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Interviews with the leaders, practitioners, and change-makers in the global Passive House movement. A production of Passive House Accelerator.
Michelle Jacobson:
00:01-00:12
Once you learn it or once you know about it and someone tells you what's going on, how could you not advocate for yourself and your family and your clients to be able to build and live in a healthy environment?
Tim Lock:
00:13-00:13
They're
Tim Lock:
00:13-00:22
doing it because they're creating work that people desire, right? And they are just telling their clients, this is what you should do.
Tim Lock:
00:23-00:27
It's a more resilient building and it's a better building and it's a healthier building.
Tim Lock:
00:28-00:32
And so if I see them not waiting, I think that we can all not wait.
Andrew Michler:
00:32-00:35
That's the magic of this kind of high-performance thing.
Andrew Michler:
00:35-00:41
It's like the synergies are just unbelievable once you get to a level of performance.
Zack Semke:
00:49-01:03
Hello and welcome to the Reimagine Edit, a special series of the Fast Vows podcast that shares curated insights from our experts and residents at the Reimagine Buildings Collective, our membership community of building professionals stepping up to tackle climate change.
Zack Semke:
01:04-01:23
Today is March 3rd, 2025, and in this episode, we'll hear selected clips from Andrew Mitchler, Tim Locke, Ed May, Michelle Jacobson, and Maria Lamonto. I'm Zach Semke, Director of Passive House Accelerator and host of the Reimagine Buildings Collective, and a big thank you to you for tuning in.
Zack Semke:
01:23-01:26
Let's dive right in, starting with Andrew Michler.
Zack Semke:
01:26-01:53
Andrew has focused on high performance building design and materiality since 1993. He's the author of the book Hyperlocalization of Architecture and the principal of the design group Hyperlocal Workshop. He's also co-founder of Passive House Rocky Mountains. He's experienced multiple fire events, including the 1991 Oakland Hills Fire and, in 2020, the Cameron Peak Fire, the largest wildfire in Colorado to date.
Zack Semke:
01:53-01:58
He's currently working on the rebuilding effort for the Marshall Fire in Boulder County.
Zack Semke:
01:59-02:06
He's also helping us to plan our next Reimagine Buildings Conference on March 14th, Designing for Fire Resilience, which is free to collective members.
Zack Semke:
02:07-02:12
So Andrew's Ask Me Anything, centered on fire hardening, was timely.
Zack Semke:
02:12-02:18
In this first clip, Andrew shares that there's more than meets the eye when it comes to fire resilience.
Andrew Michler:
02:20-02:27
People get a little, I'm not going to say knee-jerk, but we get a little overly simplified when we talk about fire resilience in buildings.
Andrew Michler:
02:28-02:38
And so if you go into any group chat or YouTube video or something, everybody says, just build it out of steel studs and concrete and you'll be fine.
Andrew Michler:
02:39-02:49
And we found plenty of steel and concrete buildings that burn just as significantly as regular buildings in terms of the actual house itself.
Andrew Michler:
02:50-02:55
And it turns out that a lot of the ways the fire did in is really sneaky, very stealth.
Andrew Michler:
02:55-03:06
So once the fire gets inside of the building system, and especially inside the house itself, the roof system, then you're in really bad shape.
Andrew Michler:
03:06-03:18
No matter what you clad your building with, even if you do best practices around the structure itself, at times, you can still have a really vulnerable situation.
Andrew Michler:
03:19-03:21
We've seen that over and over again in my experiences in Colorado.
Andrew Michler:
03:23-04:01
mountains where I live and built. And then I started the Oakland Hills fire in 91, where just everything burned pretty much no matter how, what class A roof and stucco cladding was on it. So it's the details that count. And that seems to synergize really well with how we think around Passive House, born systems approach rather than like individual approaches. So I think we have a really good mindset in Passivasta to really take on the fire resilience scope as well as we're designing in areas that need more fire hardening.
Zack Semke:
04:02-04:03
As
Zack Semke:
04:03-04:04
Andrew says, it's the details that count.
Zack Semke:
04:05-04:09
Here he lays out his most recent fire resilient wall assembly.
Andrew Michler:
04:09-04:10
We're
Andrew Michler:
04:10-05:15
using a cocoon straw panel, which is pretty much fire resilient in itself. It's about 120 minute wall, which is pretty amazing. So it doesn't really hold fire simply because you can't carry oxygen within the wall system itself. But also that's where I want to clad just the blueboard drywall on top of that and then put my WRB over that. And I think it's funny that people get excited about that. It's straw and we're putting WRBs right on top of straw. So drywall is less vulnerable than strong, especially if it's impregnated with some waterproofing content. So straw or cellulose or whatever your timber assembly is. And if you need apply for shear, that's fine. We don't need apply in the panelized system that we're using. Then we put a WRB on top. Then we put the drywall on top of that. And then we put a WRB on that. And then our air space and then whatever our cladding system design over that is a really excellent wall.
Andrew Michler:
05:16-05:26
I would say that's closer to any perfect wall, Americana style, that it's being taught in most of the architecture and engineering schools that we have.
Andrew Michler:
05:26-05:40
Now we have like really fireproof, vapor open, low carbon assemblies that should be able to easily be built by regular crafts people, trades people, in simple to detail.
Andrew Michler:
05:41-05:42
So more to come.
Zack Semke:
05:42-05:46
So what's a remaining area of fire vulnerability in Passive House?
Zack Semke:
05:47-05:48
Andrew poses the question.
Andrew Michler:
05:50-06:02
Where do you guys, when you have a Passive House and you have fire coming and you've done all these things, you have all the right outside stuff, the windows, everything's done right.
Andrew Michler:
06:02-06:06
What's the vulnerable place still in a Passive House, in a fire event?
Andrew Michler:
06:08-06:15
What's the most obvious and critical place where fire embers can easily get into the patinots?
Andrew Michler:
06:15-06:17
Your ventilation system, right?
Andrew Michler:
06:17-06:18
Your ERV.
Andrew Michler:
06:19-06:19
Exactly.
Andrew Michler:
06:21-06:28
So a lot of us are using those EPS foam tubes to bring outside air into our buildings.
Andrew Michler:
06:28-06:30
So that's, and then the foam cores are plastic.
Andrew Michler:
06:32-06:43
Holy shit, you get enough ambros into that ventilation system, and you have a pretty reasonable place for fire to take off with inside of your building.
Andrew Michler:
06:43-06:54
We're thinking we're starting to look more into filter systems, especially on the exterior coming in, but also from the interior going out for the ventilation systems.
Andrew Michler:
06:55-07:00
Almost like pre-filters, but there are also spark arresters potentially as well.
Zack Semke:
07:01-07:01
We,
Zack Semke:
07:01-07:11
of course, need those ERVs and HRVs in our buildings, as well as air tightness, not least of which to protect ourselves from smoke during wildfire smoke events.
Andrew Michler:
07:12-07:13
I
Andrew Michler:
07:13-07:22
think code should 100 % require air tightness below one and ER and HRVs by code.
Andrew Michler:
07:22-07:31
I think that should be standard practice throughout the entire industry, because we have zero control right now on air infiltration on buildings.
Andrew Michler:
07:32-07:47
Encoated has done almost no actual building science around how it's being developed, and it's been completely corrupted by, and I'm going, this is my AMA humble opinion, has been really corrupted by the furnace industry and by the building industry.
Andrew Michler:
07:48-07:53
And it's a complete overhaul in terms of air control for all sorts of reasons.
Andrew Michler:
07:54-07:57
But smoke is a big one in energy efficiency and longevity.
Andrew Michler:
07:57-08:08
building or they all work together. That's the magic of this kind of high performance thing is like the synergies are just unbelievable once you get to a level of performance.
Zack Semke:
08:09-08:15
That's the magic. Next up, we have Tim Locke and his Designing Beyond Passive House Ask Me Anything.
Zack Semke:
08:16-08:29
Tim is management partner at the architecture firm Opal. He also sits on the main AIA board of directors, the AIA National Strategic Council, and is the co-chair of the main AIA Committee on the Environment.
Zack Semke:
08:30-08:37
At OPAL, he spearheads the practice's overall approach to building ecology and climate action, and he dives into that here.
Tim Lock:
08:38-08:39
We
Tim Lock:
08:39-09:47
had to have a building ecology squad in the office, and it was like, all right, you're just going to take a topic. We're going to self-sort them into these five topics. Those five topics now have names within the office. So there's habitable planet, which is about emissions, global emissions. There's circular resources, which I think that's gained traction in recent years. Most people understand what that is. There's protected water cycle, there's healthy ecosystems, and there's healthy communities. And so those are arbitrary selections to try to create buckets that we could sort criteria into. But I think what we found is that in any sustainability framework, those buckets are always arbitrary. They bump up against each other. They have overlaps. They intersect. That's where it gets really interesting. But the reason we grouped them that way was that they were scaled from a global problem, which is human-based carbon dioxide emissions or equivalent emissions, all the way down to hyper-local problems like the healthy communities that we either support or don't support within the buildings we design, right?
Tim Lock:
09:47-09:53
So the smallest cohort, smallest community that's affected by a design project and then scaled it in between, right?
Tim Lock:
09:54-09:59
And that was a way to try to create a design problem out of a data problem.
Tim Lock:
09:59-10:28
And I say this a lot, I might've said it when we all talked together with Fast Fast Accelerator a few months ago, I'm always in this kind of constant state of the designer needs to really accept more scientific method into their approach, but scientists need to accept more design approach into their methods as well. But these things work together. And so we can create constants around the problem that we're trying to abstract and design, but our superpower is in design, right?
Tim Lock:
10:29-10:57
Or at least for me, I'm an architect. And so I don't want to not make a design problem. Can I design this framework to be generative, to be beneficial, to be impactful? And can we get to 80% conservation like we did with energy in Passive House in all these other ways. And the answer might be no. Like, I don't know yet. Like, we've only really had it in the office for two and a half years now. So we've had a few big projects that we can measure across that framework.
Tim Lock:
10:57-11:08
But yeah, it's exciting to try. And I think that it's always exciting to see how we can do more, be more impactful by just doing less and using less.
Tim Lock:
11:08-11:09
That holistic
Zack Semke:
11:09-11:26
approach and that striving to apply the frame of 80% improvement borrowed from Passive House to all aspects of ecological design are inspiring and necessary. But how are those values being disseminated across the industry and policymaking?
Zack Semke:
11:27-11:30
I find myself more
Tim Lock:
11:30-11:40
and more leading into my design education from two and a half decades ago as a way to kind of market these ideas.
Tim Lock:
11:40-12:35
ideas in a more effective way than I ever thought I would in the middle of my career when I first started engaging with ecological design in a serious way. Like then I was like super excited about the data, but the more I got into that, I realized that was a smaller and smaller group, the more specific the data became. So I find myself for dissemination leaning more on design tools than on numbers. This is probably the wrong cohort for that, but I found that it's pretty effective and can get a pretty large stakeholder group, say on a public project, on board with a highly sustainable set of criteria without having to scold or level set in ways that people think is scary or hard or costly.
Tim Lock:
12:35-12:46
But I guess I really believe in the power of disseminating through example and example being great transformative design when we're talking about buildings specifically.
Tim Lock:
12:46-13:09
If we're talking about disseminating information amongst ourselves, say as a building and design industry, I think that we're at a point in history where if you're not open source with how you're acquiring your information, your data, and how you're deploying it, then you're more on the side of a gatekeeper than I would like to feel comfortable with.
Tim Lock:
13:10-13:18
I think the reason that we made that framework is because we wanted to share outwardly how that was successful for us.
Tim Lock:
13:20-13:55
That's offered by creating those five criteria or five buckets was arbitrary, yes, as I said, it was about community scale, but mostly it was me responding to what I was hearing back from clients is I'm really excited about doing something that's good ecologically, but I don't understand any of this. What's my way in? So if I diversified the criteria, then somebody who's really just mostly interested in their kids falling asleep in class in a school building can learn how that is potentially related to these other energy saving issues, right, that are totally foreign to them.
Tim Lock:
13:56-14:07
And I wanted that to potentially be something that anybody could take to any client, to any person that they know and advocate for the intersectionality of these criteria.
Tim Lock:
14:07-14:09
And that it's really for everybody.
Tim Lock:
14:09-14:10
It's for us all to feel healthy.
Tim Lock:
14:10-14:11
It's for us all to feel safe.
Tim Lock:
14:12-14:14
It's for us all to feel resilient.
Tim Lock:
14:15-14:16
And that was long-winded.
Tim Lock:
14:16-14:17
And I'm sorry, Eric, for that.
Tim Lock:
14:18-14:20
But I think it's really a two-pronged thing, right?
Tim Lock:
14:20-14:27
It's how we talk to each other and don't withhold our information that we're learning and be honest when we're wrong.
Tim Lock:
14:28-14:37
And how we talk to the public in ways that aren't, I don't know, belittling of the knowledge base they have and using the tools at our discretion that are great motivators for change.
Zack Semke:
14:38-14:46
Tim was then asked about the role of AHJs or authorities having jurisdiction like building inspectors and co-bodies in driving change.
Tim Lock:
14:47-14:48
I
Tim Lock:
14:48-15:01
will say personally, if you're asking me the question, it's not, to be totally honest, it's not something I think about a ton. I think that the average, if you think about like the average building, we see that continuing to get better.
Tim Lock:
15:02-15:13
and it takes a vanguard of designers and stakeholders willing to go well beyond what's merely acceptable in order to continue to move that average.
Tim Lock:
15:15-15:18
And I don't see a lot of evidence in history.
Tim Lock:
15:20-15:24
I'm a kind of like, I like reading history.
Tim Lock:
15:24-15:26
I like reading political history a lot.
Tim Lock:
15:26-15:28
I like reading sociology a lot.
Tim Lock:
15:28-15:35
There's not a lot of evidence of that average being the progressive, the progressive vanguard, right?
Tim Lock:
15:35-15:56
So if I think about an AHJ as something that we need to pull along, to me, I like to turn more to the public and create critical mass in my client groups as big a scale as they can to show that it's possible so that the next project, you can maybe have a case study that allows you to move that a little bit forward.
Tim Lock:
15:59-16:17
I really, and I've said this in speaking engagements many times, like I would, I know that's hard and I'm not saying this is your issue necessarily at all specifically, but I think that waiting for the AHJs, and I know that's not what you're asking, is it is really a non-starter to me.
Tim Lock:
16:18-16:32
It's building specifically, maybe not so much design, but building a construction industry is, I think it was like a Forbes article a few years ago that said it's the most conservative, most least progressive industry in the entire country.
Tim Lock:
16:32-16:34
And I'm talking about the US alone here.
Tim Lock:
16:34-16:36
I don't know about other countries.
Tim Lock:
16:36-16:37
I know I have people from other countries on the call.
Tim Lock:
16:37-16:38
Hi, Lloyd.
Tim Lock:
16:38-16:50
But I think that's an industry that's built on repetition, that's built on consistency, and is adverse to change.
Tim Lock:
16:50-16:54
And it's up to us to show that it's possible as the vanguard.
Tim Lock:
16:56-17:02
I have no expectation of the AHJs being part of that solution.
Tim Lock:
17:02-17:05
I'm going to be totally blunt on the AMA today.
Tim Lock:
17:06-17:10
I think it's up to us to make that a reality that then can be modeled.
Tim Lock:
17:10-17:16
And we can use other models and jurisdictions which have made significant advancements as well.
Tim Lock:
17:16-17:26
But I know architects all over the country that are doing net zero Passive House proximate projects that don't even understand Passive House.
Tim Lock:
17:27-17:28
They're colleagues of mine.
Tim Lock:
17:29-17:31
Some of them are very famous award-winning architects.
Tim Lock:
17:32-17:33
Some of them are working in the Deep South.
Tim Lock:
17:34-17:35
Some of them are working in the Southwest.
Tim Lock:
17:35-18:02
areas where there's zero penetration to the AHJs and they're doing it. And they're doing it because they're creating work that people desire, right? And they are just telling their clients, this is what you should do. It's a more resilient building and it's a better building and it's a healthier building. And so if I see that possible, I see them not waiting. I think that
Zack Semke:
18:02-18:03
we can all not wait.
Zack Semke:
18:04-18:14
Totally agreed. Let's not wait. In this last clip from Tim, he shares the four aspects of a strong brand and considers how Passive House stacks up.
Zack Semke:
18:14-18:18
When we changed our name from Geologic to Opal or
Tim Lock:
18:18-18:57
split off Opal from Geologic, we had this big branding exercise and we got an actual, we randomly had a client that was a big time marketing guy. And he was like willing to give us some free services, which is great. So we took him up on it. We went through this exhaustive kind of branding exercise, which is tiring. But the first thing he said still sticks with me. It's like a good marketing approach is to find a brand idea. And this could be applied to anything. It could be like Passive House could be ecological design in general, architectural design in general, whatever, building in general. It has to be four things. It has to be big. It has to be simple. It has to be useful and it has to be true. And if it's those four things, it's going to be great.
Tim Lock:
18:58-19:02
And I think we do a terrible job, even within the Passive House community, of selling that.
Tim Lock:
19:03-19:06
It's like, and I'm not trying to be critical of Passive House.
Tim Lock:
19:06-19:06
It's what we do.
Tim Lock:
19:07-19:09
All of our projects, we try to get to those goals.
Tim Lock:
19:10-19:15
But is it a big enough idea that we can grow and change over time?
Tim Lock:
19:16-19:17
Is it useful to us?
Tim Lock:
19:18-19:24
Does it actually allow us to do the work we need to do within the collective on that idea?
Tim Lock:
19:24-19:27
Is it simple enough for anyone to understand, right?
Tim Lock:
19:27-19:30
Like anyone, that's kind of what you're getting to with your question.
Tim Lock:
19:30-19:32
Is it simple enough to understand how they benefit?
Tim Lock:
19:32-19:33
And is it true?
Tim Lock:
19:33-19:41
Yeah, we don't want to lead with data, but the data has to undergird it or else it's not, it's going to be pretty clearly inauthentic very quickly.
Tim Lock:
19:41-19:41
Right.
Tim Lock:
19:42-19:46
And I think that's, I try to think about that a lot when I think about messaging.
Tim Lock:
19:46-19:48
It's like, how are we doing those four things?
Tim Lock:
19:49-19:57
And I think you're right that it's not, it's something that definitely could be improved and we could be probably a lot less tactical and a lot more strategic.
Tim Lock:
19:57-19:58
a lot of the time.
Tim Lock:
19:59-20:00
We'd make better strides, I think.
Carmel Pratt:
20:01-20:05
Yeah, I so appreciate this addition to the conversation, Ranger.
Carmel Pratt:
20:05-20:18
We have Hulu doing us the services with the curse and things that are almost taking what were our buzzwords within our industry and turning them into curse words, for lack of a better word.
Carmel Pratt:
20:18-20:20
And we need to turn that around on its head.
Carmel Pratt:
20:21-20:22
Forget passive.
Carmel Pratt:
20:22-20:23
What does that even mean?
Carmel Pratt:
20:23-20:25
What does comfort and health mean?
Carmel Pratt:
20:26-20:29
Talk a language that everyone understands.
Carmel Pratt:
20:30-20:38
I love the four marketing secrets that you just shared with us, Tim, because that can just be applied in so many thought categories in so many ways.
Zack Semke:
20:40-20:42
That was Carmel Pratt there at the end, adding her thoughts.
Zack Semke:
20:43-20:52
Thanks to Carmel for hosting the AMA with Tim when I was on a road trip with my family, and to Mary James for doing the same with Andrew's fire-hardening AMA.
Zack Semke:
20:52-20:58
Carmel would be doing her own Ask Me Anything on March 25th, by the way, so mark your calendars for that.
Zack Semke:
20:59-21:02
Now let's pivot to Ed May's Modeling AMA.
Zack Semke:
21:02-21:10
For those of you who don't know Ed, he's partner at Building Type, where he's become one of the country's most sought-after Passive House modelers and consultants.
Zack Semke:
21:11-21:29
He's also a technical advisor with Passive House Accelerator and the instructor of our PHPP modeling course here on the collective, as well as our brand new Honeybee PH course that dives into using Honeybee PH within Rhino and Grasshopper to create powerful, accurate, and streamlined Passive House energy models.
Zack Semke:
21:30-21:36
As Ed's AMAs always are, this week's was full of great tips and insights around high-performance building practice.
Zack Semke:
21:36-21:41
This clip about FIUS's new Revive Retrofit Standard stood out.
Ed May:
21:41-21:42
I
Ed May:
21:42-21:47
think that's one of the reasons why I am so bullish on the new FIUS Retrofit Standard.
Ed May:
21:47-21:55
I really do think that is a very thoughtful and interesting new approach to designing passive buildings.
Ed May:
21:55-22:02
So the new FIUS Retrofit Standard, the Revive Standard, says don't do annual energy modeling.
Ed May:
22:02-22:05
Don't do daily peak load modeling.
Ed May:
22:05-22:11
Instead, what you want to do is you want to simulate a power outage during a heat wave in summer and design your building for that.
Ed May:
22:12-22:17
And then simulate a power outage during a cold Arctic blast in winter and design your building for that.
Ed May:
22:18-22:26
And you have to balance those two survivability periods against a total life cycle carbon emissions cost.
Ed May:
22:27-22:34
And so it's a completely new way of looking at a passive building that does away with annual energy calculations in favor of carbon emissions.
Ed May:
22:35-22:47
And instead of those like daily peak loads or percent overheating, which were never really very satisfactory in terms of metrics, they're looking at these survivability metrics across these power outage peak weeks.
Ed May:
22:48-23:13
And we can quibble with whether the peak weeks are peaky enough for a sort of 60 or 90 year projection. But I think it's at least heading us in the right direction to say this is the methodology. And then we can use that to really dial in the performance. And we have seen very positive results using that new framework on some projects so far. We found it to be really effective and really impactful for clients to see those peak week results.
Ed May:
23:14-23:18
When you talk about annual energy performance, everybody's eyes glaze over a little bit.
Ed May:
23:18-23:22
It's meaninglessly large to think about an entire year's energy consumption.
Ed May:
23:23-23:29
But when you say this week, it's going to drop to 48 degrees inside your house, people are like,
Zack Semke:
23:30-23:31
oh, okay.
Zack Semke:
23:31-23:33
Yeah, there's so much drama there.
Zack Semke:
23:33-23:36
It completely, it makes it all real.
Ed May:
23:36-23:38
It's a much better story, right?
Ed May:
23:38-23:39
And people like stories.
Ed May:
23:39-23:41
People respond to narratives and stories, not numbers.
Ed May:
23:42-23:43
And so it's a much better story.
Ed May:
23:43-23:50
Like it's a much more visceral and like tangible story that you can hold in your head about what happens during this like power outage period.
Ed May:
23:51-23:54
And so we've actually found that that's a really useful framework.
Ed May:
23:54-23:56
And so I would definitely recommend taking a look at that one.
Ed May:
23:56-23:58
The trouble with that one, of course, is that it's brand new.
Ed May:
23:59-24:04
There's a ton of sharp edges and weirdnesses, and it probably needs to go through a year or two of like calibration.
Ed May:
24:05-24:11
The tools are, let's say, in their earliest stages, and they're not terribly sophisticated or user friendly in many ways.
Ed May:
24:11-24:27
there's a lot of sort of bits that are missing and are a problem, but I'm very positive about it. I think it's absolutely leading us in the right direction. And I'm really impressed with the work that those guys have done so far on that. I think it's absolutely a great new direction for the sort of passive house methodology to move.
Ed May:
24:28-24:30
I'd like to see it expanded to new
Ed May:
24:30-24:30
construction.
Ed May:
24:30-24:40
I don't see any reason why that method is applied only to retrofits. In my estimation, that's a great way to do new construction as well, to apply those same framework, the same ideas personally.
Zack Semke:
24:41-24:41
I
Zack Semke:
24:41-24:58
couldn't agree more with Ed here. When it comes to buildings and climate, we need to be focused on one, reducing their carbon emissions, and two, making our buildings resilient to climate impacts. Revive directs its focus on those two things, and it's kind of a seismic shift. It's super important.
Zack Semke:
24:59-25:12
Next up, we have highlights from the Healthy Interiors AMA with Michelle Jacobson and Maria Lamonto. Michelle's and Maria's work focuses on ensuring that the high-performance buildings we're creating are healthy inside.
Zack Semke:
25:13-25:23
They're co-partners at the interior design firm Design GLXY, and both hold multiple certifications and leadership positions in the healthy and sustainable materials space.
Zack Semke:
25:24-25:32
In this clip, they emphasize the importance of looking beyond VOCs when it comes to the materials choices we make for our projects.
Zack Semke:
25:33-25:38
I started by asking, what mistake did they commonly see that we should try to avoid?
Michelle Jacobson:
25:39-26:57
I don't know that I'd want to say it was a mistake, but the fact perhaps it's that it's, you don't have all the education or all the tools. And the first thing I could think of, and only just because we came from KBiz out in Las Vegas, the kitchen and bath show, where we were speaking with a new vendor of mineral paint. And I think the idea, and what's to their credit, the Sherwin-Williams's and the Benjamin Moore's of the world, that those are generally the first two thoughts of, okay, we've got to put paint on the walls of our building. And I think many people don't realize that when they do choose or specify a standard brand paint, they're adding plastic to their walls. And so you have this beautiful passive house envelope or high performance building that you've built, and you're adding a paint that's adding a layer of plastic made with petroleum to your walls. And right away, even though many of these brands will say we're low VOC, sure, low VOC, but what are those paints made out of? And primarily they're made of microplastics. So right away, that's the first thing that you need to think about.
Michelle Jacobson:
26:57-27:21
You're going to put some type of a primer on the walls, and then you're going to put a paint or a wallpaper. And you want to start thinking about the very first thing you're going to put on those high performance walls. And one of those is to think about what paint or what wall material, wall selection, finish coat, am I going to put on these walls? Do you want to add to that, Maria?
Maria Lomanto:
27:22-27:32
Yeah, I do. I would say in addition to what Michelle said, two of the places where I always hate to say that something is a mistake. I think it's a learning opportunity.
Zack Semke:
27:33-27:35
You're both very diplomatic. I appreciate that.
Zack Semke:
27:35-27:36
Yes, and I
Maria Lomanto:
27:36-28:00
am very aware that I'm just using diplomacy in that moment. But I think that what happens is that if you don't have, and I doubt that it happens with the people who are attending this, but thinking that removing VOCs is your goal, and that's what you're thinking about, and you're not thinking about particulate matter in addition to VOCs can be problematic.
Maria Lomanto:
28:00-30:06
because so many, and when you're talking with the clients and the end users, is that everybody now knows about VOCs. And so they stop there. Oh, remove VOCs from the space. Our indoor air quality is taken care of. That's not accurate because there's particulate matter. And as things are breaking down and going into the air that are microscopic that you can't see, you can't smell it, but you're still breathing it in and it'll affect heart and lungs down the line. So attaching like the goals to VOC is I think one problematic, you know, approach. I'll use an example that pertains more to furniture because it's an easy one. It's like a low hanging fruit, but when you're working with furniture that has polyurethane foam inside, that is slowly going to breakdown. And I actually, I've often fantasized of getting one of these super duper cameras and doing a video of what it looks like. And I don't know if you'd have to do it like with infrared light or something, but when somebody sits down of what the particulate matter is that kind of makes a cloud when you sit down on that, if then you're in, and I know now everybody's going to be creeped out when they sit down on a sofa. But there are things to do to remediate that. If you cannot afford to use GOT certified latex or other materials inside because the costs get much higher, then you wrap it, you contain it. So there are things to do. So that's like a one area that's just a great example, but even like finishes on cabinetry too, like everything, like you have to think about it. The world is breaking down all the time. Vinyl is vinyl, which we don't want to use, but everything else is slowly breaking down.
Michelle Jacobson:
30:08-30:44
So just adding to that, I'll touch back on the paint again. When you put paint on walls, paint will generally break down with air, with sunlight, with temperature. And when you have that plastic, those microplastics in your paint on your walls, that's eventually going to be breaking down. When there's changes in temperature, changes in time, or even hanging a picture on a wall that's been painted, when you're hammering or the temperature changes in a room with a paint with a plastic in it, you also get bubbling and you get peeling.
Michelle Jacobson:
30:45-30:57
And all of those, even though there are things we can touch and feel, when that's breaking down, all of these microscopic materials are coming into that air quality, that indoor air quality.
Michelle Jacobson:
30:58-31:41
So even though everything might look really beautiful, things are consistently breaking down. So for instance, with the paint, you might choose a mineral paint that actually is made of rocks, doesn't have any petroleum or plasticines in it, and it's bonding. It's making like a cement bond to the particular sheet rock that you might be using in a space. Or even if you're painting stone or brick or something like that, it will have a bond. But then it's not breaking down. It's the exterior of your wall and there's no materials, there's no microscopic particles that are coming from it and it will not break down.
Michelle Jacobson:
31:42-32:05
And it forms a really nice barrier that you know is not off-gassing, is not going to break down and is not putting anything into the environment that is going to give somebody some type of respiratory issues, whether it could get in ears and eyes and noses and mouths and whether a pet in the area or a child touching it, you know it's not going to harm them.
Zack Semke:
32:06-32:06
The
Zack Semke:
32:06-32:14
discussion with Michelle and Maria included lots of detail on materials to use, what to avoid, and how to advance healthy materials practice.
Zack Semke:
32:15-32:19
They had this advice for getting healthy materials incorporated into renovations.
Michelle Jacobson:
32:20-32:31
Once you learn it or once you know about it and someone tells you what's going on, how could you not advocate for yourself and your family and your clients to be able to build and live in a healthy environment.
Maria Lomanto:
32:32-32:33
Yeah.
Maria Lomanto:
32:33-32:46
And appealing to the moms for their children when you're doing renovations is a certain way of getting healthier materials into the project because they want to safeguard their children.
Maria Lomanto:
32:48-32:48
And their pets.
Maria Lomanto:
32:49-32:49
And their pets.
Zack Semke:
32:52-32:58
Thank you to Andrew, Tim, Ed, Michelle, and Maria for sharing their insights with us this week.
Zack Semke:
32:58-33:06
As always, these clips just scratched the surface, so if anything piqued your interest here, please do dive into the full replays of these sessions.
Zack Semke:
33:07-33:10
And if you're not a member of Reimagine Buildings Collective, please join us.
Zack Semke:
33:10-33:20
You'll get direct access to experts like these, you'll get to know them, ask your burning questions, and expand your mind and your practice by engaging with these thought leaders.
Zack Semke:
33:20-33:22
Head over to reimaginebuildings.com to join.
Zack Semke:
33:23-33:27
Speaking of joining the collective, I want to celebrate this week's new members.
Zack Semke:
33:28-33:41
A big welcome to
Debra Little
Tim Lock
Erin Pleticha
Lloyd Alter
Zasho Donner
Frans Velthuijsen
Mike Fowler
Maria Lomanto
Michelle Jacobson
And Tom Bassett-Dilley
Zack Semke:
33:42-33:50
With that, thank you for listening to this fourth episode of The Reimagine Edit, a production of the Passive House podcast by Passive House Accelerator.
Zack Semke:
33:51-33:55
As always, don't hesitate to DM me with anything Reimagine Buildings Collective related.
Zack Semke:
33:56-33:59
What you'd like to see on the platform, any ideas you'd like to share.
Zack Semke:
33:59-34:04
We're building this community with you and for you, so feedback is incredibly valuable.
Zack Semke:
34:05-34:07
And don't forget to invite your friends and colleagues to join us.
Zack Semke:
34:08-34:09
Thanks, and have a great week.
Zack Semke:
34:09-34:10
Be well.
Zack Semke:
34:36-34:39
Редактор субтитров А.Семкин Корректор А.Егорова