Passive House vs Net Zero: The Full Canadian Certification Ladder with Casey Grey (The Conscious Builder)

0:03All right, welcome back to the Atlantic Construction Podcast. Very honored to have with us today our guest from the Ottawa, Ontario region, Casey Grey. Casey's the founder of the award-winning sustainable building company The Conscious Builder. You've probably seen Casey's company — The Conscious Builder podcast and also The Conscious Builder Show on YouTube. They've got literally tens of thousands of hits on their videos. Casey brings two decades of experience to the construction industry and over a decade

0:43of experience running and owning multiple businesses, while also staying committed to his wife and son. Casey is on a mission to help people build homes, businesses, and lives in a more conscious manner. Casey, thanks so much for joining us, thanks so much for being here. Yeah, thanks for having me — I'm excited. Yeah, me as well. Maybe we could start with, Casey, just a little bit about you personally and your background, and how The

1:14Conscious Builder company sort of started. It's a company that builds net-zero and passive homes, and with your podcast and your Conscious Builder Show on YouTube, you're a very busy man. I know I've watched some of your other materials, and he made a decision I think in high school that the classroom necessarily wasn't for you and wanted to get out there and work with your hands. So maybe just for some of the young listeners,

1:44who are thinking about the trades, maybe just talk a little bit about your personal journey. Sure. I guess I'll go back to the high school portion — I guess that's where the construction started. And yeah, I went through high school thinking I was going to become an engineer because I wanted to build stuff. I didn't really know what, or why, or anything at that point — just figured I want to be an engineer, and was taking classes that would get me to that goal. But as

2:16I started to go through the years of high school, I realized that construction was really my best class by far. I think in my last year I had like 97, you know, after the exam. And obviously that was where I was being pulled to. It just happened to be that in my last years, in grade 12, they started to push trades, and I didn't really know about it. I didn't really

2:46know about apprenticeships at the time. It was just really starting to be pushed into the schools more and more, and once I learned about it, I went home to my mom, I said hey, this is what I want to do — this makes sense to me. And she was all for it, which was great. I didn't know how she was going to take it. So obviously that was the first step that I had to do. And after that, the rest of my classes

3:08kind of went downhill. I think I passed calculus with like 50 or something like that — I'm pretty sure she passed me. So I said hey, I just need to pass this so I can start my construction career. And yeah, that was kind of the beginning. So I left high school, I put it out there that I wanted to work for somebody and start my apprenticeship. I had a few interviews where basically all they said was like, yeah, show up to work,

3:30and I'd show up to work and I'd be like, yeah, is this going to lead towards an apprenticeship? And I think one was for Minto — a big builder here in Ottawa — and they said no, so I'm like, well, I'm not interested. I walked away. Another one was like a trim company or something, and I think there was a third one — I can't remember what it was. Eventually I actually came to this one house, showed up, didn't know where I was supposed to be, just said

3:53show up at this house. Showed up, there was a gated house on the Ottawa River — massive house — ringing the doorbell asking for the boss. Nobody's answering. Finally somebody answers: "Oh, well, he's not here yet." So I just sat there waiting, and then he eventually showed up. I thought it was his house but it ended up being the job. So my first day on the job we were setting up 40-foot-tall scaffolding on the back of this house because the windows were all leaking

4:17from all the wind. There were massive windows in the back of this house, and that was my first day on the job. And I ended up working for that company for almost seven years after that, decided to go out on my own. I always wanted to go out on my own — I told my boss that since day one. I said, you know, my ultimate goal is to go out on my own. Once again, didn't really know why, and eventually that day came and I decided to make the leap.

4:44That eventually grew into The Conscious Builder. Now, where The Conscious Builder came into play was because my wife and I started to do a lot of personal development, and this is where the real change started to happen. This is, hopefully, we'll get into some of this stuff, but this is where my life started to change. I bought a book for my wife called The Success Principles by Jack Canfield — can't remember why I bought her the book, no idea. In reading the book though, she

5:09came across a story where Jack talked about Tony Robbins, and my wife remembered seeing this Tony Robbins guy on infomercials way back when she was a kid, watching it on like satellite TV in her grandparents' home. And said, you know what, I'm going to look into it, see what he's up to now, and found that he was doing these events. And one of his events is called Unleash the Power Within — UPW for short. And she goes, hey, do you want to go to this event, this live event? It's like personal

5:37development thing. I said sure — typically I didn't ask any questions, I just said yeah, sure, I'll go. No idea what I was walking into — three and a half day event. Anyway, that event changed our life, because that event — I get goosebumps thinking about it — that event changed the way that we thought. It changed our thinking. And if you change your thinking, you can change your life. And what we came out of that, like, we came out of that event on a high, like

6:02verbal diarrhea. Everyone's like, "oh, you guys drank the Kool-Aid." Like, now we know not to do that sort of stuff, right. But that event was a catalyst to everything else that came after that. And eventually we went to more and more events. But from there, I started asking myself why — why am I doing what I'm doing? You know, what's the point of all this? And this wasn't just a two-week period where you kind of got a high off of that. It was

6:25something that really lasted, and still is there today. Yeah, it's work — it's like anything, right. It's kind of like going to the gym — you need to put yourself into environments that inspire you. I realize that environment is more powerful than willpower. If you rely solely on your willpower, you will lose momentum. But if you put yourself into situations, into environments where you're forced to do better, to be better, to improve yourself, to grow — whatever it may be, even just to have conversations

6:56like this — you're forced to. By me talking about it, you know, teaching. I always say: if you want to learn, teach. Yeah, because you're forced to do these things, right. So that's one of the biggest things that I've learned in going through this whole personal development journey. Yeah, it's like you're connecting yourself with a certain kind and attracting certain kinds of people. And when you're surrounding yourself with those kinds of people, it just

7:23kind of elevates you. And even like you said with willpower — it's going to fade, it's going to linger, it's going to be up and down. Exactly. Yeah. So I'll just end that where, once I started asking the why, the biggest catalyst for where The Conscious Builder came into play was we ended up going to another Tony Robbins event, because we ended up signing up for a whole bunch. It was kind of like his Mastery University, and one of them is called Date with Destiny — that one's a

7:46five-day course. And when he says a day, they're not like six, seven, eight-hour days — these are like 12, 13-hour days. They're long days. The guy's a machine, right. And they're like rock concerts, but without the drugs, and you come out feeling way better. At that event, we actually found out that we were having our first son, and that's when it really started to sink in. Because if I'm going to tell this little

8:12person that he can be or do whatever he wants, then I need to do the same thing. And I also need to lead by example. Because anybody who has any kids — or whether they're honest with themselves — it's kind of like kids do what you do, not what you say, right. If your kids have a bad habit, chances are they got it from you, unless they're a little bit older and they have other friends. But when they're younger, they're picking it up from their parents. It's whoever

8:33they're around most. So that becomes very evident. I always say my greatest teacher — besides Tony Robbins — my greatest teacher is my son, because of that reason. He does what I do. What's your son's name? Casey Sullivan. And how old is he? He is eight now. Wow. So is he on the job sites with you? Not on the job sites, but sometimes I bring him out and about. But I'm not even on every single job site — too often I'm behind the

9:01computer a lot. We've got guys on the site, and when I go see clients I'm not bringing him with me — obviously with school and stuff like that. But if there's anything ever to do on the weekends, yeah, he's coming along with me. I've got some rental properties — he comes with me, helps me. I put him to work and he sees what's required, and then he gets rewarded for his work too. So he helps out wherever he can, even if there's stuff to do

9:23around the house. Our deal with our son is, we're not going to give you an allowance — you're a part of this family, you help out, that's part of being part of the family and being under the roof. But if you ever do any work for any of the companies, then you will get paid for your time for that. So that's kind of how we're training him — to deliver that value, but also

9:49be a part of the family and want to help out too. So we find that that's a better way to approach it. Well, that's great to hear. Thanks for sharing a little bit about your personal journey, because we can talk about a lot of technical aspects and all kinds of different topics in construction, but just to hear a little bit about someone like yourself and the milestones — like when you had your son and the change of

10:13thinking. And I think I remember reading a book called As a Man Thinketh — I can't remember the author's name. The mind is so powerful. Oh, you have a great point. James Allen. James Allen — that's it. I was going to say John Allen and I wasn't sure, so yeah. But I totally agree, the mind's a powerful thing. And the more we can control the way we think, and just the idea that we can change the way we think, is major.

10:40It kind of sounds cliche, but it's so powerful. 100% agree. So for The Conscious Builder, for your company — correct me if I'm wrong, but you're building multiple homes throughout the year, assuming in the Ottawa region of Ontario, and these could be passive homes, net-zero homes, maybe R-2000. Is that right? Kind of a mix of those three? Yeah, so we do renovations and custom homes, so we still do a lot of

11:13renovations. We're only doing usually a couple of homes a year, and then the rest is major renovations — additions, energy retrofits, some of them costing as much as building a home. Sometimes passive, lately it's been more net-zero. R-2000 kind of seems to have fallen away since the Canadian Home Builders' Association — CHBA — has introduced the new building standard called Net Zero. So that's kind of been a lot of our focus, because we find that it seems to be a fairly reasonable target

11:47to aim for, and it's not too difficult, the paperwork isn't too extreme, you're not spending a whole lot on certification. So it seems to be a good target that a lot of our clients are aiming for. Some of them are maybe aiming for beyond that, but that would be the certification that we'd end up getting on a lot of the houses. And so just for our listeners — for some of the people tuning in that have an interest in sustainability,

12:11passive homes, net-zero homes — we just maybe kind of lay the foundation and talk a little bit about terminology and exactly what each term means. Just quickly, obviously. For a passive house — I can just define a passive house? Yeah. So maybe I'll work from building code up. Sure. Building code. So I like to put this out there, and I got this from one of my teachers who I still learn from — he's retired now — in the construction

12:39world — Ross Elliott. I started working with him when we built our first passive home, and he owned a company called Homesol, which we still work with. But Ross Elliott said: the building code is the worst home that you're allowed to build by law. The minimum, right? Yeah. So if you don't want to go to jail, that's what you build. That's a way that always stuck with me, so I like to say it. So that's building code.

13:06Right. Yes. Building code gets better and better, and for the most part structural stays the same, but the things that we're really focused on are really the energy consumption, the energy use of these homes — the heating and cooling, that sort of stuff. So once you leave that you hit Energy Star. Everybody knows about Energy Star — that's essentially about 20% better than building code. Now keep in mind the building code gets better and better, so Energy Star homes built 12 years ago are actually worse

13:32than building code now. So keep that in mind when you're thinking about all these other ones. After that, you get into LEED certification, which ranges between like 20 and 60% better than building code. We don't see that a lot in residential because it's more of a commercial thing. It's based on points and materials, so a LEED-certified home doesn't necessarily mean that it's more energy efficient — it might just mean that it used better products. So we've never actually done a

14:01LEED home. Like I said, it's not big in residential, and it is a lot of work — paperwork on the energy advising — unlike some of the other standards. Is LEED more specific to materials than some of the others? It's both. And are they all both? No, they're not all both. The other ones don't necessarily care about what materials — it's all about energy usage. LEED is the only one that cares about materials, at

14:29least in the ones that we're talking about. You can go really crazy and go to the Living Building Challenge, which is basically using no plastic in your house. Yeah, and I hear you about the LEED certification — I've been on some commercial projects where the LEED paperwork is like 20% of the time spent on some of these jobs. Yeah, like the carpentry training — at Algonquin College here in Ottawa they have a LEED-certified building which is like the trades building, and

14:56they built this trades building — it might have been LEED Platinum or LEED Gold at least. But the whole woodworking shop is full of glass, which is terrible. And there's no parking, so you have a trades building with no parking for any of the tradespeople to park their trucks. But they got points for it, because if you don't have parking then you get points. So it doesn't necessarily make sense, but that's where the human factor comes in,

15:20right? I mean, there's always the human factor at the end of the day. So, yeah. So then we go on to Net Zero, which would be 30-40% better than building code. R-2000 would be about 50% better than building code. And then we start to get into Passive House, which is like 80%-plus better than building code. Now, all of these are just certifications, right, and they have to be certified by some third-party certifier. They all have different requirements in terms of the energy use

15:51and how they're measured. Even Passive House — there's two different institutes you can go through: Passive House International or Passive House US. There are some tweaks in terms of, for example, the first house that we built — PHIUS was fairly new, so we missed a few things. We didn't get PHIUS certification because of one item that they have that we couldn't pass, but we got Passive House International certification. Is that ultimately — is that the home that you built in 2016

16:19or 2017, where you gave a presentation to the engineering association in Ottawa? Yeah. So that one I built about eight years ago — I don't even know exactly what year. Yeah, it was 2014. Okay. We moved into that house. But yeah, so Passive House would be one of the most rigorous building standards in the world, and they focus on the heating and cooling demand as well as the air tightness. So a big thing in building a high-performance home is making sure that the envelope is done

16:48well. So that's our main focus. We don't care if people get certification on their homes — we do need to hit a target — but we're constantly educating and talking to people about how do we improve the envelope of the home. Because that is one thing that if you do it right, you never have to worry about it again. If you do it wrong, yeah, you have a big problem on your hands. But there's no moving parts, right? It's not like mechanical equipment where you have to replace it.

17:09You do it, you leave it, and you forget about it, as long as you're not poking holes through it. And let's piggyback on that and talk about building envelope, because obviously, like you said, that's one of the key foundations — the key parts of a passive house — which, like you said, is one of the most rigorous standards to live up to and to build to. What are we talking for R-value? Is it

17:34R-72? Is it, whereas typically R-20 in the building code for exterior wall? So it varies, and that varies because it's modeled depending on the lot, the design, the shading — all of these things are factored into each individual house. So my house that I had built, for example, the backyard was facing south. If you were to take that house and put it on the other side of the road where the backyard would have been facing north, it would not have got Passive House certification the way it was

18:07built. You would have had to either change the windows, make the windows even better, potentially, or increase all of the R-values in all of the assemblies — under the slab, the walls, the roof, everywhere. So it takes into account a lot of things. Same thing if you build a house next to a tall building and you don't get any sun, it takes that into account. I do want to caveat that: Passive House certification is different than a passive solar house.

18:39So there are a lot of people who say, oh, I built a passive solar house — that just means that they're trying to take advantage of the sun to heat their house, right, as opposed to actually getting the certification and getting the 0.6 air changes per hour and getting it down to 15,000 kilowatt-hours for the year. Can I quickly ask — the Passive House certification, although the word "house" is there, can refer to an ICI building or structure as well, it

19:05could be commercial, institutional, but the term is the same? It's actually — yeah, so "Passive House" comes from the German term Passivhaus, which is H-A-U-S, which in German means "building," not "house." So they call it Passive House just in Canada and the US and North America. But it's actually easier to certify a larger building — the larger the building, the easier it is to get Passive House certification. Why is that? It's because it's a volume thing. So when you start factoring in all the different calculations, the more square

19:36footage — it's a lot easier to hit the air changes per hour, to get the air tightness you need. And then especially if you're doing a multi-unit building, you have a lot more interior heating systems. So it's easy to separate each unit. Some units might only have one exterior wall, so you're talking one exterior wall that's thermally broken from the outside. The rest will still have insulation and air sealing because of soundproofing, but

20:06it's a very different calculation. Yeah, because I was listening to that presentation you gave to the Engineering Association of Ottawa, and I think that was maybe in 2018, but I think you said the home — the Passive House certification you achieved on that home — the home was 4,000 square feet and the fresh air systems were 18,000 BTUs for a 4,000-square-foot home, where typically for just the bare-bones building code standards it would be 90

20:38times that. That's a big difference. Yeah. So that would have been our heating load — that's what we were required based on the modeling. Now keep in mind, the way that I approach it too: we don't do the calculations ourselves. Like I said, we work with Homesol, but any energy advisor — and you can find Passive House consultants all over now — they don't even necessarily have to be in your city, right? Because when you're doing the Passive House modeling, unless you just need

21:02somebody on site to do the blower door test, all the calculations can be done off-site. So you can work with anybody.

21:11The thing to keep in mind is that I like to approach it from the reality side. In theory, certain things work. So in theory, when we designed our house — and I talked about this in that presentation — in theory we had enough heat and everything was great, and we had the shading and everything. So in theory everything was perfect on paper. But in reality, what happened in that house was we did have overheating, but in the winter months, because we would block the sun in the

21:38summer months. So everything was great. But then when it was really cold out, typically it's a nice clear day and the sun's low, so the overhangs don't block it. So now we get that passive solar heat that I was talking about, but now all of a sudden it's like 28 degrees inside and it stays in there. Right — that's the whole point of a passive house, you get the heat and it stays in there. So now you start opening windows. So it becomes uncomfortable at that point, right.

22:01So it's fine. It's one of those things where whenever we work with clients, it's like: here's in theory what's going to happen, but in reality this is likely what's going to happen based on our experience. So as long as you're comfortable with the few days out of the year where this might happen — just giving you a heads-up sort of thing. And we can all live in our house, but most people I find want maintenance-

22:23free homes. They want to set it and forget it. That's usually not the case — you have to do something with houses. But that's ultimately what we're aiming for. Yeah, it's fascinating. Continuing on the path of building — all the different scenarios and variables that come into play. Like you said, it could be whether it's the sunlight and how much glazing is on the south side, or thermal bridging, windows and

22:49where they're placed. And talk about windows — placement, R-value — what's happening to achieve a Passive House certification? What are some of the key things when it comes to glazing? For glazing, once again, it'll depend on the modeling and the orientation of the house. But I can tell you from the houses that we've worked on: you're going to have different glazing depending on the side of the home that you're talking about. So for example, on your south-facing windows, you may

23:23want a higher solar heat gain coefficient — so you want that solar heat to come into your house. However, on the north wall, which you never get direct sunlight from, you won't want that. You'll actually want a higher R-value, so the solar heat gain coefficient will be lower. Essentially, the better a window performs thermally, the less solar heat gain you're going to get from it. Yeah, which makes sense. And that's going to come down to different coatings — you can use argon gas or krypton gas.

23:51There are all sorts of different ways to do it. There are different spacers. Usually it's triple-glazed for sure. But not every window is necessarily Passive House certified, so if you are going to get Passive House certification, you want to go to Passive House-certified windows. There are some coming to Canada — we don't have any experience with them yet. In our past we've been using European windows for the most part. What are the frames made of? Vinyl frames, aluminum frames — they're different. We've done

24:23vinyl, we've done fiberglass, we've done wood, aluminum-clad wood — you can do all of the above. The best-performing ones are actually fiberglass. Is that because there's a thermal break there, whereas with... yeah, so it's a thermal break. Aluminum is going to perform the worst in terms of a thermal break. Fiberglass is the best, and it can even be insulated within that fiberglass. Wood is nice because it's a natural product, but there could be some maintenance to it obviously,

24:58and aluminum-clad wood is expensive. But fiberglass is also expensive, so a lot of people end up going with PVC just because of pricing. And it's expensive to get the Passive House-certified windows. What about the installation of these windows in the rough openings — in a two-by-six or eight wood stud wall — is there anything different about that process, the joints or the perimeters, or different materials used there? Yeah, it'll depend on the manufacturer, right. So you have to work with the

25:26manufacturer and how it gets sealed, and it really depends on your wall assembly too. Because when you have a wall — like you said, R-72 — R-72 is probably the, thinking back, yeah, R-72 has been the least amount of insulation we've had to put into a certified Passive House. We've gone up to I think R-94 on one we did in the city. When you model that house too, where that window goes in the wall assembly affects how the whole house performs. So if you want that window towards

25:56the outside, or towards the inside, or in the middle — all of those things are going to affect the numbers that get spit out by the modeling software and whether or not it's going to get certified. You really have to be a building science expert, huh. Well, you need to work with building science experts. That's the thing. That's why you need the whole team on board, and that's why we always, when we're talking to our clients,

26:19we want everybody on board from the beginning. And we call it the Integrated Design Process — I'm sure you've heard that, the IDP. Because everybody brings a different skill to the table and all of those skills are important. We're going to talk about practicality as a contractor — constructability and pricing. The energy advisors, the building scientists — they're going to talk about that, and they're obviously really good at what they do, but some of their ideas might not make practical sense on a

26:44construction site, right. And same with the architect or designer — they have all sorts of great ideas, but in reality what gets drawn on a piece of paper is often a lot harder to build, or more expensive to build, than what we expected. So that's why everyone needs to be talking and working together right from the start. Absolutely. Yeah, it's always a collaboration that leads to the best result. I think — can you elaborate a little bit too on just, with your experience,

27:09kind of think of wall assemblies like you're baking a cake — there are all kinds of different ingredients and you can put different ones together and it changes so many variables. But for R-90, you mentioned R-90 might have been the highest — one you recently built in downtown Ottawa. For insulation, whether it's rigid, cavity rockwool, mineral batt, or spray foam, polyurethane spray foam, closed cell — is there a certain combination that you feel is the best

27:40wall assembly for a passive home? Or what do you typically see in a lot of the homes that you're building? I guess it depends on what you mean by "best," right? Is best the most cost-effective, or is best the best-performing? And I guess it's going to vary depending on what you want for exterior cladding. So here's what I'll say: it's going to vary from project to project. But when you're getting into a wall

28:11that's that thick, you need to think about what's going to happen when moisture gets into it — not if moisture gets into it, but what happens when moisture gets into it. We just have to assume that there's going to be a leak, or there's going to be some vapour diffusion that goes through it, or maybe you get a pinhole. Because when you're building a house that's 0.6 ACH or less, every little hole in that assembly is basically going to be like a jet of air shooting through that

28:39assembly. And if that air is carrying moisture, it's going to bring moisture into that assembly. If you're following what I'm saying, knowing that, we need to use materials that are vapour-permeable and that will allow themselves to dry. So that your whole wall can dry either towards the inside or towards the outside, because it's going to change depending on the season that you're in. The heat is going to want to drive moisture one way in one part of the season, and

29:12it's going to go in the opposite way in the other part of the season. So I always tell people: think about the envelope of your building as the skin of your body. We don't want it to breathe — we have our lungs to breathe. That would be our fresh air system, our ERVs and HRVs — that's how we want to control the air coming and going from our house. But then we want to allow our envelope, our skin, to perspire but not breathe. You're not going

29:35to breathe through your skin, but you're going to sweat through your skin and you can dry out, and so forth. So that's what we want to think about when it comes to our wall assemblies — how can vapour travel through? There are all sorts of great products out there. When you get into a wall that's thick, we're not going to use foam typically. Sure, you can use foam, but we've never used foam on a wall that has that much R-value.

29:56We're doing foam where maybe it's a two-by-six wall and we're just adding foam to the outside, and that's it. But as soon as we get into double-stud walls, or even doing I-joists vertically up the outside of a house, it has to be something that can get wet and dry, not lose its R-value, not have mold, and allow moisture to travel in both directions. Yeah, it's very interesting — it's kind of like where the rubber meets the road, no pun intended. But there are so many

30:20different aspects to take into consideration. You have your architectural situation with whatever cladding is desired on the outside, and then what kind of clip or what kind of substructure needs to be associated with that to achieve the elevation, the look that you want for your cladding. And then even when you add in things like overhangs — that's an important element of a passive home as well — but then there's a

30:49structural element, and there are protrusions and fasteners. So then it becomes all kinds of combinations of problems to solve, all within the same 100 square feet of the envelope. And once you've done it a few times, like we've done enough wall assemblies to figure out what works and what doesn't work. But it's still — everything we do is custom. We've never built the same house twice, so there's always something new to have to figure out or navigate or have a

31:18conversation about. Because we're also doing it with clients who have never done this before, so they're going to ask questions — why can't I do that? Or how can we do it? So it doesn't matter if we think it's right or not — it's still a matter of having the conversation: we can do this, but here are the implications. Here's what's going to happen. I'm curious, and I think a lot of our listeners will be curious: so when you

31:39get a contract to build a home that is desired to have Passive House certification, I assume there's someone governing that from the start of the job to the end — someone documenting that certification. Is it a third party? Who are they representing? Who's the governing body? How does that part of the process work? So for Passive House, you have your Passive House consultant — it'll be an energy advisor. In our case, we

32:14hire Homesol, and they're checking the calculations before we start building, and the actual design, to make sure that we're going to hit it. Then once it's on site, they'll just need to check to make sure that we actually built it as per the specifications. So they don't have to be on site all the time — they just need to make sure they see it, and then they're going to do the blower door test to make sure that we hit our ACH of 0.6 or less. And then after

32:38that, once we've built everything and they do the final blower door test, that gets sent off to whichever governing body — whether it's Passive House International or PHIUS — and then it gets verified by them. So it's like a third-party verification, and they send it back after that assuming everything's good. And they'll check all the equipment, make sure that everything is like what you said it would be, because you have to basically design this all ahead of time. And they just check to make sure you did it as per

33:03what you said it would be. Yeah. There are so many interesting points when it comes to this arena of sustainability and all these different certifications. We talked a little bit about envelope, window performance, orientation of the home, the south side and the sunlight, and things like overhangs. But what about after the building's built — and you're building that as tight as you possibly can with a very high R-value — fresh air still has

33:33to move. So talk a little bit about the systems that are in some of these homes. I know in some of your presentations you talked about trying to talk people out of bathroom fans, and even range hoods and dryer vents, and those kinds of things that come into play after that structure's built to meet the standards. Yeah, so like I alluded to before, the

34:02lungs of the house. The idea is we want to make our house as airtight as possible, and the way we do that is by eliminating as many penetrations as possible through that air barrier. Now, where do the penetrations come into our building typically? Well, if you have natural gas, there's going to be a line coming in through that. You obviously have electricity — you're going to have a line coming in through that. And then you're going to have any vents. So if you are heating

34:28your passive house with natural gas, you're going to have your exhaust vent, you're going to have your intake, you're going to have all of your bathroom fans, you're going to have your kitchen range hood. And if you have solar panels there's another electrical penetration. So these are all penetrations going through the air barrier. And obviously you have all these screws potentially, and in a typical home where they use the poly as the air barrier, you

34:52would have a hole at every single plug essentially on an exterior wall, and in most houses you put your hand up against that this time of year and you'll feel the cold air coming through — it's terrible. But we eliminate all that. Now, when it comes to vents: you have to think about when you turn a bathroom fan on or a kitchen range hood, it's sucking air out of the house. And that air has to be replaced —

35:20there always has to be balance. You can't suck air out of the house without bringing air into the house at the same time. I mean, to some extent you can depressurize a house at different times of the year — the stack effect and all that. But if it's minus 25 degrees outside and you turn on your kitchen range hood — I think I have a blog post, it was an old one and it might be gone now, but there's a calculation I got from this

35:43friend of mine, Matt Peterson — he owns HVAC Design Experts. And in his calculation he says if you turn on a 1,000-CFM kitchen range hood, which is way more than what we need — McDonald's restaurants by the way have 300 CFM — do some people have a thousand CFM in their homes? People that are obsessed with cooking with grease and those kinds of things. Yeah, well they just think it's cool. We just renovated a 160-year-old stone home

36:09and he loved to cook, so we had this huge massive propane range. It's the only thing, because we turned their house fossil-fuel-free — we got them off the oil — but he wanted to keep his propane tanks for this kitchen, and he had a 1,500-CFM exhaust hood in it. Yeah, and I'm like, you can't — that's dangerous if you have fuel-burning appliances, especially after we did the work, because we made the house tight. Even this 160-year-old house, which is on our YouTube

36:32channel, by the way, if anybody wants to watch that. But if you have fuel-burning appliances and you have big exhaust fans like that, it becomes dangerous to turn those exhaust fans on when your house is too airtight, because it sucks that CO into your house. So then you need makeup air, and you're basically bringing in more cold air when you turn these things on. So when you start thinking about all that — okay, well it doesn't make sense to have a bathroom fan, does it make sense

36:57to have a kitchen range hood? You're thinking: well, what do I do instead? The answer is an HRV or ERV. And where we live, it's an ERV, right? Because the difference between an HRV and an ERV is the core. An HRV cannot transfer humidity or moisture through the core, whereas an ERV can. And "E" originally stood for enthalpy. That's good — a lot of people don't know that. They still, most people, call

37:24it energy recovery ventilators. But the word enthalpy means the transfer of moisture, and that's where the ERV originally came from. The idea behind it is: as the air comes in, it runs 24/7, right? Because we always want fresh air coming into our house — just like we breathe 24/7, we want the same thing for our houses. So these units run 24/7, they're constantly bringing in fresh air at low CFM, but instead of just bringing in that minus 25-

37:53degree air in — oh yeah, I didn't finish my calculation, sorry. I'll go back. So Matt Peterson — just to finish off that — if you turn on a 1,000-CFM range hood and it's -25 outside and you have 20-degree air inside, it might have been 22 in the calculation — you lose, if I remember correctly, 89,000 BTUs per hour by running that thousand CFM. That's crazy. My whole house, like you mentioned in the beginning, is 18,000. Not the house I'm in — 18,000 BTUs to heat the

38:23entire house, 4,000 square feet. So knowing that, you're just wasting every time you turn on a fan. It's not only bringing in that cold air — it's also bringing in all the pollutants that are in your wall. So if you have fiberglass or something that you don't want to breathe in, it's sucking that into your house, because it's just going to find the holes and bring it in. It could be mold, could be anything, right. So with these ERVs running 24/7,

38:47the air that's coming into your house is getting filtered and it's fresh, and it gets preconditioned by the air leaving the house. So the only energy you're using is the energy to run the fan in that unit, and then it's just preconditioning the air. It doesn't mix the air — it just preconditions it through the core, where it transfers as much of that heat as possible. And depending on the unit that you get, there will be different efficiency ratings. The Passive House-certified units will have a better

39:13efficiency rating than the lower ones. But there are a lot of good North American ones now. It's a long roundabout way, but we all just have to think about: when you do one thing, what else gets affected? We have to think of our buildings — not just our homes, but our buildings — as a system. When you do one thing, another thing will be affected. Like, I've done a video too on basements, because basements — I don't know, are basements big where you are? Yeah, yeah. So I think it's anywhere where

39:43there's cold weather, for the most part — unless it's permafrost — you have basements, because you're going below frost level with your structure. Is that why? Exactly. Well, that's where they came from, right. Basements came about because they had to dig down, they had to get below frost line, and that's where a basement came from. But eventually somebody said: well, we're already digging down anyway, why not turn this into livable space? So they just made it a little bit deeper and then they made it part of the

40:08house, and it became conditioned space. But a basement — the climate within a basement is completely different than the climate on the first or second floor of a house. You have to treat your basement differently than the rest of your house. So these are all things — it's the whole building as a system. Understanding how everything works, one thing affects another. Everything that happens in a basement is different from the rest of your house. Understanding that, and expecting it to be the same,

40:32is just setting yourself up for failure. What's your take on ICF foundations — insulated concrete forms? We use them a lot, partly because we can do them in-house — we don't need a forming company. Which is really helpful for additions. It's hard to find forming companies, especially now. We were talking about labor shortages earlier, before we hit record, and it just makes sense for some of the smaller projects to do it in-house.

41:01Now, foam is not great for the environment, but overall I think it's a good option for some projects. It just makes sense whether it's for timing or for R-value. Now keep in mind there's a lot of greenwashing and misinformation around the performance of an ICF. Talk to energy advisors. If you are using it, don't take the word from the ICF company about the fact that they have an R-50 wall assembly, because it

41:33doesn't actually calculate that way when you put it into the modeling software that the energy advisors use. And make sure the install has the right spacing — so the built-in studs carry through symmetrically. I've seen guys putting the sheeting inside a little off — frustrating. Tell me: does every Passive House certification, or also Net Zero home too — which is a step above — does every home that you build with these have a solar panel element? No. So for Net Zero — well, yeah, Passive House

42:07is beyond Net Zero in terms of certification. There are two CHBA standards: Net Zero Energy and Net Zero Energy Ready. Net Zero Energy Ready essentially means that if you put solar panels on, you could be net zero. Now there's a difference between a net-zero home and an off-grid home too, right. I have these conversations with people — they're like, well, I'm going to go net zero, could I go off-grid? The answer is no, not where we live. If you wanted to go off-grid, you'd be

42:33basically building a Passive House, because you need to design for the worst day or worst week of the year, as opposed to averaging throughout the entire year. A net-zero home basically averages throughout the entire year, and it just looks at your roof calculation and says: hey, do you have enough room to put enough solar panels on your roof that will cover your energy consumption? That's how it's measured, as opposed to: could you actually survive if you lost power? And then you get into battery storage and all sorts of other things.

43:02But heating and hot water are still the two biggest culprits for energy use. One other thing too is plug loads — is what? Sorry, plug loads. You could build the same house for a family of three and a family of six, and the family of six is obviously going to have a very different energy bill than the family of three. So, other than solar, are there other renewable energy elements to these homes in certain situations, or is solar mainly

43:37the one renewable element? Solar is the only way that you could reasonably add it. Like, if you think of renewable energy, it's really solar, wind, or water — in terms of hydroelectricity. On homes, you're not going to put up a big windmill. So it's going to be solar panel power for homes. Does the building code have an initiative or goal to have all homes be net-zero by 2030? Is that still a goal, and what's your take

44:12on that? Yes — all new homes. Yes, all new homes.

44:19I've been saying this for a while now. It's only eight years away, so I'm just wondering — in your opinion, are we moving rapidly enough toward that for it to be realistic? I think yes, but not necessarily because we're building better homes, but because technology is getting better. Solar panels are becoming more effective — they're producing more electricity than they were 10 years ago. Technology grows and gets better exponentially, right. Our human brains can't comprehend that.

44:51I don't think we're building homes that much better. Like, if you think about how we were building homes 100, 150 years ago versus how we're building homes now, it's not that much different. We're still slapping wood together, at least in Canada. And the only difference is we changed it from two-by-fours to two-by-sixes and we added some insulation. And at first we didn't really understand how that affected everything — we got into air

45:18barriers, vapour barriers, and weather barriers, and people still don't always know the difference between an air barrier and a vapour barrier, and that's when they run into problems. But it hasn't gotten that much better. So I think there's a lot of training that needs to be done still. I think because of technology we can get to net zero. The bigger problem that we have is: what do we do with the existing housing supply? That being said, if solar panels get better and better and we can take a 100-year-old

45:47leaky house that hasn't had any work and put solar panels on it and it becomes net zero — then great, that solves one thing. But the problem that I am focusing on is more about the health of the home and the occupants who live in it. I think we underestimate how much time we spend indoors, especially now. Other than putting the garbage out, there are some days I don't leave the house for three days.

46:14Especially just these past couple of years. Your office is at home, a lot of people's office is at home. Yeah, I'm at home, I work from home, I don't need to drive anywhere. I try to block all my driving into one day just to be efficient. So I'm home for like three or four days in a row sometimes. But I'm inside this time of year. In the summer I'll go out — we're on the water here and I'll go paddleboarding — but in the winter I'm like, I don't feel like going outside.

46:35So unless I had to, I'm more of a "let's go outside and do something" person, and I don't have a ski hill next door so it's not that easy. But the Environmental Protection Agency — this is old stats, from I think six years ago — but the EPA ranks indoor air quality as one of the top five risks to our health. So what does that mean? That means that there are a lot of pollutants in our

47:01houses that we're not aware of. Hence why we're focused more on building envelope, air tightness, ventilation, making sure that the indoor air quality is good so that it doesn't affect your health. It's going to affect your energy, it's going to affect your mood, how you feel, how you interact with people. I think that's the part that's getting missed — we're talking about energy, we're talking about carbon footprint, which is great, those are all good things. But we're not talking about: okay, well,

47:24what's happening to the people who live in these houses? What's the benefit to them? And the thing is, a lot of people are focused on the stuff that they can see — it's the bank account: how much is this going to cost me, how much is it going to save on my energy bill, how much carbon emissions am I going to save? Those are all great things. But the stuff that we can see is kind of what we like to focus on.

47:47At The Conscious Builder, just like when we build an envelope — it's all the stuff behind the wall that you can't see. That's where we put so much of our time and effort. People will hire us to do all the stuff that gets covered up, essentially, because we do a lot of projects where we don't have finished pictures, because we did the envelope for the home and the client will take over and do their own finishing or interiors. And it's the same thing when you're

48:08talking indoor air quality and the health of the occupants — they won't see it, but they'll feel it. And they might not even realize it until they leave, go somewhere, and come back. Where it hit me is when we built that first passive house. We went to Florida for three months — well, back and forth, about a month. But I would leave for four weeks and come back — our house would be vacant. And

48:33most of the time you leave your house and come back, you're like, oh, what's that smell? It doesn't smell good. In reality, that's how your house smells all the time — you just got used to it, so you didn't smell it. I left my house, and when I came back, my house smelled like wood — like fresh wood — all the pine and reclaimed wood we had. And to me, that is a healthy home. And you can't see that in a picture, you can't show it

48:58in a video, you just have to experience it or believe the person. And until you experience it, it's really hard for people to comprehend it and see value in it. You know, one of the really commendable parts of your business, The Conscious Builder, is the Academy. And I think you put a lot of effort into training. You say it's one thing to be a conscious builder and to be

49:29building these net-zero and passive homes — that's where the industry is headed, just like every other sector — but the training: how important is that part, to have people who are skilled and knowledgeable enough to do the right practices and come in and do those retrofits to get those R-values, to build those wall assemblies, and to have the knowledge of the different scenarios? Well, that's everything in mind. Like,

50:02sure, we're doing great work and we have an amazing team here, and we're showcasing what we can on YouTube and talking about it here on the podcast and stuff. But we're still one small company, and we can only do a couple of houses a year, a handful of big renovation projects — we can only have so much of an impact. So where I see the biggest potential and the biggest area for change is to help other contractors — like I was

50:3010, 12 years ago when I started the business — to become better contractors, to become better business people, to understand that and to then build better homes as well. So I think that's how we're going to really give back and make a big difference — if everybody starts building like this. Because there's more than enough work. I don't need to compete with other contractors on pricing or anything like that. I learned early in my business, when I started, when

50:56I would go to the renovator council meetings in our local association, the guys sitting around that table weren't my competition. The competition was the guys that weren't a part of the association — undercutting everyone and not understanding what was actually required to build better, not doing contracts properly, and basically going out of business. You know, the "two-tail-light warranty" sort of thing. That was the competition, just so to speak. They're not really competition in the sense that we're not competing on the

51:27same playing field. But those were the type of people that I was losing to at the beginning of my career. And you think that you need to lower your price in order to get the jobs, but that's not how you do it. So that's where I feel like, if we can help contractors understand business, stay in business, and understand the building science side of it, we can all have a much greater impact. Because if I educate one person or two

51:57people, and then those two people educate two people each, and so forth — that's how we're going to have the biggest impact. We've mentioned building code quite a bit. When you say building code, are you referring to the National Building Code, the most recent one, or is there a provincial one as well for your local area? Yeah, we deal with the Ontario Building Code here, which is more rigorous than a lot of other areas. I'm curious what the differences might be

52:24with here in Atlantic Canada compared to Ontario. I'm sure there are a few differences. I'm not familiar with Atlantic Canada and what your building code is there. For the most part they're going to be similar — they still reference the National Building Code. I think some of the changes for us might be around energy use, and stairs and railings is another one, which is a bit of a pain. And there are all sorts of new changes coming out. But yeah. Well, we had a couple of

52:51engineers on a few months back, and they were talking about some passive home topics. And I know a lot of our listeners here in the Atlantic region — they're business owners, they're contractors, a lot of them are PMs for large general contractors in commercial, institutional, or ICI construction. But these people that are tuning in, some of them are students too. They care a lot about this topic specifically — they really want to build consciously,

53:24build things right. And sustainability is on everyone's radar, wherever you're located, whatever form of construction you're in — commercial, residential, or otherwise. So I just think that what your company specifically, and then the podcast, and The Conscious Builder Show on YouTube — that complements that, along with your training academy and everything. It's really impressive, and it's been a treat for me to just kind of dive into it leading up to our discussion and

53:56learn about all the great things you're doing and watch some of your presentations. I think I watched a couple of presentations you gave to — I forget what associations they were. But you've got about a hundred thousand views on YouTube, so you're a well-known guy out in Ontario. And I just had a great time chatting with you today and learned a lot. I know our listeners are really going to enjoy the topic. Any final words, any things you want to touch on maybe that

54:23we didn't? Yeah, well, first of all, thanks for having me — appreciate the opportunity to connect with your listeners. My final words of advice — this is something I've been saying often lately — it's more of an ask, or a challenge. I've been challenging people to think differently — and not to steal that from Apple or anything — but it's more about just thinking. With everything that's going on in the world,

54:55right now — I'm not going to get into specifics — but we can relate this to the way social media, the way the internet, the way things are set up right now: the thinking is being done for us. We're being told certain things and we're taking it at face value, and we're not doing our own thinking. That's in construction, that's in whatever's happening with the pandemic, that's in what we put into our bodies with food — it's everywhere. So I challenge people to think and to

55:27do their own research. And from that point, don't even believe what you currently believe — challenge your own thinking and challenge your own beliefs. Because just because you believe it doesn't mean it's true. There are plenty of things that I've believed in the past that are not true anymore. And even now, there are things that I'm saying where there's a good chance that in five years from now you'll be like, yeah, what I believed back then, what I was saying, was not true. I've now

55:54learned something new. And that's the whole point — we need to continuously challenge ourselves and challenge what's being put in front of us, and ultimately make our own decisions. Don't let somebody else choose for us. So on that note, if anybody wants to learn more about our stuff or join The Conscious Builder Academy, we've got lots of stuff coming out. The best place to go is: we created a simple URL

56:20that's actually linked to our Instagram account. So if you just go to theconsciousbuilder.com — or Instagram — whatever we're talking about most at that point in time will be there. But you'll have the link to our free course for the five things I wish I knew before I started my business, links to The Conscious Builder Academy, links to other interviews. There are all sorts of things going on there, and that'll be the best place. We've got lots of stuff planned for the

56:44Conscious Builder Academy. If you're young and looking to become a contractor or get into construction, there are already some courses up there, but we've got stuff coming out on marketing and team building, and a few other things we're talking about today but I won't share yet. Yeah, we've got some good stuff planned for next year. That's great, Casey. This has been great, and I hope that we can stay in touch and maybe do this again

57:09sometime, maybe later in 2022. Yeah, likewise. Thank you so much. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Atlantic Construction Podcast. Be sure to follow us on any podcast platform you use. You can also find us on LinkedIn and Instagram at Atlantic Construction. Be sure to send us a comment or review — we'd love to engage with you.