[00:00:00] Eric Goranson: It's Around the House. Hey guys, it's Eric G. from Around the House. Today I'm taking a much deserved break. A little R& R. Now, here's the fun part. We've got a great conversation here with Matt Wittbeck from Wittbeck Construction. You might have seen him on This Old House as a contractor in a previous season.

[00:00:28] Eric Goranson: But we talk everything about high performance homes and working with the guys over there. You're not going to want This one, it's great for more information. Head over to around the house, online. com. You can find out more about the show. Now let's go start a great episode here that you might've missed with Matt Whitbeck and Whitbeck construction.

[00:00:47] Matt Whitbeck: When it comes to remodeling and renovating your home, there is a lot to know, but we've got you covered. This is around

[00:00:54] Eric Goranson: the house. Welcome to around the house show. This is where we talk everything [00:01:00] about your home every single week. Thanks for joining us today. I don't know why this is the first time he's being on the show, but Matt Whitbeck, Whitbeck construction.

[00:01:09] Eric Goranson: Welcome to around the house, brother. Thanks for having me, man. Really appreciate it. This is great, man. I mean, you and I go way back from sharing stages to even watching you film those Lowe's commercial pieces, kinda, that were those education pieces with my buddy Ty. Yeah,

[00:01:27] Matt Whitbeck: yeah. That was a good hookup. Ty's awesome.

[00:01:29] Matt Whitbeck: Got to come out and see you guys on the West Coast and do a little bit of touring out there. It was a lot of fun.

[00:01:36] Eric Goranson: Yeah, man. And then sheesh, got to see you, your mug on the TV all this last year with, uh, you being the official contractor for this old house project.

[00:01:46] Matt Whitbeck: Yeah, we get to do season 43, uh, with this old house, Saratoga Springs, which, uh, was, was really neat because I grew up watching this old house, uh, you know, lived on the end of a dead end road in the middle of nowhere.

[00:01:59] Matt Whitbeck: And we had [00:02:00] like the funky, crazy giant antenna. So we had like four stations and one of them was PBS and. And that was the jam, man. I loved it.

[00:02:08] Eric Goranson: Dude. Same. That's I think I would not be doing what I'm doing without that show. And, uh, I've awkwardly told Kevin and everybody else on that show, the same thing, because they're, you know, one, it's just real, it's just so real.

[00:02:20] Eric Goranson: And, you know, it's honest, which I love. What, what was the experience for you going through that man? We'll just dive into that. Cause that's gotta be some hoops to jump through to begin with.

[00:02:30] Matt Whitbeck: Yeah. Yeah. So a little bit of filming experience doing a little less than that. I did do a couple of commercials and some, um, you know, video work with a YouTube series with Lowe's called building science, which was really cool.

[00:02:44] Matt Whitbeck: So I had at least a little bit of experience with working on camera. Um, But I didn't know what to expect because I've seen some various things between doing like a, a simple, small YouTube show to doing some commercials. You see various things between audio and video. Um, [00:03:00] I did work with one professional actor doing some commercials, which was really neat to later on, turn on a television and see him on like an actual movie.

[00:03:08] Matt Whitbeck: And I'm like, holy cow, I know that guy. So, I mean, you don't quite know what to expect when you get into something that's supposed to be reality TV because you hear. All kinds of crazy stuff about what's scripted, what isn't. And one of the, um, heads of the, um, film group when we were doing the Lowe's stuff, you know, he does a whole bunch of, um, reality TV stuff, like one of the race car shows that's on.

[00:03:33] Matt Whitbeck: And, um, so he's giving me some of that stuff, you know, telling me about what happened. So I, I didn't know what to expect. And when I got into it. Like you said, it's real, it's actually happening. We're building the house, they're coming in. It's a lot of, um, you know, the various professional members of their staff coming in to do interviews with all of our trade partners and it's, it was great.

[00:03:56] Matt Whitbeck: It was refreshing to find out that what I hoped and thought it might be. [00:04:00] Was it as authentic as it really was?

[00:04:03] Eric Goranson: Yeah, it's funny. Growing up, I always thought the show was different, but now that I've, you know, been in the, in this industry for about 30 years now, I start to think of it different as it's not this old house building a house they're coming on, for instance, to whip back construction and almost reporting on the progress.

[00:04:22] Eric Goranson: Is that accurate? Yeah,

[00:04:24] Matt Whitbeck: that is pretty accurate. I mean, Tom Silva owns a contracting company with his brother. So they do a lot of contracting for this old house. So there is a bit of it where it's kind of like a lot of the members of this old house are working on a house. So they work on projects kind of exclusively, I shouldn't say exclusively, but.

[00:04:44] Matt Whitbeck: A lot of the projects they work on are being filmed for this old house in some capacity, if it's asked for this old house or, you know, even for like small clips, but, um, when they come on, yeah, they're, they're kind of acting, um, more in the reporting aspect of things. So they [00:05:00] come on and they're sort of interviewing people and a lot of what they do, and I love this about what they do is they're really trying to shed a good light.

[00:05:08] Matt Whitbeck: On the professional contractors, what their, their real day to day grind is and the things that they're bringing to the table that are important or interesting. Uh, that most people want to get that kind of behind the scenes of you. If they didn't have that show of seeing how these contractors are putting things together.

[00:05:26] Matt Whitbeck: So they, they pay a really great homage to. The everyday subcontractor and builder,

[00:05:33] Eric Goranson: you know, that's great. And those guys just, you know, it's, it's interesting because, you know, they come on the show. They, they know the challenges, but for me, even with my experience, your experience, there's always something I get out of that show.

[00:05:45] Eric Goranson: Every time I watch it going, oh, that's interesting. We don't do it that way out here or whatever it is. And that's the fun part with that.

[00:05:53] Matt Whitbeck: Yeah, it is. It's, and it's nice. And those guys, because they do all of those things and, you know, you and I have both worked with, [00:06:00] with guys like Kevin Ireton. So, you know, Kevin being the editor of Fine Home Building for decades, they get to interview so many people.

[00:06:07] Matt Whitbeck: So they have just this amazing encyclopedia, just full of interesting tricks that we don't get to see when we're kind of ingrained in our own local color. You know, so that's one of the awesome parts about them touring around the country and just really trying to pay a great light on, um, what's happening out there and what people are going through, because we don't all do it the same way, but we're not all dealing with the same environment, you know, we're, we're building habitat for human beings, but it's in different environments.

[00:06:38] Eric Goranson: Absolutely. And Kevin, geez, what a. Just a wealth of knowledge. And that's one of the things looking back and I'm not really doing the stage much anymore. Just because this media thing's kind of been keeping me a hundred percent. But, uh, man, some of the stuff I learned by just watching and listening to everybody from their different perspectives, you know, with all the [00:07:00] different people, whether it's you, whether it's Walt, whether it's Kevin, you know, that whole group and many more.

[00:07:05] Eric Goranson: Um, just such a great brain trust. And it's so fun, like you mentioned, because something that you do up there and, and Saratoga, New York, and something I do on Portland, Oregon, maybe we have the general idea, but so many times it's done a different way. Just because of climate, construction, or even materials that we're using that are different.

[00:07:26] Matt Whitbeck: Yeah. Yeah. Things that we're just accustomed to, you know, like, you know, is it a jack or a trimmer? Great question. What are we putting in there? You know, is it worm drive or direct drive? You know, there's certain things guys, just you move around the country. And that's just a staple thing. You know, it's, it's like PBR Budweiser or something.

[00:07:47] Matt Whitbeck: People just have what they're used to. And that's the thing where you are and everybody's just accustomed to it. But that doesn't necessarily mean that people aren't doing something that's super similar or using slightly different vernacular for what it [00:08:00] is. Um, at the end of the day, I mean, we're, we're not really reinventing much, you know, building's been happening.

[00:08:07] Matt Whitbeck: For so long, we're just trying to come up with creative ways to do it and kind of do it economically for people. Um, and that's, that's really what's important, I guess. Right.

[00:08:18] Eric Goranson: Yeah. And you know, climate's part of it too. I mean, like you were talking about, I mean, for instance, my neighbor's got a big waterline leak right now in front of his house.

[00:08:26] Eric Goranson: It's running down my driveway. They're going to be digging that up here soon, but I 18 inches underground here because of our climate. Yeah. Wouldn't be doing that up in your area.

[00:08:35] Matt Whitbeck: No. I mean, if you can see behind me here, you know, we, we got snow already and it's sticking. It's now melting. Um, but you know where I am, it's kind of funny because, um, a short commute away, I drive like eight, nine minutes down the mountain.

[00:08:52] Matt Whitbeck: And there's no snow. So yeah, that's kind of the funny part about where we are, you know, not so much different from where you're in Portland, right? You, you drive up the [00:09:00] mountain, snow driving to Portland, you're in the bay and things are different.

[00:09:04] Eric Goranson: Exactly. And all of a sudden I'm out at the coast, uh, you know, where it rarely freezes out there, so Yep.

[00:09:09] Eric Goranson: Same kind of thing. Same kind of thing. What did you learn? I mean, what was the challenges of the, this whole house? I mean, it's all, I mean, what a great group of people and you had all the filming, but. You're still building a massive remodel on a house with an addition and everything else. What are the challenges of outs?

[00:09:26] Eric Goranson: I mean, you have challenges doing that on a normal day just from it's remodeling, right? Yeah. Now you're going to throw a very experienced film crew on it. And, uh, the way they have to do it because TV schedules, man, they're a dog.

[00:09:40] Matt Whitbeck: Yeah. I mean, stuff. Really tough. And I mean, to boot we're in COVID. So, I mean, like you deal with supply chain issues and you almost, you know, you make a great schedule, you know, and you try to fluff a whole lot of incidental room in there.

[00:09:57] Matt Whitbeck: And then by the time you've revisited it, like the fourth [00:10:00] time, you're like, why, why do I waste time doing this? I don't know. Um, so it's been interesting the last couple of years for that reason. You never know what's going to come up missing. Um, you never know what part's going to come. You never know if you're going to wait, you know, 18 weeks to get something and it comes and looks like Ace Ventura delivered it and just trying to get down the street.

[00:10:20] Matt Whitbeck: It's, uh, it's bad sometimes. So we try to stay out in front of things. Um, I did read something kind of funny recently by the architect who designed that house where he talks about the Saratoga area and it's one of the oldest inhabited, um, cities in the U. S. Anyways, I mean, because it's on that, um, Hudson river chain.

[00:10:42] Matt Whitbeck: So when we think about like early development of the U. S. and the Hudson river being part of that trade route, you know, we're. Predating, um, French and Indian war, all that stuff. But he says, you know, we got some really beautiful houses and that trim was really well thought of. And nobody thought about the framing.[00:11:00]

[00:11:00] Matt Whitbeck: Like they just kind of pieced it together. And, um, I spent the beginning of my career as a framer, you know, all we did was high end luxury homes. And I really had a great knack for it. And I loved it. Uh, but then at the end of the day, you know, I take apart some of these old houses and what's funny is I always hear people say they don't build them like they used to, you know, and I say, thank

[00:11:22] Eric Goranson: God, right.

[00:11:23] Eric Goranson: You know, we'd, we'd all be sitting in

[00:11:25] Matt Whitbeck: a pile of rubble with a new style of construction. You know, somebody throw a granite countertop on an Island and are some of these houses and we're going to go, you know, we'd have the, you know, the, the scene from the money pit. But, um, You know, stuff like that.

[00:11:44] Eric Goranson: It's funny.

[00:11:45] Eric Goranson: I get into so many arguments on social media sometimes, and some of like the old house groups and stuff, because people are like, Oh, they sure don't build them like they used to. And I'm like, you know, like you are, it's like, you know, yeah, they had some wonderful building materials and they. They [00:12:00] dealt with what they had, but there was no engineer involved in the process.

[00:12:05] Eric Goranson: Many times there were not drawings. There was not a load calculation. If they got the concrete right, they got it

[00:12:13] Matt Whitbeck: good. Yeah. Well, here we don't, you know, we don't even have a lot of concrete here. So a lot of stacked stone foundations and going, you know, four, five, six, eight feet into the ground. And you never know the soil content you're dealing with.

[00:12:27] Matt Whitbeck: That was one of the fun issues of that house. We assumed that there was more foundation under it. And we started excavating and they just tapered the foundation from like six feet to nothing over 20 feet. So when we started peeling it back to figure out where our footing base was, we realized it was like four inches in the ground.

[00:12:48] Matt Whitbeck: So I know it was holding up the whole back of the house. Um, so that's some of the funny stuff about that. I mean, do those houses last? Yes. Did they move around a lot? Yeah. So would you want to put tile on the floor of [00:13:00] like the back entryway? No, absolutely not. You know, you would start with a normal format and tile and end up with mosaics in a few years.

[00:13:09] Eric Goranson: Exactly. Um,

[00:13:10] Matt Whitbeck: exactly. That's it. You know, and the guys did have great material. You know, they, they had old growth material. The lumber was abundant. It was all locally sourced. So, I mean, that's an amazing thing. And you had more craftsmen. So you had a huge, huge amount of labor force to pick from, uh, people that did the work and knew how to work with their hands and most homeowners knew how to work with their hands and that's, you know, very different.

[00:13:34] Matt Whitbeck: From right now, so

[00:13:36] Eric Goranson: yeah, it's funny, my little lake neighborhood that I'm in here. We had a, uh, what was the first, one of the first big iron mills here, uh, where they would create iron for the railroad for the railroad coming out West. And this lake was a vacation lake for the people of Portland. And so all of the.

[00:13:54] Eric Goranson: The homes that were built back prior to 1940 were lake homes traditionally, [00:14:00] so they were just that cabin esque thing had no intention of really heating that thing. It was a summer home and, uh, much like some of the older stuff of, you know, 100 or 200 or plus years before same plan of, there was no intention of today's technology to go into that and remodeling comes up that same way where it was built on piers and things like that.

[00:14:24] Eric Goranson: I was just meant to be a cabin.

[00:14:26] Matt Whitbeck: Yeah. That's a lot of how Saratoga was built because originally it was a close destination from New York city, from Boston. You know, you're a couple hours in both directions. So you look at. Um, you know, the Connecticut area, uh, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey. Um, you know, Pittsburgh, where he had a lot of, uh, industry with the steel.

[00:14:47] Matt Whitbeck: Um, people came up here cause it was, it was a carriage ride. It was a railroad ride that in a few hours you could be at. That resort town where there's horse racing, but they were all homes that people spent the summer [00:15:00] in. So it was only a small community of people that lived here year round. So we have a lot of these really big estate style homes that people came up with, maybe their race horses, or they came up to just enjoy that summer life.

[00:15:12] Matt Whitbeck: Get out on a little bit of the city, grind in the heat and enjoy a different climate and the cleaner water. And, uh, they didn't do that. They didn't put heat in. And then, you know, we get into that heating era. And people just took already modest framing and hacked it apart to, you know, put the coal furnace in and everything else.

[00:15:31] Matt Whitbeck: And, and boy, I'll tell you when you peel some of the lath and plaster back, you, you're, you're a little nervous because, uh, you realize that the lath and plaster was probably holding 60%.

[00:15:44] Eric Goranson: Well, again, a hundred years ago, the plumber got in there and just started hacking stuff up too. So when they threw plumbing in or whatever, it was just kind of what it was.

[00:15:52] Matt Whitbeck: You know, yeah, I think people were so excited to just have indoor plumbing, this is great. You know, big deal. We'll cut [00:16:00] this joist apart. Um, but yeah, it's, it's interesting.

[00:16:04] Eric Goranson: That's awesome. I mean, it's funny, I gotta ask you, what were some of the challenges you had outside of the stuff? Were there anything that you were like, Oh man, this is tough with TV.

[00:16:15] Eric Goranson: Was there anything that threw into your schedule, the TV thing, did you have to delay stuff for shooting? And I assume you had to have a little bit of that give and take.

[00:16:22] Matt Whitbeck: So those guys are great. I mean, um, we did have to, you know, walk away from a couple ideas that we all had for what was going to be filmed and it had to do with schedule.

[00:16:35] Matt Whitbeck: So could we put the right people up there at the right time? Could there are people come in? Um, how did it work with the schedule? Did we have the right materials in? Um, but ultimately, um, they're very accommodating. They're trying to work with our schedule. Um, and, and really put people on the site. That are going to be in the best interest of that time and place.

[00:16:55] Matt Whitbeck: So if we have a really interesting thing coming up with HVAC or [00:17:00] electrical, they want to put the right people up there so that the Q and A and the interview process really sounds correct over television. So, um, not any real big hurdles of that. It is, uh, it's TV, so it's a little bit slower going to do, um, second shoots and retakes and closeups and things like that to make sure that.

[00:17:19] Matt Whitbeck: The audience gets good view of things. And there's, there's that behind the scenes stuff that people just don't understand, maybe if they've never seen it done or haven't participated it in some way, um, but other than that, uh, the guys are, are always there to be respectful and I think that's, what's great.

[00:17:36] Matt Whitbeck: About the, this old house crew, as these are primarily, I would say 99 percent of the people on staff have either spent long enough on construction sites. And even if it's the AV guys or whatever, they know what's happening. So they understand and appreciate the effort of work that goes into getting them on site.

[00:17:55] Matt Whitbeck: And they'll almost jump through hoops to really accommodate and make it move as smooth as [00:18:00] they can. Um, yeah, helping out with stuff, you know, they're, they're even. They're not just there to film, do their job and wander off. Like if they're on site on location, they're actually helping out with things, you know, Oh man, he's every, he's everything.

[00:18:15] Matt Whitbeck: I hoped Tom silver. He's just, he's such a nice guy. He really is so genuine. Everything you see of him on, on television. On instagram just everything. He's he's such a genuine nice kind person and loves his job He loves his work. He loves the job people out. He loves he just loves carpentry loves building,

[00:18:38] Eric Goranson: but they're all that way I mean, I remember running into richard at the uh, Vegas a couple years ago, and I just met with him a few months before When I was back at the uh at the well at nrla that year and i'd gone over to their 40th anniversary party So it was that next?

[00:18:55] Eric Goranson: Um, IBS kitchen, the bash show, and I'm walking down, heading back to our [00:19:00] stage. And I hear Eric, I look over and he yelled to say hi. And I'm, I was like an eight year old little girl that just saw my favorite, you know, TV star. I was like, He knew who I was as stupid as that is, it was still that, you know, that legend was saying hi.

[00:19:18] Eric Goranson: And that to me was just cool. It's, it's, even though we're all doing what we do, you know, I think everybody, I can speak for most of the trades, the respect for, they have for that entire organization is, is there and well deserved.

[00:19:32] Matt Whitbeck: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they're, they're kind of the godfathers of that industry.

[00:19:37] Matt Whitbeck: Right. So, I mean, it's hard not to look at them with that level of respect, you know, they've really paved the way for the educational aspect of it, which is, is really needed. And, you know, you and I have both worked in that genre of, of education and, you know, it's important. We realize how important it is.

[00:19:55] Matt Whitbeck: It's something that you do day in and day out is trying to bring that education to people, [00:20:00] whether they're tradesmen or homeowners. And, um, And it's important, especially when we're, we live in a time and place where there's not people really working in that apprenticeship role, like under their father, you know, their son, you don't really have like, you know, two career choices, what my dad does or what my uncle does, you know, it's, it's, it's different.

[00:20:23] Matt Whitbeck: So it's, it's harder and. And there's not as many people that are sticking their hands and things, and it's been that way for a lot of years and I'm seeing, I mean, I think we all see this really great movement where more people want to learn about the trades, especially homeowners want to learn how to work on things.

[00:20:42] Matt Whitbeck: I find more homeowners that I work for that would like if I break them off a small section of the house and like teach them how to do something. That was another fun part with this old house project. Like the homeowners wanted to be involved. So, um, the owner's mother was there. She wanted to be involved.

[00:20:59] Matt Whitbeck: She's [00:21:00] lived in the house her whole life. He wanted to be involved and they wanted to learn. So I teach them things. And because of that desire. They would figure it out. They'd stick their hands in the dough. They'd give it a try and, uh, and it worked out. They saved a lot of money doing it too.

[00:21:14] Eric Goranson: Yeah. And they had the best teachers in the planet there to help walk them through it

[00:21:18] Matt Whitbeck: too.

[00:21:19] Matt Whitbeck: Yeah, absolutely. Which is a great thing, you know? So beyond that being a legacy home for them, you know, they have a whole nother thing now, which is, you know, it was televised and everything was kind of put under the microscope by high grade professionals. And that's a really great thing for them too. And it's a amazing opportunity.

[00:21:41] Matt Whitbeck: I'd say all the way around my staff as well. So everybody really enjoyed being able to work with them, the subcontractors, my in house staff, and they were just, I mean, top shelf, they're so kind to everybody and so respectful, uh, respectful of all the people that were there. It was. That was great. [00:22:00]

[00:22:00] Eric Goranson: Yeah. And normally say, man, I had to make you nervous, but I know you've been doing top shelf stuff for a long time.

[00:22:04] Eric Goranson: You've, you've got decades under your belt, but, uh, I'm sure there had to been a little bit of a gulp. Here we go. And they first are getting ready to roll in. Yeah.

[00:22:12] Matt Whitbeck: Yeah. Yeah. It was, uh, I didn't know. I didn't know how I was going to go, you know, you see these guys and you hear their reputation and you know, we had a few meetings beforehand and you, you know, quickly in conversation with people.

[00:22:27] Matt Whitbeck: Yeah. You know, if they, if they know their business, right. Cause if you know yours, you know, they're speaking the same language. Um, and I, I knew what I was in for, you know, so when we first started filming, I was, I was, I was on eggshells, man. I was really nervous.

[00:22:45] Eric Goranson: I would have been too, man. And I do a lot of TV stuff, you know, when that camera light comes on and you're standing there with all the years of TV experience I have.

[00:22:54] Eric Goranson: I'd have gone, all right, here we go.

[00:22:59] Matt Whitbeck: [00:23:00] Yeah, it was, it was funny, but it, they're all, they're also great like that. And, um, a comforting sense where they make you feel really comfortable around them. Just the dialect and the dynamic of how they jump in and help out. And then it's such an easy thing when somebody's carrying wood next to you, when somebody's nailing boards next to you, there's just a camaraderie, man.

[00:23:22] Matt Whitbeck: It's in the trenches with another guy. It's just, it's easy to warm up to somebody quickly that way. So, yeah.

[00:23:29] Eric Goranson: We were fortunate. They had your best interest in mind the whole time anyway. So, you know, this isn't some weird gotcha thing. It's, you know, you had a good partner there. So, you know, you were, you were in a good spot.

[00:23:40] Matt Whitbeck: Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's amazing. I mean, that's cool. Kevin to the host. I mean, he,

[00:23:45] Eric Goranson: I love him.

[00:23:46] Matt Whitbeck: He's smart as a whip. He loves the business. I mean, loves the building science and the things we had some great conversations about. You know, technique and why we do what we do, where we've kind of stolen some of our [00:24:00] ideas from where we've come up with a few of our own.

[00:24:02] Matt Whitbeck: And it's, it's really just cool to see, you know, the dynamics come together that way. Um, and we're just, I mean, taken back by the whole process really. Cause it was, it was a beautiful thing. I mean, yeah,

[00:24:16] Eric Goranson: that's awesome. That's awesome. Well, let's jump over and talk about your Lowe's pro stuff that you did because that building science series.

[00:24:24] Eric Goranson: That was solid. And you know something, I, uh, here's my bitch about YouTube out there. There's a hundred ways to see how a project's done on YouTube and about 90 percent of them are wrong in some aspect. Yeah.

[00:24:38] Matt Whitbeck: Yeah, you're right. So that's been a tough thing for us. Like my, my business partner, my brother and I have been trying really hard to develop a catalog actually of good YouTube videos to hand off to our employees so that.

[00:24:53] Matt Whitbeck: They can watch things that we know are good, you know, um, that's, yeah, it's tough [00:25:00] because you get a lot of guys that just because they, they have a credit card and they can make it to the box store and swipe that thing. I mean, there's no license needed to go buy tools. And I laugh every day about it. I'm like, some of this stuff is really dangerous, the hoops you got to jump through to buy other things.

[00:25:17] Matt Whitbeck: I mean, you got to get licensed to drive a car. You got to get licensed. You can walk into a home improvement center. Anything, you know, they don't care if you're going to cut all your fingers off or what's going to happen. You know, let's see if you can figure out how to use the table. So that'd be interesting.

[00:25:34] Eric Goranson: But even in, even at that, you can walk into a home improvement store and I'll throw home Depot Lowe's under the bus on this and they're good people, but there are things in that store in there that don't meet building code.

[00:25:44] Matt Whitbeck: No, you're right.

[00:25:47] Eric Goranson: I mean, it's just what it is. You know?

[00:25:49] Matt Whitbeck: Yeah, I always laugh about duct tape, right?

[00:25:51] Matt Whitbeck: I mean, you go for the duct tape and the duct dial and you're like, this is the worst thing you should possibly put here. Like, anybody who puts duct tape on their duct work [00:26:00] is just, you know, Yeah, you

[00:26:03] Eric Goranson: know, it's, it's, oh, cool. Um. Yeah, I don't need that recircling vent hood, even though that's not building code in my area and you got 30 of them on the shelf, but you know, those kinds of things that it's like, yeah, come on, come on, but, but that's a problem if you don't know any better.

[00:26:18] Eric Goranson: And that's where I liked what what Lowe's should have done a lot more of those. I think, I think they were onto something good there because you're right. Uh, it's just so much that can be said out there. I mean, I was on a. She's probably four or five months ago on social media. I think it was on Facebook and there was a dude on there building a high end steam shower for himself.

[00:26:39] Eric Goranson: And he's one of the, I'm going to use social media influencers as a, uh, as a, uh, air quote here that nobody can see, but he built it out a green board and then tile over the top of it. And I'm like, dude, this is a steam shower. I don't care if you're putting a membrane over the top of it, it's still drywall.[00:27:00]

[00:27:02] Matt Whitbeck: Yeah, that's, it's just, I mean, when you know how long it's going to last, it's hard and oh goodness for me, um, I really keep the sustainability aspect in mind. That's always in the forefront of my mind and how long I can make something last for is so important to me. Um, being in the building industry for a long time.

[00:27:22] Matt Whitbeck: And my son now who's coming up on 12, he's, you know, telling me every day, I want to be an engineer, I want to be an engineer. And we have those conversations a lot about what's important as an engineer. And I tell them, you know, there's, there's engineers we work with that. I mean, they, they really love to over engineer things.

[00:27:40] Matt Whitbeck: And I'm like, that's the opposite of what you should be

[00:27:42] Eric Goranson: doing. So I'm like, if I'm making something last

[00:27:45] Matt Whitbeck: longer with less parts, like that's good engineering. And when we see stuff like that go together where, yeah, can you do it? Yeah. There's a lot of the country do stuff like that. Yeah. Is it good for 10 years?

[00:27:56] Matt Whitbeck: Yeah. Why would you want to put that level of work into something that's [00:28:00] going to just start falling apart where it should be in the infant stage of its life, right? Like you should be able to build something like that and say, no, steam showers inherently are going to be a difficult thing to put in your house.

[00:28:11] Matt Whitbeck: Anyways. Right. Like sure. You're not the YMCA locker room here. Like this is going to to go through some serious provisions and considerations, but with, with minor tweaks to the material, uh, you know, you can make something that could have lasted six, seven, eight years and turn it into something that could last 25, 30 years.

[00:28:32] Matt Whitbeck: Yeah. And

[00:28:33] Eric Goranson: like mine, for instance, I did a steam shower in my house. When I did mine, I did the, the, uh, the weedy vapor proof system behind it. And then I put large format slab, porcelain over the top of it. You know, it's not going anywhere. And if any moisture made it through a, a caulked seam, then guess what?

[00:28:52] Eric Goranson: I got a whole system back there. That's not going to let any steam through it, but. That's the process like you doing. I mean, you're the such [00:29:00] an expert in building science. It's the same kind of stuff. You gotta have those provisions for what happens when it doesn't stop the first way in.

[00:29:09] Matt Whitbeck: Yeah. Yeah. And, and we don't live in a very forgiving climate.

[00:29:13] Matt Whitbeck: Um, That's what's tough here. I mean, being on that Northern Eastern seaboard, um, hot, hot, humid summers, and then really cold, damp winters. So, um, that makes it tricky. You know, we really don't get a dry spell. We don't get that forgiveness of, you know, that Pacific climate or the desert climate, like it's humid and it's funky.

[00:29:37] Matt Whitbeck: And then we got to deal with the freeze on top of that. So when you go into the Southern part of the country and say, all right, great, it's hot and it's humid. And then. It's, you know, not so bad in the winter, but you know, we deal with the freeze up. So if you absorb all that humidity and then we go into the freeze up, like you wouldn't believe it sounds like sometimes guns going off in some of the houses I've been in because we eat that heavy freeze and that moisture starts to [00:30:00] crack and move through wood.

[00:30:01] Matt Whitbeck: It's a crazy sound, you know, when that, when the boards start to check and break open and move.

[00:30:07] Eric Goranson: Yeah. It's like splitting a lumber up there. We don't get that. You know what I mean? We have our rainy season, which is that, you know. October, November through June, and then we don't get rain for six months. So we get that dry heat in the summertime.

[00:30:22] Eric Goranson: You know, you've been out here dries out really nice. And then the wet comes in. So we don't get that you guys out there. That's where the problems are. Is that humidity to freezing? Thing where it's almost like, all right, we're going from Georgia to North Dakota.

[00:30:39] Matt Whitbeck: Yeah. So I think about steam showers here and we built quite a few of them and I'm, I'm just as worried about how they're attacked from the backside, from any gap or crack or break from, you know, any of my index or control layers, letting humidity in behind it, and then that.

[00:30:54] Matt Whitbeck: It's stopping that vapor transfer. And then I got to build up on the backside. Another reason I would never [00:31:00] touch green board for that reason. I know in like eight years I'd rip it apart and it would look like a fungus dish and it'd be full of black mold. And you know, I'd have a bag

[00:31:10] Eric Goranson: out of it. No kidding.

[00:31:12] Eric Goranson: I mean, even on mine, even though that I had that whole wee system in there, I still put rockwool on the back of it. Yeah. Yeah, just because just being careful and it's an interior wall. So I just, you know, it's like, all right, I'm going to throw it in here. It's just cheap insurance, but it's that same kind of thing.

[00:31:29] Eric Goranson: And, and, you know, now you're in this remodeling business out there and you've been doing this for a while. You're the new construction remodeling, but, uh, you know, building science just keeps getting. It's it's not that the science changes, but we keep learning more and more. And, you know, what was just a simple house wrap years ago is now gotten into a whole new level of stuff.

[00:31:52] Eric Goranson: You know, when you're putting in windows, doors, and siding and, and weather resistant barriers and all the rest of the stuff out

[00:31:57] Matt Whitbeck: there. Yeah. Compatible products. I mean, we got. [00:32:00] Six, seven different types of tapes out, you know, different, different basis of how those things are made between like acrylics and, um, you know, butyl bases, I mean, these things don't stick together.

[00:32:12] Matt Whitbeck: It's, you think about how many different types of caulking we have. Right. I mean, latex is an elastomerics and silicones and hybrids. And I mean, the, the piles of goop, you can just go buy off a shelf and then to find out later, it's not compatible with what you stuck it to, or that it's, you know, eating a hole through another product that you see on top of it.

[00:32:35] Matt Whitbeck: You need a chemistry degree almost to be dealing with stuff and at the very least you got to do a lot of due diligence and reading to stay on top of it and it's, it's tough, you know, it is really hard to be, um, a novice user of these products and get it right, you know, so my hats go, my hat goes off to anybody who's a weekend warrior that's making it work because it's, it's not an easy task, you know, I'm doing [00:33:00] it, I'm doing it, you know.

[00:33:01] Matt Whitbeck: 60 plus hours a week. And I'm still beating my head against the wall trying to figure out how to make some things happen.

[00:33:07] Eric Goranson: So,

[00:33:11] Matt Whitbeck: don't get it. Some of the smartest people I know don't get it.

[00:33:15] Eric Goranson: It's tough and my recommendation always to the DIYers is try to stick into a system and go with it. You know. Whether it's, whether it's zip or whether it's the punch or whatever you're using out there, you know, throw a dozen other brands on top of that, but whatever you're using, stick with that system and follow the directions at least on your project.

[00:33:36] Eric Goranson: Know it because. Where the problems occur is when you go, Oh man, they were out of this tape. And I got this other tape or, Oh, gee, here we go. The grocery store mom mentality where they're

[00:33:47] Matt Whitbeck: like reading and they're like, Oh, this one's 75 feet. And that one's 70 feet and this one's 45 cents less. So I get an extra.

[00:33:54] Matt Whitbeck: Five feet. Oh, please

[00:33:58] Eric Goranson: stop. They don't go [00:34:00] together. Oh, it's like putting people there. I always think of them as like languages, right? It's like, okay, I'm trying to put the German and the French people talking to each other over here. That just doesn't work. Good. You know, it just doesn't work good. So you got to keep that stuff going in.

[00:34:14] Eric Goranson: But, uh, yeah, I mean. Circling back though, those, you know, the stuff that was so good on there, the, your flashing that you did with my buddy Ty, the how to install windows stuff. I think those are a great resource for our DIYers out there because, you know, it's, you guys had to do a lot of vetting and, you know, I was there for that one day, a shoot in Seattle to watch where.

[00:34:37] Eric Goranson: You know, you guys had to keep it honest to what was on the shelf at the store. And that was before we ran into our, you know, our problems that we had with COVID and our, and our distribution issues that we had of getting materials in, even then it was like, okay, what's on the shelf here and how do we make this look

[00:34:56] Matt Whitbeck: national?

[00:34:56] Matt Whitbeck: Yeah. Yeah. That's always tough because, [00:35:00] um, right now with the internet, you think about, you know, all you got to do is, is Google something, do a series search, whatever, uh, works for you. But I mean, the world's your oyster. That doesn't necessarily mean it works for where you are. Um. That's been some of the tough things that I've done with a few of the builds.

[00:35:19] Matt Whitbeck: Uh, the first year I did the lab house, it was all about, can I buy this from a lumberyard right now? And that's what I wanted to do with that was, can I make a high performance build off of something I can get today that's off the shelf? And can I tweak the products rather than importing things? Because importing specialized things, I can get stuff from Japan, from Germany.

[00:35:38] Matt Whitbeck: They're awesome at putting those things together on a high end sense, but you know, I don't want that. I want to be able to do something that I can explain to builders who are trying to do this in a nine to five, or maybe building development houses, like, you know, don't throw the baby out with the bath water, make minor upgrades.

[00:35:54] Matt Whitbeck: And you can really do a lot for a community with minor upgrades and what you can still get your hands on, on the shelf every [00:36:00] single day. So, you know, thanks for noticing that because that's a hard thing to do is just to find the stuff that's available and do your best with it. That's like what we said about engineering, you know, it's, it's not about over engineering something.

[00:36:12] Matt Whitbeck: It's about doing the best you can with the least amount of stuff. So can I get it today? Is it available? What's the lead time on it? Um, cause I think, I think that means a

[00:36:21] Eric Goranson: lot. Yeah. Well, it's funny with, I love building stuff and kind of over, over engineering it when I'm building my own stuff, but sometimes that's not good, especially when you're coming in and throwing a bunch of lumber and exterior wall.

[00:36:34] Eric Goranson: That's less efficient because now you've got that thermal mass there of that's not insulation in there and that would loves to transfer heat and cool through it. So that's that's not your friend outside of the structure side of

[00:36:48] Matt Whitbeck: it. Yeah, or, you know, God forbid you're in the commercial realm and everything's steel.

[00:36:52] Matt Whitbeck: Right. So now you're, you know, bulk steel, steel studs. You know, you think about a lot of the, um, South American countries, [00:37:00] everybody's building on a building on a metal studs. Um, you know, metal is a great conductor, so, you know, it has no problem transferring temperature back and forth. Um, you know, that's, you know, like Joseph Kubrick says, it's why we don't make, uh, electrical wires out of wood.

[00:37:15] Matt Whitbeck: You know, it's, it doesn't really make sense, you know, fair point. Metal's a great conductor and it's going to do that whether we like it or not. So, um,

[00:37:26] Eric Goranson: yeah, that's why we cook in metal pans.

[00:37:31] Matt Whitbeck: Transfer the heat, widen it out, you know, give it a good range and let it hold on to it. But yeah, it's, it's tough, Eric.

[00:37:38] Matt Whitbeck: It's really, it is, it is hard to find stuff at a store. It's hard to find. Um, things that work well together, but I, I'm, man, I'm a, a big, big advocate at telling people stay in the system, just like you said, you know, don't let the chemists, the engineers, all the people that, that worked on that, because believe me, if you do any level of R and D ever for any [00:38:00] group, you'll find out how many people are involved in making sure that these products, selections of saying things are compatible.

[00:38:07] Matt Whitbeck: A lot of research has done. I mean, sometimes a decade worth of research before they say, yeah, we're going to use this tape instead of that tape, um, it's, it's a lot, you know, it takes a lot for these companies to put a good product out on the shelf and feel great about it. Um, and I think that's important to trust that because you also have the warranty backing when you do it, you know, so that's a huge part.

[00:38:30] Matt Whitbeck: And I found in my experience, both doing, um, you know, forensic inspections and home inspections, as well as being a builder when I have to write reports out in the sense of a warranty failure, I've never seen a company. Bawk at it every single time. If they, if, if something was wrong, even a percentile wrong with, with their product, they step up and own it.

[00:38:53] Matt Whitbeck: Um, it's not like fighting an insurance company to try to get 8 of the, you know, 80, 000, you just [00:39:00] paid them. They want their customers to be happy and they want to stand by their product. They want to put that information back into a good think tank and feedback loop and make their product better. Uh, it's important to them.

[00:39:11] Matt Whitbeck: I haven't run across one company yet that hasn't stood by their warranty and treated it well.

[00:39:17] Eric Goranson: And that's awesome. I mean, and there's so many products out there too. And one of the things that I've learned traveling around the country is that some products are in some areas and some other products just aren't there.

[00:39:30] Eric Goranson: I mean, great example. If I'm out on the East coast, I see a fair amount of zip. I see green and red around Pacific Northwest, fairly rare, even though we need it badly in those winter months for framing here and you and I have talked about this in the past, but. You know, with our rainy season, we get out here, I'll drive by some mixed use building.

[00:39:50] Eric Goranson: That's six stories of framed lumber. And by the time they're putting the roof trusses on it, the lower two floors of OSB are black, you know, [00:40:00] and then two weeks later, they're throwing house wrap around it and going. And I'm like, man, there is a better material for this, but it's just not really that seen in our area yet, even though it's here.

[00:40:12] Eric Goranson: Not a lot of people have embraced it yet. And you see that, you know, around the country where that would have been really smart to have in those buildings, but now they're going to have a litmus test of serious other issues there of, of, uh, indoor air quality issues and stuff, just because they've wrapped all that nasty mold mildew inside the building.

[00:40:33] Matt Whitbeck: Yeah, that's hard. I mean, you know how fast some of these developers are trying to build a house. So they're, they're not exactly getting in there and saying, all right, let's let the place go stagnant for a while, post MEPs and running dehumidifiers and really trying to suck the moisture out of it. So yeah, you know, you think about it, like having that last little bit of moisture in a Ziploc bag or something, and you know, it's going to hang out in there, it's got nowhere to go.

[00:40:57] Matt Whitbeck: So you seal up both sides of the wall and, [00:41:00] you know, you create, you know, Warm, warm, dark, and damp. That's the breeding ground for mold, you know, that's, that's what you need. So

[00:41:08] Eric Goranson: it was funny. I had a job site that I was working at. I was going out to measure. It was a, I mean, these were a million dollar homes and 15 years ago in Seattle.

[00:41:17] Eric Goranson: And they were building these, you know, developments with these nice high end, you know, 4, 000 square foot homes in them. And I go walking in to see how far it is before I can measure for cabinets. Framing's going, I walk in the front entry door doors, not in its frame. There's sheathing on there. They're doing the interior framing wrap up coming off the second floor balcony.

[00:41:38] Eric Goranson: It's raining so hard outside. It's a water feature. I can't walk through it. It's a four foot wide sheet of water over the doorway just coming out. Because of the, they hadn't cut any of the, the bottom plates out. There was two inches of water down, you know, inch and a half of water sitting on the floor.

[00:41:57] Eric Goranson: There's air compressors. There's the [00:42:00] guys in there framing. There's a guy out there at the pole out there at the temp, hitting the GFCI. They'll go power click. And I walk in and I'm standing in water and I hear the guy go power and he hit the reset and I'm like, I am out of here. This someone's going to die.

[00:42:20] Matt Whitbeck: Oh, man.

[00:42:23] Eric Goranson: What an amazing experience.

[00:42:28] Eric Goranson: It was just like Darwinism awards. National Lampoon's movie right there. Exactly. But at the same point, you know, they put roofing and siding on that thing, and I, and I can promise you, there wasn't a dehumidifier that ever entered that house.

[00:42:45] Matt Whitbeck: Oh, I guarantee, I mean, I've, I've unfortunately had tor some litigation reports on class action suits and developments before from bad flashing details and, um, you know, when you got the same subs doing the same job over and over and over, [00:43:00] believe me when I tell you that if they did it to one house, they probably did it to all of them.

[00:43:04] Matt Whitbeck: So, You know, we were doing an inspection one day and somebody saw what I was doing in the house and every, you know, buddy out walking their dog, jogging with their kid, everything wanted to know what the heck we were doing. And I was going out, I was heading inside of the house, it was a vinyl house, you know, standard OSD, um, you know, commodity based home wrap around the outside of it, and I'm walking around with the blunt end of the screwdriver and just tapping the house because you can hear.

[00:43:30] Matt Whitbeck: When the, when the OSB has gone dead, I mean, it's like the difference of hitting a snare drum in the bass drum. Right. So it snaps up and just nothing's

[00:43:40] Eric Goranson: there. You're like, all right.

[00:43:42] Matt Whitbeck: That would. So, you know, we're going to start peeling some of the vinyl off and seeing what's happening, but you know, you know, we're going to look for those spots anyways.

[00:43:50] Matt Whitbeck: It's always the roof to wall connections. It's the porch to wall connections. Like those are the spots that somebody gets the flashing job wrong, you know, they took the metal flashing behind, over, [00:44:00] under, ripped, tore something, didn't rubberize it, didn't nail it, didn't tape it. And it's always that, you know, we got three, four different subs working and nobody's supervising it, um, well enough, or, you know, I usually find most of the time it's because it's just ignorance.

[00:44:15] Matt Whitbeck: They're not stupid. They know it's not that they don't care. It's just, nobody took the time to explain it to them. So they're showing something, they think it's right. And they're just going to keep producing it because nobody's got them in the feedback loop to tell them it's wrong. Um, so it's like, what else is that way that are just junk.

[00:44:33] Eric Goranson: Well, it's like they had all the materials there. They get around, they get all the stuff together, they go to tape it up. And nobody grabbed a roller, something as stupid, simple as nobody grabbing a roller and hitting the pressure sensitive tape with that. And they just hand applied it, ran their hand over one.

[00:44:48] Eric Goranson: Oh, that's good enough. And that's where the failures

[00:44:52] Matt Whitbeck: occur. Yeah. All the time. Minor stuff. You know, you think it's good. You think it's going to bite. Well, you think everything's okay. And then it's just not, [00:45:00] but these guys don't. See it fail, you know, and that's, that's the other tough part, um, with not having the subcontractors not having their employees, part of that feedback loop of letting them know where the failures are and involving them.

[00:45:14] Matt Whitbeck: And you also have guys that are just really nomadic about their jobs. Like they're changing careers all the time. They're changing the companies they work for. So how do you involve somebody in a feedback loop that's, you know, had 19 different jobs in 25 years, you know?

[00:45:29] Eric Goranson: Yeah, it's funny. Like there's a.

[00:45:31] Eric Goranson: Eight houses up for me. There's a house right now. That's they tore it down. It's a couple million dollar house up there and they tore the whole, you know, 700, 000 house to put the other one in and I go walking by and I'm like, wow, guys, uh, would have been cool. If you to tape the Tyvek seems on that. Maybe, you know, but then I can walk around the corner and there's a guy doing an addition down there and they're putting the new windows in and his flashing in detailing is just from walking on the sidewalk, walking [00:46:00] my dog, I'm like, that is beautiful, you know, so it's, there's a big difference out there with, with, and I know you do the same thing, man, I know you're driving around and you're sitting at the stop sign of the stoplight looking over going, what the heck are they trying to do over there?

[00:46:16] Matt Whitbeck: Oh, we, we laugh all the time. Uh, so my interior designer, Julie Moleski, uh, she's, uh, we, we always laugh 'cause we feel like we're the, uh, you know, the old ornery up Muppets balcony. Like, ah, just critique in the heck

[00:46:34] Eric Goranson: on everything because we'll go for a drive

[00:46:36] Matt Whitbeck: to go visit a new client. And it's like eight houses will pass by under

[00:46:43] Eric Goranson: construct.

[00:46:45] Matt Whitbeck: You know, and she is a designer. She sees things different than I do. I see things as a builder. She sees them as a designer. And it's just, it's funny. You know, you, you can't, you can't help once you know better, but that's also one of the pollutants is I had a [00:47:00] younger guy when I was doing the, this old house job.

[00:47:02] Matt Whitbeck: So he was next door and he was, he's a painting contractor and he started to dabble a little bit more into general contracting. Really nice guy. Um, I want to say he was from Finland, maybe. Um, and he's really trying, you know, so he had a lot of, we had a lot of dialogue, Q's and A's about like, Hey, should I do it this way?

[00:47:21] Matt Whitbeck: Should I do it that way? And he's trying to rebuild these people's porch. Um, just, I mean, absolutely. Funny to me sometimes what happens between somebody who like cares and wants to learn and somebody who's just going to like try to take their client's money and sort of move to that next stage. Right. So, you know, here's the guy who was really trying to make it work, trying really hard, putting the effort in.

[00:47:45] Matt Whitbeck: Some people don't care, you know, they're not, they're not going to ask anybody. Right. So it takes a lot of humility to ask, um, but you know, the, the information resources are out there, but, you know, you said earlier in the show, you know, some of them are bad [00:48:00] information, so you gotta,

[00:48:03] Eric Goranson: that's the bad part. I mean, generally our trades are packed with people that.

[00:48:09] Eric Goranson: Know their stuff. They care, but you're right. It's the education side of it. You know, um, maybe somebody that's been out there doing windows and sighting learned how to do house wrap 20 years ago and didn't do one minute of CEU. And what was known back then versus what is known now is two different, two different processes.

[00:48:30] Eric Goranson: You know, back what you did when you first learned what house wrap was, is now wrong.

[00:48:37] Matt Whitbeck: I learned wrong. I learned the absolute wrong way. And I I was, I'll tell you right now, when I started wrapping houses in Tyvek, I was the absolute neatest and a perfectionist at putting Tyvek on wrong. Same. You never

[00:48:56] Eric Goranson: saw wrong.

[00:48:58] Eric Goranson: Same, you know, I wrapped [00:49:00] the Tyvek in around the top and around the bottom before I put the window in. There was no tape. It was beautiful. I was tucking that thing in

[00:49:08] Matt Whitbeck: like

[00:49:08] Eric Goranson: a military bag. The corners were tight, everything was, you know, wrong fasteners, everything, everything was wrong. Staple, staple, staple.

[00:49:21] Eric Goranson: Boy, you know, you

[00:49:21] Matt Whitbeck: could put a bow on the front of it and it probably leaked like a sift, but that's how I was taught to do it. And I was trying hard to make it better than what everybody else was doing. But with just bad information, you know? So, I mean, that was, that was being 20, you know, I just didn't know.

[00:49:38] Eric Goranson: Yeah, absolutely. And what's fun now though, is, is every year. And I know you do the same thing. You'll learn something a little bit new. You know, this is a, this is such an evolving science to this. That's why it's a science. It's building science. It's, it's evolving. It's not stagnant. You know, we're, we're realizing that, Hey, there's a new fix for this.

[00:49:57] Eric Goranson: There's a new way to do this. And, you know, [00:50:00] 10 years ago, people were rarely doing blower door tests and remodels and things like that. And these are all. Things that are changing so much. And especially when you get into home technology and as you know, ERV systems where you're bringing in air and makeup air, there's a lot of new stuff happening out

[00:50:16] Matt Whitbeck: there.

[00:50:17] Matt Whitbeck: Yeah. Yeah. Smart technology with being able to read that air constantly. I mean, there's some really cool stuff out there. Uh, Panasonic's been working on with being able to actually read the air and trigger back to different mechanisms in the house. Um, you know, that's great. I mean, the fact that we're doing that.

[00:50:35] Matt Whitbeck: Um, that, that we can test and sense air quality. It's huge. You know, v o C output's a really big deal, and I think with, um, you know, covid happening, people really, um, getting overly cautious and worried about trying to clean every surface in their house. Not a lot of people understand that. Um, the V O C L put that volatile organic compound output.

[00:50:59] Matt Whitbeck: From some of [00:51:00] these cleaning products are really horrible for your lungs, you know, and being in the trades, you know, I, I talked to a guy today and he was a amazing mentor of mine. He just had, um, his knees done for, I think the fourth time he's in his, um, early eighties, right? Still in the field working, right?

[00:51:19] Matt Whitbeck: Owns one of the most successful companies in our area. Really amazing guy. And I mean, another one of these encyclopedia builders and he, um, you know, he was thinking about that and he was talking to me about having his knees. And then he's like, look, that's, that's what happens. You know, I, I beat on these joints.

[00:51:37] Matt Whitbeck: They're going to need to be redone. We said, you know what? I'm really happy that my lungs still work and my heart still works. My liver still works. He's like, I've just treated those things well and I've taken care of them. I've had a job where I've been blessed where I'm an outdoor good air a lot. I'm not stuck inside buildings.

[00:51:54] Matt Whitbeck: I'm not inhaling bad chemicals all the time. And it's been great. So I, you know, I think about that [00:52:00] and I think about these studies that people have done and how long we're indoors and how much time we spend indoors. And it's, it's the bulk of our life, you know, if we're at the 78, 84 percentile of just being indoors, you know?

[00:52:12] Matt Whitbeck: Yeah. It's, it's tough. You're breathing in a lot of bad, stagnant, funky air, and then you add other chemicals that are offgassing. It's tough. It's beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. One of the studies, it's, you saw, um, recently I was reading and just a nerd out on you for a second, if I haven't already in the show. Uh, they were sitting there found in, uh, V O C traces from paint seven months later after the paint was done.

[00:52:37] Matt Whitbeck: Seven months. I mean, that's just absolutely amazing to think about some of the tight energy efficient houses we're building, and then what's happening right there, you know, to have to go in and repaint something or, you know, tune something up, or you think about people using these, you know, high v o c paints, acrylics and enamels, or mm-hmm.

[00:52:55] Matt Whitbeck: you know, God forbid, it's an aerosol based, you know, urethane or something like, [00:53:00] oh yeah, that's going to be in the air for a

[00:53:01] Eric Goranson: long time. It is. We just had a roster through on here recently and actually last week and uh, we were diving into that subject as well with him, but it's one of those things that.

[00:53:13] Eric Goranson: And so many people don't realize that, you know, not using that, it's so simple, not using that kitchen vent hood when you're cooking, it's not vented to the outside, you know, maybe putting in that, uh, I'm not going to use a brand here, but that plug in air freshener that puts all that oil up. It's like, You realize you're vaping inside your tight house, right?

[00:53:35] Eric Goranson: That stuff that's that orange, purple, green, yellow, that's vaping inside your house. It's just a more diluted way. Do you want to be doing that 24 seven?

[00:53:44] Matt Whitbeck: Yeah. Yeah. Bring, bring your baby right over there next to you. No, I don't like the smell of the

[00:53:49] Eric Goranson: dirt off of

[00:53:51] Matt Whitbeck: the old, uh, aerosol funky smells there. But no, I mean, even simple stuff, right?

[00:53:57] Matt Whitbeck: Like absolutely simple things. Um, you [00:54:00] run in timers on the fans in your bathroom, you know, that's, that's a staple item in all of our homes. We don't give people an option for it. Uh, they should be in there letting them know they should keep the door shut to their bathroom because. You know, the CFM on that fan is not designed to vent your whole house.

[00:54:14] Matt Whitbeck: It's designed to vent that one room. And if you keep the door open, I'm now venting your house and not the room. So, you know, if you want it to work, right, you got to shut the door. You're going to paint your nails. You know, this is now a conversation. I got a 14 year old daughter, shut the bathroom door and turn the fan on.

[00:54:28] Matt Whitbeck: Like, I don't want to smell your nail polish in the other room.

[00:54:31] Eric Goranson: Like that's VOCs you're smelling.

[00:54:34] Matt Whitbeck: I don't need it. I don't, I don't, I don't need to get high when you paint your nails, you know, and that's exactly what's in a tight house. So, well,

[00:54:41] Eric Goranson: you know, Brown, Brown, new tones got a thing out now too. I don't know if you've caught that Panasonic's got that great system.

[00:54:46] Eric Goranson: Brown has a new system out where you can plug in these sensors into outlets and they're again, air sensors. But they'll touch Bluetooth into the ERV and it'll talk to the ERV and the vent fans in the bathroom. So if it goes, [00:55:00] wow, we need to ventilate. It'll crank it on automatically, which is kind of cool.

[00:55:04] Eric Goranson: Yeah.

[00:55:05] Matt Whitbeck: Panasonic is almost the same system. So, you know, all of our leading, uh, fan techs are really realizing that they got to start interfacing this stuff and making it work. Right. And if you can piggyback that information back to an ERV, right. Have the RV, maybe your hood. Right over top of the range and the bathroom fans all interfacing with each other.

[00:55:27] Matt Whitbeck: And I said, the next step beyond that is really getting something like a venerable skylight. So you look at like VLUX has a system or that senses indoor air quality. So that'll crack itself open and let out, you know, it can sense carbon dioxide levels picking up. So you have. You know, Thanksgiving's coming up.

[00:55:42] Matt Whitbeck: Right. So, um, you know, by the time this airs, we'll probably be after that. So, Hey, everybody, Christmas is coming up. Christmas is coming up. You're going to have a lot of people in your house, you know, the carbon dioxide level is going to get really rich in some of these things. We'll now just slowly open to vent that out.

[00:55:57] Matt Whitbeck: And you don't end up with that funky headache later [00:56:00] on, you

[00:56:00] Eric Goranson: know? Well, yeah, it ain't the Turkey folks. It's making you sleepy. It's the 15 people that are emitting carbon dioxide. That's that's dragging you down. And remember you and I were at that, uh, that high performance trailer that we had, that was that tiny home.

[00:56:14] Eric Goranson: And it was so funny because you and I'd be in there in Vegas with that thing and be up on stage and you could watch the. The, the air quality in that building go bad. And all of a sudden it would automatically turn the, start venting the skylights because it's like, even though it's inside, it's trying to be smart and going, Hey, we need better air in here.

[00:56:31] Eric Goranson: It's venting to itself, but it was funny

[00:56:34] Matt Whitbeck: back into its own

[00:56:36] Eric Goranson: building. Exactly. It didn't know any better. Cause it's assuming it's exterior, not a problem with the product. It was a problem with the air quality in the building. Cause I knew as soon as I saw that thing moving, when we're up on stage, I'm like, Oh, that's not good.

[00:56:50] Matt Whitbeck: Yeah, no, it was a tight, it was a tight building. I remember they did the blower door test and, uh, they turned it on the thing, uh, short circuit and basically gave him back an error [00:57:00] code just because it had decompressed the building in about three and a half seconds.

[00:57:06] Eric Goranson: The only way they could get the blower to run is to crack one of the

[00:57:09] Matt Whitbeck: windows so it could get circulation.

[00:57:12] Matt Whitbeck: Um, but it was just that tight of a build and that was the goal, you know, make this building really tight on a. Off the shelf products and it can be done. You just got to pay attention to the detailing. Um, but yeah, you're a hundred percent right. It's funny. You know, you get, and you, we had tours going through there.

[00:57:28] Matt Whitbeck: So people were walking through there constantly and it did get funky. And then God forbid, someone let one rip in there

[00:57:35] Eric Goranson: for a minute. Yeah, that was, that was going to linger, shall we say.

[00:57:43] Eric Goranson: But, oh yeah, that's good stuff. And you're going to be up here, uh, soon at the, uh, NRLA speaking, aren't you?

[00:57:49] Matt Whitbeck: Yeah. So, uh, I will be on the expo that's in a couple of weeks. So I'm going to do some high performance clinics there and do some, uh, Q and A. Uh, you know, lumber yards, [00:58:00] dealers, um, architects, some builders just kind of talking about, um, performance building, you know, I like that show.

[00:58:07] Matt Whitbeck: Cause it is a lot of, uh, lumber dealers that get there and it's really cool to try to get some face time with them and talk to them about things they should get on their shelf. Uh, to kind of help out all the, all the builders and homeowners get better usage of product.

[00:58:22] Eric Goranson: Cool. Yeah. Tell the guys over Curtis Lumber.

[00:58:23] Eric Goranson: I said hello. Yeah, absolutely . I love those guys. Yeah, they're great. Love those guys. So, Matt, we gotta get out to break here, but, uh, what's the best way for people to find you, especially if they're in your area and they want to talk to you about doing a project?

[00:58:38] Matt Whitbeck: Uh, so they can check us out on, uh, Facebook at Whitbeck Construction.

[00:58:42] Matt Whitbeck: Uh, I think in Instagram we're the same handle. It's, uh, Whitbeck Construction there. Um, other than that, look us up on our website. It's, uh, whipbackconstruction. com. And, um, you know, all of our contact information's on there. You can find us, uh, give us a reach. Our office [00:59:00] manager, Stacey's, uh, really great. Be able to help you out with anything or put you in contact with any of the members in our firm that can get you answers.

[00:59:09] Eric Goranson: Cool, cool brother. And yeah, I just saw your, uh, episodes running on Magnolia Network on reruns here this last week. Oh,

[00:59:15] Matt Whitbeck: cool. Yeah, my son thinks it's hilarious. We were in the grocery store the other day and some guy's like, Hey, I saw you on TV. And he's like, he doesn't realize that at 11 years old, he kind of gave me a good rip.

[00:59:25] Matt Whitbeck: He's like, yeah, dad, you're, uh, you're local famous, huh?

[00:59:29] Eric Goranson: Oh, Snap. Yeah. Kids bringing it. That was a

[00:59:39] Eric Goranson: solid, that was a, that was a Whitbeck burn right there. Hard. Evan, like younger me burned me. Exactly. That apple doesn't far fall far from the tree. It seems that is awesome. Well, Matt, thanks for taking the time today, brother. I know you're super busy and trying to get stuff wrapped up for, uh, [01:00:00] Winter projects, but, uh, appreciate you taking the time

[01:00:02] Matt Whitbeck: today.

[01:00:03] Matt Whitbeck: But thanks for having me, man. Always really appreciate it.

[01:00:06] Eric Goranson: All right, man. Thanks again. Hey, I'm Eric G and you've been listening to Around the House