Real Estate Addicts

Ross Trethewey, founder and lead engineer for TE2 Engineering and Home Technology Expert on “This Old House” joins REA to talk mechanical engineering and smart home tech. We begin with a discussion on sustainability and identify the easiest and most effective ways to make your buildings more cost efficient to run and environmentally friendly to operate. Next, we dive into a discussion on basic options with regard to home heating and cooling systems from gas fired furnaces, to “combi units”, electric heat pumps and VRF units and how they each compare with regard to upfront installation costs and operational costs. From there we jump into a discussion on the best smart home features.
Other topics covered include:

Why is the temperature on a thermostat alone often a poor indicator of comfort?
Why are so few people satisfied with the thermal comfort in their home?
What is indoor air-quality? Why is it critical for buildings need to “breath”?
How can I measure indoor air quality in my home?
What are the most common mistakes Ross sees builders making on the MEP side?
What are some strategies to keep HVAC systems quiet?
What’s up with solar? Is it worth considering? How has battery technology changed the game in terms of solar?
How do driveway snow melt systems work? Are they effective?
Is induction cooking worth considering?

Show Notes

Ross Trethewey, founder and lead engineer for TE2 Engineering and Home Technology Expert on “This Old House” joins REA to talk mechanical engineering and smart home tech. We begin with a discussion on sustainability and identify the easiest and most effective ways to make your buildings more cost efficient to run and environmentally friendly to operate. Next, we dive into a discussion on basic options with regard to home heating and cooling systems from gas fired furnaces, to “combi units”, electric heat pumps and VRF units and how they each compare with regard to upfront installation costs and operational costs. From there we jump into a discussion on the best smart home features. Other topics covered include: Why is the temperature on a thermostat alone often a poor indicator of comfort? Why are so few people satisfied with the thermal comfort in their home? What is indoor air-quality? Why is it critical for buildings need to “breath”? How can I measure indoor air quality in my home? What are the most common mistakes Ross sees builders making on the MEP side? What are some strategies to keep HVAC systems quiet? What’s up with solar? Is it worth considering? How has battery technology changed the game in terms of solar? How do driveway snow melt systems work? Are they effective? Is induction cooking worth considering?

What is Real Estate Addicts?

Marc Savatsky, Ray Hurteau, and Dan Rubin open up and discuss their own deals, budgets, and mistakes every Tuesday.

Not guru content. The stuff that decides whether a project makes money: what a triple decker really costs to build now, the retroactive Newton tax bill that landed on unsuspecting condo buyers, the helical pile surprise that cut a deal's IRR from 70% to 40%, the eleven-week-old demo company doing $6K a week against a $20K burn. They read their own numbers on air, including the ugly ones.

A typical week is some mix of: a breakdown of one of their active projects (an 1874 adaptive reuse in Amesbury, a Dorchester three-family held fourteen years, a waste and demo business), a guest who does one thing extremely well which include zoning attorneys, architects, labor lawyers, energy consultants and brokers. Ray's Multifamily Minute on the news that actually moves the needle, and a round of Overrated / Underrated / Appropriately Rated.

Heavy on Greater Boston and New England, because real estate is hyperlocal and pretending otherwise is how people lose money. Useful anywhere the same problems show up: permitting, capital stacks, subs, tenants, and the gap between what the spreadsheet says and what the building does.

For investors, developers, GCs, agents, and anyone still holding a W-2 while they figure out deal one.

Co-hosted by Ray Hurteau, Dan Rubin (Instagram: @rhinvestgroup), and Marc Savatsky (Instagram: @choose_boston)

Follow the Real Estate Addicts Podcast on YouTube: @RealEstateAddicts