cut embodied carbon.
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Ron Jones: Hi, everybody. I'm Ron Jones, president of Green Builder Media. We're here today to explore the vision House, in Las Vegas that we're doing in conjunction with Beazer Homes. And we actually have a series of homes here. We're starting in the deconstructed model. And I want to welcome my guest this morning. This is Sean Hunter, global sustainability director for Shelter Solutions.
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Ron Jones: Quite a mouthful at DuPont. And of course DuPont needs no introduction in terms of the building industry and especially DuPont, Tyvek and all of the, systems that go into play there and that suite to give us, wonderful control over our interior environment. Tell us a little bit about the DuPont role in this project.
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Shawn Hunter: Yeah, absolutely, Ron. And thank you. Hello. Just great to be here. And I say, DuPont, we're just thrilled to be part of the, zero energy ready vision that Beazer has and really excited to be part of this vision House Las Vegas project. So, yeah, you nailed it, right. And when we talk about products, we really bring kind of the weatherization piece, their tightness piece through our Tyvek solutions.
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Shawn Hunter: And, that's something that we've been known for for a number of years. But we think about ourselves is really a combination of the products, the knowledge and the service as well. So we've got the products, we've got the Tyvek, other places. We're pairing that with styrofoam for continuous exterior insulation. So you've got air, water and thermal, you know, kind of all together.
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Shawn Hunter: But we really we bring the knowledge together to know, how do you how do you put those things together as sort of the easy button for the builder to meet their, their requirements. And so we'll work with folks. We've got a building knowledge center that, really helps the builder design. What's the best way to to meet the code considering different configurations and then once we've helped with the design, we also have the service side where, you know, we're actually getting out there.
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Shawn Hunter: We've got specialists who are out there getting in the field on the jobsite, kind of getting the hands dirty, but really helping make sure that these products are installed the right way the first time.
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Ron Jones: Well, you know, as a builder myself, what I appreciate the most, in addition to the longevity of the product, is knowing the track record that it has is the fact that there's a whole suite of products that complement one another, and it takes the guesswork out of it for the builder, when you're specifying and you're worried about fenestration wrapping and, other elements where there are penetrations in the building that you have to address, not just the house rack, which is key, but it's all of those things combined.
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Ron Jones: So it streamlines it and gives you the confidence that you're not going to have, problems with people pointing the finger at each other because something failed along the way. You have every bit of confidence in the entire suite. So special. And then, as you mentioned, the service and the follow up and the ongoing, innovation that that you folks are so diligent about, what what are you working on that's most exciting today for a new product?
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Shawn Hunter: Yeah. Well, I'll tell you, Ron, every time I talk to our technical folks, I just get super excited because we've got so many smart scientists in the back working on cool new things. On the innovation side, actually, I might throw kind of a curveball at you and say, from an innovation perspective, we've actually been innovating a little bit on that knowledge and service side.
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Shawn Hunter: So, you know, when it comes to meeting energy compliance codes, meeting the code, you of course have your prescriptive pathway, you've got your performance pathway. There's that new Ü calculation pathway that a lot of folks might not know about.
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Ron Jones: Explain that a little bit.
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Shawn Hunter: Yeah. This is it's really what we see as, one of the most flexible ways to make code compliance. So when you consider UA, what you're really doing is you're just going to look at the UA, kind of the, you know, the heat transfer through each of the UA assemblies, each of the assemblies in the building. And when you do that, you're allowed to to really kind of play with some trade offs.
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Shawn Hunter: So maybe you're going to trade off between the wall, you know, the foundation, the roofs. And as long as you meet the, you know, kind of the, the required, you don't go above the energy throughput through from the calculation you've met code. And so what we've done is we've actually put together, kind of a proprietary, calculator that we offer for free to any builder who wants to explore this pathway.
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Shawn Hunter: So if somebody says, hey, I want a little more flexibility in meeting code, you know, reach out to us, we'll be happy to run the numbers, kind of sit down with you and help you evaluate some options. And we think it's just a really flexible way to get at it.
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Ron Jones: Well, it's especially important when you start looking at all the different climate zones and you look at the ever changing weather systems and patterns that we have. We're having to remain innovative and and forward thinking with all of these things to stay ahead of the game. I wonder what about from a pure sustainability standpoint, if you were asked by a prospective home buyer.
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Ron Jones: Yeah. Well, how does this enhance the sustainability of this house that I'm thinking of buying?
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Shawn Hunter: Yeah, it's such a great question. There are really three things I think, that come to mind. So one, obviously, you know, for us, sustainability of a house, it has to be durable over time, right, to sustain the function of what a house does. You can't have damage from water intrusion, that sort of thing. It has to be durable.
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Shawn Hunter: So for sure, that's kind of where a product like Tyvek starts out is, you know, you're reducing that air infiltration. The water infiltration that can lead to compromised durability over the years. But then obviously the second area, of course, is energy efficiency, right. So, you know, sustainability being, you know, energy efficiency being a strong part of that, you know, when you're, you're, achieving high air tightness with something like, like Tyvek.
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Shawn Hunter: And then in other climate zones, not three be where we're at, but more colder, milder climate zones. When you're pairing that with continuous exterior insulation, now you're just really getting, you know, that high performance envelope. You know that that really strong thermal performance that you need. And that from a sustainability perspective, of course, is lowering your, your operational carbon.
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Shawn Hunter: And I think what we're seeing more and more, these days run is, homeowners, where sustainability is really personal to them. And, you know, they want to do what they can to reduce their own carbon emissions. Right? They want to do what they can do to address climate change. And so when you look at it from a personal perspective, if you look at your individual carbon footprints, you know, the carbon related to heating and cooling your home is typically a pretty big chunk of that.
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Shawn Hunter: So as a consumer, as a home buyer, you know, if I'm buying a house built to zero energy standards or even energy Star, right? Or, you know, just the latest IC codes, I'm kind of doing my part to make a big dent in reducing my own carbon emissions.
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Ron Jones: It's that combination of comfort on the interior space, that conditioned space, the sustainability that we talked about, the durability of, of the building itself and then the energy performance, which is critical. So all of those things sort of wrap in there. What do you see going down the road in terms of the sort of the next steps, in the building envelope or in wall assemblies or anything that you're focused on?
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Shawn Hunter: Yeah, for sure. So, you know, we're of course, you know, big energy efficiency guys. So we're watching where the energy efficiency, where the codes are going. Right. So you know, Energy Star 3.2 design the IC, at 2021, you're seeing where where continuous insulation is really being emphasized there. It's kind of peek around the corner and you look at Energy Star 3.3.
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Shawn Hunter: Now we're actually starting to see where continuous insulation like you almost have to have it at climate zones four and above to, to meet the requirements. So that's exciting kind of seeing again this that trend towards overall, you know, increased efficiency. If you then layer something like zero energy ready on top of it, you know, now you meet an energy star, energy efficiency requirements, but now you're adding more air tightness, right?
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Shawn Hunter: Even lower air changes per hour. And to get there certainly is not trivial. And I think that's just why it's really inspiring to see a leader like Beazer, you know, making commitments around zero energy ready because, you know, it's not trivial. But when you get there, it's just, you know, has a huge impact and they're demonstrating that it can be done at scale.
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Shawn Hunter: I think that's really exciting.
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Ron Jones: Well, you know, our tagline for this project is Crossing the Rubicon. And the reason we came up with that is because Beazer is actually taking a big step across that river, and there's no going back once you start raising the bar and raising the floor. What happens is that the industry moves with you. And so this is a huge improvement over what we would call the base level.
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Ron Jones: That had been the standard for, production builders around the country. Our hats really go off to them for having the courage and the foresight to, take charge of that. But, it's critical that they use the very best systems and products and the best people, to help get there. So thank you so much for everything that you do in the industry, and especially for helping us with these projects.
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Shawn Hunter: Now, we're more than happy to be here. And actually, Ron, if I could, you kind of ask what's around the corner? I take it from energy efficiency into the carbon side. Yeah, carbon's that next big forefront, right. And that that's kind of why why we're building to these, these really highly efficient, standards. Because now you're able to just reduce that carbon again, you're you're at zero energy ready.
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Shawn Hunter: You're energy star, you're reducing your operational carbon. But as we all know, there's carbon embedded in this product.
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Ron Jones: Absolutely.
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Shawn Hunter: And, you know, in order for us to do what we need to do as an industry, we have to get to net zero, you know, both in the operations and in the embodied side. But 2050 at the latest. And so what we're seeing, we are seeing increased emphasis on that embodied carbon side. You know, we're seeing, definitely an uptick in the interest of environmental product declarations.
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Shawn Hunter: You know, we're we've seen that the last couple of years, kind of more and more requests up from what was zero before that.
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Ron Jones: Exactly.
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Shawn Hunter: And, along those lines, you know, we're seeing well, for a house, how do you measure embodied carbon? Well, we're seeing things like the ResNet 50 and 50 standard that are coming out. And of course, but then I think it's overall, how do you put all that together? And if you're, you know, a DuPont, if you're a product manufacturer, you're looking at how do you reduce the carbon associated with this?
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Shawn Hunter: So, towards the kind of back to the innovation side, one of our biggest innovations the last couple of years actually has been with our styrofoam brand, XPS insulation. This is the result of like, an over a decade long innovation project. But when we got done with it, Ron, we had a product that was 94% reduced in embodied carbon.
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Ron Jones: Amazing.
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Shawn Hunter: So just huge reductions. But of course, we're not stopping there. You know, we are looking at Tyvek and there's actually some exciting things that are going on as Tyvek. So, we actually just came out with a new environmental product declaration for Tyvek. You can find that, and in that EPD, we actually have lower embodied carbon than we did before, because now we're producing today Tyvek with electricity that's backed by renewable energy credits.
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Shawn Hunter: So, you know, that's kind of a cool step in the direction. But, Ron, that's not all, because what I'm really excited to share is that today we've got the ability to make Tyvek using a renewable raw material. And so for those customers that might be interested, we can make an even lower embodied carbon version of Tyvek using this approach.
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Shawn Hunter: And it's something that we've we've rolled out to customers and other markets that Tyvek serves and had a lot of interest there. And, you know, we're just really excited to be able to offer this bio based, certified, you know, version of Tyvek to to those customers and builders that might be interested.
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Ron Jones: It's a never ending quest to shrink the environmental footprint and, make a balance between the natural environment and the built environment.