Optimizing Design for Lower Cost High-Performance Homes

00:00:01:08 - 00:00:29:03
Mike Collignon: 2.0. This is session two of our six virtual sessions that examines how to consistently optimize five key housing housing user experiences. Now today's car is anticipated design session formally titled Optimizing Design for Lower cost, High Performance Homes. So some of the strategies you say will help you provide a better product at a lower cost. In fact, I'm so confident in that statement.

00:00:29:03 - 00:00:48:10
Mike Collignon: It's actually why we're holding this session during International Expect Success Month. Yes, my name is Mike Collignon. I am the housing 2.0 Program Manager. Now, if at any point you have questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to me via the chat box or by email. And I'll put that email address in the chat box in just a little while.

00:00:48:12 - 00:01:14:04
Mike Collignon: You know who else expects success? Same. Raskin. He's formerly the chief architect at Doe's Building Technologies office, but he is now focused on creating and teaching the content for the housing 2.0 program. That content is based largely on Sam's latest book, housing 2.0 A Disruption Survival Guide. The full program was established to help empower you, our building professionals, to design and construct higher performance, healthier, healthier, more sustainable homes at a fraction of the cost.

00:01:14:06 - 00:01:43:02
Mike Collignon: Now, Sam is going to lead us through today's seminar, and he's also going to address your questions at the end. Before we get started, I need to tell you about our successful sponsors. The first is Schneider Electric, who is driving the digital transformation of modern homes with smart and sustainable energy solutions for ultimate comfort and energy efficiency. Their connected home ecosystem of smart energy management solutions provides digital control of energy use throughout a home from the grid, by their smart electrical panel to their connected wiring devices.

00:01:43:07 - 00:02:10:02
Mike Collignon: Next, we have Genco Solar. They are a leading PV module manufacturer and energy storage system integrator. The company has deployed more than 100GW of their Eagle modules in 160 countries globally, including more than 17GW right here in the United States. Eagle storage brings together the best energy storage technology for turnkey hardware and energy storage services, and we're going to hear a little bit more about Genco from Ben later in the seminar.

00:02:10:03 - 00:02:36:25
Mike Collignon: Now we also have Mitsubishi Electric. Mitsubishi Electric promote sustainable building through the electrification of residential and commercial heating and cooling products. Their mission is to advanced technologies that reduce energy efficiency and eliminate dependance on fossil fuels. And finally, we have Panasonic Healthy Indoor Living Solutions. They're helping builders across the country differentiate themselves with powerful, code compliant and cost effective indoor air quality solutions that provide a safer environment for home buyers.

00:02:36:26 - 00:02:58:07
Mike Collignon: Now, during the course of today's presentation, you can submit questions for Sam. Use that questions box I referenced earlier. It's inside the go to webinar control panel. I'm going to review those questions and pose them to Sam after his presentation. And now here's a guy who expects you all to have success after attending these sessions, Mr. Sam.

00:02:58:10 - 00:03:36:04
Sam Rashkin: Thank you so much, Mike. And like Mike, I could not be more grateful for our sponsors Mitsubishi Electric, Panasonic, Genco Solar, and Snyder Electric. And welcome everyone. This is our second module or in the series of 2024. And we're going to talk today about optimizing the design user experience. And the goal always for me is to get lower cost, high performance homes in effect make the high performance housing professionals, industry leaders what we will cover today.

00:03:36:06 - 00:04:12:18
Sam Rashkin: Is first, a context. Having 2.0 provides that user experience optimization process and strategy that I think is critical for all high performance home builders. We have to do better with less and then we'll jump into optimizing the design. User experience will go into best practices. In the middle of that we'll introduce Genco Solar. Then we'll come back and wrap up the best practices and move on to the design user experience, where we apply the best practices and show how the numbers can add up and the numbers add up to pretty substantial figures.

00:04:12:18 - 00:04:38:12
Sam Rashkin: So let's jump right in. And as Mike mentioned at the end we will have a discussion. So first context for the housing 2.0 user optimization. And it all begins with this key data point, which is where we look at how time is spent every day. Or adults in this country. We spend about what we spend time in our homes, at work, dining, outdoors, vehicles.

00:04:38:12 - 00:05:04:23
Sam Rashkin: And the key thing is this point that nearly 70% of our time is spent in our homes. Homes, in fact, are where life happens and probably post-Covid happens even more. I would estimate maybe 7,075%, at least of our time as more and more work at home. So this brings us to the why for housing 2.0. Our core reason for existing is homes where life happens better.

00:05:04:26 - 00:05:32:17
Sam Rashkin: Now. What we do is we start with this audience that we attract normally high performance home builders, and we try to build on that performance experience that we provide so well. Once we're in any number of different programs. And the way we do that is look at kind of the whole housing experience as a system. In addition to performance, there's the design of the home, the community, the sales quality.

00:05:32:21 - 00:06:05:20
Sam Rashkin: In fact, these five strategies entail about 160 best practices that we go over and believe consistently, consistently deliver better user experience for lower cost. So this is what we do. And with housing 2.0 and how we get there is a process for getting consistent results. And generally what we're doing, we have these contrasting business model. The first cost is a typical business model for most builders, and we'd like to transition to a user experience optimization business model.

00:06:05:20 - 00:06:30:02
Sam Rashkin: And the first step of making that happen is to realize we spend often as little as we can for experts and special features in a first class business model, and what we want to do is invest in user experience, experts and special features for sure. Things. Those are features and experts solutions that can transform the homeowners living experience in that home.

00:06:30:02 - 00:06:52:16
Sam Rashkin: If we know we have a sure thing, let's make those investments. The key part is next part is we only have a ray of cost for material, labor, marketing, and sales that we can substantially reduce if we optimize value and just the way we want high performance on the efficient and lean. We want the same from every aspect of what we do.

00:06:52:16 - 00:07:18:00
Sam Rashkin: Building a home. Simple, lean quality, integrated systems, mass customization all offer opportunities for cost savings, and that shows up as a net reduce cost. And because the experience is a better added value. And the whole concept here at the end is to translate the value of a better home for lower cost. And that includes sales and services. So that's the basic context of what we do.

00:07:18:01 - 00:07:50:05
Sam Rashkin: And we highlight a lot of empirical results in housing 2.0 book. And this is one example where Walsh Construction built one building on a site apartment project and then built the second with UX optimization. And they were able, just for the user experience optimization part, to get a 24% reduction in their cost. And so the key resource for doing all this is our book housing 2.0 A Disruption Survival Guide.

00:07:50:07 - 00:08:27:06
Sam Rashkin: You can get it by just copying this code on your camera. I'll take you to how to order it, but this is the basic reference for this program. It includes over 400 pages. It goes into detail about the five user experience optimization strategies, including 160 plus best practices. Has hundreds of graphics, over 360 citations, amazing guest expert essays from friends across all these disciplines, and gone through five years of vetting before being rewritten from the original source material, retooling a US housing industry.

00:08:27:06 - 00:08:52:27
Sam Rashkin: So again, if you can take a picture of this code, you can get access to the book. Now let's jump into the best practices. And as I usually do in the housing 2.0 reference, as I lay out frameworks for this basic construct, why? What is the core purpose for that? For the user experience? What are the user experience optimization goals and what are the strategies and why we optimize?

00:08:52:27 - 00:09:14:28
Sam Rashkin: Design is because how you live matters. Again, respecting this sobering statistic that were in our homes 70% of our lives, how you live outside, inside and all the details make so much difference. And what do we do to get there to deliver on this? Why is first we optimize the location and we do that by fitting to site.

00:09:15:04 - 00:09:39:18
Sam Rashkin: Then we optimize nature, these free resources just for the taking that are surround us every day. And we do that with natural comfort. Then we optimize space and we do that with the right sizing, optimize form with simple and finally optimize function with the integrated systems. So jumping into the first strategy fit the site. There are four key first tier best practices.

00:09:39:18 - 00:10:06:16
Sam Rashkin: And then there are granular, more detailed best practices. You'll notice at the top ribbon, we kind of have a kind of a way of locating where we are at every step of the way. Here we are at fit the site, and optimizing views is about both design views and natural views. Optimize drainage is really about optimizing topography. That's creating siting and setback from slopes to managing water and erosion.

00:10:06:16 - 00:10:30:02
Sam Rashkin: I'm not going to go into too much more detail. I think a lot of the reference material in the book is there for this topic. Optimizing materials is about respecting the damage function forces acting on any specific location. So cold climates want to manage fleas for resistance. In coastal climates with a lot of salt air, we want to manage corrosion resistance in very hot climates.

00:10:30:03 - 00:11:02:00
Sam Rashkin: We want to manage ultraviolet or UV resistance, and in warm climates we also want to manage pest damage. So we have that with pest resistance. Again this one I'm not going to spend too much more time on. And then the fourth strategy or the fourth high tier best practices optimized connection. We do that with the rear or recessive garages, garages, front porches and landscaping instead of fencing for markets where they feel that's a possibility.

00:11:02:05 - 00:11:26:11
Sam Rashkin: Now I start with get the site with an iconic piece of architecture. Most people recognize this home from Frank Lloyd Wright's Pulling Water, Mill Run, Pennsylvania, Eastern Highlands, and without question, it's just a remarkable, remarkable piece of architecture. I'm going to suggest it's not a remarkable, remarkable home, so much so that it can't even function as a home anymore.

00:11:26:17 - 00:11:47:05
Sam Rashkin: The costs and maintenance on this home, which functions almost like a snow collector and one of the regions with the most snowfall in the continental US, just doesn't allow it to function like a home. It just tremendous amount of cost and repairs go into it. The freeze thaw that happens with the snow that sits on these huge balconies.

00:11:47:11 - 00:12:11:12
Sam Rashkin: I also mentioned that, you know, the balconies also block a lot of the view. That's so incredibly impressive. In fact, here's an inside shot of the falling water. And you can see low ceilings, big overhangs and very quickly the amazing views compress to unfortunately not an impressive outcome. And again you can see lots of ways to space and dark colors.

00:12:11:12 - 00:12:34:24
Sam Rashkin: So I'll go and hit the risk of suggesting this is an amazing piece of architecture that just blew away the potential for what concrete could do at the time, but it's not a home that's at the site, and a function is mostly like a museum where all the lovers for Frank Lloyd Wright have a Mecca kind of experience to go and visit this home.

00:12:34:27 - 00:13:02:27
Sam Rashkin: So let's jump into the first key, most important priority in all the best practices we have for design. And that's to optimize use. And without question, you know, we talk about in the planning process, you wanted to lay out your site. So you leverage as much natural view opportunity for the most number of units as you can. So when you have natural views, the design then should follow through and optimize those views.

00:13:02:28 - 00:13:28:09
Sam Rashkin: If there are no natural views, here's what I suggest. You're not off the hook. You need to optimize design views to create views with the way the home is position and set in the site in architecture. So this is a top priority. And once you do that, then you have to optimize the landscaping and hardscape design view to kind of follow through.

00:13:28:09 - 00:13:56:02
Sam Rashkin: And I'll suggest landscape architecture trumps home architecture. As a recovering architect, this is something I've come to realize. So this picture makes it evident that when you have a compelling view, you have to do everything to leverage it. And it could be water, vistas of cityscapes, green spaces, any of those types of views all should be optimized. Now, when you don't have a view that you have to design a view.

00:13:56:02 - 00:14:27:07
Sam Rashkin: And here's where I want to suggest landscaping architecture trumps building architecture. You can see the before and after how much the architecture is. It's secondary to the landscape of the whole home. That's how powerful the landscape architecture is. So the design view is basically two options. No, most builders don't want to do the landscaping. Understand that. So you can at least offer an upgrade as one option and have the model home.

00:14:27:07 - 00:14:52:00
Sam Rashkin: If you're a bigger builder, show options for landscaping that can be expertly done and provided as part of the cost of the home. And if that's to bridge too far, you can always provide expert landscaping plans where you leverage really great expert designs maybe 2 or 3 that can be chosen from. And the homeowners have some adult supervision.

00:14:52:00 - 00:15:17:27
Sam Rashkin: So things go right. You know, there's so much that goes into really expert landscaping that most of us lay homeowners don't have. So here's an option where you may offer a landscaping option like this. Or instead, you may offer a landscape design that specifies the bushes, the hardscape, the trees, and so all laid out to accommodate outdoor living furniture and and amenities like a hot tub, whatever it may be.

00:15:18:01 - 00:15:48:00
Sam Rashkin: So the key thing here is again, where experts make the difference. They understand turf type and how much turf should be there. The amount in difference with shrubs and spacing, groundcover opportunities, trees type and spacings and how much do they drop or don't drop? Hard scaping, outdoor living. This is just, you know, insanely important skill to have. And since we're not trained for this, most of us don't have it.

00:15:48:02 - 00:16:08:20
Sam Rashkin: Okay? We have a lot of building types where this could be a challenge. And this is one townhomes. I just took a Google Earth image from townhome in a region where I live. And just to show you that basically in front of the townhome, just looking out at a parking lot in the back, you have a postage postage stamp backyard.

00:16:08:23 - 00:16:31:15
Sam Rashkin: Now, what it looks like conceptually is there is a might be 5 or 6 townhouses in a row, these backyards that have postage stamp size in the back again, the fronts parking. So the typical plan is minimal view because it's just a very narrow part of the back. Minimal outdoor linkage because again, poor.

00:16:31:18 - 00:16:56:18
Sam Rashkin: The poor planning has very little view of the back and therefore very little access to the outdoor space. And then, because it's so long and narrow, has minimal daylight and minimal minimum privacy on two story townhomes, people can look into one another person's yard from the second story windows. So this is the least optimized configuration and it winds up looking like this.

00:16:56:19 - 00:17:17:20
Sam Rashkin: It's not going to take a picture of one the townhomes in our region. And it's just going to be a throwaway space. It's hardly used. And it's it can see the lack of privacy, the lack of view, the lack of access and daylight. And so it's just it's just it's just something that's almost a wasted space. Now you can offer solutions.

00:17:17:24 - 00:17:41:04
Sam Rashkin: You can see how transformative expert solutions are. So you do have a good view from whatever rooms are off this backyard, but you have minimal linkage because there's so few rooms off the back, minimal access and daylight and minimal privacy. So this is kind of the way you say a view is a high priority in my design strategy.

00:17:41:06 - 00:18:03:11
Sam Rashkin: I know she can help. Seems to solve a lot of these challenges. One, we can repurpose the yards that we're no longer using so we can have equivalent number of units. In this case, we went from 6 to 4. And on our site plan we can find with all this extra space that's not being used for backyards, we can find additional space for the extra units.

00:18:03:11 - 00:18:33:00
Sam Rashkin: So we had the same number of units, but now we have the good view. Plus we have optimized outdoor linkage access daylight and privacy. Let me show you how. On the side facing the courtyard on your neighbor, the no windows. That's the quiet side. So you have privacy and then you have this huge exposure. Now on the floor plan to the courtyard so you have optimum outdoor linkage, optimum access, optimum daylight in what normally is a building type that doesn't have this.

00:18:33:00 - 00:18:56:21
Sam Rashkin: And because again the client side optimum privacy. And then this secret sauce here is the center entry because that gives you a full room up front and a full front porch. And you don't have to walk through them to get to the entry. And so that works amazingly well. Digging and researching. Found a project in the Pike Road, Alabama the waters.

00:18:56:21 - 00:19:27:27
Sam Rashkin: And here you can see the exact design strategy being employed. Where you have full front porch, you have the full room in front, you have the entry in the middle of the courtyard. It's amazing how well it works. Here's the actual project. The one big disappointment for me was the courtyards. I went recently and found the home unit was for sale, and this is the first time I ever saw a picture of the courtyards, and I crossed off optimized view here because courtyards could do so much better.

00:19:27:29 - 00:19:55:25
Sam Rashkin: As an example, much more expertly designed courtyards. And again, I'll always tell you in the hands of the experts, landscaping and hard skating, it's just transformative. So I always try to encourage that's a great investment to make when we get to Community Connection, our typical two car garage or three car garage dominated for an elevation results in no community connection.

00:19:55:25 - 00:20:33:22
Sam Rashkin: You can just tell looking at this one project that the the whole the whole experience in terms of the community, street walking and neighbors and so forth is so diminished, in contrast to when we actually have communities that are designed for connection. And one study from the World Health Organization points to all the social connect connectedness benefits for disease prevention, lower rates and anxiety, stronger immune systems, improved cognitive function.

00:20:33:25 - 00:20:44:05
Sam Rashkin: But it's all it's all kind of intuitive. When you see these neighborhoods, you know they live healthier. Another study done.

00:20:44:08 - 00:21:29:27
Sam Rashkin: Quantified 50% better chance of staying healthy and increased longevity. And that study included over 300,000 participants is one of the medical journal studies. So connection is a huge impact on how we live. And the best practices again are recessive garages, rear garages, front porch and views of the street. So essentially this is something we have to design from the very beginning when we lay out communities and then execute when we design the home, moving the natural comfort with tabbing across the top, we understood power of all nature resources around us over a thousand years ago.

00:21:29:28 - 00:21:59:06
Sam Rashkin: And this is an example here with cliff dwellings, Mesa Verde, Colorado, where the native Indians would find a cliff facing south, build the homes with Adobe thermal mass, and let the sun just bake them in the winter, because this low sun would come pouring in and it would heat the spaces directly in front of the mass. So at night, that big thermal battery would provide all these warm surfaces, making it feel cozy at night and during the summer, the high.

00:21:59:07 - 00:22:25:24
Sam Rashkin: Some would be shaded completely by the cliff and the night swings at night were. So the temperatures are so low that you again, the federal battery was working to provide conditioning during the day all this year round. Natural comfort with no electrons, no natural gas. It was just incredible. And today when we build in the desert, like in Las Vegas, this is a city center.

00:22:25:25 - 00:22:56:07
Sam Rashkin: We're building buildings were essentially, if there's a power failure, you would die within hours. You know, the excessive heat and without without the mechanical force systems to save us. We die in buildings without the power. Amazing. A thousand years. How much we regressed in just the power of natural resources that enhance how we live. So there are four key best practices for natural comfort.

00:22:56:07 - 00:23:27:09
Sam Rashkin: And they're optimized natural heating, natural cooling, natural lighting, natural fresh air. And they all use some portion of all of six key more granular best practices solar orientation, solar shading, thermal mass storage, prevailing breeze orientation, prevailing breeze capture, and cool roofs. I'll go through some of these as much as I can in timeframe we have today, but it's obvious when you see.

00:23:27:11 - 00:23:49:14
Sam Rashkin: A building design for nature that doesn't have glare, how much more view and daylight and comfort you have compared to. And we don't design for it with force to close the blinds all day on the right. And you know, we we build this whole capability with all these windows and we lose all the benefits because we don't design for nature.

00:23:49:17 - 00:24:17:19
Sam Rashkin: Same thing in terms of just orientation. This is a study done in California. And look at just how much impact having homes placed South Wood would have on a heating and cooling cost, and it was 25% effective free heating and cooling. It varies from coastal to inland climates, but it's just there for the taking. If we only have top of mind when we lay out communities to optimize East West Street.

00:24:17:19 - 00:24:43:09
Sam Rashkin: So the home space north, north, south, perpendicular to the street and then designed for them with good designs. A great thing that happens with thermal mass is it stirs the heat. So at night you feel cozy and during the day you don't overheat. Mean radiant temperature versus the temperature of the surfaces around us has 40% greater impact on perceived comfort than ambient air temperature.

00:24:43:09 - 00:25:10:09
Sam Rashkin: It's transformative in terms of comfort. And then natural light is we all know we feel better with natural light. Even our pets know to just embrace daylight and sit by the windows and screen doors. It boosts vitamin D, wards off seasonal depression, improves sleep, enhances productivity. So each benefits. But people don't even need to know the science. Everyone knows they like they like.

00:25:10:15 - 00:25:19:06
Sam Rashkin: And we see a room on the left where we design with nature and we allow.

00:25:19:08 - 00:25:47:12
Sam Rashkin: Glare free light to come through with proper shading and overhangs and so forth. How much different it is from the room on the right where we have to pull down the blinds because we don't design for nature, 98% of home builders, designers and architects scored Natural Light, a top home feature in 2022, which amazed me because I've been beaten this drum for decades and it's great to see it come to light, no pun intended.

00:25:47:14 - 00:26:14:27
Sam Rashkin: Okay, natural comfort. Fresh air also contributes tremendous amount to wellness. Eliminate stale air removes dust. Better concentration, better health. Again, all these scientific studies just always just show when you connect to nature, you have better living experience. So the key thing for me about this, all these experiences glare free views for heating cooling.

00:26:14:29 - 00:26:18:12
Sam Rashkin: Superior comfort.

00:26:18:15 - 00:26:32:23
Sam Rashkin: Again with by managing the mean radiant temperature, a natural light fresh air and then the resilience our space spaces can actually float without brute force. Mechanical.

00:26:32:25 - 00:26:42:05
Sam Rashkin: Equipment, electricity, natural gas equipment, all that sort. Worth tens of thousands.

00:26:42:08 - 00:26:48:03
Sam Rashkin: I'm sorry. Oh, that's worth tens of thousands of dollars.

00:26:48:05 - 00:26:52:12
Sam Rashkin: That's my estimated value.

00:26:52:15 - 00:27:15:00
Sam Rashkin: But I'll tell you, just the energy savings over 30 years will come out to about 25 to $40,000. So it's a pretty safe estimate from my from my perch. So here are these tens of thousands of dollars of value just sitting there. And the cost to get to natural heating or cooling, natural fresh air and natural lighting is zero.

00:27:15:07 - 00:27:40:23
Sam Rashkin: The biggest objection I get from builders why they don't take advantage of this is they don't want to bother because they can't control the lots they get. Many of them build either for clients or they built. They built for developers where they've given the lots. And what I always try to explain is, by probability, 25%. Your lots are with a shooting distance of south.

00:27:40:25 - 00:28:11:21
Sam Rashkin: For the real elevation, 25% of the lots are within shooting distance of south for the front elevation, and then 50% loss will face east or west. That's just probability. So as it, as it's just a a great opportunity might not have standard design strategies or solutions ready for the 50% of the lots you have that you'll get to have either south facing front or south facing rear rear.

00:28:11:23 - 00:28:49:03
Sam Rashkin: And the way you apply these best practices again are orientation, thermal mass for natural heating. All of these best practices for natural cooling, for fresh air per billing breeds orientation and prevailing breeds capture, which is nothing more than saying you have windows facing the prevailing cool breezes, particularly at night in Western climates, and then you actually think about how your window openings work and how you use, let's say, casement windows and which side you have open to to optimize the capture and flow through a room.

00:28:49:03 - 00:29:03:28
Sam Rashkin: And then on natural lighting, it's orientation, shading and the shading. So you don't have the glare free. You don't have the glare effect that forces you to pull down a blinds and negate the natural lighting.

00:29:04:00 - 00:29:24:22
Sam Rashkin: Just running through this just a little bit to see why this work. If you look at the arc for the sun in the summer, it rises in the northeast and sets in the northwest in the winter, and it's very high in the sky in the winter. It rises in the southeast and it sets in the southwest, and it's very low in the sky.

00:29:24:25 - 00:29:49:00
Sam Rashkin: So the SAP orientation optimizes the access to the sun and optimizes control because it's highest most of the day on the south and overhangs can block it. East west orientation minimizes access. You only get a few hours in the morning at night, and minimizes control. Because it's so low in the sky, there's almost nothing you can do short of having some mechanical blinds or something like that.

00:29:49:03 - 00:30:34:21
Sam Rashkin: And north orientation is only diffused light. So this is what we want to do is optimize east west streets with north and south facing homes and tens of thousands of dollars of superior user experience value and utility savings of tens of thousands of dollars just from the orientation benefit the. When I say how the standard designs ready for the South facing lots for one where it's the south facing the front yard, you might want to consider a sawtooth design as a way to get the sunlight to the back of the house where most people live, and then thermal mass is a way to again have that battery thermal battery to store and avoid overheating even

00:30:34:21 - 00:30:58:22
Sam Rashkin: in the winter, and let those heat come out at night. And then again, overhangs are critical to effectively control the sunlight and mitigate the glare it give a backyard facing south. You might want to just have a higher wall in the backyard, a trellis that creates a full shade between 20 transom window and the main sliding door or window below.

00:30:58:22 - 00:31:23:25
Sam Rashkin: And again, because the wall is higher, you have a deeper penetration of daylight into the space. What happens is when we don't even integrate these opportunities. This is a home in Florida with all the blinds drawn. Again, there's nothing you could do if the sun's going to be beating in all day, and most people wind up just not even adjusting the blinds, it just living close all the time.

00:31:23:27 - 00:31:50:03
Sam Rashkin: And contrast is a house that getting Chico, California back in the early 80s and every window shaded in and again, tremendous amount of thermal mass. And the house just is incredibly natural comfort the Q skylights and that skylights, they're actually batch solar water heaters. And again, the thermal storage can be integrated. Lots of easy ways to be could be the floor.

00:31:50:03 - 00:32:14:07
Sam Rashkin: It could be tile or some other ceramic surface. You have fireplaces with stone veneer. Counters can be stone as well. There's lots of ways of getting lots of storage, and you need about five square feet of thermal mass, or one square feet at that south facing window to buffer that heat and save it for the nighttime. Okay, I'm going to take a break.

00:32:14:09 - 00:32:18:11
Sam Rashkin: Mike, is Ben here from Genco?

00:32:18:13 - 00:32:23:00
Mike Collignon: I do not see him in the list, so I would go ahead and carry on.

00:32:23:02 - 00:32:49:08
Sam Rashkin: Okay. Carry on. Maybe it is here at the end. We'll put them in. Okay. Moving on to the next best practice or next strategy, rather rightsizing. We have two key best practices for how we get the most out of space we built. One is the optimize the space. And that's the geometry the floor plan eliminating rooms. We don't need combining rooms so they live bigger together.

00:32:49:10 - 00:33:18:02
Sam Rashkin: Minimal but generous circulation. You want the least circulation you have, but you don't want it to be. A negative experience. So sometimes a light or a slightly greater width is worth doing. Indoor outdoor linkage. As we mentioned, built in furniture is a great way to optimize space that you adds about effectively 2,030% additional space in perception. And I'll show you why in a moment.

00:33:18:03 - 00:34:07:08
Sam Rashkin: And the details make an incredible difference. Varying ceiling heights, quality trim, hardware finishes, expert colors, expert lighting, all those things create a perception of a bigger space. So the big concept would be similar to the car industry. If you look at the bloated, incredibly oversize cars we built in the early 1970s, they were the epitome of non right sizing, just way more spacing needed for storage for engines or comfort inside that car, and the pressure of the imported cars, which are much smaller and much more effectively designed, eventually forced the American car industry to follow suit and build right sized cars.

00:34:07:08 - 00:34:43:15
Sam Rashkin: So if you look at 2020, Paola, versus a 1977 power 50 years difference, you have maybe three feet less wheelbase, but you have the same or more legroom and headroom and trunk space. You have more efficient, more productive engines, you have far more safe car with crumple zones and better braking and seat belts and airbags. Everything about the experience driving the car is better, and it's so right sized compared to the bloated product leads to build 50 years ago.

00:34:43:20 - 00:35:21:07
Sam Rashkin: And I'm going to suggest if you saw last presentation we did about the future of housing, that we have to move towards more affordable housing. Rightsizing is an amazing strategy for doing that. So we mentioned geometries. One opportunity and you can see here why you have a two 1500 square foot footprint configurations for homes 160 by 25, one 37.5 by 20ft, and you wind up with 170 linear feet of wall foundation on the rectangular floor plan versus 155 linear feet.

00:35:21:09 - 00:35:53:28
Sam Rashkin: Now, on top of that, when you have a long, narrow floor plan, you need more hallway to navigate and get through from front to back rooms and you have less daylight. You have less exposure in the front and back where most of the windows are. So everything's better about the square floor plan. And if you look at the cost for framing walls and for foundations, it's about almost $1,650 savings in cost for the 15 linear feet of wall and foundation you don't build.

00:35:54:01 - 00:36:22:02
Sam Rashkin: These prices are pretty old, I would suspect. Today it's closer to $2,000 savings. Building a square or square type of footprint versus rectangular, and it gives you almost two times the views to the front and back. And because you have about 10% less wall exposure to the outside conditions, you have about 10% of the energy savings. So this is this way is a better configuration.

00:36:22:05 - 00:36:48:23
Sam Rashkin: Now these the planning process has to accommodate these footprints. Sometimes I accept your stuff with what you're stuck with and you have to use a rectangular configuration. We said also to eliminate rooms you don't need often today. Very common. The dining room, formal dining room. It's such a little utilized room. It's been cut very often from modern floor plans that we build today.

00:36:48:26 - 00:36:56:17
Sam Rashkin: There's some other rooms that we we cut in terms of.

00:36:56:19 - 00:37:17:16
Sam Rashkin: I think the other big rooms, but mainly the dining rooms. What is a big culprit for, for where we have savings and, and then when we combine rooms together, the whole perception of the space just lives larger. Everything just lives larger. When we do this now, there is a little bit of a.

00:37:17:19 - 00:37:52:01
Sam Rashkin: Commentary going on that we're maybe moving back to more floor plans. I would encourage everyone not to believe that so much Covid created a little bit of a movement there, because people wanted spaces to separate in the event that Covid hit a household. Open rooms, spaces just live larger. And I believe the small trend will be short lived if it was much at all.

00:37:52:03 - 00:38:13:12
Sam Rashkin: Indoor outdoor linkages. I can't emphasize enough. We've been advocating this, starting with retooling for about 15 years, and I keep saying this is one of the most valuable spaces you can provide for homes, and now the data backs it up. 87% of homeowners surveyed.

00:38:13:15 - 00:38:42:15
Sam Rashkin: Investing More in Outdoor Living 2022. They just want to get more out of their property. So this should be a no brainer. And the outcomes are always pretty amazing. And again, done well. So really integrating outdoor living and then having the linkages from inside and outside. So there's a natural flow will make the whole house live bigger because it's like you have all this additional living space visually, the outdoor living space that's not part of your indoors.

00:38:42:17 - 00:39:10:13
Sam Rashkin: Another big one is built in storage or built in furniture. I get a lot of flak about this one because builders are reluctant to put this in, but I'll tell you right now that an absence of a lot of good, thoughtful storage your households will be to be living with clutter and clutter is a huge negative user experience.

00:39:10:20 - 00:39:41:14
Sam Rashkin: The psychological effects of stress and increased cortisol levels that can become chronic, inability to focus, that kills productivity. And this on the prestigious Mayo Clinic findings they did on research. But we all know this. We don't need the scientific evidence. We all know clutter is just a stressor. And so if we don't solve it for the residents moving in and we just have models that have no real life.

00:39:41:17 - 00:40:18:13
Sam Rashkin: Connection to how we actually will use the home and load them up with lots of stuff that we own, then the home buyers who move into our homes will have a lower experience and satisfaction with us when we build those homes. So there's a compelling business case for what you did built in just in terms of the demographic shift that was buying homes, everything from millennials down to Z, one that the younger demographics and the millennials aren't so young anymore, believe in a sharing economy.

00:40:18:15 - 00:40:40:12
Sam Rashkin: They don't want to own a lot of stuff. There's this insanity of moving that I call the process of what really happens when we move our furnishings, and how much compared to how much they're actually worth. The cost of moving can easily see the value of the furniture, and then homes will live about 20 to 30% bigger if you effectively integrate built ins.

00:40:40:16 - 00:41:05:29
Sam Rashkin: More about that in a moment. And then the lower cost if if in fact it's faceless 20 to 30% bigger and you can design a home with 2,030% less conditioned space, the hard cost savings from the smaller right sized home with the built ins will more than offset the cost of the buildings, so it'll be a lower cost solution.

00:41:06:02 - 00:41:39:28
Sam Rashkin: And the options include window seats, entertainment centers, shelving desks, dressers, closet storage hutches, drop zones, mudroom storage, garage storage. There's just a whole host of things we could do to make homes live better. And the concept of why you get that perception of so much bigger space with built ins is evident with these two pictures. And the left is a piece of furniture and you see you have waste of space and you decide the furniture because of the baseboard moldings, you have to pull the furniture off the wall.

00:41:39:28 - 00:41:58:10
Sam Rashkin: So you have the air gap between the furniture and the wall. And sometimes things can fall off the back, and it's hard to access the outlets. And and you don't use a floor to ceiling height. In contrast, if you look at a built in hutch in this dining room, you have all this incredible amount of storage across the entire wall.

00:41:58:18 - 00:42:28:09
Sam Rashkin: Florida ceiling shelving for displays. You have just so much more value and also call attention to the window seat. Again, ample storage for big things where we don't normally know what where to put them, like blankets or or a lot of tablecloths for the room, whatever it may be. There are so many things that would benefit from this kind of storage, and the dining room now just feels bigger because of the buildings.

00:42:28:12 - 00:42:54:28
Sam Rashkin: Now, closet storage is a one of the sure things I can promise 100% of your buyers would want. In contrast to the typical closet on the left with a little bit extra investment on the right. This is about a $400 unit retail for at Lowe's. I assume builders can get it for much less, but just to start optimizing storage so your buyer experience is so much better, has such big dividends.

00:42:55:00 - 00:43:07:24
Sam Rashkin: And of course I think bigger closets often this is an extra upgrade. But we should figure out ways to find solutions that are more.

00:43:07:26 - 00:43:34:13
Sam Rashkin: Standard. And it has to be an upgrade charge as little as we can charge so that our buyers just love our homes. Sometimes we don't have to just gouge them on every upgrade. If we can install an upgrade that makes them so much more happy with us as a builder, this is one you want to do it, then you want to just steal waste space and convert it into a huge asset from a small asset.

00:43:34:13 - 00:44:01:28
Sam Rashkin: So great example here is under stair space that was converted to a beautiful work at home center. So just a closet that would only be under a staircase might be worth $1,000. A whole work at home center, I would estimate, might be worth 15,000. I just needed $14,000 of value to that space under the stair. I'm pretty confident I can build this unit for under $14,000 net profit.

00:44:02:01 - 00:44:21:22
Sam Rashkin: And also we have to just be really good at curating trim and optimizing trim for buyers. One of the things that we have to really rethink as a building industry is loading up models with everything buyers would love to have, only to have them have to just keep coming back and not knowing how to package everything to fit a budget.

00:44:21:23 - 00:45:04:18
Sam Rashkin: I think we have to curate choices for various price points so people don't get this huge frustration when they buy homes. It's insane that they get so financially stressed as they currently are, so we can have curated trim packages and hardware packages and appliance packages and just what the car industry has an X and LCS and limited edition, let's say for a specific model car, you can have an X and X and a limited edition options for your homes, and you keep people in the right, curated choices that are expertly curated by great interior architects who know how to get the most for the least cost and color adds value.

00:45:04:19 - 00:45:10:19
Sam Rashkin: Here's here's a study done by Zillow.

00:45:10:21 - 00:45:40:04
Sam Rashkin: Where they essentially looked at over 30,000 photos from homes and able to do a correlation to show that color was worth as much as $5,400 difference between homes that had expert color and those that didn't. So again, it makes spaces feel bigger and it adds value. And expert lighting makes spaces still bigger. And it's something you have to think about as an industry, because the new advanced lighting technologies bring so many capabilities.

00:45:40:05 - 00:46:04:05
Sam Rashkin: And if we can start mass customizing homes and have solutions like this don't cost as much because they're being used over and over again. Again, we have tremendous cost savings. And again, expert lighting is transformational. One of my good friends just built a house and go in with the smart control technology. Any mood you want to set various color options.

00:46:04:07 - 00:46:28:06
Sam Rashkin: This is where the industry is going and we have to figure out adverse price points. How do we integrate ones that are sensitive to that price point and optimize the experience? So just when we apply all this stuff, just just one example, many we're leveraging space. We have open plans. We're eliminating or combining rooms for minimizing circulation space that has the least value.

00:46:28:09 - 00:46:56:00
Sam Rashkin: We're using built ins to create so much more effective space and getting rid of clutter. And then we're enhancing space with indoor outdoor linkages with varied ceiling heights, quality trim, hardware finishes, colors and lighting. So all this just kind of works together. And here's an example of a four point I'm going to show you multiple times getting 80s for a project we were doing with the utility company.

00:46:56:00 - 00:47:27:23
Sam Rashkin: But this is a 1400 square foot four plan. I would submit lives like ATM square feet, three bedroom, two bath compartmentalized bath luxury suites. Need your kitchen counters and islands and so forth. And I figure the 400ft² at $250 a square foot is about $100,000 savings. By knocking out for square feet I didn't have to build. Next is simple, and I love this quote from Leonardo da Vinci.

00:47:28:00 - 00:48:04:05
Sam Rashkin: Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication and you see it in Europe all the time. Now. This happens to be when cities went to Portofino. But I love the picture because we often think European architecture so impressive because it's so ornate, complex, and it's just the opposite. These are just flat walls. And what's making the buildings and streets and the architecture exciting is a rhythm, a texture of color trim and indoor outdoor living.

00:48:04:08 - 00:48:33:08
Sam Rashkin: It's just all the principles work. Simple is a unique approach to saving cost and delivering a better experience. About the three top tier best practices or optimize the floor plan the exterior and the interior, and then more granular. It's about footprint and functionality of the footprint. It's the geometry and the functional architectural features and the trim, color and details.

00:48:33:08 - 00:49:10:27
Sam Rashkin: And then on the interior finishes and details again. So I love this recent study again, stuff we've been saying for 15 years, just coming to roost in terms of filing people accepting it. The number one must have for home buyers this year. Simplicity 80 plus percent of nearly 1700 Americans between ages 2175 wanted more simple designs. Okay, this is a Harris poll, but, you know, we just feel we have to load way too much complexity.

00:49:10:29 - 00:49:39:22
Sam Rashkin: So just to share what happens when I just do one recess in a design, how it adds costs and no additional value. So if I want to have a recess in this footprint, 12ft in, 16ft across for kind of a porch, like I said, under the house from the second floor, I've added two 12ft walls that I don't have with just a square design because to go in 12ft, I had to have two walls, 12ft and two foundations.

00:49:39:23 - 00:49:59:19
Sam Rashkin: So that's $2,600 additional costs just to do the recess pocket. And I wound up with 200ft², and I just kept it square. And I would just reinvest that money into a much nicer porch from the front of the house. So simple. Looks better. It saves more money. It's always the better way to go. So here's that design I just showed you.

00:49:59:19 - 00:50:27:24
Sam Rashkin: That was 1400 square feet, that lives like 1800 square feet. And I compare it to another three bedroom, two bath design that's probably about 2000 square foot, 2200 square foot home, but one has 15 corners. The simple one on the right has six corners, nine more corners at $1,500 corners 13,500 dollars just for the complexity that was added that I don't believe adds any value.

00:50:27:26 - 00:50:47:03
Sam Rashkin: Same thing in kitchen designs. When you get to your footprint on your inside the homes. No corner cabinets to me always deadly know it's hard to get to the corner high cabinet at all and so you can do it angle, cabin or figure something out. A lot of times the corner has some more expensive lazy Susan or it's just dead.

00:50:47:04 - 00:51:10:12
Sam Rashkin: I've seen some builders just give up the corner. And in contrast, on the right, what we do is simply move the pantry that's outboard on the left to next to the refrigerator, and it creates a framed space for the refrigerator, creates a much more useful pantry. It creates more counter space. Everything's better when it's simple.

00:51:10:14 - 00:51:49:11
Sam Rashkin: And also just here, two pictures of homes, both from manufacturer edits and then when I left is stunning in terms of the complexity of what is what it's really got to do. I always ask kids in lectures about just trying to make housing and architecture simple. What's the purpose of a roof? And even they get it. It's the shed weather and the roof on the left versus a roof on the right has incredibly additional complexity and costs involved in it for less functionality, tremendous additional costs in the future to maintain and replace it.

00:51:49:12 - 00:52:12:25
Sam Rashkin: It's just simple and authentic is better. In my neighborhood. I go crazy when I see. Architecture in this case of brick front and then the vinyl siding and go, just what you could do is just like many homes have in our neighborhood, just use one siding, don't have a fake front, and reinvest the savings in the masonry into a front porch away.

00:52:12:26 - 00:52:39:21
Sam Rashkin: This homeowner did. So it's about using your money more wisely. The brick is like an advertisement. This is the cladding I can afford on all four sides. I wish I could, but here it is on the front versus the authentic home, right? Which also has better color and better trim. That costs no more is just thoughtful selection of the of the siding and then all the additional resources to build a front porch.

00:52:39:24 - 00:53:15:19
Sam Rashkin: So just wrapping up simple footprint geometry function authentic. There are obvious when they're done right. Of course, there's a lot to do with proportion and just attention to detail, but simple is a huge cost saver just waiting for you. And the last strategy for design today is integrated systems and the three key best practices the infrastructure systems, the actual building structure HVAC, plumbing, electric, the livability which is the furniture, the storage, lighting, water protection.

00:53:15:19 - 00:53:36:15
Sam Rashkin: And yes, premature is a system. And if you ever see floor plans about furniture layout, I just send them back. I don't want to see them till I can see the furniture. And then technology is just creeping up on us as a new system. That's a must have. So the solar system and smart home capabilities have to be integrated into design as well.

00:53:36:18 - 00:54:05:22
Sam Rashkin: So in structure note there's no more cost to do a roof that's 4.84 and 12 versus five and 12. And that will save you cutting an extra piece of of OSB sheathing on either side of the ridge. Why don't we be thoughtful and actually design our homes for two foot dimensions, knowing all she good products coming for bike dimensions that can be found of dollars of savings.

00:54:05:23 - 00:54:39:26
Sam Rashkin: We talked about that Walsh construction project in Portland, Oregon. 124 fourth. And I'll give you a few examples to show how they say 24% cost. First, they went from two by four, framing 16 on center to two by six, framing 24in on center. And that saved them 42% reduction in framing material. Now the same thing happened on their interior, four sheathing on the interior walls.

00:54:39:26 - 00:55:08:18
Sam Rashkin: They did this throughout. They just optimized for two dimensions. And then on the outside they wound up with all this extra insulation is 16% increase in the whole R-value. And then they wound up with 25% less sheathing because of less waste cutting everything with size fully sheathing. All the dimensions are designed for it. So it was impact on the design aligned up with about 24% savings just by optimizing design for structure.

00:55:08:20 - 00:55:40:18
Sam Rashkin: And then here's one where thinking about structure, the very initial concept phase of your design, you can go, well, why you can do a traditional basement design. Let's say this is a cold climate home. I can trade off that basement with a shallow frost detected footing and and use it as a structure instead of trusses. And I have all that upper level space volume where the attic used to be with a frame construction.

00:55:40:18 - 00:56:00:19
Sam Rashkin: And now I've finished off a basement for an upper level, which might be worth 100 to $150 square foot more, because it's an above level space and the savings are pretty impressive up to 6000 going from a conventional basement to a.

00:56:00:21 - 00:56:21:10
Sam Rashkin: To shallow, frost protected footing on the either end of the gable walls, you're now getting function out of it. It's a wall for your living space, so that framing is free. It's 1000 $2,000 of framing because it already was there. The egress windows you don't have to build to get out of the basement for code might be 1 or 2000.

00:56:21:11 - 00:56:41:09
Sam Rashkin: All the air ceiling and air barriers at the attic ceiling interface might be 1 or 2000. All the attic venting you don't need ridge and soffits, gable vents, 1500. All the waste that you save is so much less waste. Building with the set system. And about time three or 4 or 5 days might be worth one and a half, 2500.

00:56:41:09 - 00:57:08:29
Sam Rashkin: And if the 8000ft² on the upper level is now worth $100 more, or $100 more, there's another 60,000 to $100,000 of extra value. Just because the above grade space is so much better living. So this is how we, the numbers can have very quickly in terms of more cost effectiveness. I mentioned I don't want to see a floor plan without furniture.

00:57:08:29 - 00:57:39:21
Sam Rashkin: So a good friend of mine built this project in Libertyville, Chicago. It's a very narrow site, so he had to do a narrow footprint, but he built nice indoor outdoor living pockets and design. But the furnishing tells me it lives really well. However, when I get to a second floor over here, I'm crazy because I don't know where to put a dresser in this room because the sliding door is right down against the edge where the walk in closet, and so they move the sliding door and turn the bed so it has a better view to the outdoor deck.

00:57:39:27 - 00:58:00:27
Sam Rashkin: I now get much more storage. I get two dressers where I had none. Just by turning the bed 90 degrees, I realize how much more function I get out of space and how it lives better. And the other bedroom. It's insane that the door is on that side, because I have such a tiny dresser way below what it should be for that room.

00:58:00:27 - 00:58:26:14
Sam Rashkin: I moved door to the other side. Now I get a full dresser, but this is just only going to happen if we're just really diligent about kind of looking at furnishing as a whole design strategy and really getting the house to live as well as it can get rid of wasted space, lost functionality, simpler construction. This is a storage system in my car.

00:58:26:14 - 00:58:48:21
Sam Rashkin: I'm not going to go through all these things, but I made a list. That's just what I do, and I'm starting to realize how little there is in homes. So I've developed a storage system for homes. This is a basic list. It's in its in the housing 2.0 reference book. I'm not going to go through all these, but essentially there's so many.

00:58:48:23 - 00:59:10:26
Sam Rashkin: Storage needs your buyers have for bedrooms, for cleaning, for entertainment, for work, for drop zones and garages. And if you don't provide it, the chances are they'll do a, at best, a modest job with a lot of clutter as a result. So here's an example of a drop zone, which is nice to see this finally come to awareness.

00:59:10:27 - 00:59:34:22
Sam Rashkin: Is it as an important feature? New homes that a place to put all your keys and mail and your jackets and your boots. And it's just a place most houses would love to have it. We can super enhancement to the user experience, and then we know people need storage for cleaning, for vacuums and mops and brooms and cleaning supplies.

00:59:34:22 - 01:00:06:26
Sam Rashkin: And we know, and laundry rooms, people need places to hang clothes and for all the again, cleaning supplies and other needs. So if we provide it, it'll look better. If we don't. Then again, declutter and lighting is so important and is a very again complete difference when it's done with an expert versus done just by homeowners themselves. So in the design process, we have to think through ambient task, accent lighting, and more and more.

01:00:06:27 - 01:00:30:14
Sam Rashkin: This will have to be integrated with the smart home strategies that are absolutely here to stay. So all this has to be done. And we think of letting you just have to know that the capabilities are going for the roof. And if you're not tracking and thinking about how you integrate them, someone else will. And it's a question of not being left behind.

01:00:30:17 - 01:00:57:03
Sam Rashkin: And outdoor lighting is transformative. This is this is like 80W, 90W of LED lights. And what it does to the house is incredible. And think what it does the whole neighborhood if you're a builder building subdivisions. So this again camping afterthought lighting needs to really be thought through. So let's wrap up with just applying.

01:00:57:05 - 01:01:10:13
Sam Rashkin: Oh one second.

01:01:10:15 - 01:01:15:20
Sam Rashkin: Wrap up the few minutes.

01:01:15:22 - 01:01:18:28
Sam Rashkin: Okay. Can you hear me, Mike?

01:01:19:01 - 01:01:21:10
Mike Collignon: Yep. You're sounding good, Sam.

01:01:21:13 - 01:01:42:26
Sam Rashkin: Okay, great. So we're in the homestretch here. Let's just look look at what it might look like if we apply all these best practices. And what again, I want to do is go back to the how of housing to, of housing 2.0 and the process. The first thing we do is we invest in user experiences that are transformative.

01:01:42:26 - 01:02:08:00
Sam Rashkin: And so we may have to add some cost for experts in those features. And so that might be the design views with landscaping and hard scaping. It could be choosing low maintenance regionally appropriate materials, building front porches and adding features that help the home live bigger, bearing the ceiling heights, outdoor living, built in furniture, expert lighting quality, quality finishes and trim.

01:02:08:03 - 01:02:38:08
Sam Rashkin: But the next part is to then optimize value by extracting all these cost saving opportunities or zero cost opportunities. So in the top of the best practices that are free, optimizing views is just a matter of just getting the most out of natural views that you have. Natural comfort costs no more. If you're just a little bit thoughtful in the community planning process and taking advantage of lots, we have that face the back south or the front south.

01:02:38:10 - 01:03:02:04
Sam Rashkin: Natural heating and cooling. Natural light. Natural fresh air. Optimizing drainage is a must. You don't want to have a home buyer with a wet basin problem. That will be a completely dissatisfied homeowner for the life of their time. In your house, you want to live bigger with optimized footprints, optimized layouts, and expert colors. None of this costs more.

01:03:02:04 - 01:03:27:08
Sam Rashkin: And all these best practices that cost less. Rightsizing with less square feet, simple integrated systems, and mass customization. We spoke about last week, really leveraging your investment in expert solutions that use over and over again. So with this in mind, I'll show you an example of how it might be applied with this 1400 square foot home we showed you earlier.

01:03:27:10 - 01:03:53:26
Sam Rashkin: Again, I want to call out that it has a tremendous amount of counter space in the kitchen, in a dining space. It has a living space as well, a very luxurious master suite with tubs and showers and compartments for toilets and master closets and tremendous amount of storage compartmentalized bathrooms that you can use it in the hallway, bedrooms with dressers and desks and full featured laundry room.

01:03:53:26 - 01:04:25:04
Sam Rashkin: And so it addresses all five strategies for the site natural comfort, right sizing, simple and integrated systems so person fit the site. We have optimized design views that are off the page, thus both the view windows and landscaping and hardscape is optimized drainage optimized, regionally appropriate materials. In a very hot climate, we had the resistant siding, UV resistant roofing and fire resistant roofing, which was unique at the time.

01:04:25:04 - 01:04:51:09
Sam Rashkin: Most homes in California for which this was designed were using cedar shake at the time, which was like putting kindling in a roof, which is a stunning design. Trace back then and then we optimized community connection with a full featured front porch and a rear garage and that chair. And then on natural comfort we went with that approach will erase the back elevation that was facing south, so the light goes deep into the spaces it could.

01:04:51:10 - 01:05:25:17
Sam Rashkin: We use sip roofs that you see here to create a natural high ceiling, and then we load a portion of it for storage and mechanical that I'll show you later. But a natural comfort. You had the solar orientation south to the back, the cool roof and future solar space. You have overhang and trellis size to control the seasonal sunlight near the summer sun shaded and the winter sun able to come through and heat the thermal mass flooring and had that summer breeze ventilation and go through the house and bring walls to shade the sun in the morning and afternoons.

01:05:25:20 - 01:05:52:25
Sam Rashkin: So essentially, this was a comprehensive natural comfort home with thermal mass control as well. On rightsizing, we had an open layout, minimal circulation, all these built ins throughout the house which will make it so clutter free and live so much bigger. Even though the bedrooms are small, they had oversize dressers with Paul ceiling shelving above the dresser and then workspaces with deaths.

01:05:52:26 - 01:06:21:08
Sam Rashkin: And then, you know, you can read another room small. It's going to live so much bigger. And then we have very silly heights. We mentioned with the natural sit roof configuration and the flat port in the middle for mechanical and for storage right there. And then we have indoor outdoor linkages. And the result is again about 400ft² of savings worth about $100,000 in estimation.

01:06:21:11 - 01:06:51:11
Sam Rashkin: And then integrated systems and structure the roofs and walls to put dimensions simple. Roof mechanical, electrical is compact HVAC and conditioned space contact plumbing. Smart home. Everyday battery ready furniture was optimized for flow. Minimized wasted space storage, extensive built ins, generous closets, attic storage and solar south facing roof and events and the design began is more complicated design and went to this design.

01:06:51:11 - 01:07:22:03
Sam Rashkin: So went 1480 2480ft². So and we got a bigger front porch, a larger kitchen, and a private workspace, and we saved 100ft². It's simple geometry, eight foot less lot with six less corners, no kitchen corner cabinet and mass customization. We took this whole section and repurposed it over for this design. So here's how these numbers add up. No, on the site, the views are worth about $10,000.

01:07:22:03 - 01:08:04:27
Sam Rashkin: In my estimate, the front porch is about 10,000 of value. The natural comfort 30 year savings estimated about 20,000. For the smaller house, the better views comfort, daylight, fresh air, about 20,000. Rightsizing the clutter. Free living about 25,000. The square feet at 100,000. Six less corners 10,000. Standard kitchen and bathroom, no corners and simple design about 10,000 less the structure savings I did 2500 contact HVAC 1000 contact plumbing 1000 plus with all the instant hot water, the fixtures in the bathrooms, about $1,000 not having to wait for hot water and the future ready for solar.

01:08:04:28 - 01:08:41:27
Sam Rashkin: About 15,000 that you would you would save just from not having to do any changes. So just without adding it up directly, but just taking conservative numbers. It's about 120,000 of savings and $100,000 of that'd value. So numbers are big with optimization, and it leaves me with these recommendations. One everyone should look at the framework and housing 2.0 as a placeholder.

01:08:41:29 - 01:09:11:12
Sam Rashkin: It's what I was able to curate from decades and decades of having this privilege to travel across the entire country, and 20 years of experience as a residential architect to just collect all the best practices I could. It doesn't mean that they're for everyone, or that you have to embrace them all. You have your own preferences based on tolerance for change or demographics, marketing conditions, climate conditions.

01:09:11:14 - 01:09:34:29
Sam Rashkin: You should at least look at them as a sample. What you could do add, delete come up with your own framework. Because once you have a framework that you embrace as your as your framework for your product, you have a brand. This is what your home experience. This is a user experience. Your homes will consistently deliver. You have a whole story to tell.

01:09:35:01 - 01:10:06:09
Sam Rashkin: Invest in the experts to apply that customized optimization framework for architecture, interior design, color lighting technology, landscaping. Extract substantial cost savings by minimizing waste complexity. Optimizing integrated systems. Invest in savings and transformational user experiences, views, storage, built ins, outdoor living and explore mass customization and systems. Built options. And over time, Mike and I do set up these action groups that work together.

01:10:06:09 - 01:10:14:00
Sam Rashkin: If you're ever interested, do put yourself in a list and over time, we'll.

01:10:14:03 - 01:10:22:19
Sam Rashkin: We'll consider setting another one of those up. So that's basically the design module. Mike I'll let you wrap it up.

01:10:22:22 - 01:10:33:26
Mike Collignon: Well, Sam, we're fortunate enough to have been here with us. And so then can can speak a little bit to Genco and some of the things that they can do.

01:10:33:27 - 01:11:05:10
Ben Millar: So very quickly. Thank you for having me on here. Really appreciate the time to come and speak again. My name is Ben Millar. I'm the director of business development for Genco Solar, and I have had a focus throughout a lot of my career of working with homebuilders, particularly on how to get their kind of best bang for their buck, for the return they are able to give to their homeowners and to themselves.

01:11:05:10 - 01:11:25:22
Ben Millar: And I say return. That means just generally benefits. And so I work with a home builder for a while, worked in a purchasing department of Pulte Homes, and then made my way into green building and into solar. And so really happy to be here to talk to you. Genco is a large solar manufacturer, and just put that into color.

01:11:25:27 - 01:11:54:00
Ben Millar: They have a capacity of 110GW of solar. The Three Gorges Dam in China is 22GW of energy. So, pretty big company. But I do want to get into a couple of things I'm going to skip forward here in terms of some some benefits to solar and why builders should be starting to think about it even more than they have in the past.

01:11:54:02 - 01:12:20:29
Ben Millar: One of them in Sam showed this here is that there is a real quantifiable value for homeowners. And therefore then to the builder as well, of building solar, and that's the value of either the savings or the value of the increased appraised value that we've started to see born out. There's another value, though, quickly when you get in.

01:12:21:01 - 01:12:51:15
Ben Millar: That is providing kind of this a resilient home and energy secure home. I live here in Florida where we don't have frequent kind of brownouts and power loss, but we do have frequent hurricanes. And so we see so many people and even some builders decided to to have energy storage as well as solar connected to their homes to give them a clean source of renewable energy.

01:12:51:15 - 01:13:13:25
Ben Millar: And that means it gets renewed. You don't have to go to the gas station to continually get gas to feed a generator, but you actually get to harvest the sun over and over again. And so builders are starting to see that homeowners are wanting that. They see that homeowners want generators quite often. But they've started to say, well, there may be a better way to get them power.

01:13:13:27 - 01:13:37:21
Ben Millar: There's an opportunity as well, homeowners, to make your homeowners kind of proud of their homes. I would see homeowners that have smart features as well as good energy features. They become a little bit more proud and sometimes brag about their home a little bit more. But there's a there's a benefit to.

01:13:37:23 - 01:14:02:02
Ben Millar: To solar for builders if they want to. And that is to control the look of their communities. When I worked with a builder many times, we were very, very concerned about the look and what what was the unit going to look like. Right. So we did control for how landscaping looked, what the entrances looked like, what what the lighting looked like.

01:14:02:04 - 01:14:30:07
Ben Millar: But if you know, what we'll see is that somebody goes solar every 48 seconds in the US. What will happen in many cases is if you don't do the whole job in the beginning, then somebody else comes back behind you and does it not as well. And that goes to what Sam was talking about with spaces and making sure people have room for, you know, dropping the things or storing the things that they need to.

01:14:30:08 - 01:15:10:25
Ben Millar: People will come through and do maybe not as good a job of getting things installed. So you can actually, as a builder, control the look of the systems that get installed by deciding to install themselves or having a post closed program where you have allotted an area on the roof. In certain designs that can happen even close post close, and by making sure that you've got the correct electrical connections up front in the right conduit so you can hide things and make things look really good, that's incredibly important to builders is the.

01:15:10:27 - 01:15:39:07
Ben Millar: But it also is important to homeowners. And you can show a really sleek looking home, that, you know, powers itself. That is a that is a big deal. And many times by implementing solar inside of your building process, there's a good chance that you won't lose any days of production. You won't have any large delays in what you have to do, because there's a minimum amount of things that you need to do in order to make solar work.

01:15:39:09 - 01:16:09:26
Ben Millar: And obviously for for a lot of builders, that can lead to more profit. So you can kind of a real quick and easy way to think of things. If you're a builder out there, you can implement solar either as a pre close installation process or even a post close installation process. As Sam pointed out, you can have a pre-planned roof area, free events.

01:16:10:03 - 01:16:36:28
Ben Millar: You can have a conduit run from the electric panel to the attic, or even up to the roof, so that any sort of things, or any electricals hidden within the structure of the home. And then once you've done that, you could either market this kind of solar ready home or market a solar home if you're actually having the panels then installed during construction and get that marketing benefit.

01:16:37:01 - 01:17:14:19
Ben Millar: You know, what I would suggest is if you were going to work with a group like Genco, would, hey, work with one of our preferred install partners and then just we'll, you know, we'll provide design, engineering, marketing material and even buyer consults if needed. Again, keeping the the lifting, the heavy lifting from you. But at the end of the day, you end up providing a lot of value to your homeowners, potentially raising the, price of your own homes and or being able to get kind of referral fees at the same time.

01:17:14:19 - 01:17:44:06
Ben Millar: So there's a lot of benefits there. I wanted to talk through that quickly because I didn't want to take up too much time. But there are some, some definitely big benefits now to go ahead and controlling the look of your homes and planning things out from the beginning. As you're thinking about building homes, it is crucially important to keep costs down and to add value to your homeowners.

01:17:44:08 - 01:17:48:11
Ben Millar: With that, I'm just going to be quiet from there.

01:17:48:13 - 01:18:06:23
Mike Collignon: All right. Well, thank you, Ben, I appreciate it. And actually don't go anywhere because I do have a question for you. One of our audience members, Zoran, wanted to know if solar panels and battery storage is the new normal. So I'll let you answer that one first. And then he's got a follow up question to that.

01:18:06:26 - 01:18:32:11
Ben Millar: Yeah, absolutely. So I wish it was the new normal. We're almost there. Right. So depending on the location that you're in, if you're in California I would say that could be a new normal. But in other places it's not normal yet. Right. It's it's something that you're adding value to. And you may be one of a few or 2 or 3 of a few builders in your area to implement.

01:18:32:12 - 01:18:51:14
Ben Millar: And. Right. So there is still room to say, hey, we're doing something better for our homeowners. And I think there's something to that. You know, I hope one day it becomes like the Energy Star program where everybody says, hey, I've got we have Energy Star homes, right? We everybody has to say it. That's not where we're at right now.

01:18:51:14 - 01:18:57:13
Ben Millar: But there is tremendous marketing value saying that we've done something better for our homeowners.

01:18:57:16 - 01:19:08:07
Mike Collignon: All right. And then I know Zorn's up in Canada. And so his question is does solar make sense in some northern locales like Canada?

01:19:08:09 - 01:19:10:20
Ben Millar: It can it produces a lot less.

01:19:10:20 - 01:19:35:10
Ben Millar: Power per square foot of panel if you think of it that way. So it's going to depend a little bit on your, cost of energy if you're thinking simply economically. So it's going to depend on your utility energy. And then it also depends on how long somebody was maybe living in the home and depends on the type of energy have.

01:19:35:10 - 01:20:09:05
Ben Millar: So if you're going to live there a long time and the utility currently burns coal, you may want to still have solar because it is a renewable source of energy. You may want to have energy and solar and storage. If you are subject to some level of blackouts, or you may want to have some sort of solar in storage if you have a very variable, time of use or demand type pricing, that you're able to kind of play a little bit of arbitrage so it can make sense.

01:20:09:08 - 01:20:32:14
Ben Millar: It wouldn't be the place that I look to and say, that's where you've got to put it right. But it can make sense depending if you're meeting the needs and desires of your specific clients. It's easier down in Florida where you can say, yeah, this is going to give you an economic value right away. But there are other considerations to make other than just the economic value.

01:20:32:20 - 01:20:37:04
Ben Millar: But that is where a lot of the main, main drivers are.

01:20:37:07 - 01:21:01:12
Mike Collignon: Okay. And then one more follow up to the economic part of it he was wondering about, do you advise people to try and negate their entire consumption, to basically go to try a zero energy system, or is it, you know, does it? I think there are the factors that typically come into play, right? Like are you credited on your bill at retail or at wholesale?

01:21:01:14 - 01:21:06:07
Mike Collignon: Can you talk a little bit about some of those economic aspects of it?

01:21:06:14 - 01:21:30:04
Ben Millar: Yeah. So so let's say the reason that somebody is going solar is, is purely the economic. Right. Well then it will certainly depend on your utility, whether you have net metering or whether they're kind of letting you subsidize their grid. And, and only giving you a certain or half credit for the energy that you send to them.

01:21:30:06 - 01:21:58:12
Ben Millar: So that does matter. But let's just play the game of, of, let's say you get full credit for the energy that you produce and send to them, which they then send sell to your neighbor. If that is the case, then yeah, getting enough solar to power your whole home is great, but it's going to depend on your roof size, which is if you're a builder, if you can, you know, look a little bit at that without creating extra waste.

01:21:58:19 - 01:22:14:29
Ben Millar: That's fantastic. It's going to depend on where the location of your, clear spaces are, whether it's east, south, west, typically don't want to have them face north. But what I would tell you is.

01:22:14:29 - 01:22:15:25
Ben Millar: Even if you can't.

01:22:15:25 - 01:22:36:08
Ben Millar: Get well first, if you're building well, you build a home that doesn't use a ton of energy, right? You thought about the energy consumption, and so many homes can get to 80 to 100% of the energy. That is a cute dog. But if you don't, let's say you're only able to get 60% of your energy and harvest your own energy.

01:22:36:10 - 01:23:07:06
Ben Millar: I look at that a few ways. One, if somebody told me that I can go to the grocery store and get 15% off of 60% of my groceries, I would take it, right. Secondarily, I don't know if you guys garden any, but if you've grown anything successfully, I haven't done much successfully. But if you've grown anything, there is this great feeling for being able to provide for yourself.

01:23:07:08 - 01:23:30:06
Ben Millar: Even when you can't provide all the vegetables you, you consume. Right? Being able to provide for yourself and get a, getting maybe even a discount on that energy for part of it is a huge deal. And if you are using it for resiliency and energy security and adding storage, then obviously you want to be able to refuel your energy to.

01:23:30:09 - 01:23:49:23
Ben Millar: Energy from the sun. And so that's the way I've always thought about it. Most people, again, are in that 60 to 90% range. You can do a hundred if you really thought things out in the beginning, but I typically wouldn't worry about, hey, I've got to get every last cent I would, I would worry about it. Let's get most of the way there.

01:23:49:23 - 01:23:55:06
Ben Millar: And that's where a lot of the value is, particularly with the way people's rate structures work.

01:23:55:08 - 01:24:18:07
Mike Collignon: Awesome. Well thank you, sir. We really appreciate you joining us today. We thank you certainly, Genco, for the sponsorship. And if people have other questions for Ben, go ahead and send them my way because I can always get them to Ben via email. So thank you Ben. We really appreciate it. And Sam, speaking of questions, we've got some questions for you as well.

01:24:18:10 - 01:24:24:29
Mike Collignon: So if you've got a couple of minutes to to take those.

01:24:25:01 - 01:24:31:20
Mike Collignon: I can't hear you at the moment, but.

01:24:31:23 - 01:24:37:14
Mike Collignon: If we can get Sam's audio working again.

01:24:37:16 - 01:25:02:10
Mike Collignon: Can I hear you saying, there we go. All right. Okay, so we have we have a handful of questions here for Sam. First, let's take one from Zoran. He wanted to know can ceramic tiles over wood floor joists be considered thermal mass?

01:25:02:12 - 01:25:25:27
Sam Rashkin: Not very good. Generally you want about two inches of thickness is good for a mass. So if you have a if you have a thick set mortar versus a thin set, then it will work. What happens with mass is you get about 80% of the benefit from those first two inches. There's a very big drop off in terms of the effective battery storage kind of functionality.

01:25:25:29 - 01:25:46:11
Sam Rashkin: So yeah, you could, but it would have to be a thick set. You know, you want some decent amount of storage capacity, but even over a thin set you get some benefit. But the full storage again about two inches is your sweet spot.

01:25:46:13 - 01:25:57:25
Mike Collignon: All right. I had a question from David. He wanted to know if you're framing 24in on center, how does that affect shear wall design?

01:25:57:27 - 01:26:24:26
Sam Rashkin: Well, you have to basically engineer out the numbers. Essentially, it's going to be a lot this year comes from the sheathing material itself. And if you have a wider stud, a two by two by six versus two by 4th May actually be stronger. So it all depends on the calculations. But generally there's no problems with shear with 24in in the center.

01:26:24:29 - 01:26:51:02
Mike Collignon: Okay. Very good. I wanted to go back to a couple of other questions that Zoran had talking about windows opening windows, is that going to negatively impact indoor air quality? If you have pollutants such as pollen or other allergens entering the home? And then there's another question about opening windows. Bill let you go with first on the IQ angle.

01:26:51:04 - 01:27:18:01
Sam Rashkin: Absolutely. So you want to be conscious of obviously don't want to open windows during wildfire season event. You don't want to open windows if it's a heavy smog day or a heavy pollen count. So windows have constraints, but it's it's, you know, during most conditions when you have cool night breezes, the air quality outside is generally very good.

01:27:18:02 - 01:27:43:11
Sam Rashkin: And it's an amazing resource for cooling a space, bringing fresh air, just kind of washing the whole house. But you do have to watch it, of course, as we go to the southeast in the Mid-Atlantic and you have hot, humid conditions in the summertime, obviously it's not it's not as effective to use outdoor air when the outside when one of the most significant pollutant humidity is present.

01:27:43:13 - 01:28:11:06
Sam Rashkin: But it's a great feature to have on nice days when the outside air quality is good to get an open windows and have them designed and strategically set up to create either cross ventilation or sidewall ventilation, front to side ventilation whatever strategy you choose, fresh air is an amazing user experience. It feels great to have fresh air.

01:28:11:09 - 01:28:31:08
Mike Collignon: And he also has a question about the natural heating and cooling if it's too hot or cold, well, obviously, you know you're going to want to try and maintain a certain temperature range in your home. The fall and spring kind of seasons are usually when you can find some of that sweet spot. If it gets too hot or too cold.

01:28:31:09 - 01:28:47:17
Mike Collignon: Obviously up in Canada, it's too cold. You don't want to have your windows open because you're just going to be freezing. But I think you talked a little bit about that there with your answer, Sam, about, you know, when you have really nice days, open it up and enjoy.

01:28:47:20 - 01:29:11:06
Sam Rashkin: Yeah. You have in many climates you have extended times, swing seasons with at least a month of in the spring and fall, where open windows is just the way to go. What you have in the Western States is you have a very significant diurnal swing, so that where it may be 100 degrees, let's say in Sacramento, where used to live during the day, it'll be 60 or below at night.

01:29:11:07 - 01:29:33:19
Sam Rashkin: So what we would do is we would open the windows and just thermally charge all the mass in the home, the drywall, the tile floors and concrete floors that we had counters. Everything would just be charge all night long. The cool Delta Breeze come in and air conditioning would come on the next day into, well, late in the afternoon.

01:29:33:25 - 01:29:57:28
Sam Rashkin: He just had so much free cooling that be recharging. And you had no significant latent load because we're at West. So the conditions were very again by climate and location. But almost everywhere I've lived there just always extended periods where pressure is by far when the house feels the best, when it's able to capture and just just bring in that air.

01:29:58:01 - 01:30:15:17
Sam Rashkin: Spring and fall, just amazing times of year to have natural there. I go nuts when we just rely on the whole house. Ventilation is the only option. Of course you need whole house ventilation, but I shut it down during the spring and fall.

01:30:15:19 - 01:30:39:13
Mike Collignon: Now, this may be a little bit of a preview for an upcoming seminar, but I'll ask it anyway. Zorn wanted to know, do we need to simplify over complicated mechanicals or HVAC systems, and if so, how? I think we might be covering this in the seminar.

01:30:39:15 - 01:31:15:14
Sam Rashkin: Yeah, we won't, but that's a good question. I think the bigger challenge with systems, mechanical systems, HVAC systems is with high performance homes for creating ultra load housing. And I think it's just it's like having a finicky sport car. And we have to realize we need equipment that's really so adaptable to this ultra low loads. And so we have to move more and more to variable speed equipment.

01:31:15:14 - 01:31:40:22
Sam Rashkin: And so good variable speed equipment, high performance pumps are amazing opportunities for for homes, high performance homes. Because the just just the orientation alone could change the heat pump sizing requirements up to two tons. And do we really want to or let's say we're building a subdivision? Do we want to really have to have all these very variations and sizes of equipment?

01:31:40:23 - 01:32:18:05
Sam Rashkin: We have to order by house, by orientation, variable speed equipment is going to be just able to throttle down function efficiently. And you don't worry about the sizing nearly as much or hardly at all. And it's just a perfect solution. The other thing that makes it also great in terms of design is its footprint. High performance heat pumps up a smaller compressor outdoors, and a lot of the designs and systems for distribution are easier to integrate in the design on the inside the home as well.

01:32:18:07 - 01:32:38:00
Mike Collignon: All right. Well, we don't have any other questions, Sam. So I'm going to go ahead and wrap up our second seminar. And if you enjoyed that one there are still four more you can attend. Our next seminar is we kind of teased it a little bit there with that answer. It's going to take place three weeks from today.

01:32:38:01 - 01:33:05:25
Mike Collignon: It's on Thursday, March 7th. That's going to be at our normal start time of 2 p.m. eastern time. As we mentioned, we're going to be discussing performance, but not just when it comes to energy efficiency. So thank you so much for attending today. Thank you for all the wonderful questions. Thank you for the compliments. Thank you once again to our sponsors, Schneider Electric, Shinko Solar, Mitsubishi Electric and Panasonic Healthy Indoor Living Solutions for their sponsorship of housing 2.0.

01:33:05:26 - 01:33:13:15
Mike Collignon: Until next time, I hope you all have a great President's Day weekend. Stay safe, stay healthy and take care of everyone so long.