This is really the perfect collision for me, Ferrell is from the point of a highly educated consumer, and Risinger as an advocate and enthusiast of proper building methodology and design.
That quote: "It's not that high performance homes cost too much. It's that our idea of a fairly priced new home is based on a history of houses that meet and embarrassingly low performance benchmark." ... except even those homes with embarrassing performance cost way way too much right now... it's absurd.
I've been following Matt R. for years now and the Build Show has taught me heaps about energy efficient homes - it's so important to address insulation and draughtproofing *before* looking at PV - PVs may be somewhat sexy but, if you have a badly insulated, draughty home you'll be starting so far back that you'll need a MUCH bigger solar array to cover your needs not to mention needing to oversize HVAC equipment because of those inefficiencies! The saying "Live simply so that others may simply live" comes to mind...
As a European house owner I totally agree with everything you said. When I built, I was already thinking that my son might get this house when I‘m older and I might move to a smaller place. It is value I pass on to my child. Even when we build a „forever home“ and plan to live there only for 10 years, we know we can sell it with high value and the second hand owner will have a good quality home. What I also want to mention is that I think it is quite a european thing to build new homes with flat roofs. I estimate that 50% new built houses are flat roof houses. Don‘t know why though. I also realized while traveling through north america, that people are talking a lot about renovating their roofs. That is not so much a topic here. Cheers from Austria.
Thank you. This podcast told me a little more about what is wrong with my 1961 forever home. I have been working on this house for 23 years now. First thing I did was replace the single pane windows with double pain windows. Next an energy efficient AC or so I thought, It lasted 15 years and just replaced it again. I am 12 years into a Solar lease on my asphalt roof. All appliances are replaced with energy efficient ones as they die. I just added attic insulation to cover my ducting that goes through my Las Vegas heated attic. I am into technology and have started automating items in my home. I have put these innovations into this old house to make living more comfortable. I have lowered my utility bills, and have made my house a home. I would love to have a new net zero sustainable house, but I do not think that will be in the cards for me. Now I just want a beautiful piece of property to visit with my motorhome. May be someday I will build a house. That is a dream, but in the meantime I am making my current property work for me.
I would love if next time you guys could cover types of heating systems, heat pumps and efficient appliance design. Wonderful watch, and thank you both for taking the time for a good conversational pod 👍👍
I started following "this Mat" awhile back and stumbled on this portion of the "rabbet warren" that we refer to as Y-Tube, his back log of vids is amazing! I am about to embark upon a restoration of the "For-Ever-Home" we chose late last century. These insights are extremely timely and will receive all due consideration as planning proceeds along its due coarse. Thank you for being bold enough to share your stories, they are inspirational and help some of us. They will be implemented in my up-coming rebuild of the 1920's home we chose late last century. My issues start with the original foundation, it was made with beach sand and set 6 inches (200mm) into expansive clay. Thankfully there is a stable sandy gravel layer about a yard down (just under 1 meter) that I intend to sink my footers into, and we now know to keep salt out of our concrete mixes. Hopefully construction commences Spring of '24, let the shenanigans begin! 🦊Riki2Tails
What I really hate is that the engineers in America simply do not do heatloss calculations. That's what matters. Not if the EPS sheet is 10mm or 15mm thick. Houses should primarily be built based on heatloss calculations. All the other metrics are secondary.
Guys, excellent conversation. In my mind one of most important observations made in this podcast was the one that affirms that thinking about the impact of water on a building as the No.1 issue. In New Zealand we have an epidemic of what has become know as ‘leaky building syndrome’ - something that has cost our economy billions of dollars over the last couple of decades. This has lead to a change in our building code that effectively ensures that houses (regardless of whether they are timber or brick) are built in the style of the older ‘brick veneer’ houses - which, if built well, seldom suffer this problem. Effectively this provides a 20 to 40 mm ‘moisture management plane’ that decouples the exterior wall from the interior insulated one - the outer wall is minimally vented at the top and bottom. So even if water does get through the exterior wall (not that it should) it can drain/dry out preventing long term deterioration. However, this standard still absolutely requires a quality builder who pays attention to detail and takes pride in knowing their building should ‘out live’ them. Thanks again to the two Matts - I’m an avid watcher of both your channels.
Ok, I've been waiting for this. I thought the brothers were discussing this interview, so was confused. Glad to see you have a "bomber" interview w Mr Risinger. Love his content.
Need to clip that bit about the exterior shades and send it to my mom. Been trying to tell her for ages that curtains don't keep heat out of a house. At best they just focus it by the window. Need to block the light/heat from coming in in the first place.
Great Podcast! I’m working on becoming a general contractor in my area to help my community. Always a great day to learn something new about the industry
An urgent topic regarding resilience are extreme weather events. Am always astonished, when people are surprised, that their cardbox homes do not withstand a hurricane or tornado etc. Frankly ridiculous expectations build on sand. No wonder, home insurances become unaffordabke in certain regions.
I just bought a spec home in Colorado. It's 95% 'builder grade'. The electricians were here today swapping out a couple of the amazingly bad breakers they installed originally with some Square D ones because the oven kept tripping the cheap ones. It's been a problem in every house they've made with an electric stove in it. Cheap out and find out I guess. Course now that the blue tape stuff is done I'm the one who's going to be finding out :X The parts where they splurged (comparatively) were the outside bits, the curb appeal. It looks quite nice from the outside. I even browbeat them into doing xeriscaping and they actually did a good job. Now I just need the houses on both sides of me to be built so I don't have dirt, then pretty rocks and succulents, then dirt again. I wish I had the money to make a passive house, or even just a better than builder grade one, but even with this odd lot spec home being discounted it was a big gamble on whether I can afford it. I lose my job and I'm super screwed. lol that reminds me: They put fancy marble countertops on top of Home Depot prebuilt cabinets. There's still gaps in between the cabinets they need to block up or do something with.
Matt would you be able to share the materials and equipment you use for your house and where you get them just for our reference? Just those materials that makes lots of difference like insolation, roof, etc.
Unfortunately this is why I never went back into building after 2008. We were trying to build code+ buildings in a spec market. The day that started my exodus was when I realized that during a particular project the only customer questions I ever recieved were about countertops and appliances. Not a single one about the upgraded HVAC, insulation package, window, ect. At the end of the day, the house still only had comps of all the other bare code built trash in the same geographic market.
I'm on the other end of that. Just bought a spec home in Colorado. It has the pretty paint and front yard and marble countertops and GM appliances, but I'm spending a ton on upgrading to a heat pump, getting solar, increasing the insulation where I can. I wish I had the money to custom build, but even this comparatively cheap house was still a stretch to finance. All throughout the build I was asking if they could upgrade things like the insulation. The only thing they caved on was the heat pump and water heater. And they didn't even install the right heat pump! They went with a crappy 15 SEER one when the one I paid for is 18+. Not only that but it switches to 'emergency heating' below 40f... in Colorado... So now I gotta sue to get the funds to put the right one in. Assuming that even goes my way, if not I'm super screwed because energy prices here are double what they were where I was living.
Still makes me wonder why building houses with wood when it needs so much maintenance that you just don't need to worry with a cinder block and concrete construction, also if there's anything that can destroy your house why keep building them like that if a tornado or hurricane flattens the area every couple of years. The collab I never knew I needed, been following the build show for years.
I seen cinderblock homes with significant mold growth due to condensation from humid warm air on cold walls. Like with any building products, it requires good assembly design and installation.
Always a good listen, like the cross pollination of two of my fav podcast/youtubes... Matt R is a good one on builders (funny hearing the sharing/intro & wrap up) and would like to see ya'll do a unity podcast all post lessons learned. Your version is closer to us non homebuilders as a career types...and from what I'm seeing..best not to take it on, if you have the money, buy/sell old home and get into the new one vs people getting into it themselves...wish it was like building a custom desktop pc. 1) Clarification - EU homes are not expensive, check out the 1Euro dollar for a home gimmick (to each their own, location location location (you pay for what/where you want to live) - my references are mostly from Italy although I've travelled plenty while living +20years in Europe (mostly Italy/Germany). Classic story of why not build new smart cities (just like FSD would be amazing if we also had smart roads). I've heard that Italians don't pay taxes on their first home (Matt you know the joys of MA/NH real estate taxes yearly, I'm at around $15k/yr...my Italian friends in Rome choke on that number lol). 2). Can you clarify the Solar on your new home right? Seemed Matt R said you didn't? then you referenced clip on PVs to a metal roof? what did you mean by that - I have metal roof (different than yours), and hesitate about the PV install due to same points you made...holes in the roof aka leaks. Thanks again, keep the podcasts coming.
Home Depot has a number of sheathing products, but none of them are described as being comprised of cardboard. So what nomenclature is applied to cardboard sheathing because I really want to avoid this product.
Matts: not all European homes are recent, but a lot gets redone. My home is over 3 floors + attic, 5500 sq ft. BUT it,,s been refurbished since 2010, with modern insulation, taking the walls to 3’, only simple double glazing vs triple glazing., underfloor heating from a ground source heat pump (550’ vertical, double shaft) and 14kw solar, and 32kwh batteries. My biggest issue has been poorly fitted doors and windows which your blower test would pick up, but it’s totally uncommon in Britain We found a good tool when house hunting is a thermal imaging camera
I suppose a TV show called "United Stats of America" hosted by the Sklar twins was doomed to failure. But maybe Matt and Sean could reboot the idea on our new media landscape? The last episode of the original show was titled: "Livin' Large" and chronicled the size of the average family home in the United States, IIRC. My takeaway was that a family can live in about 300 square feet, but they need several thousand for all their JUNK! 😆
Is it easy to get the materials in the US if you want to build a house like in Europe? All the factory's and suppliers probably aren't on the American market so for the builder to get the materials and learn to use them isn't that convinient i believe! Also required for new homes is a rainwater tank that you have to place under ground that fills up with the rainwater from your roof and terrace so you can use that water for your garden and toilet. Is the rainwater tank something they use in the US or some parts off the US?
I haven’t even watched yet, but it’s great to see two of my favorite CZcamsrs converging for a podcast.
Ditto. Big fan for both Matt’s
This is really the perfect collision for me, Ferrell is from the point of a highly educated consumer, and Risinger as an advocate and enthusiast of proper building methodology and design.
That quote:
"It's not that high performance homes cost too much. It's that our idea of a fairly priced new home is based on a history of houses that meet and embarrassingly low performance benchmark."
... except even those homes with embarrassing performance cost way way too much right now... it's absurd.
This a collaboration that I was waiting for. Two channels that I watch every video of. Great talk from Matt and Matt!
I've been following Matt R. for years now and the Build Show has taught me heaps about energy efficient homes - it's so important to address insulation and draughtproofing *before* looking at PV - PVs may be somewhat sexy but, if you have a badly insulated, draughty home you'll be starting so far back that you'll need a MUCH bigger solar array to cover your needs not to mention needing to oversize HVAC equipment because of those inefficiencies!
The saying "Live simply so that others may simply live" comes to mind...
As a European house owner I totally agree with everything you said. When I built, I was already thinking that my son might get this house when I‘m older and I might move to a smaller place. It is value I pass on to my child.
Even when we build a „forever home“ and plan to live there only for 10 years, we know we can sell it with high value and the second hand owner will have a good quality home.
What I also want to mention is that I think it is quite a european thing to build new homes with flat roofs. I estimate that 50% new built houses are flat roof houses. Don‘t know why though.
I also realized while traveling through north america, that people are talking a lot about renovating their roofs. That is not so much a topic here.
Cheers from Austria.
Thank you. This podcast told me a little more about what is wrong with my 1961 forever home. I have been working on this house for 23 years now. First thing I did was replace the single pane windows with double pain windows. Next an energy efficient AC or so I thought, It lasted 15 years and just replaced it again. I am 12 years into a Solar lease on my asphalt roof. All appliances are replaced with energy efficient ones as they die. I just added attic insulation to cover my ducting that goes through my Las Vegas heated attic. I am into technology and have started automating items in my home. I have put these innovations into this old house to make living more comfortable. I have lowered my utility bills, and have made my house a home. I would love to have a new net zero sustainable house, but I do not think that will be in the cards for me. Now I just want a beautiful piece of property to visit with my motorhome. May be someday I will build a house. That is a dream, but in the meantime I am making my current property work for me.
"Why would you want to heat and cool that part of the house"...
...and why would you want to clean that extra space as well!
I would love if next time you guys could cover types of heating systems, heat pumps and efficient appliance design.
Wonderful watch, and thank you both for taking the time for a good conversational pod 👍👍
I started following "this Mat" awhile back and stumbled on this portion of the "rabbet warren" that we refer to as Y-Tube, his back log of vids is amazing!
I am about to embark upon a restoration of the "For-Ever-Home" we chose late last century. These insights are extremely timely and will receive all due consideration as planning proceeds along its due coarse.
Thank you for being bold enough to share your stories, they are inspirational and help some of us. They will be implemented in my up-coming rebuild of the 1920's home we chose late last century.
My issues start with the original foundation, it was made with beach sand and set 6 inches (200mm) into expansive clay. Thankfully there is a stable sandy gravel layer about a yard down (just under 1 meter) that I intend to sink my footers into, and we now know to keep salt out of our concrete mixes.
Hopefully construction commences Spring of '24, let the shenanigans begin! 🦊Riki2Tails
What I really hate is that the engineers in America simply do not do heatloss calculations. That's what matters. Not if the EPS sheet is 10mm or 15mm thick. Houses should primarily be built based on heatloss calculations. All the other metrics are secondary.
Guys, excellent conversation. In my mind one of most important observations made in this podcast was the one that affirms that thinking about the impact of water on a building as the No.1 issue. In New Zealand we have an epidemic of what has become know as ‘leaky building syndrome’ - something that has cost our economy billions of dollars over the last couple of decades. This has lead to a change in our building code that effectively ensures that houses (regardless of whether they are timber or brick) are built in the style of the older ‘brick veneer’ houses - which, if built well, seldom suffer this problem. Effectively this provides a 20 to 40 mm ‘moisture management plane’ that decouples the exterior wall from the interior insulated one - the outer wall is minimally vented at the top and bottom. So even if water does get through the exterior wall (not that it should) it can drain/dry out preventing long term deterioration. However, this standard still absolutely requires a quality builder who pays attention to detail and takes pride in knowing their building should ‘out live’ them. Thanks again to the two Matts - I’m an avid watcher of both your channels.
Ok, I've been waiting for this. I thought the brothers were discussing this interview, so was confused.
Glad to see you have a "bomber" interview w Mr Risinger. Love his content.
Excellent collaboration you really went to the mat for this interview!
Need to clip that bit about the exterior shades and send it to my mom. Been trying to tell her for ages that curtains don't keep heat out of a house. At best they just focus it by the window. Need to block the light/heat from coming in in the first place.
Great Podcast! I’m working on becoming a general contractor in my area to help my community. Always a great day to learn something new about the industry
I've been looking at structural insulated panels for years now & haven't been able to find a local builder willing to look at them.
An urgent topic regarding resilience are extreme weather events. Am always astonished, when people are surprised, that their cardbox homes do not withstand a hurricane or tornado etc. Frankly ridiculous expectations build on sand. No wonder, home insurances become unaffordabke in certain regions.
I just bought a spec home in Colorado. It's 95% 'builder grade'. The electricians were here today swapping out a couple of the amazingly bad breakers they installed originally with some Square D ones because the oven kept tripping the cheap ones. It's been a problem in every house they've made with an electric stove in it. Cheap out and find out I guess.
Course now that the blue tape stuff is done I'm the one who's going to be finding out :X
The parts where they splurged (comparatively) were the outside bits, the curb appeal. It looks quite nice from the outside. I even browbeat them into doing xeriscaping and they actually did a good job. Now I just need the houses on both sides of me to be built so I don't have dirt, then pretty rocks and succulents, then dirt again.
I wish I had the money to make a passive house, or even just a better than builder grade one, but even with this odd lot spec home being discounted it was a big gamble on whether I can afford it. I lose my job and I'm super screwed.
lol that reminds me: They put fancy marble countertops on top of Home Depot prebuilt cabinets. There's still gaps in between the cabinets they need to block up or do something with.
What's the link to Matt's "20 questions to ask a builder"?
I wanted to hear both Matts say ON The Build Show!
Matt would you be able to share the materials and equipment you use for your house and where you get them just for our reference? Just those materials that makes lots of difference like insolation, roof, etc.
Unfortunately this is why I never went back into building after 2008. We were trying to build code+ buildings in a spec market. The day that started my exodus was when I realized that during a particular project the only customer questions I ever recieved were about countertops and appliances. Not a single one about the upgraded HVAC, insulation package, window, ect. At the end of the day, the house still only had comps of all the other bare code built trash in the same geographic market.
I'm on the other end of that. Just bought a spec home in Colorado. It has the pretty paint and front yard and marble countertops and GM appliances, but I'm spending a ton on upgrading to a heat pump, getting solar, increasing the insulation where I can. I wish I had the money to custom build, but even this comparatively cheap house was still a stretch to finance.
All throughout the build I was asking if they could upgrade things like the insulation. The only thing they caved on was the heat pump and water heater. And they didn't even install the right heat pump! They went with a crappy 15 SEER one when the one I paid for is 18+. Not only that but it switches to 'emergency heating' below 40f... in Colorado...
So now I gotta sue to get the funds to put the right one in. Assuming that even goes my way, if not I'm super screwed because energy prices here are double what they were where I was living.
Still makes me wonder why building houses with wood when it needs so much maintenance that you just don't need to worry with a cinder block and concrete construction, also if there's anything that can destroy your house why keep building them like that if a tornado or hurricane flattens the area every couple of years. The collab I never knew I needed, been following the build show for years.
I seen cinderblock homes with significant mold growth due to condensation from humid warm air on cold walls. Like with any building products, it requires good assembly design and installation.
@@phamlam3720 still way less maintenance
Always a good listen, like the cross pollination of two of my fav podcast/youtubes... Matt R is a good one on builders (funny hearing the sharing/intro & wrap up) and would like to see ya'll do a unity podcast all post lessons learned. Your version is closer to us non homebuilders as a career types...and from what I'm seeing..best not to take it on, if you have the money, buy/sell old home and get into the new one vs people getting into it themselves...wish it was like building a custom desktop pc. 1) Clarification - EU homes are not expensive, check out the 1Euro dollar for a home gimmick (to each their own, location location location (you pay for what/where you want to live) - my references are mostly from Italy although I've travelled plenty while living +20years in Europe (mostly Italy/Germany). Classic story of why not build new smart cities (just like FSD would be amazing if we also had smart roads). I've heard that Italians don't pay taxes on their first home (Matt you know the joys of MA/NH real estate taxes yearly, I'm at around $15k/yr...my Italian friends in Rome choke on that number lol). 2). Can you clarify the Solar on your new home right? Seemed Matt R said you didn't? then you referenced clip on PVs to a metal roof? what did you mean by that - I have metal roof (different than yours), and hesitate about the PV install due to same points you made...holes in the roof aka leaks. Thanks again, keep the podcasts coming.
Home Depot has a number of sheathing products, but none of them are described as being comprised of cardboard. So what nomenclature is applied to cardboard sheathing because I really want to avoid this product.
Look up Thermo Ply sheathing
The Perfect Wall, Joseph Lstiburek (how the other Matt built his home), aka Monopoly Framing.
Re: 35:45.
Matts: not all European homes are recent, but a lot gets redone. My home is over 3 floors + attic, 5500 sq ft. BUT it,,s been refurbished since 2010, with modern insulation, taking the walls to 3’, only simple double glazing vs triple glazing., underfloor heating from a ground source heat pump (550’ vertical, double shaft) and 14kw solar, and 32kwh batteries. My biggest issue has been poorly fitted doors and windows which your blower test would pick up, but it’s totally uncommon in Britain
We found a good tool when house hunting is a thermal imaging camera
I suppose a TV show called "United Stats of America" hosted by the Sklar twins was doomed to failure. But maybe Matt and Sean could reboot the idea on our new media landscape? The last episode of the original show was titled: "Livin' Large" and chronicled the size of the average family home in the United States, IIRC. My takeaway was that a family can live in about 300 square feet, but they need several thousand for all their JUNK! 😆
Is it easy to get the materials in the US if you want to build a house like in Europe? All the factory's and suppliers probably aren't on the American market so for the builder to get the materials and learn to use them isn't that convinient i believe! Also required for new homes is a rainwater tank that you have to place under ground that fills up with the rainwater from your roof and terrace so you can use that water for your garden and toilet. Is the rainwater tank something they use in the US or some parts off the US?
We do not use rainwater tanks here in the USA. I worked in construction for years and now sell homes in New York and New Jersey