Green Builder Media CEO Sara Gutterman asks Housing 2.0 founder Sam Rashkin and ventilation specialist Ken Nelson how builders can use indoor air quality certifications and invisible, well-designed ventilation to create healthier homes and cut HVAC cost.
00:00:09:22 - 00:00:22:25
Sara Gutterman: The combination of wildfires, extreme heat and Covid has made healthy home indoor air quality and ventilation solutions a new imperative. Tell us why healthy homes enhance the homeowner user experience.
00:00:22:26 - 00:00:51:08
Sam Rashkin: You know, it's easy to tell that health just completely transform transformed the home's user experience just by looking at data. Americans are spending about $45,000,000 billion a year on organic food and over $20 billion a year on bottled water. If they're given a healthy choice, they want it. And the user experience is just this piece of mind. You're doing the best to protect their family.
00:00:51:10 - 00:01:07:26
Sam Rashkin: And we consume about four times more air than than food and water. It's just in every way where we want to be. Especially with a surge of interest in health by American homeowners. You know.
00:01:07:27 - 00:01:35:01
Ken Nelson: As a homeowner homebuyer, I wonder if we shouldn't expect an IQ strategy within our house, right? I mean, we why do we have to as a home buyer? Why do I have to go out and demand more indoor air quality processes? So our challenge, of course, is that fans, we believe fans should be invisible. We we believe that exhaust or balance strategy, that ventilation strategy should be invisible to the home buyer.
00:01:35:03 - 00:02:01:23
Ken Nelson: I mean, you don't want to spend your day wondering whether you're ventilation system is managing the moisture or managing the the VOCs or particulate within the house. It should be a given that that's that that's there for you. So as far as the value to the home buyer, to the homeowner, home buyer, you know, the value is in our our families and our, you know, ourselves, right.
00:02:01:25 - 00:02:09:21
Ken Nelson: How do we want to live our best life. We want to live it healthy. I can tell you that living a healthy life is going to be your best life.
00:02:09:23 - 00:02:18:28
Sara Gutterman: How can builders leverage indoor air quality to create a better product, aka a home? And how can builders use healthy home solutions to differentiate their offering?
00:02:18:29 - 00:02:48:13
Sam Rashkin: You know, it's easy for builders to leverage investments in healthier homes with proven behavior change strategies. The first that comes to mind is certifications work. You know, we paid a lot more for a certified pre-owned car than a used car. And so the first thing I would recommend for builders is look at indoor air plus certification and also products and manufacturers whose reputation brings confidence that the homes will be healthier.
00:02:48:15 - 00:03:13:28
Sam Rashkin: Companies like Panasonic. The second thing they can do is create experiences around their health benefit. They can actually showcase, you know, the features in their home and the benefits right when they show off their homes. The health features are really desired by American home buyers. Now they have to bring them front and center and make it part of the home buying experience.
00:03:14:01 - 00:03:23:08
Sara Gutterman: Ken, how can builders create a more livable property that is ultimately more cost effective? How does proper ventilation translate into our value?
00:03:23:15 - 00:03:49:27
Ken Nelson: We had a significant discussions at the last conference I was at centered around how do we deal with moisture, high moisture content in hot, humid climates, right. And we talked about using the early the energy recovery ventilator as the primary supplier strategy, because in the early will will wick moisture out of the air before sending it into a dehumidifier strategy.
00:03:49:29 - 00:04:14:06
Ken Nelson: The challenge here is that without a strategy, your your HVAC, your air conditioning and whatnot is going to have to make up such a significant moisture load or resolve such a significant moisture load. You wind up over sizing. You wind up consuming more energy. You wind up spending more money on maintenance with the IRB feeding that we can diminish that moisture load before it goes in there.
00:04:14:06 - 00:04:43:14
Ken Nelson: You can downsize that HVAC strategy as well. If I were to use a dehumidifier product, I deem product is going to chew 500 to 1000W of energy, and I can run that ERV strategy for 11 to 12W of energy. It's just such a significant difference strategy from a cost perspective, from a health perspective to both the builder and the homeowner.
00:04:43:16 - 00:04:44:19
Sara Gutterman: Thanks, Ken.