The Future of Comfort at Home

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Mike Collignon: The World Oceans Day. A day to celebrate our oceans and raise awareness about the vital importance to our planet. So please take care of them. You know, the ocean can be comforting for many, but our homes are also comforting. Well, they're supposed to be. Today we're going to discuss how high performance HVAC systems impact energy efficiency, indoor air quality, and comfort.

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Mike Collignon: We're going to look at a novel HVAC engineered distribution system designed to meet today's and tomorrow's energy codes, reduce builders cycle time and cost, effectively move ducts to conditioned space. This system is already in use by production builders like Lennar, Pulte, Beazer, Taylor Morrison and DR Horton because it reduces cooling tonnage. It increases the opportunity to access federal and state tax credits and local incentives, and it reduces waste.

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Mike Collignon: Now here to introduce us to this new system is Alan Lang. He's a partner and CEO of LLC. Alan has spent the last 35 years in the construction and residential home building industry, in various senior management and executive roles. He recently retired from national builder Taylor Morrison, where he was the executive vice president of homebuilding. Now, prior to Taylor Morrison, Alan was the CEO of Orleans Homes, where he led the turnaround in eventual sale of Orleans to Taylor Morrison and Lennar.

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Mike Collignon: He also spent 15 years with Pulte Homes as national vice president of operations and area president for Bill Pulte Building Systems. Alan currently serves on the North American Board of Rockwell International, which is a global installation manufacturer based in Denmark. Now, the Thought Leader webinars are part of our larger housing 2.0 program. The content for that program is based largely on the same rations latest book, housing 2.0 A Disruption Survival Guide.

00:01:50:06 - 00:02:09:20
Mike Collignon: Now, that program empowers building professionals to design and construct higher performance, healthier, more sustainable homes and a fraction of the cost. You can learn more about that program by visiting.

00:02:09:22 - 00:02:33:15
Mike Collignon: Now, I need to comfort our sponsors by telling you about them. The first is Mitsubishi Electric. Mitsubishi Electric promote sustainable building through the electrification of residential and commercial heating and cooling products. Their mission is to advance technologies that reduce waste output, promote sustainable resource cycles while increasing energy efficiency, and eliminating dependance on fossil fuels. Next is Westlake Royal Building Products.

00:02:33:15 - 00:03:06:23
Mike Collignon: They are the North American leader in the innovation, design and production of a broad and diverse range of exterior and interior building products, including siding and accessories, trim and moldings, roofing, stone windows and outdoor living. For more than 50 years, Westlake Royal Building Products has manufactured high quality, low maintenance products to meet the specifications and needs of building professionals, homeowners, architects, engineers and distributors while providing stunning curb appeal with an unmatched array of colors, styles and accessories.

00:03:06:24 - 00:03:32:14
Mike Collignon: For more information, please visit Westlake Royal Building Products. Com. Schneider electric 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 via their smart electrical panel to their connected wiring devices.

00:03:32:20 - 00:03:57:07
Mike Collignon: This grid to plug solution makes it significantly easier to create smart solar power and backup power ready homes, both now and in the future. And our newest sponsor is Beco. They exist to empower new generations of homeowners to live healthier lives on a healthier planet. They created the industry's first Healthy Kitchen Council to help guide product innovations, and they are one of the most sustainable brands in the world.

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Mike Collignon: And that claim is backed by Becca's parent company becoming carbon neutral in global production operations three years ago. Plus, they're the only home appliances brand to receive Energy Star designation every year they've operated in the United States. That's six years in a row and counting. Now, if you have any questions for our guest, please enter them into the questions box found in the Go to Webinar Control panel.

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Mike Collignon: I'll review those questions and pose those to Alan after his presentation. All right Alan, welcome to the webinar series.

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Alan Laing: Thanks, Mike and Mary. Thank you for setting this up. Great introduction. You covered a good part of my presentation. So thank you. I'm glad to be here today and look forward to questions at the end of this marriage. You want to go to the next slide.

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Mike Collignon: Oh hold on just a second here Alan.

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Mary Kestner: Yeah it's.

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Mary Kestner: There we go.

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Alan Laing: There we go.

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Mary Kestner: My apologies.

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Alan Laing: No problem. So Mike had touched on this, but we're an engineered supply side distribution system that improves homeowner comfort, reduces installation time for the trade, and is designed to meet today's and tomorrow's energy codes and reduces builder cycle time. There's other benefits, but that's kind of the core of it. So maybe I'll talk a little bit about the background next slide.

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Alan Laing: So this started with my partners at Ibex back in about 2016. Maybe even before that there was some related research. Theo was very involved early on. Carrier spent some time with us from 2017 to 19, and it involved as a bunch of pilot homes and testing. And ultimately we built we. I joined the company in 2019. I've been retired, as was mentioned earlier, and my partners talked me into moving to Pittsburgh for a few months to get a better understanding of Ria and then and develop strategy to bring it to market.

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Alan Laing: So we were raising capital in 2020 just before Covid, and then we began the production for our tooling during that year. Obviously is an interesting time to be starting a company, and then we are fully in production now. We've last 18 to 20 months. We've been working across the country and installed thousands of homes successfully. And along the bottom we did something unusual.

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Alan Laing: We invited eight, those eight builders to become investors in the company in their minority investors. But nonetheless, they their investment levels could be as little as 2 or $300,000 and as much as several million, depending on the builder. And our logic there was that that they would be good investors, but furthermore, they would be more invested in innovation and change, and we'd be able to get their mind space that was going to be required to create the kind of transformation weren't going.

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Alan Laing: And so far, so good. They've been really good investors. We've got about 40 other investors that are range from individuals to to companies. Next slide.

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Alan Laing: So what is it?

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Alan Laing: On the right one now. One more.

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Alan Laing: Perfect. We're headquartered in Phoenix. Obviously on the CEO we've we've developed a group of about 20 people that range in skill set, from HVAC designers to product development experts to finance. And then the biggest part of the organization is a field technical group that is just distributed around the country, that work with the trades and the builders locally to identify the opportunity, manage the change process and more most importantly, train and certify the the companies, their individual crews and provide technical support for them.

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Alan Laing: We're really excited about everything we're doing. We've also partnered with HVAC design firms around the country. There's about ten of them that we work with actively. In fact, as I sit here today, we've got five members in from my tech from all over the globe that are going through two weeks, spending two weeks with us to get detailed training.

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Alan Laing: So that's who we are. Next.

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Alan Laing: What when we step back to 2015, 1617, the underlying thesis for Ria was, how do you get in front of the ever changing building and energy codes that seemed to be rolling from west to east? So California, Oregon, Washington, with some exceptions, Minnesota's got an aggressive energy code as well. But how do you get in front of that?

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Alan Laing: And one of the hallmarks of all of them was either rewards or incentives or penalties. If the ducks were outside the thermal envelope of the home. And that kind of gave birth to this notion of a three and four inch diameter ducts that could be efficiently and easily routed inside the thermal envelope of the home and get in front of the code changes proactively.

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Alan Laing: And that's been generally the path we've been on. And for example, I live in Phoenix and here with a huge cooling loads. You know, the insulated ducks are 14 16in around. So moving them out of the attic and into the condition space architecturally really challenging to do. We can do that very efficiently either. Right. The the three introduction two by four walls or in very discreet small 6 to 8 inch drops in ceilings and chases in homes that are nine foot, ten foot plates, that they've become very discreet and not nearly as much architectural interference.

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Alan Laing: So that's kind of the why part of the original investment in the activity next.

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Alan Laing: So some of the features, as I mentioned, they're small diameter ducts. It's a low velocity system. We sometimes get paired compared to debts and or Unico, which are high velocity. Rs is low velocity and it works with any air handler carrier Lennox and train York any of them. We use a home run system, kind of like the old PEX plumbing system.

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Alan Laing: So everything is dedicated from a manifold with direct duct distribution to the room. Everything is snap fit connections. They're basically a wire cutter, utility knife and a drill. And you can install the whole system. And we've seen up to 50% savings and labor, which in today's environment has been really helpful to us and everybody else. And every diffuser has a damper.

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Alan Laing: So we've got a really good strategy for managing comfort in the home, and we'll get to the details of that in a second. And the whole system is only 16 SKU. So conventional systems will see district distributors and contractors. They'll have 2500 to 5000 SKUs to manage all the different combinations of boots and products and dampers and diffusers.

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Alan Laing: And we're managing this whole system with 16 of them next.

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Alan Laing: So what we the value that we present to both builders and contractors is cost effectively moves the ducks in the condition space. And we've seen, as I mentioned, aggressive codes that either reward you. For example, in Minnesota the ducks are outside the conditioned space. You've got to do a duck leakage test that's really hard to pass in that state.

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Alan Laing: And they defaulted in many cases to using products like aero seal, which were expensive. And we've been able to work collaboratively with the architects and engineers that the builders get all the ducks and conditions based. And really the requirement for doing duct testing, leakage testing, and therefore all the cost of either masking glue and tape or in some cases aerosol.

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Alan Laing: So that has been a really positive financial outcome and a better, higher performing home. Generally, we're picking up 2 to 3 Herz points by moving the ducks into conditioned space. Generally, depending on where you are in the country, you're going to get half to a full ton of tonnage. In reduction of the sizing, there's federal 45 L credits that singularly using Ria is not necessarily going to make you qualify for, but it's foundational to getting there.

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Alan Laing: In some states, there's pretty aggressive tax credits as well, and even in some municipal incentives as well. We're taking generally a day out of the production cycle time, which obviously is important. We've had very few callbacks, and because of the mixing of the air, if you imagine having 3 or 4 sources of air in a master bedroom versus 1 or 2, and they're distributed between the high side walls and the floor, we get much better air mixing.

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Alan Laing: We got some really good data on comfort. We'll get to you in a minute. And lastly, we think we have about 90% job site reduction in waste. So depending on where you sit in an organization with what we see with ESG initiatives, obviously you're less waste is good and obviously the cost of that as well. So we've we've had a great way story next.

00:13:42:24 - 00:14:07:26
Alan Laing: In terms of the product the doctor's, it's actually gray in color versus the picture on the slide here. But it is a 30 year old duck that's been around a very long time made by Thermal Flex. It's three and four inches and it's got a wire helix and a very durable fabric exterior. The it's 181 rated. It's a class A duct.

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Alan Laing: It's been, as I said, been around for a long time. Our component parts, the two threaded pieces you see there are the feral so that threads onto the duct and air seals. In fact, when you put it on, if you put it on just by hand tight, you can't get it off. So that when we're demonstrating it, we've always got to tell people, you know, if you're really wrenched down on that, it's going to be there until you cut it off.

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Alan Laing: And then the piece in between is a coupler. So that that allows us to splice lengths of the duct comes in 50ft lengths. So there's not a lot of splicing. But we also the connectors all pass a new UL standard called 181 C, which is a really high standard to get over. So we've never failed the duct leakage test in the history of the company.

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Alan Laing: At the energy Star threshold, the snap fit twist on, twist off. It's oral. So when it's seated there's a click. So the installers can really learn it very quickly. And it's hard to get it wrong. So it seats clicks and you're done with it. And then we've got patents on the majority of the system. We have systems patent and we got component patents as well.

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Alan Laing: Next.

00:15:21:26 - 00:15:44:27
Alan Laing: And then there's you can see what I described there. Now we've introduced the coupler to an elbow a couple of elbows depending on what the requirements are. And on the right side are the boots. So we've got on the top of high sidewall which would sit 5 or 7in from the the top of the wall. We have a mounting bracket that you can use the center to place it or you can use it.

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Alan Laing: You can see the holes that amount it directly to the top plates pass through boot is if there's a bulkhead, same thing. The ceiling boot is obviously for the diffusers. And then on the manifold box there's an inside and an outside that clamps together that you attach the duct to next.

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Alan Laing: So the manifold is kind of the centerpiece of the system. It sits on top of the air handler. Our design software generates layout in a template that as you can see the tradesmen there is cutting them. We also will we have a sheet metal version of this. Although the duct board seems to be preferred. They build, the contractor builds it.

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Alan Laing: A lot of them are starting to do with fabricating in their shops and taking it out to the home.

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Alan Laing: The shop drawing, as I said, comes from the design software and the designer. That's one in stock board and we provide a whole guidelines set. We've got instructional videos on our website on how to do this. And then as I mentioned earlier, the fittings snapped together by hand. Next.

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Alan Laing: From the diffusers, the high sidewall on the left and these can be painted. You'll go into a lot of model homes of ours around the country, and they'll actually be painted the color of the wall. And on the right is the ceiling diffuser. We've got a couple versions of this. We have a smaller diameter, one for northern climates and a larger the one you see here for southern climates.

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Alan Laing: And again, all of them are paint paint grade. And each one of the diffusers has got a five position damper inside them. Next.

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Alan Laing: So here's some pictures of of interiors of homes. And you'll see that we've integrated them in with the lighting diagrams. And they're pretty discreet. We as builders will walk in and stare at the ceiling and think that it might be a little busy, but actually, we've never had a single comment from a homeowner. Once she furnished a home and move into it, it just seems to disappear into the wall.

00:17:57:20 - 00:18:24:00
Alan Laing: And relative to if you're living in the Midwest, you got brown, ugly floor diffusers on the floor, underneath the curtains and the couch. Or in the southern climates, larger metal diffusers that are not conveniently placed. The one at the far right pictures, actually a Southern California home, and it's got a glazed curtain wall, so there's actually a huge heat gains in that home that resulted in those three diffusers above the door.

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Alan Laing: We're all we're doing some consumer research now to come up with the combination diffusers. So they'd be a little more of a commercial linear look, but we've had good feedback on the use of these ones already. Next.

00:18:41:22 - 00:19:05:00
Alan Laing: I think I'm going to assume that most of the folks on the call are familiar with the manual JS and D process, so. And if you're not, I'll go a little bit slower. But basically step one for us, and it's the same as a conventional process, is a load calculation that generates targeted air flows. These are required by code.

00:19:05:02 - 00:19:28:20
Alan Laing: The manual S is it takes those loads and then provides a database of equipment that you can select the air handlers, compressors or package units, whatever it is you're choosing. And then manual D is the duct design system. And the conventional system is by the weakest link in our system. It's what's different. There's a lot of the algorithms.

00:19:28:20 - 00:19:50:08
Alan Laing: And the intellectual property of the company is founded in the algorithms of air flows over length of duct. That took a couple of years of testing to get where we could program and ensure it works. And then at the end of this, we have a verify that operates on a phone. So the contractor is trained and they go into a home with a hood capture.

00:19:50:11 - 00:20:14:00
Alan Laing: They go to the pull up the design on the phone. They capture the air flows out of each diffuser in the home takes about 30 minutes. They enter the the air flows into the the app and they hit verify. It runs against the the design background. And it'll generally suggest you go back and change 4 or 5 diffusers in the home from position three to position five.

00:20:14:03 - 00:20:33:28
Alan Laing: We then guarantee that home is going to operate at the design air flows. So if that second bedroom called for 90 cfm of air, we're guaranteeing that it's going to be within 10% of those air flows. And then lastly there's a report that can be generated and left with the home or put in a binder for for customer service purposes.

00:20:34:01 - 00:20:55:06
Alan Laing: So again, somewhat of a traditional process with a little more emphasis on the on the home run duct system and guaranteeing that the air flows are going to be per design, and then verified that they are kind of a commercial balancing and commissioning application. Next.

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Alan Laing: So we're operating.

00:20:57:27 - 00:21:22:26
Alan Laing: These slides. We're always updating them. But in multiple markets the gray is what we're moving into production now. And the blue is where we're in full blown production. And are our general market entry strategy is to partner with one of the investor builders or somebody else. You'll see Shea and Fisher and Ashton Woods. There's a lot of Americans for rent.

00:21:22:27 - 00:21:47:07
Alan Laing: There's another one that their builder customers of ours generally we're going to start with them. We're going to select a market and enter it, and then generally do some monitoring for performance in trade education. So this map ever changing. We're heading into South Carolina here shortly. For example next week we start there. We're going to be in Iowa in July with the our Horton.

00:21:47:07 - 00:21:58:06
Alan Laing: So check check frequently on our website. You'll see if we're not in your state yet we may be arriving soon. Next.

00:21:58:08 - 00:22:15:00
Alan Laing: So these are some data. Again it's a little bit dated. We're we're right now we're installing about 1500 homes a month and growing next.

00:22:15:03 - 00:22:40:21
Alan Laing: From a supply chain standpoint, which is obviously a popular topic with everybody today. Our doctor is manufactured in South Carolina by Thermo Flex. They're adding new capacity, and some of that's going to be distributed to Houston and Phoenix over the balance of this year and early into next year. We're entertaining other suppliers, but they've been a really good partner right now.

00:22:40:22 - 00:23:09:29
Alan Laing: We're excited to get them from a freight standpoint. A little bit further west, our plastics partners, a company called Viking Plastics, they're based in upstate Pennsylvania, and most of our production to date has been there. It's shifting as we speak to a dedicated facility in Jeffersonville, Indiana, right outside Louisville. Up to this point in our in our history, we've been generally what we were making and shipping directly from our manufacturers.

00:23:10:00 - 00:23:32:10
Alan Laing: That's over the course of the next 18 months. So we're going to be adding more distribution. We have a small distribution center here in our office in Phoenix. We're going to be adding a second one in Louisville. And then we'll add further injection molding capacity in the West. We suspect somewhere in the Salt Lake City, Nevada Reno area by the end of the year.

00:23:32:12 - 00:23:51:09
Alan Laing: So robust supply chain. Our lead times today are 6 to 7 weeks. We've had really great stability in our pricing. We've had one price increase in our couple of years of commercial activity. So we've been blessed in that sense. Next.

00:23:51:12 - 00:23:52:17
Alan Laing: We get questions.

00:23:52:17 - 00:24:18:07
Alan Laing: Around this and static pressure and weather. How does that work in this system. And generally the manifold box is pressurized. And then we manage the static like you would any conventional system. And we test for static when we commissioned the home. And we've always been within ranges manufacturer range of prosthetics. We're advocates of central returns. We don't insist on them, but we're advocates of them.

00:24:18:07 - 00:24:43:11
Alan Laing: I think the building science community is aligned around that as well. We do see the use of jumper ducts around master bedrooms. We also see use of of transfer girls above secondary bedroom doors. But wherever we can influence it, we're suggesting central returns and all that's in balance with air flows. Right. We want to be able to relieve whatever we're putting into that room.

00:24:43:11 - 00:25:06:26
Alan Laing: Needs to be relieved to avoid static pressure. And we've seen good results with testing with that and then balancing obviously with a damper at every boot, that allows us to be pretty safe with with measurement and balancing. And that's kind of if you thought about it from a technical standpoint. Basically, we're pressurizing a box with within static ranges.

00:25:06:27 - 00:25:21:29
Alan Laing: We're leaving it through a return strategy that's certifying that the room CFM at the end of the process are as per design. Next.

00:25:22:02 - 00:25:53:26
Alan Laing: Early on, we did a lot of monitoring of homes, and that would be for a variety of things. It could be comfort, it could be for temperature, relative humidity, dew points. The home in Pittsburgh where a lot of this was originally conceived, we held for about three years, and we went through multiple variations of testing and sampling. We did 18 townhomes in our 16 townhomes in the Maryland DC area that we monitored for well over a year.

00:25:53:26 - 00:26:23:24
Alan Laing: We monitored a home in Florida for six months. We're monitoring homes in Phoenix now, and we monitored a home in Portland for a full year. We collected a lot of good data elsewhere, some of it here in a second, and we've done less of it lately. We've we've gotten pretty confident with with the results. We although recently we actually put a monitored home in Houston along the shipping channel, kind of right in the belly of the beast of humidity.

00:26:23:24 - 00:26:31:19
Alan Laing: And we've had the monitoring on for a couple of weeks and so far so good. Next.

00:26:31:21 - 00:26:32:24
Alan Laing: So some of the results.

00:26:32:24 - 00:27:02:07
Alan Laing: Of that, if you were to measure comfort by room to room deltas and temperature and Florida floor, this particular charts room to room and it's both heating and cooling. And you can see I'm not going to read it all to you, but we've had really tight banding of room to room temperatures in every case where we have been able to either monitor a model or the same floor plan.

00:27:02:10 - 00:27:24:09
Alan Laing: Now, these are less than scientific. When you're comparing two homes, there's so much dependent on people coming in and out of the house and how where they put their set point for their thermostats. But we've had really good results. We haven't had a single comfort complaint in the 18 months we've been doing this next.

00:27:24:11 - 00:27:25:25
Alan Laing: So our typical.

00:27:25:25 - 00:27:35:12
Alan Laing: Introduction for anybody on the phone that would like to engage with us, this is our broad kind of roadmap.

00:27:35:15 - 00:28:03:14
Alan Laing: An introduction could be very similar to this, this very similar presentation on a team's call with a builder and possibly their contractor. We have a design library that we would send you if you said, look, we're building 2000 square foot box on box, two stories on basements. We'd send you 3 or 4 sample plans and you can see where the duck routing and it is in those plans, and get a sense of what it would look like in your plans.

00:28:03:16 - 00:28:31:26
Alan Laing: The builder is going to do some evaluation of it for fit, and then if it's in a go, we would enter a design phase and we would collect all the information. We introduce you to a third party design if you don't have one, if you do have one, we would work with them and train them if appropriate. Obviously that is an intake on the construction documents, the specifications, who your energy rater is, who you trades are and whatever.

00:28:31:27 - 00:29:06:23
Alan Laing: Anything else irrelevant if there's rebates you're trying to get to, we like to understand what those goals are. That's going to take 2 or 3 weeks for us to get a design executed. And then there's obviously an iterative process when it is done to get everybody on the phone. So okay, we think this is going to work or there's a beam here we didn't understand or missed and and whatever adjustments and red lines need to be made, we would then do a pilot home typically now if this if you're in a market where we're already active, then you can go see all this first hand in a competitor's community.

00:29:06:23 - 00:29:37:27
Alan Laing: Everybody's really good about making those communities available. We might not do a pilot home if it's in a city like Denver or Minneapolis, where we've got dozens of homes going on every day, there'd be the reinstallation would take a couple of weeks after the the pilot scheduled. There'd be a debrief, red lines, value engineering. If there's monitoring and take us a few weeks to get to the end to get the the verification done as a homeless closed.

00:29:37:27 - 00:29:58:03
Alan Laing: And then we'd host a production and planning meeting that would look at which communities, what floor plans. And by way of example, you know, the Pulte where we're working with them in several cities in the upper Midwest and Mid-Atlantic, where they build two townhome plans and they're pretty much unchanged, but for climate zone from across 7 or 8 markets.

00:29:58:03 - 00:30:13:02
Alan Laing: So we're always looking for leverage in our design efforts where we can reuse the plans. If that doesn't exist, then we enter into a phase where we're designing for each community next.

00:30:13:04 - 00:30:37:28
Alan Laing: So what we've learned and what we ask for in terms of the builders engagement, that obviously some attendance in these meetings, getting the floor plans to this in a timely basis. If if it's an I Joyce floor system and there's going to be cutouts, then obviously there's a little more involvement. We've done lots of them and it works and conventional systems are required as well.

00:30:38:01 - 00:31:07:21
Alan Laing: Working with us to finalize the designs. And then if there's any adjustments so that that from the design and the architecture in a interplay, that's what we ask for. Same purchasing again, be involved right from the beginning. Introduce us to the trade. Stay involved with the trades, develops the scope of work based on our template. We provide builders a a drafted started scope of work that they can integrate into their documents.

00:31:07:24 - 00:31:35:23
Alan Laing: Help us if needed, set up a product distribution. We typically sell contractors big contractors directly, but we've got distribution in every market. Our strong preference is direct. If they're big enough to to take truckload shipments and they've got good credit, and then obviously the integration into our warranty in the event it's needed from a construction standpoint. You know, obviously now we're getting into the codes and permitting, you know we're batting a thousand.

00:31:35:24 - 00:31:58:20
Alan Laing: Although some municipalities are a little more challenging to get get over the goal line. But we've never been in a situation where we haven't been able to get there, with the exception of North Carolina, where they do not allow for uninsulated ducts inside of floor systems. So we're we're in the middle of engaging in their code approval process.

00:31:58:20 - 00:32:31:05
Alan Laing: It'll be next year before we're through it everywhere else, including California. We're approved. Any framing changes that need to be made need to be coordinated. And then we hold a field training session with the contractors and the superintendents to make sure that we've got a handout. On the key side, if you're a superintendent and you're walking frame walking a home, that mechanical frame complete stage, you know what to look for with our product or the ducks pull tight or else where they're needed.

00:32:31:05 - 00:32:56:06
Alan Laing: There's no pinches or kinks. Very similar to a traditional duct inspection. We've got a whole set of sales support tools that we get with the sales teams and and we're needed if they want to put a small display in their quality wall in their models. We've got a package that goes with that and we provide them marketing materials as well.

00:32:56:09 - 00:33:00:16
Alan Laing: Next.

00:33:00:18 - 00:33:24:13
Alan Laing: So if you wanted to get started, the first thing I do is not on the slide is I'd encourage you to go to our website and watch. We've got some really good video content of the different components of the home or the process, the design side, the installation, the training. We got training guides, we got videos on on the commissioning.

00:33:24:14 - 00:33:43:06
Alan Laing: So it's a great source of education. If you got through that and you said, yeah, we'd like to try this, obviously reach out to us, but these are some of the pre-work that we would need you to think through. So community name and the address, the target and type of plans. How many plans, what types are they?

00:33:43:08 - 00:34:07:04
Alan Laing: When would it start? When with production start? As I said, our lead times are manageable, but getting in front of the supply chain challenges today is just the responsible thing to do. So some scheduling and planning, all the contractor information and all the design, energy raiders, all those things. And then we do our best to integrate with the lighting layout.

00:34:07:04 - 00:34:16:10
Alan Laing: So we've got a nice clean ceiling so that these are the formats we like those things in next.

00:34:16:12 - 00:34:29:06
Alan Laing: And that is the the highlight reel. I try to get that through that pretty quickly with the hopes that there's some questions. And if there is Mike, I'm happy to take them.

00:34:29:08 - 00:34:56:04
Mike Collignon: Yes, there are some questions. And I did put it into the chat box there to please send in your questions now, because we'll be taking them over the next half hour or so if you have them. So question came in about from drew about you had a slide about how the kind of the process of it works and you talked about balancing and that sort of thing, static pressure.

00:34:56:06 - 00:35:04:16
Mike Collignon: But he had a couple of questions. One was, do the small ducts need higher pressure for the same CFM?

00:35:04:18 - 00:35:31:26
Alan Laing: No, no. So it's using the builder grade, air handlers and the box, the manifold box pressurized. Yeah. You know, I'm going to give you some general numbers for a three inch duct. We have three and four inch, but a three inch duct, if you're five feet from the manifold, you may get as high as 45 cfm. If you're 40ft from the manifold, that CFM might be 31.

00:35:32:02 - 00:35:54:24
Alan Laing: And that's part of the algorithm and the design software that allows us to say that room that is 40ft away needs 120 cfm of air. We know it's 40ft. It assumes some sweep and some components, and it'll specify the number of ducts to be in that room. And then the damping is the fine tuning to deliver that exact 120 cfm.

00:35:54:26 - 00:36:11:15
Alan Laing: So no additional pressure, no additional equipment. Like any HVAC system, our system works better with variable speed fans, but it works with the basic builder gray apartment grade air handler.

00:36:11:17 - 00:36:20:05
Mike Collignon: A question from our friend Fernando. Is the system limited to cavity walls?

00:36:20:07 - 00:36:54:00
Alan Laing: No, I understand the question. So we're running anywhere in the conditioned home. Generally we are running vertically in two by 4 or 2 by six stud walls and just rent chasing all the way up at vertically. We also go horizontally in floor systems so it could be open with truss. It could be high. Joyce periodically will drop ceilings or drop chases in laundry rooms or closets or discrete areas in the home.

00:36:54:03 - 00:37:16:02
Alan Laing: To root ducts around. We see some interesting things and some of what we do, but so we can run them pretty much anywhere. Air ceiling is a critical part of this, right? If you're going to have a chase against the attic in a hot, humid climate, we've got some suggested construction details that we like followed to make sure there's air ceiling and no moist air getting into the chases.

00:37:16:09 - 00:37:28:18
Alan Laing: But we can run the ducks just about anywhere. Our you know, we're not at batting a thousand with getting every duct in conditioned space. But we certainly aspire to.

00:37:28:21 - 00:37:30:04
Mike Collignon: Okay.

00:37:30:06 - 00:37:35:18
Alan Laing: I don't know what happened there. My computer blinking on me.

00:37:35:21 - 00:37:39:03
Mike Collignon: Maybe getting a little battery, but you'll see. We still hear you.

00:37:39:05 - 00:37:41:10
Alan Laing: Yeah, it's plugged in. Sorry.

00:37:41:13 - 00:37:58:08
Mike Collignon: All right, that's fine. That's fine. Another question came from drew. What are the hers savings based on? Is that just compared to a traditional system or you talk about 2 to 3 points there.

00:37:58:10 - 00:38:26:11
Alan Laing: Yeah. Some of it is the, the the hers rating outcome of moving the ducks into condition space. Some of that it is the sizing of the equipment that also corresponds with for example, in market like Phoenix, everything air handlers and ducks are in the attic. So there's a hers pickup when you move them out of the attic and put them into conditioned space.

00:38:26:13 - 00:38:44:20
Alan Laing: If you want to get my email information out, I can have one of my engineers respond with a more technical answer. But it's generally in that in the hers performance, both the prescriptive modeling and then the testing on site is we're seeing 2 to 3 points on average.

00:38:44:22 - 00:39:01:17
Mike Collignon: Okay. And yeah, you know, you mentioned email. We had a request come in for the website and the email address because that wasn't something that was posted. And so if we could share that with our audience, that would be really helpful.

00:39:01:19 - 00:39:12:12
Alan Laing: Yeah. My my name is Alan Lang, but my email is Alan laying at re comfort.

00:39:12:14 - 00:39:20:29
Alan Laing: In our website is Ria comfort. Com.

00:39:21:02 - 00:39:47:05
Mike Collignon: Okay, I just put the web link into the chat for everybody. I wanted to get to a couple other questions that we had again from our friend Fernando. Can these ducts be routed through the cavities of concrete masonry units he builds in the Caribbean? And so CMU is much more common there.

00:39:47:07 - 00:40:04:25
Alan Laing: They would have to be inside the thermal envelope of the house. I'm trying to imagine what that looks like. If they were on the on the thermal side of the, of the masonry. Yes. If they weren't, I would say no.

00:40:04:27 - 00:40:15:27
Mike Collignon: Okay. And can you talk a little bit about the maintenance requirements as an example. Just one example. How do you clean these ducts? Once they're installed.

00:40:15:29 - 00:40:50:14
Alan Laing: You can conventionally clean them. So the same method as you would use traditionally you can vacuum them or you can forget the the term the that you would use. But so you can however you're cleaning duct state, you would clean these from a maintenance standpoint there really isn't any. You know it's it once it's home, it's commissioned. Or we hope now consumers are they want to pull the the register grills off.

00:40:50:16 - 00:41:13:07
Alan Laing: Obviously they can reach the dampers and and move them around. And that's why we want to have a balancing report. If there is a comfort complaint, we can go back and set the house to its original verified position and then take some readings and measurement. So the no extraordinary maintenance required change filters like you'd normally do. And and it works just fine.

00:41:13:09 - 00:41:33:05
Mike Collignon: Okay. We did have a question about a specific slide. So Mary if you could pull up it was the slide about the process. It was right before the monitoring program slide. There was there was a question about.

00:41:33:08 - 00:41:54:18
Mike Collignon: Just go back a little farther. Keep going there. Good job. Yep. Right there. There you go. Very good. So the question came in. What is better missing as shown on your slide. So the question was a little unclear. And so I thought well if we pull up the slide maybe I could get a chance to look at it.

00:41:54:20 - 00:42:01:16
Mike Collignon: But I don't see what's being referred to here. So hopefully.

00:42:01:19 - 00:42:08:15
Alan Laing: Some of the questions are pretty common. Do you want to just read it to me as you got it, and I'll see if I can understand what they're trying to ask.

00:42:08:17 - 00:42:22:29
Mike Collignon: Well, it says what is better quote missing quote unquote as shown on your slide. So again, I'm, I'm a little bit of a loss for that one.

00:42:23:01 - 00:42:24:11
Alan Laing: Okay.

00:42:24:13 - 00:42:39:15
Mike Collignon: But I had a question for you. And that was talk to me about what it was like getting the conversations going with some of these builders. How receptive were they initially?

00:42:39:18 - 00:43:07:23
Alan Laing: You know, I'll take it in two ways, Mike. I think I'm a career home builder because I've been an executive at big public companies like Pulte and Taylor Morrison. Now, within my career at Pulte specifically, I ran $1 billion trade business. So I've kind of rare and that I've been on the supply side, contractor side. So when we I know a lot of these folks, the sea level folks around the other big builders.

00:43:07:23 - 00:43:36:11
Alan Laing: So when it came to the first discussion was around investment. And that was pretty singular topic to say this industry has suffered miserably with a lack of productivity for decades and very limited innovation. Nail guns and roof trusses are a wall. Panels are the innovations that are actually commercially available in the industry. I said, look, if we're going to solve the productivity challenges, we've got to narrow it down to one vertical trade at a time.

00:43:36:13 - 00:44:04:04
Alan Laing: You know, they invested in the in the Building Talent Foundation to try and address the labor issues, and it was attaching to some of that momentum and saying, what if we could take one trade vertical and create technology that did everything we talked about, but really initially said really helped with the labor issue? We can take a lower, younger, lower skilled entry level person and train them how to do this within 45 days are really good at doing.

00:44:04:04 - 00:44:22:04
Alan Laing: It. Takes us 45 minutes to train a crew initially, and by the fifth time they do it, they're getting really good at it and we've seen 30 to 50% labor improvement. So the thesis for the investment was really around labor. And it was I was talking to the CEOs of these companies. Most of them got it pretty well.

00:44:22:04 - 00:44:42:21
Alan Laing: We had a really good introductory video that explained it, but we had the home in Pittsburgh and the recently retired the CEO at Toll Brothers. As soon as he walked in the house three minutes into it and he says, well, of course this is what we should be doing, right? You had to see it. And when he did, he went most makes perfect sense.

00:44:42:21 - 00:45:09:12
Alan Laing: So we had a really good response at the sea level around the notion that we needed a higher performing system in general, but we really want to attack this labor issue in the day to day world of a construction VP of purchasing, sales and builders and trades. We've had largely really positive responses. We have a patient approach with it.

00:45:09:13 - 00:45:38:12
Alan Laing: We've got data on our side and performance on our side, and we've had a really good response. Some builders want to go a lot faster than others. Some other builders that are watching their fast, you know, fast followers, not necessarily leaders, but generally speaking, we've had a really positive response. I think one of the challenges we've all enjoyed the last 18 months is just the originally was the mind space with all the supply chain problems to even think about doing something different.

00:45:38:15 - 00:46:01:16
Alan Laing: What's been a bit of a catalyst for us the last several months is there's a really meaningful shortage of insulated flex duct. So those the builders that were maybe thinking about it kind of step to us because they couldn't get houses built conventionally and we've had great success onboarding them. Obviously we don't have the capacity to take up the shortfall and insulated duct everywhere.

00:46:01:23 - 00:46:26:26
Alan Laing: I'd say the greatest resistance has been at a VP or owner of a trade company who's been doing something for 30 years. I've had a lot of people put their hands in their hips and say, you don't understand static pressure, you don't understand air flows. And then we'll go through this process with them where we do a pilot home and they look over our shoulders when we do the duct leakage test and the static pressure test and they go, I'll be damned.

00:46:26:26 - 00:46:45:11
Alan Laing: I didn't think this was going to work, but tough to argue with the data. So we've had good conversions with with 98% of the trades we engage with. So we've had its work, but we've had a positive response. Some of it is just change in general. It wouldn't matter what we showed up to talk about, it would be problematic.

00:46:45:14 - 00:46:58:17
Alan Laing: Some of it has just been, you know, in some cases a really responsible set of questions that that are fair questions to be asked of us, and we owe them a really good response, which we've been able to do.

00:46:58:19 - 00:47:18:21
Mike Collignon: Gotcha. We figured out a couple attendees helped us with the room CFM portion of this slide. The second sentence, it says that provides better missing instead of mixing, I think is the guess. It's just a simple typo I think is what we're finding.

00:47:18:24 - 00:47:21:29
Alan Laing: Yeah, someone's got a sharp pilot.

00:47:22:02 - 00:47:23:14
Mike Collignon: Yeah, yeah.

00:47:23:16 - 00:47:32:23
Alan Laing: So if you thought about that. So if you went into, as I mentioned earlier, a.

00:47:32:26 - 00:47:58:20
Alan Laing: Great room in a, in a home or a kitchen area, we may have 4 or 5 diffusers in that room. There could be three high sidewalls, one in the floor and one in the low wall. And the, the the outcome is we get much better air mixing so that those ceiling diffusers are going to throw air six feet in every direction, hit the walls and roll down the walls.

00:47:58:22 - 00:48:19:13
Alan Laing: The high side wall is going to blow 12ft. We got a huge throw in them. So we're throwing from the interior of the house of the exterior. So all that air mixing is what creates comfort and lessens the stratification stack effect of air in the room, if that makes sense.

00:48:19:16 - 00:48:24:01
Mike Collignon: Okay, yeah it does.

00:48:24:04 - 00:48:37:06
Mike Collignon: I did have a question from Dan. He wanted to know if you have measured the dew points within some of these building cavities, to assure that there's not going to be condensation on the ductwork during cooling season?

00:48:37:08 - 00:49:05:20
Alan Laing: We sure have. We had a home in Orlando that we held from April through to October. So our view of it is the greatest risk is in shoulder seasons where the system humidity is growing, but the system isn't running as much because the loads aren't as great. And we built chases against the attic purposely. And then we we had ducks in the floor systems as well.

00:49:05:20 - 00:49:26:11
Alan Laing: And we, we had sensors in the home, but we were even more basic. We put trail cameras into the chases so we could sit here in Phoenix and every day look at the live, look at the performance of the ducks. And our first effort, we did get some moisture on a duct in an attic. And this is an interesting story.

00:49:26:13 - 00:49:52:18
Alan Laing: The that home was built. We were supposed to go there to train the crews to install it the week Covid travel started. So we actually trained the crews from our garage here, our workshop, and what we didn't realize in the pictures they sent us, they they'd used OSB as the ceiling of the chase at the attic level. And the only sealant they used and the seams was pink insulation.

00:49:52:19 - 00:50:16:13
Alan Laing: So we got warm air infiltrating into that cavity. So we went back and we foam sprayed the sealed the chase from the attic side. And we had no, no issues. So we pay attention to the floor cavities we've got. That's what we're doing, what we're doing in Houston, which we think is, along with Miami, mostly pretty much the most extreme environment.

00:50:16:15 - 00:50:28:15
Alan Laing: And there's been a lot of failures in the industry. And we've I think we're in our 10th day of monitoring a home we built in Houston and right in the shipping channel, and so far, so good.

00:50:28:18 - 00:50:31:07
Mike Collignon: Gotcha.

00:50:31:09 - 00:50:45:09
Mike Collignon: Final call to our audience for questions. If you have any, please send them in. I get one more and I'm curious as to your kind of take on this.

00:50:45:11 - 00:51:06:13
Mike Collignon: Some of the elements of what I'm seeing and hearing here remind me of the Unico system. Are you are you familiar with that? What they do and I mean are there can you talk a little bit about is there is it a similar situation? Are there differences.

00:51:06:16 - 00:51:33:04
Alan Laing: Are very different. So I'd throw that's in in Unico into this. That's a Quebec based company. The biggest difference is the their system requires you by their air handlers. And when they're very expensive and they operate at high velocity, high static, high velocity, we don't we you can you know, we're you can use the Lennox carrier train. Doesn't matter.

00:51:33:05 - 00:52:00:13
Alan Laing: Our system works with any of them. And it doesn't operate at high pressure or high static. Oddly enough, we're entering the Toronto market and part of what's taking us there Canadian. So that's part of it. But the bigger part is that the the companies are in the in that high velocity space are failing. They're having equipment failure. So everybody loves the idea, the small diameter ducks.

00:52:00:13 - 00:52:29:14
Alan Laing: And they easily routing and keeping conditioned space. But they're having equipment problems. And the challenge there is you've got to continue to buy their equipment. You can't swap out if you're upset with Lennox here you can switch carrier train or good one. That's not that's not possible to do when you've got that system installed. So similar in concept in terms of an efficient way to root ducts inside a condition space at the cost level and the equipment level.

00:52:29:14 - 00:52:31:08
Alan Laing: Very, very different.

00:52:31:11 - 00:52:47:00
Mike Collignon: Gotcha. Okay, okay. Another question from the audience. What's the approximate fan operating cost on an annual basis per 1000 CFM. Do you have any.

00:52:47:03 - 00:53:13:14
Alan Laing: Yeah, I don't know that if email me. And so I got the contact information. One of our engineers can respond to them. Okay. Yeah. If it's if they're if the question is coming from California. We just built a home in Sacramento and we passed all the title 24 what draw tests and duck linkage test all passed all of it here in the last two weeks.

00:53:13:16 - 00:53:22:03
Alan Laing: And if you're in that market by all means it's a Beazer home. We're happy to provide the address. You can go look at it.

00:53:22:05 - 00:53:47:20
Mike Collignon: Did you have a question from Michael as well? He says your system reminds me of the Zehnder ERV HR system. Do you have plans to add an option in addition to your heating and cooling distribution system, to limit the holes in a home to two, and hopefully make everything even more efficient?

00:53:47:23 - 00:54:14:15
Alan Laing: We're very familiar with them. We actually sell Zehnder some of our component parts for connections, so they use the same duct we do. And so our parts work with their their ERV systems. So we sell them some of our components. We have not on our product development plan. That is not top of mind. That's not say never say never, but it's not something we're working on today.

00:54:14:17 - 00:54:25:14
Alan Laing: We think there's a lot of companies like Zehnder April Air who've got pretty good technology that we would more likely partner with versus developing our own.

00:54:25:17 - 00:54:26:08
Mike Collignon: Gotcha.

00:54:26:10 - 00:54:46:01
Alan Laing: Now we work with all over the country. Right. If you the only challenge it creates for us and everybody else is the size of the mechanical room. But for example, in Minneapolis, their code required, you know, so we've worked with HR and and breeze for months or years now.

00:54:46:03 - 00:54:53:23
Mike Collignon: Right. And as you see the codes getting lower and lower on air changes per hour, you're going to see more of that stuff coming to.

00:54:53:24 - 00:54:58:28
Alan Laing: So yeah, that can't happen fast enough in our view. Right.

00:54:59:00 - 00:55:20:13
Mike Collignon: Right, right. Yeah. There's some places that drag their feet a little bit more than others for sure. Yeah. Well I, we don't have any other questions. So I want to thank you for, for sharing your time with us today and information on this. This has been very helpful. Thank you also to our audience for attending and asking all those wonderful questions.

00:55:20:13 - 00:55:53:08
Mike Collignon: And thank you to Mitsubishi Electric, Westlake, Royal Building Products, Schneider Electric and Beco for their generous sponsorship of the housing 2.0 program. Now, if you enjoyed today's webinar and you'd like to learn more about housing 2.0 strategies such as comfort or maybe design or community or performance, you can register now for the third Workshop series of 2022. That's six part series is going to begin on Thursday, November 3rd at 12 p.m. Eastern Time.

00:55:53:09 - 00:55:57:15
Mike Collignon: Simply go to Green Builder Media.

00:55:57:18 - 00:56:00:03
Mike Collignon: Two.

00:56:00:05 - 00:56:23:22
Mike Collignon: And you can also join us again on July 20th at 2 p.m. Eastern time for another webinar in our Thought Leader series. Those are always free to attend. We'll be taking to looking into the future of housing peer reviews with Jimmy Duffy of the Baca Group. Thank you once again, everyone, for joining us. Thank you Allen. And until next month.

00:56:23:26 - 00:56:26:04
Mike Collignon: Take care everyone. So long for now.