Narrator: Welcome to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Indoor airPLUS podcast series. In this podcast, we are pleased to present two of Energy & Environmental Building Alliance Board of Directors, Robert Broad, from Pulte Homes, and Gord Cooke of Building Knowledge. Joining Broad and Cooke is EPA’s Indoor Environments Division’s David Price, an environmental scientist with more than 25 years of construction experience who developed EPA’s Indoor airPLUS Construction Specifications for new homes. Here now are David Price, Robert Broad and Gord Cooke discussing the state of the home building industry as well as forecasting the new home industry’s future.

David: This morning I’m joined by Gord Cooke of the Energy and Environmental Building Association, he’s a certified trainer for EEBA and Robert Broad of Pulte Homes. Good morning gentlemen.

Gord and Robert (in unison): Good morning.

David: Let’s start off Robert. Tell me a couple of things about yourself.

Robert: Sure! I’ve been with Pulte Homes a little over 13 years now in a variety of roles all across the country, currently residing in Las Vegas as the Director of Purchasing. But, my background includes everything from construction management, building science, research development, and product design. So, I’ve kind of done the full tour over the years and I’m actually EEBA Board President currently.

David: Oh great. And Gord?

Gord: Yeah, thanks for the opportunity, David. So, Gord Cooke, company name is actually Building Knowledge, an independent consultant to the industry, very proud to be a trainer with the EEBA program, the Houses that Work program, and I do a wide range of training across the country to the building industry. Just helping builders build ever more efficient, durable, healthy, comfortable, safer houses, and I have a particular expertise in indoor air quality. I’ve been in that world; mold, and ventilation, and air tightness, and so on for the last 25 years or so.

David: Great, great. Alright, let’s start off with just kind of a share some discussion here about where the new home industry stands today with a number of things that have changed. I mean, changing building codes. The reality is that we’re all dealing with it, of this downturn in the economy, and the commensurate reduction in homebuilding starts and, but let’s think about too about customer preferences and the effects of the green building labeling programs that are out there and, and whatever else you guys see that’s shaping the industry today. Give me your thoughts on where home construction is standing today. Would you want to start off, Robert?

Robert: Sure, well obviously home construction’s seen one of the biggest downturns that any of us have ever seen, kind of history of U.S. residential housing starts, so it is an extremely challenged business right now, I think that those of us that are continuing to succeed as well as just continue to operate are doing so for a couple of very basic reasons. One, is just attention to the core processes within our business, so making sure that we’re following good financial principles, but the other thing is really understanding what consumers are looking for today. So, it’s a very value-oriented buyer today, and being able to deliver on that promise, certainly I think the first-time buyers, really the most significant driver of the market today and mostly what we’re concentrating on.

David: And Gord, I’ve heard you hone in on that customer preference thing. Talk to me about that a little bit, what you try to get buyers and builders to kind of sink on. 

Gord: Well I think it’s very important to understand that, that buyers have been conditioned by other industries; the car industry, the computer industry, to be ever more demanding. Expecting more and more from builders. The moving into houses and really wanting everything to be done with really less of an intuitive knowledge as to how houses work and how they operate and so we have much higher demands from a technology standpoint to make sure that we’re offering customers those kinds of experiences that they’re comfortable with. And if I can tie into what Robert said on the, on the one hand obviously a very devastating market from an economics perspective, that actually has two sides for me. One, what I’m hearing almost paradoxically is that builders are actually busy. That is that business had been pared down so much that we actually look at people doing more than one job within the industry and taking on new roles. So, I think there’s going to be a significant need for training and re-training, multi-tasking if you will. The second thing, on the encouraging side, because things have slowed down a little bit, because consumers are expecting more, we are starting, finally, I‘m very encouraged actually by the rise of technology, the rise of quality of construction, the interest in quality. So, on that hand, I think it’s very good for the industry, I’ve never actually been more encouraged about how quickly, we always talk about being on a path of continual improvement and builders are certainly bought into that concept that each year they should be looking at improving the quality of construction of their homes. And that’s a very encouraging trend.

David: Well that trend, let’s continue on that a little bit, Gord. Talk a minute about where building codes are, the residential code is now as opposed to maybe a decade ago, and then kind of frame it too with where we’re heading with the green building and green labeling programs.

Gord: Right, and again, the thing that’s, I find the most encouraging that as an industry, the building industry is being far more proactive about codes than they used to be, and in the past I think we could all have been faulted for being a little reactive, waiting for things to happen and then making code adjustments. Now we’re seeing a vision towards 2020 and 2030, and looking ahead and saying, “where do we have to be in 5, 10, 20 years from now?” There’s a fairly clear map now in, in the billing code process as to where we’re going with respect to energy efficiency, for example, with respect to indoor air quality and the other aspects that are happening. And the green labels to some extent are out in front, they are the ones that the codes look to, so we have a codes and standards as a base. And then we look at the green programs, what’s worked, what hasn’t worked, and they’re a good example, I guess, of the kinds of things that can become mainstream. So, green program have been very nice to give the industry an opportunity to try some things, see what works is, on a mainstream level, and allow that then to become codified, if you will. But, on a very much more proactive vein than it used to be.

David: Yeah, I was going to say, Robert, if you could talk about that for a minute too, I’m thinking from Pulte’s perspective when you look at the current code and the green building programs.

Robert: Yeah I think it, it’s a great point that Gord made in terms of the codes moving toward being more proactive instead of reactive. I think for many, many years, if not decades, what we saw were codes that reacted to specific, either life safety issues or other circumstances. So, that might be plumbing, fire safety, or structural. But, now I think what we’re seeing is a movement towards codes, certainly proactive is a good way to put it, but they’re moving the general building construction practices forward in a way that we haven’t really seen before. So, I wouldn’t say that they’re necessarily leading, but I think they are looking to some of the labeling programs and others as good examples of where to draw on industry knowledge on what is effective and how we can then implement that on a wider basis. So I think that the conversation has changed, it has evolved to the point where the codes should begin to form the basis of how we build better instead of just how we build to the minimum standard to protect people from a, you know, fire issue or a, a life safety issue. And furthermore, you know some of these things that have been basic for us from an industry perspective on building science, are now being better understood by the code industry. There’s still work to be done, but I think the builders that have, that have kind of lead the industry have really shown people that it can be done and it can be done on a large scale.

David: EPA has kind of thrown it’s two cents into this whole issue as well, over the probably the last half dozen years and, let me narrow the discussion a little bit, target it more maybe to indoor air quality. Here at EPA one of our principle missions has been to basically provide information to the public regarding the pollutants that can impact homes. And we spent a lot of years focusing on schools and commercial buildings and existing homes. And then several years ago, you know, we thought, you know, well there’s hundreds of thousands of new homes built in the United States every single year. And we can, by building smarter, build out or prevent a lot of these IAQ issues that we have to help the public deal with in their existing homes. So, we set out to develop a, some criteria that builders could follow in building a home, to obviously address these indoor air quality issues. And we ended up with a, some pretty comprehensive guidance that would cost-effectively allow builders to use equipment and materials and construction methods to address indoor air quality issues. And the uh labeling program, Indoor airPLUS, does that in a comprehensive manner, and you guys have worked on this program and we enjoy your support and you know it it addresses as you know, moisture and mold, and radon, and it creates pest barriers, and it prescriptively tells builders how they can design heating and ventilation and cooling systems to address IAQ problems and provide ventilation, get fresh air for the house, and also to effectively install combustion appliances. We like to establish more barriers against our carbon monoxide entering the house and so we’ve structured it so we have layers of protection against CO and, which extends also to the garage, the way the garage is attached to the house and…So, it’s a very broad program, and what we attempted to do was basically set a benchmark that builders could reach in building homes that address indoor air quality. So, my question to you guys is, how has our labeling program for homes affected what you do? You want to start out Robert?

Robert: Sure, I’d be happy to. I think one of the things to realize is that there’s probably several different layers of impact of labeling programs. One is that it encourages at the manufacturer level changes in that marketplace that enable us as a builder to build some of the houses you’re talking about. So, I think when manufacturers begin to see the market trends moving in a certain direction, they begin to change and develop their products accordingly. So, whether that’s a carpet manufacturer, cabinets, you know, adhesives, paint suppliers, I think all of these companies are recognizing the move towards improving indoor air quality, whether that’s VOCs or formaldehydes, or addressing basic mold and other issues. So, I think certainly we see that as a builder, that as a labeling programs continue to push the bar forward that manufacturers are responding accordingly.  The other thing that we see from a consumer perspective is that it’s one thing for us to call our house “green,” for whatever that means to whichever particular subgroup of the buyer that you’re looking at, but when you have an independent labeling program it provides that assurance to our customers that it isn’t just us calling it something “green”, there is some either a government standard or third-party agency that we’re being rated against and tested against. So if that helps in particular I think the builders that are trying to do the right thing, differentiate,  because it, one of the challenges that we have and we really are leading the industry is we get a lot of “me too”-type builders that really aren’t necessarily doing the right steps to verify. So, it helps to make sure that we aren’t diluting the message by having a lot of folks in this that are trying to tag on to “green” or do “green-washing.”  And as a result we’re able to make sure that the, what we are promising, we’re actually delivering it. So, to me those are two of the most significant elements there. 

David: How about you Gord. How’s the Indoor airPLUS labeling program affected how you train and the opportunities for you?

Gord: Well exactly I, it’s such a nice training event quite frankly, because just going back to what Robert said about giving manufacturers sort of a benchmark to work against, it also gives builders, “What do I do?” One of, one of the things that’s very common in my consulting business, I either get a phone call from a home owner saying, “Can you come test the air in my home?” or a builder saying, “Can you test the air in my home and certify that it’s healthy?” and what we know and through the EPA’s work is that’s really difficult to do and very subjective.  And what we really want to do is give builders what the label does for us, is give builders a very clear direction, “Do these eight, nine, ten things and you will absolutely make sure that the air inside somebody’s house is as healthy as it possibly can be.” It gives a very clear distinction as to what’s important, what isn’t. And in fact, from a training perspective, it’s nice to be able to go through and say “Here’s what you start with first, here’s what you do second.”  Clearly, carbon monoxide is a huge potential threat, so let’s make sure we deal with that in a very practical way, and that’s what I love of the program is that there’s these very practical elements. We start out the day with this nebulous topic called indoor air quality, by the end of the day the builders go down a checklist and go, “Got it, got it, got it, need to get this done,” and most of them are finding that they’re already doing many of the items, they need to just maybe change the order that they’re doing them in or just integrating them a little better. But, by the end of the day they realize, “Wow, this is something I want to be doing and should be doing just to ensure that my homeowners are breathing the healthiest possible air that they can.” So, the labeling program from a training perspective has just been such a powerful tool to help builders make good decisions. 

David: It helps the uh builder appreciate what the other subcontractors are doing as they’re building the house. What impacts something that the plumber may be doing, the insulating contractor may be doing? He now sees those efforts in building the house also impact air quality. 

Gord: And I’m sure Robert will concur. I mean, the professional builder today, is really his primary job is to integrate the functions of so many different trades and the integration of trades into IAQ and understanding the role that each individual trade has is so important for a builder. And we of course encourage the builder; bring your HVAC contractor, bring your insighter, bring your siding contractors, those who are doing your water management detail, because they need to hear these messages and understand the impact that they can have, but again, very useful for a builder to be able to take the, that labeling spec, hand it to the HVAC contractor and say, “Here’s what I need you to do,” it’s not me saying it, it’s somebody else. It’s a very powerful tool.

David: Robert, I thought you had something you were going to add.

Robert: Yeah, you know, I said I was going to indicate that I couldn’t agree more with what Gord was saying. But, the other piece, certainly we involve all of our trade partners these days. It’s, it is truly house as a system, there is no one thing that you will change that isn’t impacting something else within the home. But, the other key piece there is that really a lot of builders are beginning to look at this as risk mitigation as well. Whether that’s you know, increased litigation risk out there in the general built environment or specific to our industry, whether that’s mold, or indoor air quality or other elements, but specific with IAQ there’s a lot of things we talk about that really are just a better way to build a house and also best way to reduce the risk from a builder perspective. So if you’re addressing mold, you’re addressing basic water entry issues that are real drivers of warranty risk for us. 

David: These litigation issues obviously are part of the cost of doing business and it’s something that builders don’t ever want to have to deal with so we’re just avoid addressing those issues, right?

Robert: Absolutely, without question. And the carbon monoxide is the same thing so if you know, we’re putting directly on fireplaces and there’s a reason for it and it isn’t simply because it’s building a more efficient house, it has to do again with that risk mitigation piece. So, you know, we look at that from a number of different angles and certainly part of the cost of doing business is a way to address those warranty concerns and make sure that we minimize those going forward.

David: Yeah, I heard that some experiences in the field where builders that are in these programs have just slashed their warranty costs. And so they’re seeing the benefit of building right and doing things that produce a better product and avoid these issues. So it’s, it’s being born out in the field. 

Robert: …Yeah, just one last…

David: Yeah, I’m sorry…

Robert:…thought is that it’s not just the builders who are seeing that, it’s also our trade base. You know, we’ve had a condition where we were able to address basic building practices on the drainage plains in California, and we had a stucco contractor that initially was very resistant, but once we actually started to see a rain event in California again, he was as bought in as any trade partner you’d ever see.  And when you talk to him about it, he says, “You know I didn’t have an issue for 10 years and then I looked at it and it didn’t rain for practically 10 years.”  So he’s one of the most bought in folks you’ll see in the country when it comes to drainage plains. 

David: Yeah, that’s a great example. Alright, let’s talk about the facts and the realities about indoor air quality that we see at the EPA and you see as professionals in the field. But let’s talk about the what I call the facts and realities. From EPA’s perspective, we look at the health impacts of indoor air quality. We know that mold growing in houses produces allergic reactions in people, can make people ill. We know that radon kills an estimated 20,000 people every single year with lung cancer. We know if radon is found in one in every 15 existing U.S. homes across the country.  The whole issue of asthma, we know that almost 20 percent of all households contain a person who has been diagnosed with asthma at some point in their life. So, I mean, a huge number of potential customers have experienced asthma. Also carbon monoxide, as Gord was talking earlier, we have to, we’re building really tight houses, we have to worry about the possibility of spillage of exhaust gases from traditional combustion appliances, so we have to engineer the houses so that that doesn’t happen. And then again, our research here has told us in the last several years, we’ve actually seen how, chemicals for example, can migrate from the garage into the living space. So, a spot where you park the car and you start an engine, but you also store all kinds of solvents and cleaners, those volatile organic compounds are actually migrating into the house and so we have to think about things we can do to create a barrier so that doesn’t happen. When you look at and think all about all these different health impacts, what are you seeing out there in the industry, do you see these problems, and how are, how are you reacting to them?

Robert: From our perspective I think it’s a it’s a real area of opportunity going forward on the sales floor as well as from an education standpoint with buyers. I don’t think that buyers today fully appreciate that a new home can help solve some of these issues for us. As you touched upon, I think just about everyone either has within their own family unit or knows people that have breathing issues. So, I don’t know that the message is really out there that the way a house is constructed can fundamentally impact that and improve that condition. So I think that’s a significant area of opportunity, I think it’s also something that if we focus on, we can really help  the consumers understand that it isn’t just about going within their current house and buying a fancy air filter for the room, it’s all of the things that you put into the house that impact, that really, I think the average person, Gord probably knows this stat better than I do, but I think you spend 90 percent of your time indoors. So, as a result, certainly the way that we build those houses can impact dramatically one’s quality of life.

Gord: And let me continue on with that. The phone calls I get from homeowners, and I do in my own market do indoor air quality assessments and audits for people and, again the call I get is, “Can you test the air in my home?” and very often I immediately ask them back, “Why? What is it that makes you think it’s your home?” and they’ll say to me, “I feel better when I’m away from the home and I always feel worse when I’m at home.” And that’s obviously a very important clue that the air in their home is not as good as it should or could be, and that as Robert said, I don’t think everybody has made that distinction yet. They haven’t necessarily made that link. When they do, the experience has been phenomenal.  That is, when a homeowner makes the link that their home is causing issues, and when they make the changes like moving to a new home that’s labeled, the change in lifestyle is quite remarkable. And I’ve been pleased to work with some very sensitive folks who ultimately make the decision to improve the air in their homes for the kinds of measures that we’re speaking of, and just see a dramatic change in their lifestyle and their well-being. So, you know, it’s quite an interesting field, but again, not a lot of people have made that connection. One of the things that I always like to point out, and Robert mentioned, is that a lot of things have changed, and whereas people in the past thought their home was the safe haven, where the air was the best, what they’ve forgotten is that lifestyles have changed a lot. We are spending far more time indoors, with far more chemicals in our everyday lives, with far different lifestyles, and far different expectations than ever before and so a lot of these things that may not have been a problem 30, 40 years ago in houses now are. I always struggled because we hear that air quality somehow has something to do with houses getting tighter, and frankly it’s just not the case. Certainly from a carbon monoxide perspective that’s true in the back drafting of furnaces, but the vast, vast majority of air quality problems have nothing to do with how tight a house is and so the reality is that we want to build tight and ventilate right, one of the key things that the Indoor airPLUS talks about is the relationship between tight construction and ventilation and so that’s really the, there’s a huge amount of education that has to take place for our industry and for consumers to really understand what’s going on in houses. 

David: Gord, let’s hit that one more time. I’m really glad you brought it up. The concept you would hear it over and over again is that we’re building houses too tight, the houses don’t “breathe.”  We have got a requirement in the Indoor airPLUS program that you mechanically ventilate these houses. So, talk for a minute about what that accomplishes, talk about how we’re insulating more, we’re sealing more, why are we doing that, Gord? And how do we overcome the ventilation issue?

Gord: Right, and again it, what we really need to do in our minds and obviously it’s a short phone call then and that’s why obviously we’ve been saying “take the training that’s associated with EEBA and EPA,” but the key lesson that we need to understand is that houses need to be tight from an insulation perspective, that is, when you add insulation to a wall, you’ve changed it’s drying characteristics. The more insulation you add, the less potential a wall has to dry. And therefore, the less moisture that you can allow to get into that wall and therefore, you need to make that wall airtight to not allow moisture into that wall cavity. Making the wall airtight also has lots of other benefits, it keeps out dust and pollutants and bugs.  There’s this idea that somehow we used to get our fresh air through those holes in walls and along baseboards. We never got our fresh air that way, there’s been articles written hundreds of years ago that said we used to ventilate our houses with windows. Windows were our ventilation device. So, what we really want to do is disconnect the conversation. We want walls and attics to be airtight, we want houses to be well ventilated. We used to ventilate through windows, and now because of noise, dust, security issues, people don’t feel like they want to open their windows anymore. So, we replace that manual ventilation with mechanical ventilation. A very simple collection of fans that bring air in and take air out. And there’s a variety of devices, simple, good, quiet, bathroom fans, good, fresh air intakes it into air handlers, or ultimately heat recovery ventilators that have two match fans that bring air in and take air out. It’s really about the control of air quality that we need to help the industry and homeowners with. Always, always maintaining control over the air they breathe by building tight and then adding back some mechanical ventilation to replace the manual ventilation system they used to use, which was opening windows.

David: Right, well okay, we’ve spent some time now talking about potential indoor air quality problems in houses. We make decisions in equipment and construction methods and materials to avoid those IAQ problems. But, let’s look from the customer behavior side for a minute. Let’s, I’m, uh, start with you, Robert, you want to be able to sell this value, these IAQ features, and the value that you’ve built into the houses to the customer. What do you see from the customer side? What kinds of concerns do the customers voice to you? What kinds of questions do they ask that relate to indoor air quality?

Robert: Unfortunately, I don’t make it out in the field enough to actually talk with the customers directly. But, what I hear allegorically is that there certainly is a movement towards buyers asking these types of questions. You know, “what does this mean for me? How does this affect my family? How does this affect the that way we live within the home?” So, we certainly are getting some of those questions, I think that Gord really hit on some key points there that there are some basic misperceptions out there still related to tight construction and what that really means for the quality of the built environment once they move in. So, when we work to address these things, I certainly I would agree that the labeling from an independent agency like EPA, helps our customers feel more assured in that we’re doing the right things. But, really getting the message out there on that build it tight and ventilate it properly. There’s one thing that I encourage builders to do, it really is to build a tight house. And that’s probably the biggest thing for your trade base and for everyone else to really get their arms around. So, build a tight house that is properly designed from a water entry standpoint and then the other things are remarkably easier to do once you have that down. But, what we hear specifically from the customers, and I tell you that it depends on the individual consumer. For some people, right when they walk in the door, it’s one of the first things they ask us about, for other consumers it doesn’t even enter the conversation. So our sales people tend to try and tailor the conversation to the specific customer that’s coming through the door and what types of questions they’re asking. So, it’s a challenge for us to make sure the sales people are educated enough so if you have a customer that’s asking those questions they know how to address them, and if not, they’re moving on and taking other elements within the house. 

David: Gord, I’ve been to a number of your training sessions over the years and I know that you spend time training folks how to pull the consumer into this discussion. You ask them some leading questions about what they enjoy about their current house and maybe what they don’t find so great about their current house, and you almost prime the pump so you can have this conversation about indoor air quality.

Gord: Absolutely, and the stat that you indicated, David, that 20 percent of households at least, has somebody in them with suffering from asthma. And we know that there’s another percentage, 30 or 40 percent maybe in total, that have a true interest in indoor air quality. The problem is that they don’t necessarily, as we said, make the connection between how a new house might be able to help with that. So, it is important for builders to use a program like the label, that’s why I think the label is so powerful. It’s impossible for a builder to go out there and say “the air in my home is healthy,” that would be a mistake, a liability issue, but what we want to be able to say is “we are providing the healthiest possible air for you and your family to breathe.” That said, as Robert indicated, not everybody out the chute is interested in that, they have lots of other things on their minds: how close is it to schools, hospitals, so on and so on. So, it’s really important for builders to simply have their sales agents ask a few important questions, such as: are there any special needs in the household; tell me about your current home; how has it been from a health and life safety perspective; how did you enjoy the air in your existing home? So, there are some very simple things that can be done, all of those prompted, I will say, by something like a label that’s out there in front and shows that a builder is being proactive, so, I think it is a bit of an odd one as we know that consumers do more research after they bought their house than before. So, isn’t it nice to know that a label such as the Indoor airPLUS label is there so that when consumers do start to think about the house purchase they just made, that they’re going to get a better feeling of satisfaction knowing that those kinds of things have been looked after, as they do that deeper research?

David: I remember one of the sessions we had, Gord. It was a incredible example of kind of what we’re talking about. We were doing a session, trying to train the audience in asking the right questions. I think the question was, to the customer was, “tell me something about your house, was it comfortable to live in? Did you ever have any air quality problems or deficiencies in that area?” And the response was, “well you know what, we always had a musty basement, the basement always had a musty smell to it, and therefore we never liked the kids to play there and we never finished off that basement and the living space because it just, it wasn’t very comfortable and it just seemed to be dank and dark and musty,” which provided the opportunity for the builder to then say, “hey, well let me show you what we do to our homes to keep moisture out of the foundation in the basement, to keep the air quality in that basement.” So, it became an opportunity for the builder to sell features. 

Gord: Absolutely, and that’s as you’ve indicated that’s not necessarily a topic in mind for consumers, it’s our job, we have such a great product to sell in new housing, such a great product. And consumers don’t have enough time to really do all of the research to really appreciate all those great elements, and this just being one of them. That it’s really up to us to encourage them, to dialogue with them, to show them how what problems we may be able to solve for them by buying a new house. 

David: Right, any specific guidance either one of you can offer on how we can best market indoor air quality to home buyers? Are there hot buttons that we should try to address or specific messaging that you would offer?

Gord: Well, I’ll again start with that and say very clearly there’s this subsection of the population, maybe 30 percent of families that are truly motivated, and with a very simple question, such as any special needs, asthma allergies, respiratory problems, people are going to be excited by that. Second, most of these labels, as we’ve learned with Energy Star, and this label is no different, fundamentally, when consumers buy from a builder like a Pulte, they’re going to say “I want to buy from a builder I can trust.” People always ask me, “how do I know a builder that I can trust?” And I always say to them, “find the most educated builder, the builder who has learned more and knows more about the craft of building houses than anybody else.” Where do they go to get that education? Through training programs such as these labeling programs, so that to my mind, is at least as important message, the quality and the trust that it brings as opposed just the healthy air, because many consumers don’t necessarily make that initial link to healthy air.

Robert: Those are great points, absolutely well taken. The only other thing I might add is that if you work on the consumer base and they’re understanding, is to help them make that connection between the fact that their home can have a significant impact on their indoor air quality, their personal experience, their quality of life. So, I would much rather have people asking the questions of builders than waiting for a late-night infomercial on the latest miracle gadget that…

David: Right.

Robert: …that follows their indoor air quality issue for them.

David: Exactly. One just to give a personal experience that I remember working with a builder here in the last year and he has a great messaging piece he uses regarding the ventaliation issue that we’ve been talking about and he makes sure that all his potential buyers know that he’s installed equipment that guarantee they have fresh air every hour without ever having to open a window. It’s fresh, filtered air from outside. So, he’s providing that through the design and the equipment in the house. And that gets a lot of home buyers’ attention, that they’re getting fresh air throughout the day. 

Gord: It’s a very nice spot. I have other builders who ask that question, “in your current home, how do you get fresh air?”  And then he starts the conversations from there. So, there’s lots of great questions that builders can be asking of homeowners. “Tell me about your current home.  What rooms do you enjoy? What rooms don’t you use in your house and why that might be so, tell me about issues you’ve had.”  Also, I was talking to a homeowner yesterday and they said they thought they might have some mold issues related to a damp basement and I said to them, “have you had any leak problems?” and he said, “Well, only when it rains,” and I thought that…and he hadn’t made the connection that that somehow might be leading to an air quality problem and as soon as he said it he goes, “Oh yeah, I guess that maybe that has something to do with the moisture problems that we’re having.” Yeah, exactly.

David: So we have an industry that’s changing. We’ve got stricter basic building codes, we’ve got green building labeling programs that are out there in every region of the United States, we’ve got LEED, we’ve got the National Green Building standard, we’ve got lots of green products that are being offered by manufacturers. All kinds of things to save energy and save water and reduce pollutant loads, and we have a customer base that’s, you know, more aware of, in this case, indoor air quality. They’re very acutely aware of the mold issue, a larger portion understand what radon is all about and will ask questions about that. How can builders move to the next phase of the new home market? What’s the best way for a builder that is currently building maybe a code home, maybe a little better, how can we best move those builders to the next phase of quality in the new home market?

Robert: Maybe I’ll go first on that one. I think Gord really hit on a key point there, is educate yourself. There isn’t a builder that I’ve met that after going to sessions and learning more about the topics, doesn’t say, “You know what, I really want to build that way.”  And, you know, speaking from personal experience here in the Las Vegas market, there isn’t a single member of our construction staff that wouldn’t want to build their next house, whether it’s a custom or with a different builder, by the same standards that we’re executing on today. So, I think once people educate themselves on the topic, it becomes an absolutely transformational type of process for them to the point where they wouldn’t ever even consider ever going back. So, the best way that I can tell you that we can move the whole market forward is that education piece.

Gord: And I will concur, not to extend it out. As I travel the country, frankly North America, builders in general, it’s a good group of individuals, they want to do good work. The problem is, on a given day, they may not know exactly what the next step is. I can always get every builder in the room to raise their hand when I say, “Should we all agree that we should be on a path of continual improvement?”  They all put up their hands, they all know that as builders they should be constantly trying to improve the product they build. The issue is, “what’s next? What’s first? What’s next on the list? What should I be working toward? Is it green? Is it energy efficiency?” And the good news is, all of these things are synergistic. That is, the same things that you do to improve air quality, for example making houses tight and ventilating right, also happen to improve energy efficiency. So, the beauty of this is with a little bit of training and a little bit of knowledge, builders magically take that on and say, “we just want to improve our houses.” The tact I’ve be using lately and it seems to be resonating well with every three to five years we should be improving what we built by 25 to 30 percent.  And so looking down the list of, “if I can’t do it today, could I be doing it next year, could I be looking at it two years from now?” It’s not a question of if I’m going to do it, it’s a question of when I’m going to do it. And lay out a plan. So what, as much as anything, I said at the beginning, what’s really nice about the labels, such as the indoor air quality label, is that it gives you a bit of a plan. Here’s the 10 things that you have to do on the checklist, as you start to do those, when you’ve achieved all 10, now you get to say “I have this label. But, in the interim, I work toward the ones that I’m not currently doing.” And that base of education, every builder wants to build great houses and I applaud them for that, that’s why I love this industry and love training in this industry. Is I know what I give that day of training, somebody is going to change the way they build because now they learned about it.

David: Well let me segue away from that, what do you see on the horizon for homebuilders in the next five to 10 years?

Gord: As I say, what I really love is this proactive view to codes and standards, understanding that we’re on this path now of building ever better quality houses, not being reactive but having a true sense of how the physics of how houses work. Builders who are able to come to manufacturers and partnerships, and Robert is so brilliant at this at Pulte, is to work together with government, work together with suppliers, to say “Okay, what is coming? Where should we be in five years?” And I would really encourage all builders to start creating partnerships with their suppliers, with government agencies and map out their future in a proactive sense. And that’s absolutely where I see the industry going, is builders who are working with other groups within the industry to get on that path of continual improvement. I’m more encouraged now than I’ve ever been in the last 25 years about how the building industry is going to advance and improve.

David: Yeah, it’s great news. Hey Robert, any thoughts?

Robert: Absolutely, I certainly appreciate Gord’s comments as well. I think that in addition to working with manufacturers, a couple of other things potentially will be changing. One, is that we continue to see consolidation within the industry, certainly at the top end of the market, so the large production builders who are continuing to consolidate and you will have fewer entities that then are going to be pushing the conversation forward. So, I think that’s going to be a significant change in the next five to 10 years. The other thing that I’m very hopeful about is when it comes to labeling. So, labeling not just for new homes and things like the HERS E scale, but also for existing. So, if we start to require when a house becomes, you know, put up for sale or when it actually gets sold, a evaluation of labeling of that existing house, I think it’s going to do a couple things. One, it’ll encourage retrofit to occur on a very large existing base of houses that are out there. The other thing I think it’s going to enable new home builders to differentiate and continue to move the bar higher. So, if there’s a better consumer understanding of what they’re buying in the marketplace, whether that’s used or new, I think it always helps that the people that are pushing the envelope and continuing to try and do the latest and greatest practices. So, I’m extremely hopeful on the labeling side of things when it comes to resale as well as existing houses because I think that’s going to really help consumers understand just what it is that they’re buying and as a result become more savvy consumers and start to pull the builders in the direction instead of just having the builders push in one direction.

David: Thanks Robert, I appreciate your comment. We’ve covered a lot of ground here. Any other thoughts you guys would like to share about where the industry is heading, or where, or just something that you’d like to talk about, indoor air quality and green building?

Gord: I would just like to reiterate once again, it’s not, indoor air quality is not a bucket of it’s own. It’s part of that whole, as Robert said, that house is a system that magically we never want to compromise. We want to simultaneously make houses more efficient, more durable, more comfortable, but we also want to improve indoor air quality, the health and safety within houses. And the good news is the path we’re on right now with the integrated, integration of the buildings science message.  We can do all of those things simultaneously so the very same things that you do to make houses efficient also happen to improve indoor air quality and the label absolutely points that out, the synergies between it for example and the EPA Energy Star label are so nicely intertwined that as you do one, you’re magically impacting the other. And, I think that’s nice for builders to know that we’ve kind of figured out the science. We don’t have to make the mistakes that we made 25, 30 years ago making houses that were really efficient but not very healthy. We’ll never let that happen again. And, the labeling really helps with that.

Robert: I couldn’t agree more. You know, it’s not one or the other, it’s not water efficiency or energy or indoor air quality, it’s all of the above. And the things that we’re doing to work on these things are incredibly synergistic in terms of how we move that forward.

David: Thanks so much for your time. I really, really appreciate you taking the time from your busy schedules, and I know how hard you guys work cause I’ve seen you. And, so Robert Broad and Gord Cooke, thanks for your perspectives and we’ll see you in the field pretty soon. Take care now.

Gord: Thanks very much, David.

Robert: Thank you.

Narrator: Thanks for listening. To learn more about Energy & Environmental Building Alliance Board, go to www.eeba.org. Information on EPA’s Indoor airPLUS program is available at epa.gov/indoorairplus.

EEBA Podcast Transcription


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