Solar has gotten popular in Texas, and it's long been popular in FL. But before dropping tens of thousands on it, you should know that there are WAY EASIER and more cost effective ways to improve your home's efficiency. So join us and Travis Jones of Smart Roof & Home Performance as we discuss various aspects of building science, energy efficiency, and solar energy, particularly in the context of Texas. They explore the importance of improving home durability, the role of air sealing and ventilation, and the challenges of solar energy adoption in the region. Travis Jones shares his expertise in roofing and home performance, emphasizing the need for a holistic approach to home improvement that prioritizes energy efficiency before considering solar solutions. In this conversation, the speakers delve into the complexities of modern building practices, focusing on issues such as humidity control, ventilation, and the impact of building codes on home performance. They discuss the trade-offs of energy efficiency versus traditional building methods, the challenges faced by contractors in the roofing industry, and the importance of educating consumers about quality construction. The conversation also highlights innovative products showcased at a recent builders conference, emphasizing the need for continuous learning and adaptation in the construction field.
TLDR:
- Building science encompasses durability, comfort, health, and efficiency.
- Improving energy efficiency can reduce the need for solar panels.
- Air sealing is crucial for maintaining indoor air quality.
- Solar energy may not be cost-effective in Texas due to low energy prices.
- A well-ventilated home is essential for preventing mold and maintaining comfort.
- Homeowners can easily tackle air sealing projects themselves.
- The roof is the first line of defense against water damage.
- Controlled ventilation is necessary for modern energy-efficient homes.
- Identifying and addressing energy leaks can significantly improve comfort.
- A holistic approach to home performance leads to better outcomes.
- Humidity is often misunderstood as the main culprit in home issues.
- Controlled ventilation is crucial for managing indoor air quality.
- Building codes can create unintended consequences in home performance.
- Air tightness can improve energy efficiency but may introduce new problems.
- Consumer demand drives builders to adopt new practices and materials.
- The roofing industry lacks regulation, leading to varied quality.
- Educating consumers is essential for improving construction standards.
- Collaboration among contractors can elevate industry practices.
- Innovative products can address long-standing issues in construction.
- Continuous learning is vital for adapting to new building challenges.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Nobody's watching this right now, it's fine.
Yeah, so we'll do an official countdown intro and then I trim it off.
Why is that so live stream?
That would be very funny if like we recorded the pre thing and then put that out as aseparate thing later.
I'm not sure if that's possible.
(00:20):
Well, you know, we're fixing to find out.
mean, people might be watching for all I know, but you know, we're just gonna go with it.
Okay, we about ready to start this thing for real?
Let's do it.
be anymore ready.
I am so freaking excited.
right.
Where are my video uploads?
(00:40):
You actually don't seem ready.
Yeah, right?
Yeah, that's fair.
listen, there's upload media.
Come on now.
I had done uploaded this last time.
All of this gets turned off, guys.
Here we go.
(01:00):
All right.
Learn that.
Here we go.
This will be the official start right here, and I will trim it in three, two, one.
(01:23):
It is another day, another episode of the Ride Along here today.
And Matt, how you doing?
Welcome back on.
Travis, how are you doing as well,
Doing good, man.
It's been a busy couple of days.
We a big windstorm in Dallas, Fort Worth.
So yeah, it's been crazy.
So you're in Dallas, Matt, obviously you're down in Houston.
(01:45):
Houston just arriving back from Las Vegas actually.
we got to talk a little bit about that because we talked in the last episode about it forsure.
want to hear whether or not you and Beau got into a fight.
We did not actually.
was a very, it was a very, it was a bromance to say the least.
(02:05):
Actually, I mean, that's not the least.
I don't want to get anybody like too excited or whatever.
was just, it was just, we're bros, man.
You know, if there's, you you meet people online.
I've been talking to Beau on the phone.
I've talked to him online or whatever for like three years.
You sometimes wonder like if these people are going to be the same in person as theyactually are like, like, you know, their, their virtual self.
(02:27):
I actually didn't ever question that really with both and and it was it was exactly whatyou would expect.
Now he's my brother from another mother man.
We're just we're buddies and we had a real good time stomping around Vegas and really Imean like I can't think of anybody else I'd rather walk around that show and try to learn
(02:47):
about stuff with.
He has a really you know he's got a we're much different in the way we think and so.
When we're walking through the show and seeing all this new and cool stuff, he's like,wow, let's go, go check this out.
And then we ended up in a booth.
would have never gone in.
And then next thing you know, we're making videos.
And so we've got content for days, probably weeks because of it.
(03:08):
See, I get to all that out and it was a bromance where we went into a booth that I wasn'tthinking about and we were making and I can just make it say whatever after that.
This is some special, I'll see you guys on the ride along here.
See, this is why you guys need to subscribe to the show if you haven't already, definitelydo because the conversation with Beau last time was fantastic.
(03:30):
And we're having a good conversation here today.
with Mr.
Travis as well.
So first of all, Travis, tell everybody a little bit about yourself, what you do up inDallas, kind of what your specialty is.
Because before we jump into the topic, after you introduce yourself, we got a little newsegment that we're going to be kind of doing here.
first, tell everybody who you are, man.
Yeah.
It's Travis Jones in Dallas, serving all kind of Dallas Fort Worth market.
(03:54):
But, my company is called Smart Roof and Home Performance.
And then on Instagram, I'm Travis builds it.
And so we do roofing, home performance testing, insulation, and then kind of within that.
I like to drill down on for residential roofing.
do fortified roofs, which is kind of the next standard for how to do a better, moreresilient roof.
(04:16):
And then on the insulation side, I do blower door testing and blower door assisted airsealing to try to tighten up the envelope, make, give people a more comfortable and
healthy home.
No, I love it.
Definitely.
you know, kind of in, in talking with Matt a little bit leading up to this, one of thethings that we really want to dig in on today, and I think for everybody watching, this is
(04:38):
what's going to be interesting.
We're not just talking home inspections.
We're not just talking roofs.
We're going to be talking a little bit about building science because in your dealingswith roofing, it's not just roofing material shingles or anything of the nature that you
specifically deal with, but you also deal with solar a little bit as well, don't you?
I do.
Yeah.
So we, I've dabbled in solar, you know, solar was kind of when interest rates were low,solar was a little bit more attractive to people.
(05:05):
I think it was a better value, but as interest rates have gone up, you know,unfortunately, solar can be a, one of those industries where people over sell what it can
do for you and over promise.
And, it was really because of seeing some of the failures of solar, I got interested inbuilding science and figuring out.
Can we make a home better first before we put solar on it?
(05:28):
And that's what led me to get a blower door and start doing home performance testing andtrying to just make the house better so that solar, if it's appropriate, it's not
appropriate for every house.
Especially some of the ones with you.
If all the panels are in the shade, you know, you're not, it's not really doing anything.
And unfortunately, I mean, down the street for me, I've got someone who's has just a fullarray, just always shaded.
(05:51):
It's like, that's just not how solar works, but.
Let's assume you get the house really fine tuned and working well.
Solar's a great cherry on top, but it's something we have to be a little more cautiousabout as I've learned a lot more about building science.
I love it because when I first met you, at least in person, Travis, this is actually whatkind of fascinated me and wanted, said, man, we need to talk about this, like on a podcast
(06:17):
or on some form, we need to have this conversation because it was intriguing to me thatyou were, I think, selling solar equipment and you were walking to these houses and
realizing these people did not need solar equipment.
They needed better energy efficiency.
And that...
You know, motivated you to start your business.
If I have that storyline, correct.
(06:38):
Is that, is that right?
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, it was kind of when I started smart roof and home performance a little over, um,we're in our third year.
So October of 2022, I've been selling solar for about a year and a half.
I've been selling roofs for other companies.
And then I just kind of saw an opportunity to bring it all together and, really do alittle more of a high touch.
(07:01):
I'm not a volume churn and burn guy.
I like to do a little more high touch with the client, figure out what do they reallyneed?
And then solar kind of fits into that discussion.
Some people come to me wanting solar and we're like, Hey, let's do a few other thingsfirst.
And then we can get to solar later on.
that's, started my own company so I could do things the way I wanted to do them.
(07:24):
yeah, yeah, I understand that.
So let me ask you a question about that.
Like, so I think we're probably going to bounce a little bit from solar to energyefficiency and really with a core topic being building science.
you know, solar in Texas is not very popular.
And I want to know, like, your take on this.
So how do you feel about once we get a house in better energy efficient condition, once weaddress some of these issues where you're losing efficiency?
(07:52):
You actually think even in Texas that solar is still a good option.
think it can be, but it's all about like, are your goals with solar?
if you have, let's say your house, we've tightened up the envelope, we've improved theinsulation, we've gotten better, more efficient HVAC.
(08:13):
Once we do all that, we say, okay, now we need solar.
Well, if you were to analyze that house.
before you did all the improvements and then after you did all the improvements and putthe numbers on all these solar proposal tools, after you do all the improvements, you
would need a lot less solar.
So that's a good starting point.
You need fewer panels, which means it's less cost.
(08:34):
So now it's less that you're even risking on it.
Okay.
And to the extent that it can offset your electricity bill a little bit, that's, thatcould be a good thing, but the real
What we really need in the whole energy space is better storage options, i.e.
batteries, because right now they're really expensive and they don't make financial sense.
(08:56):
So I, in our market, they make sense in markets where there's much higher electricitycosts, but
But the battery's not gonna pay for itself in Dallas, Fort Worth.
It's just not going to.
But if you get outages and you wanna have a battery so that you can keep your freezer andall the meat you got from hunting season from staying frozen, or if you wanna keep your
(09:20):
CPAP machine running at night, maybe that's good reason to do it.
But it's not right now.
Here's the question I ask people.
I say, why do you want solar?
And if the first thing they say is to save money, I'm like, then we need to have a seriousconversation.
Because you're not most likely going to save much money in Texas because our energy costsare still pretty low.
(09:47):
And when they buy back whatever you send to them, they buy it kind of at a discount.
there's just a lot of hype.
lot of it, Smithy.
Yeah, there's a lot of hype with it.
And then the whole thing of like, it adds value to your house.
mean, really how many, how many realtors are like, take that off so we can list yourhouse, you know.
(10:09):
whether or not it adds value.
A lot of people in Texas don't really want it yet.
And I think that a lot of that has to do with the fact that our energy is not veryexpensive as compared to some other areas.
And that's the reason why I wanted to know like in Texas, if it made sense, what you'resaying makes total sense.
So like, you know, just lower the amount of energy you actually need, uh, by making yourhome more efficient, put your money into those areas and then, and then let's see if we
(10:34):
even
want to go that direction after all of that, because I think you probably see a lot moredirect benefits by handling these issues.
Whenever you have somebody such as yourself, go through there and really pick the houseapart and start finding areas where you're missing efficiency.
Now, with that being said, because I've seen you with the smoke pen and everything goingthrough and finding areas where houses are leaking.
(11:02):
By the way, I have one of those coming, not that one.
okay.
another company that actually manufactures a product called flue blocker.
And it's something that goes inside your chimney flu when you're not using it out of likebig thick wool.
And it's there to keep drafts from coming in through that area.
It's really cool.
let me see.
What's that?
(11:22):
I've seen some people like stuff vacant chimneys or vacated chimneys with insulation.
the same thing except it's thinner, but it's like a it's a it's more like a mineral woolor something like that.
And it's got handles on it.
So and it's sized specifically for the area.
I mean, I think it's a really good idea to block that area when you're not using it.
Right.
And so I'll I'll I'll let you know what those are.
But anyway, they also manufacture a smoke pencil or smoke pen or something like that.
(11:46):
And so they're they're sending one over and I'm going to I'm going to take a look at thatand see how I might be able to incorporate that as well.
Because I've seen you use it and it seems like such a great tool, especially
conjunction with the blower door.
where are the areas that you're seeing, let's say existing homes, what are the areas thatyou are seeing that are failing the most often in terms of energy efficiency, things that
(12:08):
are like that.
I want to call it like low hanging fruit.
Like you walk into a house and you're like, okay, well, first of all, we do this, this andthis.
Yeah.
You know, and first, just so you kind of understand the way I think about a house, a houseis a system, right?
It all works together and in building science, you kind of have the four pillars of thatsystem, durability, comfort, health, and efficiency.
(12:35):
Right?
So if it's, if we're not going to build it to last, why are we building it?
If we don't have the most durable approach to shed water and all that, right.
But then what do we do to make a house more comfortable and healthy, mainly air quality,but that's also sound and light, you know, it's environmental quality.
Here's the cool thing.
If you make a house durable, comfortable, and healthy, it will be efficient.
(13:00):
Now here's a question that I want to kind of pivot off of that specifically because I didan episode of the ride along last year.
We kind of got two, two different tacks with the show here.
One is the podcast as we're doing now, but there was also kind of a video series that Ishot last year and I got to do a, episode with an inspector just outside of Austin.
(13:21):
And one of the things that, we have here in Florida is something that's happening out inTexas as well, which is that they are
throwing up new homes faster than you can blink, right?
So when it comes down to durability, what standards are you seeing or what are things thatpeople can do to improve upon durability in houses that are being chucked up as quickly as
(13:42):
they are these days?
Well, in my opinion, it always starts with the roof, right?
Your roof is your umbrella and it's supposed to, and I always tell my guys, I'm like, Hey,what's the roof's job to keep the water out, right?
Water destroys buildings.
So we just have to have, we need to do better roofs.
(14:03):
And that's why I do, you could look at the whole fortified standard.
It's a, it's a better than code approach.
And we do it when we're reroofing.
We're doing one tomorrow.
In fact, where.
It's things like taping the seams on the deck, re-nailing the deck, making it more secureand then doing everything to keep the water out.
So you start with a better roof, siding, you know, people have, I'm sure more people aregetting familiar with the concept of a rain screen on siding where, know, you have your
(14:34):
sheathing and then you, you don't just put your siding against it, but you create a numberof ways to do it, but you're creating a gap for draining and drying so that
moisture gets behind the siding, it can drain dry.
it starts with that for sure.
And then, you know, if you have issues with drainage, you got to deal with that.
So, but we start with the roof.
(14:56):
I think unfortunately the code, you know, for it's interesting fortified is a better thancode way to do a roof, but most of the time, the roofs that are being built and re roofed,
which happens a lot, especially in my market, it's like the biggest hail market.
Those, they're not even being built to code to begin with.
People don't change the flashing, which leads to failures.
(15:18):
People don't have the ventilation right.
That's one of the things we fix the most.
Even when someone doesn't need a re-roof, we'll go in and say, man, you'reunder-ventilated, which may mean you need more exhaust, but it often means you need more
intake, soffit vents or other types of intake vents.
So we want to ventilate it right.
And once we do that, that helps the performance.
(15:40):
And then I think from a low hanging fruit standpoint, Matt, as you mentioned, like ahomeowner could do this.
And I've got some videos of me doing it at my own house.
A lot of times after a renovation, right?
Contractor goes in, cuts a bunch of holes and puts what kind of, we love recessed lights,right?
All those recessed lights, but if they don't air seal around those lights, it's kind ofcrazy math.
(16:04):
If you take a six inch can,
and cut the drywall and you don't seal that gap between the drywall and the can, it'sbasically the same thing as putting a golf ball size hole in your sheetrock.
And if you multiply that times 20 lights, right, that's a big hole connecting your atticair you don't want to be breathing to your inside air.
(16:28):
so go in and getting a tube of big stretch and pulling off the trim and if it's notsealed, just
big stretching around your lights or around your AC grills.
That's a weekend project that most people could do and that's low hanging fruit.
Right.
Definitely.
Like I like the sash coat plug there.
(16:48):
That's a fantastic company.
But and Big Stretch is the tool for that job.
But yeah, I mean, that's an area where not only are we talking about like thermal energy,but also like dust and things are coming through those holes as well, especially when the
house is pressurized and depressurized, whether it's using fans or whether it's openingand closing doors or whatever.
(17:09):
Like you said, you know, a lot of times, you know, whenever
you'll get those situations where a home will depressurize whenever you're using anexhaust fan because they don't have makeup air or something like this.
I see this in homes every now and again, and you can just imagine what's happeningwhenever things are moving from the attic space into the house and all the stuff that's in
(17:33):
your attic, not only just the air and the temperature, but all the dust and debris that isbringing with it.
Here's like quick, like simple example.
So I was at a person's house and they said, man, this tiny little hallway.
like main living space hallway into a bedroom.
Okay.
That hallway each, there were doors, a door from the living room into the hallway and adoor from the hallway into the bedroom.
(17:56):
said, gets so hot in this hall.
Why does it get so hot in here?
So I'm, you know, looking at it.
It's like, well, first of all, you have a return, an AC return at the bottom of thesheetrock in the hallway.
And right above me was the attic stair.
And so I actually just closed the doors, turn on the air conditioner.
(18:18):
had my little manometer and I stuck a hose under the door and it depressurized by eightPascals that little space.
And I'm like, it's just sucking air from your, every time your air conditioning kicks on,it's sucking air from around that attic stair into your living space.
So you need to air seal your attic stairs or we're
(18:40):
We're going to start installing, we're doing our first one next week, the FACRO AtticStair.
Did you see those at the build show?
Dude, those are amazing.
They lock, they have like a little key lock them and it's an air sealed Attic Stair.
Cause how are they?
simply using like weatherstripping around the hatch?
It's the way they build it.
Yeah.
It's a, you know, they're not cheap.
(19:00):
It's, think we're getting one that's a, it's a, about a $700 door.
and you know, there's different prices.
They, this one we're getting has a cool like metal stairs, but, you can maybe get them aslow.
wooden stairs, maybe as low as like 350, but basically because there's weather strippingand the way they built it, when it shuts and you turn the key and it latches, it's
(19:25):
airtight.
And they also make a cover you can put on it to have another layer that has an airtightdeal.
know,
encapsulated foil contraptions that go around the top of the attic access.
Yeah, the funny thing about those, I've got some funny videos about those.
Everyone thinks, I'm insulating.
It's like, yeah, but you're not air sealing.
So I was in an attic and it was a great friend, Evan, who's a mold inspector.
(19:50):
He's part of our BS and beer group here in Dallas.
And he's done his own, like a lot of DIY stuff at his house.
And he thought he'd done a good job of sealing that attic stair and he had the littlesilver.
And so we go up in the attic.
have the blower door running and I've got my little retro tech air tracer running alongthe seam and it's just sucking air into the house.
(20:11):
It's like even Evan, who's a very conscientious knows what he's doing.
It's just, it's just not the sometimes just not the right product.
You just need a better product to serve that purpose.
I've got a question on this simply because again, you know, when I got into the homeinspection field almost 10 years ago, a lot of what you heard people talking about was
(20:32):
that you wanted the house to be able to breathe, right?
You wanted the house to be well ventilated, be able to breathe.
And yet a lot of the modern language is about air sealing.
Like, do you actually want the house to breathe or do you want it to be airtight?
Which is it?
So, Allison Bales has been writing this blog for years called Energy Vanguard.
(20:54):
He's out of Atlanta.
He's a brilliant guy, brilliant building science guy.
And he wrote a book called, A House Needs to Breathe or Does It?
And he talks about it.
said, look, if you're inside something that's breathing, you better get out.
No, he said, a house does need to breathe only to the extent that we make it breathe.
(21:17):
Controlled ventilation.
it's controlled.
it's like, and another phrase you'll hear the building science guy say is build tight,ventilate right.
So it's cause where do you want the air coming from?
Do you want to breathe naturally from like who wants to spend time in their attic?
If you have an unconditioned attic that you don't want to breathe that air.
(21:37):
So we want to air seal all of that.
if you get tight enough to where you need the highest end fresh air, like an ERV, you dothat.
But maybe you just need a ventilating dehumidifier just to get some fresh air in there.
And if it's an older home, you may never get it so tight in a retro that you need freshair coming in.
(21:59):
It can't hurt.
But yeah, I think you have to, it's a
An attic, an unconditioned attic needs to breathe.
We want good ventilation, but a house only needs to breathe to the extent that we arecontrolling it.
It's about control.
Now, I think like to add something to that and to like kind of expand upon what yourquestion was, Brad, like, you know, when you're talking about these old houses, I think
(22:23):
you should kind of compare them more to an attic.
Okay.
Like the fact of the matter is like we are building houses to try to achieve better energyefficiency.
This has been going on for a long time now.
And while we're, we were making advancements like into like passive houses and houses thathave like crazy energy efficiency.
(22:43):
There's this space where like, you know, we, we have the old houses that like basicallyweren't efficient.
And then we have the houses like in between the high performance that are like somewhatefficient.
you know, anytime you get past that old house where like it was completely, I mean, you'dhave a 2000 square foot house with like a four and a half ton AC on it.
(23:06):
Cause they had barely any, if any insulation, they had single pane windows.
There was like,
no R value anywhere going on in these things.
You don't want to encapsulate that, right?
Like you don't want to eliminate air movement.
Like you have to, and that was the reason why you think like, okay, well how we didn't airseal things like back in the day, like why were houses not just completely filled with
(23:28):
mold?
Well, they compare them to an attic.
mean, air was literally moving through them the whole time, you know, but now, but therewas also costing a lot more in energy because you know, you had to have much bigger units.
and you had to run them a lot more to cool them or heat them.
You you're constantly losing heat in these houses.
And so, you know, as we get into more modern construction, we're getting more energyefficient and then it becomes more important to manage ventilation and to have everything
(24:00):
be air sealed and control what is going through the house.
Because I mean, that's where the danger happens is whenever we get into this zone wherewe're getting energy efficient and we lose control of ventilation, that's when all of a
sudden the stuff from outside starts making an inside where when and where it's notsupposed to.
(24:20):
And we end up in situations where we have mold, where we are not just uncomfortable, butwe have a health concern.
I'm sorry, Travis, you're the building science guy.
How did I do on that?
yeah.
That's I think what, what has happened is.
So it's like, think about an airplane.
Some of the early airplanes.
(24:41):
There was like, you know, you had a little windshield, but it was open to the air, right?
You weren't worried about getting fresh air in the airplane.
just breathe.
And then as airplanes got more sophisticated and wanted to climb higher, now you have todo more things.
You got to, it's got to be more airtight.
But once it's airtight, now we got to make sure we're filtering it.
(25:01):
And then if you want to go to space in a rocket ship, the higher performance the airplane,the more you need things like the right kind of ventilation and airflow and filtration.
It's the same thing with a car.
It's one thing to ride in a convertible, but when you get in your car, we think of howmuch we've improved the way climate zones and air and all that.
(25:25):
But those all have filters and all that.
What's happened is with our homes, as we've gotten them tighter, we don't always bring inthe right, technology, the right mechanicals.
Right.
So Corbett Lunsford is one of my mentors in the, in the home performance space.
He's got an incredible YouTube channel, home diagnosis.
(25:46):
They, he's got three seasons of a TV show where they talk, they go in and figure out howto solve these problems with, with a home.
And he says his, his kind of model is very simple.
Air seal, insulate, mechanicals.
So I do the air seal, insulate part, and then I have a great HVAC contractor to come inand say, all right, now that we've air sealed and insulated, what do we need to do on the
(26:10):
mechanical side?
Dehumidification, fresh air, filtration.
And then sometimes, how many times, you know, or...
You go to a house and they had, they knew they needed by code some fresh air.
So they're just pulling a duct from a soffit and they have a motorized damper going intothe return.
And it's, and it's basically been disabled, right?
(26:32):
Why, why did they disable it?
Well, but what's happening?
There's a reason that they came out and said, let's disable this fresh air.
It's cause they have too much humidity, right?
that is the culprit, but oftentimes that is not the culprit.
That is controlled ventilation.
And where the culprit is, is the areas where they slipped up and we have uncontrolledventilation.
(26:55):
Well, it can be though.
Here's the thing.
If you dump fresh air in Texas into your return plenum, what are the chances that air isgonna be a lot warmer than the air that's in your house?
Pretty good.
That warm air coming into that plenum is now gonna hit that evaporator coil on your AC andit's gonna increase the humidity.
(27:24):
in the system.
So I think they disable it because it's every time the fresh air comes on in the summer,it just makes it more humid in the house.
Well, there's a reason it's cause that hot air coming in is warming up the coil and addingmoisture to the air.
So that's just not a good way to do fresh air.
It's a shortcut.
It's acceptable, but that's where doing it through a Santa Fe ventilating dehumidifier sothat you're not or an ERV.
(27:51):
So you're not dumping hotter air into the return.
You know, so that's part of the problem is it's as we get tighter and the code requiressome things and not others.
Guys don't understand how to, they don't know what to do.
had a, talking to a guy.
I'm not, I won't name the builder, but they do really nice homes.
And he was telling me, yeah, we put a fresh air.
(28:12):
We build tight enough that we have to put fresh air in all of our houses.
It's like, well, do you put dehumidifiers?
He's like, no, why not?
Well, the code doesn't require it.
It's extra.
You know, they're like a high end production builder.
And he said, they keep getting callbacks for if they're lucky, people say it's too humid.
But if it's really bad, they say, I have mold.
And it's like that we should be putting dehumidifiers in, but we don't, especially at thatlevel of air tightness.
(28:39):
Because now the air conditioner is more efficient.
It doesn't run as much.
It doesn't pull out as much humidity.
So you need dedicated dehumidification.
It gets very complex.
we need great HVAC contractors.
We need more of them to help solve these issues.
I, I start to wonder if we're introducing some of our own problems to fix down the line,right?
(29:03):
you know, for example, it's, and I'm not, I'm not advocating against more efficient homes,but down here in Florida, you've got, houses that have weathered everything from
hurricanes to termites to everything in between.
And they've been here for over a hundred years, right?
I mean, every, every part of the country where you've got ancient homes and it's like, sowhat, what has allowed those houses to hold up?
(29:24):
without modern efficiency codes over the years and still be relatively durable, still berelatively sound to have aged gracefully in such a way, whereas with the sophistication
that we have now with some of these new systems, we have to now think extra hard about,for example, like you're talking about air sources, how much humidity?
(29:45):
It's like, okay, we solved one problem, but by doing that, we just created another one.
And this to me is now so regionally specific that, you know, one specific building code isnot going to solve for it.
You're going to have to do this by region, right?
You guys have a lot of humidity in Dallas.
Imagine building things that tight in Florida where humidity is just, we have air you canwear, right?
(30:08):
So how do you solve for that?
You know, something that I kind of was thinking on as you were talking about sealingthings.
is like how does air tightness better affect or negatively affect things like stack effectin the wintertime because in Dallas you guys still deal with winter to a small degree.
(30:28):
Can you speak to that at all?
Well, sure.
mean, if you have the more air sealed your attic is in the winter, right?
That hot air is wanting to push up.
Well, you're keeping it.
You're trying to cut off the path for the air to get out of the conditioned space.
Right.
And so, there's a, I call him building science Yoda.
(30:51):
name is, Ken Allison.
He's coming to speak at our BS & beer next next or this month, but he likes to say,
If you stop the flow of air, you don't need much insulation.
A lot of the heat transfer is air transfer.
And so I think getting it air sealed is going to help that.
(31:16):
And I think maybe to zoom out and say, why do we build to begin with?
What is the purpose of the built environment?
We're trying to separate ourselves.
from the outdoor conditions, right?
And if you've ever been, if you've ever had the privilege of on a warm night, being acamping, on a camping trip and you're in a tent with another guy.
(31:43):
It's not a pleasant night's sleep, right?
It is not a pleasant night's sleep, right?
And you gotta roll those, right?
It's like we've cut off the outside, now what's, the thing is as humans, we create a lotof stuff.
We have humidity, we have smells, we have skin that sloughs off methane.
(32:03):
Yes, we cook, like the act of cooking in your, you're throwing off all kinds of VOCs andpollutants.
So we've enclosed ourselves so we can stay,
out of the elements, right?
mean, the whole, South really grew after the air conditioner was invented when Carrierinvented the air conditioner.
Cause people are like, well now we can, now we can live in this stuff.
(32:25):
But the more you live in it, it's like, what else is happening in the space and how do wedeal with it?
And you're right, the tighter we, there's always a consequence.
It's a, there's, and maybe it's a way of thinking of it's just trade-offs.
You know, the tight, like think about it with roofing.
We see a lot of houses that originally had a wood shake roof on it.
(32:47):
And they were a big gable and they just have two little gable vents on the end and theyhad wood shakes.
Well, eventually we couldn't do wood shakes anymore.
So we took those off.
We decked the house and now we have an asphalt shingle.
So that whole assembly used to breathe really well with just these two little gable vents.
(33:08):
It does not breathe well anymore, right?
Because
Just the shingles themselves.
It wasn't airtight all around.
So that whole assembly could breathe.
But then we changed the surface, the primary surface and didn't change the ventilation.
like, let's put whirly birds.
Let's put Ridge vent.
(33:28):
Let's put, you know, I there's a house I've been working on that there is no soffit.
There's just not any to pull air.
And it has gable vents, Ridge vent and whirly birds.
They have basically three different kinds of exhaust.
It's not working.
Yeah.
But the house wasn't designed to work like that.
So we have to say, okay.
(33:49):
It's we've changed something.
What are the unintended consequences?
How do we need to, and now what do we need to do to update the design, change the roofassembly, et cetera.
Right.
So I think we have to do that with everything.
And, we, does, it's going to be a, it takes time to evolve into how we need to handle allof that.
(34:09):
You know, everything from the wall and roof assemblies to the inside to all of it.
We're just continually losing.
you're, you're asking like, you know, basically like, why don't we build like we used tolike things were fine.
Why do we had to go mess with it?
I think some of it comes down to like changes in code, um, that, know, kind of like whatyou were saying, you know, some things that we are not allowed to do anymore for other,
(34:35):
for various reasons.
I mean, we used to do all kinds of crazy stuff.
They used to put asbestos in homes, lead paint, galvanized water piping, you know, we comeup with.
better ways of doing things because we learn more.
And then I think, you know, the, becomes this gray area because you want to, uh, you know,well, okay.
(34:56):
If, if, if we can, if we know this now, if we have this knowledge now, let's use thisknowledge to create something a little bit better.
And then, so, so we do that.
But I mean, yeah, every time you try to get some, make something a little bit better,there could be something else to, oh, well, we did this, but we didn't do that.
And this is.
really what's happening in production building right now because they're kind of like, gota toe in building science because people want energy efficiency and that's the other
(35:21):
driver, right?
It's people.
People want energy efficiency, right?
The people want that.
And so builders have to build this or the people are going to buy the houses or at leastthey have to sell them on it, right?
So production builders are selling them on the energy efficiency, but they're notdelivering.
They're not meeting the expectations and there's not really a whole lot of people that
know what those expectations are, how to achieve them, not in construction these days.
(35:46):
And man, it is seemingly a dying breed, construction, people in construction.
We need people in the trades for sure.
we do.
Now, Matt, you hit on something interesting there, which is the consumer demand as well.
I remember seeing these were new construction homes.
Gosh, like I said, almost about 10 years ago when I first started inspecting andWashington, DC was going through a new construction boom where I was at the time.
(36:11):
you know, the guy that I kind of learned under, he pointed out a few things as I was goingthrough on a few phase two inspections and he pointed out some of the some of the caulk
work that was being done around
exterior joints in the wall framing.
And he's like, yeah, so if you look at this corner over here, if you look over thesewindows here, a lot of these builders, we didn't use to caulk these areas, but they're
(36:35):
doing that now to sell it as being more energy efficient.
You really think that that little bead of caulk was really doing anything?
No, but the buyers coming on site and they're going, well, this separates them from thisguy down the road, this builder down the road over here in this division.
And for them, it was just that one little thing that they could do that made them.
more valuable than the other builder, right?
(36:56):
But from there, you started to see fully encapsulated basements.
You started to see closed cell foam, spray insulation, things like that.
so, you know, I guess maybe consumer awareness does help to drive some of this to adegree.
Travis, how have you really seen that affect your roof business?
Man, the roofing business, it's the wild west out here in Texas.
(37:18):
So there's no, there's no license.
There's no mandatory license in Texas.
The only roofing license is voluntary and it's through RCAT.
And what I got, I was able to get it last year and became one of literally 350 roofers inTexas with a license.
(37:39):
We have like 15,000 roofing companies and now some people like, the license doesn't meananything, but, okay.
It's marketing, you know, whatever.
Hey, I went through the, I want the accountability.
want to keep getting better, but the incentives, if you ever heard the phrase, show me theincentive and I'll show you the outcome.
Like, what are we incentivizing?
(38:01):
So unfortunately the way most people, especially in DFW get new roofs is insurance paysfor it.
So they're always like, I get a new roof.
My insurance is going to pay for it.
Well, as deductibles have gone up, that becomes a problem because guys used to just eatthe deductible.
And then how do they do that?
How do they do a roof for less?
Well, they cut corners.
(38:22):
So people are used to this idea that, well I can, I shouldn't have to pay for a roof.
I've been paying my insurance premiums, which are high.
They feel justified and I get it.
Right.
But.
Because the roof, like I said, is this umbrella for your house, and it's important tore...
to do it correctly, to protect your home, protect your investment, protect your family.
(38:44):
really, to me, it comes back to the consumer.
They have to get educated about what kind of roof do I want?
I'll give you an example.
So we've been out doing repairs the last couple days after this big windstorm.
And in fact, I just went to one.
my last call before I came back to do this podcast and I get there and he's got threelittle hip and ridge cap shingles in his hand.
(39:12):
It's the only thing that happened to his house.
It's the reason he had to call me.
And I look at it.
was like, well, this is three tab.
It's not a ridge shingle.
It's three tab because
Low wind rating.
To save a couple hundred bucks, so many roofers around here will buy, instead of buyingridge shingles, they'll buy three-tab, they'll cut it, and they'll create their own ridge.
(39:37):
Okay, a three-tab shingle, at best, on a roof is at a 60 mile per hour wind rating.
A ridge shingle, you can get 110 mile per hour wind rating.
And ridges and hips are the most vulnerable to wind.
Like, why would you take this cheap product and put it here?
(39:57):
And so he paid me more to fix it.
I was like, look, I'm just going to reattach these and nail them.
them.
Here's another shout out for Sacha.
Use them through the roof to seal it and, and you'll be good.
Okay.
And so I had to charge him.
I went out there, did the work.
What I charged him is more than it would have cost to buy the right product to begin with.
(40:23):
That's ridiculous.
It's, is.
doing it all the time.
And I guess that's the deal.
you you carrying that license and that means something, right?
It means, Hey, I, I, there's, there's something here to say, I am trying to give youvalue.
(40:43):
I'm trying to bring the best, you know, possible product to you as, the client, you know,and this is, and I'm licensed to do so I went out of my way when I didn't have to, to
achieve this, to try to give you that level of comfort.
Yeah.
You know, and then what I do, Brad, too, is part of why I, in my, on my Instagram,especially, I'm just trying to, and I made, I didn't just do the repair.
(41:08):
I made a couple of videos I'll post later because I'm trying to educate homeowners.
And I'm, and, I can't remember who said this.
It may have been Matt Rice here.
was talking about it.
He's like, look, educate your competition for free.
That's good, man.
And so I have literally tomorrow we're doing a fortified roof.
(41:29):
And I think at least one guy's coming down from Oklahoma to see it.
But I have, I've invited three of my competitors to come and learn how to do fortifiedroofs while I do one.
Because at the end of the day,
I like, I'll tell them, I'm like, look, we need more good guys.
(41:49):
know, the race to the bottom, that knows no end.
And I'm not interested in competing and I'm not competing with the guys that are racing tothe bottom.
The guys that are doing it well.
I would love to lose a job to one of those guys.
Cause there's so much work.
that's a whole nother episode altogether because we deal with this from the homelessfraction front, right, Matt?
(42:10):
I mean, it's dealing with guys that are trying to undercut the competition.
I had a hopefully she's not listening to the episode because I'm doing a home inspectionfor tomorrow.
But you know, there's a an agent north of me, who I used to do a lot of work with up inDC.
And she said, Hey, I've got this client for you, but you better not charge me those DCprices.
(42:31):
I'm like, I'm going to charge you what I charge you.
Because I just had somebody that was just up north of Tampa call me and goes, hey, whatdid you charge for this job that you last did?
Yeah, we raised our rates.
We would have charged $200 over that.
You should probably do the same.
And it's and he's one of the leading guys in the area.
But I had lost work in that neck of the woods before because an agent goes, yeah, I'msorry, a standard inspection, a four point and a win.
(42:56):
I can find somebody that could do that for 375 all in.
I was like, then you can use them because I'm not making that drive for that money.
You know, but it's there's always, yeah, there's always going to be those scalpers.
So you're bringing value, you're adding value, and you're doing it in ways that are goingto be much more noticeable and realizable to a consumer than, you know, just making a jump
(43:19):
to something that is a massive upfront cost in the form of something like solar.
These are practical things that they could do to really improve upon their home.
That's that's huge.
So, dude, we could talk about this all day.
But there's a couple things that I want to talk about before we wrap up the show.
One.
because I've only got a little bit left here.
I wanted to reintroduce a segment that I used to do on the show back in the day called thedrink of the day.
(43:41):
And this would be at some point in the future where we have a really cool little cutawaything.
let's go left to right on my screen.
Matt, what are you sipping on tonight?
tonight I have got a cup of Eagle rare.
I, I poured the, yeah, I went, I went, semi special occasion for this one.
(44:02):
I was feeling good about this podcast.
So I went, with a 10 year Eagle rare.
Cheers.
I love it.
Cheers to you , Matt.
Travis, How about you buddy.
All right.
So this is funny.
It's a little embarrassing, but I was inspired by Matt's green light.
You know, we talked about St.
Patrick's Day is coming up, right?
And so I have my little green light.
It almost looks like I'm my like from the three person view.
(44:25):
looks like my screen is bleeding into Travis's screen.
That's pretty awesome.
Totally.
I have a son in law and I have a son in law to be my middle daughter is getting married inMay.
My son in law to be his, he lives in Colorado.
His name is Dallas and he bought me a bottle of that Eagle rare and I would have pouredit, but I finished it.
(44:50):
Congratulations, it's important to do.
So my other son, my son-in-law currently, God love him, Zach, he's a good old boy.
And he brought this over and cause there was some green in it.
You'd see that not quite the color.
It's a little light.
Guys, this is the Jim Bean apple.
(45:13):
This is, you know what?
Hey, it's a.
Apple liqueur infused with Kentucky straight bourbon.
So, you know, it's a little on the sweet side, but hey, cheers.
had relatives
a Thursday kind of drink.
Yeah, that's right.
That's it cheap stuff on there is you know somebody told me before you know what thedifference between a nine dollar bottle of wine and a 90 dollar bottle of wine is About 90
(45:39):
91 something like that.
Yeah, they're $89.
I can't do math Yeah, yeah, it's that's all it is.
Hey, whatever gets the job done, you know, but Yeah, it's you know, whatever way it getstough
So for me over here, I am wrapping up a little Sazerac, which I made with an ice cubetonight.
You're not usually supposed to do that.
You're supposed to use a chilled glass, but I cheated and I wanted it cold fast because wewere recording this show.
(46:03):
So I whipped up the traditional New Orleans cocktail, the Sazerac, which is a great plugbecause Inspection Fuel 2025 will be in New Orleans this September, I believe.
So stay tuned for dates on that because the show will definitely be live there too.
But Matt, let's wrap it up here.
Dude, what were some key highlights from the Builders Conference,
(46:25):
man, key highlights.
You know, I, when I go into this thing, I mean, I really never know what I'm going to seewhenever I go through the expo.
And so, I did find a few really cool products.
There is a product made by, you know, the, the cassette tapes, Maxell.
Okay.
They have, a, I can't remember what the acronym stands for, but I made a video on it, butthey make up here.
(46:48):
have one right here.
They make a product.
MAP is another company that they have same company.
makes this product right here, which is a piece of flashing.
is basically just rubber, it is self.
It's got an adhesive on it, self adhesive.
And so, you know, they make these with different size holes.
They make them brown.
They make them square as well.
(47:09):
And a couple of different things that you can use for flash wall penetrations.
Obviously, you know, we've got companies like quick flash and green skin that makeproducts like this, but they are made with a lot of material.
Well, the one thing about like quick flashes, they make a big
Plastic piece which is great and easy to tape but that same plastic base is used for everyone of them So they have that same wasted material that's used for every one of these You
(47:34):
know if you got a small hole like this They just use this small amount of material andit's just the self adhesive so you don't even have to have any tape So I think that's a
super cool product I also ran into a company called Hydro block which I think is out ofUtah I think they're out of Utah
(47:54):
And they make a product that can be used for drywall.
I've got a sample of it somewhere here, but it can be used.
It's completely 100 % waterproof.
Now I've not used this, so this isn't a plug for them, but it's completely 100 %waterproof.
It can be used in place of drywall.
It can be used for sheathing.
(48:14):
It's structurally rated and can be used for sheathing.
It can be used under stucco.
So you know how they were doing like,
Therefore a little while they had like a hardy backer or a hardy board they would use andput a stucco material over it.
I haven't seen this in a while now, but, uh, because there's so many problems in like ourarea.
So humid, it's, we have so many problems with, with moisture and stucco, right?
(48:37):
Uh, not just humidity, but just rain period.
Uh, we have so many problems with that.
And so they were trying to find solutions to that.
So they had this time type of fiber cement board product that had like a cement, uh,coating on the outside that looked like stucco, but it wasn't, this can be done very much
in that way.
only the board itself is completely 100 % waterproof, super duper light, but yet superdurable.
(48:59):
I feel like it's got like a, like a, it was like an hour or two hour fire rating orsomething like that.
Like it is a long time before it actually burns.
It's almost like everything the guy told me, and again, I have no experience with it, buteverything the guy told me was like, wow, like this is a pretty spectacular product.
So Hydro Block, that was another one that I thought was pretty cool.
(49:19):
Those are probably the two takeaways that I can really remember.
I mean, I got a bunch of material, a bunch of things that I filmed.
Also, Dyken, I visited the Dyken booth and didn't even realize that they have a largefacility out here and real close to me and invited me over to take a look at some of their
equipment and do some videos over there.
So I'm looking forward to that as well.
(49:42):
Cool.
awesome, man.
Good stuff.
So well, Travis, we got to have you back on the show, man.
Seriously, this has been an awesome conversation.
Truly.
And honestly, I think like next year, that we need to just have you podcast live from thebuilders conference.
That'd be pretty awesome, too.
Truly.
Yep.
But no, Travis Matt warned me he's like, Hey, look, this might be the easiest episode thatwe've done, just because look,
(50:08):
Travis can rip on so many different things.
Seriously, I mean, we're at 50 minutes.
This is gonna be one of the longer episodes.
I hope you guys are stuck around for the whole thing, seriously.
But Travis, where can they go follow you?
Seriously, where can they follow you on social media?
So I do most of my stuff on Instagram.
Travis builds it and, um, would love to interact with people, comment, you know, askquestions.
(50:28):
I, you know, I love it.
You know, my, uh, I'm, I'll be 52 in June.
And one of the things I've liked to say is, um, a couple of phrases that had become a partof my life more so in the last, I don't know, 10 years than before is.
(50:48):
I changed my mind about that or I was wrong about that.
And I think that's part of, part of my journey in being able to share stuff is it's notall cause I just know everything.
It's cause I want to learn.
want to grow.
And if, if I get new information, I want to, I want to change my mind.
(51:10):
And we get too stuck, I think, in our way.
So I loved the whole Instagram world.
That's kind how Matt and I connected.
And I've connected with so many others that way.
And the great thing is there's a lot of people out there trying to do some good.
So I appreciate that.
Matt, super appreciate all your stuff, man.
(51:31):
It's inspiring to a lot of people.
And we love it,
Likewise, my friend, likewise.
That's awesome.
Well, you guys go follow Travis, follow Matt, follow the show to definitely make sure yousubscribe because there's going to be a whole lot more of this coming down the road.
Honestly, Travis, I feel like for our first long term, like if we're to go full three hourJoe Rogan show style, like we're just got to bring you back because this was easy.
(51:55):
The easiest, you know, we've done truly.
So thank you guys so much for watching.
We'll see you right here next time on The Ride Along
awesome.
All right.
I'm hitting end here.
Nobody's watching this right now, it's fine.
Yeah, so we'll do an official countdown intro and then I trim it off.
Why is that so live stream?
That would be very funny if like we recorded the pre thing and then put that out as aseparate thing later.
I'm not sure if that's possible.
(00:20):
Well, you know, we're fixing to find out.
mean, people might be watching for all I know, but you know, we're just gonna go with it.
Okay, we about ready to start this thing for real?
Let's do it.
be anymore ready.
I am so freaking excited.
right.
Where are my video uploads?
(00:40):
You actually don't seem ready.
Yeah, right?
Yeah, that's fair.
listen, there's upload media.
Come on now.
I had done uploaded this last time.
All of this gets turned off, guys.
Here we go.
(01:00):
All right.
Learn that.
Here we go.
This will be the official start right here, and I will trim it in three, two, one.
(01:23):
It is another day, another episode of the Ride Along here today.
And Matt, how you doing?
Welcome back on.
Travis, how are you doing as well,
Doing good, man.
It's been a busy couple of days.
We a big windstorm in Dallas, Fort Worth.
So yeah, it's been crazy.
So you're in Dallas, Matt, obviously you're down in Houston.
(01:45):
Houston just arriving back from Las Vegas actually.
we got to talk a little bit about that because we talked in the last episode about it forsure.
want to hear whether or not you and Beau got into a fight.
We did not actually.
was a very, it was a very, it was a bromance to say the least.
(02:05):
Actually, I mean, that's not the least.
I don't want to get anybody like too excited or whatever.
was just, it was just, we're bros, man.
You know, if there's, you you meet people online.
I've been talking to Beau on the phone.
I've talked to him online or whatever for like three years.
You sometimes wonder like if these people are going to be the same in person as theyactually are like, like, you know, their, their virtual self.
(02:27):
I actually didn't ever question that really with both and and it was it was exactly whatyou would expect.
Now he's my brother from another mother man.
We're just we're buddies and we had a real good time stomping around Vegas and really Imean like I can't think of anybody else I'd rather walk around that show and try to learn
(02:47):
about stuff with.
He has a really you know he's got a we're much different in the way we think and so.
When we're walking through the show and seeing all this new and cool stuff, he's like,wow, let's go, go check this out.
And then we ended up in a booth.
would have never gone in.
And then next thing you know, we're making videos.
And so we've got content for days, probably weeks because of it.
(03:08):
See, I get to all that out and it was a bromance where we went into a booth that I wasn'tthinking about and we were making and I can just make it say whatever after that.
This is some special, I'll see you guys on the ride along here.
See, this is why you guys need to subscribe to the show if you haven't already, definitelydo because the conversation with Beau last time was fantastic.
(03:30):
And we're having a good conversation here today.
with Mr.
Travis as well.
So first of all, Travis, tell everybody a little bit about yourself, what you do up inDallas, kind of what your specialty is.
Because before we jump into the topic, after you introduce yourself, we got a little newsegment that we're going to be kind of doing here.
first, tell everybody who you are, man.
Yeah.
It's Travis Jones in Dallas, serving all kind of Dallas Fort Worth market.
(03:54):
But, my company is called Smart Roof and Home Performance.
And then on Instagram, I'm Travis builds it.
And so we do roofing, home performance testing, insulation, and then kind of within that.
I like to drill down on for residential roofing.
do fortified roofs, which is kind of the next standard for how to do a better, moreresilient roof.
(04:16):
And then on the insulation side, I do blower door testing and blower door assisted airsealing to try to tighten up the envelope, make, give people a more comfortable and
healthy home.
No, I love it.
Definitely.
you know, kind of in, in talking with Matt a little bit leading up to this, one of thethings that we really want to dig in on today, and I think for everybody watching, this is
(04:38):
what's going to be interesting.
We're not just talking home inspections.
We're not just talking roofs.
We're going to be talking a little bit about building science because in your dealingswith roofing, it's not just roofing material shingles or anything of the nature that you
specifically deal with, but you also deal with solar a little bit as well, don't you?
I do.
Yeah.
So we, I've dabbled in solar, you know, solar was kind of when interest rates were low,solar was a little bit more attractive to people.
(05:05):
I think it was a better value, but as interest rates have gone up, you know,unfortunately, solar can be a, one of those industries where people over sell what it can
do for you and over promise.
And, it was really because of seeing some of the failures of solar, I got interested inbuilding science and figuring out.
Can we make a home better first before we put solar on it?
(05:28):
And that's what led me to get a blower door and start doing home performance testing andtrying to just make the house better so that solar, if it's appropriate, it's not
appropriate for every house.
Especially some of the ones with you.
If all the panels are in the shade, you know, you're not, it's not really doing anything.
And unfortunately, I mean, down the street for me, I've got someone who's has just a fullarray, just always shaded.
(05:51):
It's like, that's just not how solar works, but.
Let's assume you get the house really fine tuned and working well.
Solar's a great cherry on top, but it's something we have to be a little more cautiousabout as I've learned a lot more about building science.
I love it because when I first met you, at least in person, Travis, this is actually whatkind of fascinated me and wanted, said, man, we need to talk about this, like on a podcast
(06:17):
or on some form, we need to have this conversation because it was intriguing to me thatyou were, I think, selling solar equipment and you were walking to these houses and
realizing these people did not need solar equipment.
They needed better energy efficiency.
And that...
You know, motivated you to start your business.
If I have that storyline, correct.
(06:38):
Is that, is that right?
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, it was kind of when I started smart roof and home performance a little over, um,we're in our third year.
So October of 2022, I've been selling solar for about a year and a half.
I've been selling roofs for other companies.
And then I just kind of saw an opportunity to bring it all together and, really do alittle more of a high touch.
(07:01):
I'm not a volume churn and burn guy.
I like to do a little more high touch with the client, figure out what do they reallyneed?
And then solar kind of fits into that discussion.
Some people come to me wanting solar and we're like, Hey, let's do a few other thingsfirst.
And then we can get to solar later on.
that's, started my own company so I could do things the way I wanted to do them.
(07:24):
yeah, yeah, I understand that.
So let me ask you a question about that.
Like, so I think we're probably going to bounce a little bit from solar to energyefficiency and really with a core topic being building science.
you know, solar in Texas is not very popular.
And I want to know, like, your take on this.
So how do you feel about once we get a house in better energy efficient condition, once weaddress some of these issues where you're losing efficiency?
(07:52):
You actually think even in Texas that solar is still a good option.
think it can be, but it's all about like, are your goals with solar?
if you have, let's say your house, we've tightened up the envelope, we've improved theinsulation, we've gotten better, more efficient HVAC.
(08:13):
Once we do all that, we say, okay, now we need solar.
Well, if you were to analyze that house.
before you did all the improvements and then after you did all the improvements and putthe numbers on all these solar proposal tools, after you do all the improvements, you
would need a lot less solar.
So that's a good starting point.
You need fewer panels, which means it's less cost.
(08:34):
So now it's less that you're even risking on it.
Okay.
And to the extent that it can offset your electricity bill a little bit, that's, thatcould be a good thing, but the real
What we really need in the whole energy space is better storage options, i.e.
batteries, because right now they're really expensive and they don't make financial sense.
(08:56):
So I, in our market, they make sense in markets where there's much higher electricitycosts, but
But the battery's not gonna pay for itself in Dallas, Fort Worth.
It's just not going to.
But if you get outages and you wanna have a battery so that you can keep your freezer andall the meat you got from hunting season from staying frozen, or if you wanna keep your
(09:20):
CPAP machine running at night, maybe that's good reason to do it.
But it's not right now.
Here's the question I ask people.
I say, why do you want solar?
And if the first thing they say is to save money, I'm like, then we need to have a seriousconversation.
Because you're not most likely going to save much money in Texas because our energy costsare still pretty low.
(09:47):
And when they buy back whatever you send to them, they buy it kind of at a discount.
there's just a lot of hype.
lot of it, Smithy.
Yeah, there's a lot of hype with it.
And then the whole thing of like, it adds value to your house.
mean, really how many, how many realtors are like, take that off so we can list yourhouse, you know.
(10:09):
whether or not it adds value.
A lot of people in Texas don't really want it yet.
And I think that a lot of that has to do with the fact that our energy is not veryexpensive as compared to some other areas.
And that's the reason why I wanted to know like in Texas, if it made sense, what you'resaying makes total sense.
So like, you know, just lower the amount of energy you actually need, uh, by making yourhome more efficient, put your money into those areas and then, and then let's see if we
(10:34):
even
want to go that direction after all of that, because I think you probably see a lot moredirect benefits by handling these issues.
Whenever you have somebody such as yourself, go through there and really pick the houseapart and start finding areas where you're missing efficiency.
Now, with that being said, because I've seen you with the smoke pen and everything goingthrough and finding areas where houses are leaking.
(11:02):
By the way, I have one of those coming, not that one.
okay.
another company that actually manufactures a product called flue blocker.
And it's something that goes inside your chimney flu when you're not using it out of likebig thick wool.
And it's there to keep drafts from coming in through that area.
It's really cool.
let me see.
What's that?
(11:22):
I've seen some people like stuff vacant chimneys or vacated chimneys with insulation.
the same thing except it's thinner, but it's like a it's a it's more like a mineral woolor something like that.
And it's got handles on it.
So and it's sized specifically for the area.
I mean, I think it's a really good idea to block that area when you're not using it.
Right.
And so I'll I'll I'll let you know what those are.
But anyway, they also manufacture a smoke pencil or smoke pen or something like that.
(11:46):
And so they're they're sending one over and I'm going to I'm going to take a look at thatand see how I might be able to incorporate that as well.
Because I've seen you use it and it seems like such a great tool, especially
conjunction with the blower door.
where are the areas that you're seeing, let's say existing homes, what are the areas thatyou are seeing that are failing the most often in terms of energy efficiency, things that
(12:08):
are like that.
I want to call it like low hanging fruit.
Like you walk into a house and you're like, okay, well, first of all, we do this, this andthis.
Yeah.
You know, and first, just so you kind of understand the way I think about a house, a houseis a system, right?
It all works together and in building science, you kind of have the four pillars of thatsystem, durability, comfort, health, and efficiency.
(12:35):
Right?
So if it's, if we're not going to build it to last, why are we building it?
If we don't have the most durable approach to shed water and all that, right.
But then what do we do to make a house more comfortable and healthy, mainly air quality,but that's also sound and light, you know, it's environmental quality.
Here's the cool thing.
If you make a house durable, comfortable, and healthy, it will be efficient.
(13:00):
Now here's a question that I want to kind of pivot off of that specifically because I didan episode of the ride along last year.
We kind of got two, two different tacks with the show here.
One is the podcast as we're doing now, but there was also kind of a video series that Ishot last year and I got to do a, episode with an inspector just outside of Austin.
(13:21):
And one of the things that, we have here in Florida is something that's happening out inTexas as well, which is that they are
throwing up new homes faster than you can blink, right?
So when it comes down to durability, what standards are you seeing or what are things thatpeople can do to improve upon durability in houses that are being chucked up as quickly as
(13:42):
they are these days?
Well, in my opinion, it always starts with the roof, right?
Your roof is your umbrella and it's supposed to, and I always tell my guys, I'm like, Hey,what's the roof's job to keep the water out, right?
Water destroys buildings.
So we just have to have, we need to do better roofs.
(14:03):
And that's why I do, you could look at the whole fortified standard.
It's a, it's a better than code approach.
And we do it when we're reroofing.
We're doing one tomorrow.
In fact, where.
It's things like taping the seams on the deck, re-nailing the deck, making it more secureand then doing everything to keep the water out.
So you start with a better roof, siding, you know, people have, I'm sure more people aregetting familiar with the concept of a rain screen on siding where, know, you have your
(14:34):
sheathing and then you, you don't just put your siding against it, but you create a numberof ways to do it, but you're creating a gap for draining and drying so that
moisture gets behind the siding, it can drain dry.
it starts with that for sure.
And then, you know, if you have issues with drainage, you got to deal with that.
So, but we start with the roof.
(14:56):
I think unfortunately the code, you know, for it's interesting fortified is a better thancode way to do a roof, but most of the time, the roofs that are being built and re roofed,
which happens a lot, especially in my market, it's like the biggest hail market.
Those, they're not even being built to code to begin with.
People don't change the flashing, which leads to failures.
(15:18):
People don't have the ventilation right.
That's one of the things we fix the most.
Even when someone doesn't need a re-roof, we'll go in and say, man, you'reunder-ventilated, which may mean you need more exhaust, but it often means you need more
intake, soffit vents or other types of intake vents.
So we want to ventilate it right.
And once we do that, that helps the performance.
(15:40):
And then I think from a low hanging fruit standpoint, Matt, as you mentioned, like ahomeowner could do this.
And I've got some videos of me doing it at my own house.
A lot of times after a renovation, right?
Contractor goes in, cuts a bunch of holes and puts what kind of, we love recessed lights,right?
All those recessed lights, but if they don't air seal around those lights, it's kind ofcrazy math.
(16:04):
If you take a six inch can,
and cut the drywall and you don't seal that gap between the drywall and the can, it'sbasically the same thing as putting a golf ball size hole in your sheetrock.
And if you multiply that times 20 lights, right, that's a big hole connecting your atticair you don't want to be breathing to your inside air.
(16:28):
so go in and getting a tube of big stretch and pulling off the trim and if it's notsealed, just
big stretching around your lights or around your AC grills.
That's a weekend project that most people could do and that's low hanging fruit.
Right.
Definitely.
Like I like the sash coat plug there.
(16:48):
That's a fantastic company.
But and Big Stretch is the tool for that job.
But yeah, I mean, that's an area where not only are we talking about like thermal energy,but also like dust and things are coming through those holes as well, especially when the
house is pressurized and depressurized, whether it's using fans or whether it's openingand closing doors or whatever.
(17:09):
Like you said, you know, a lot of times, you know, whenever
you'll get those situations where a home will depressurize whenever you're using anexhaust fan because they don't have makeup air or something like this.
I see this in homes every now and again, and you can just imagine what's happeningwhenever things are moving from the attic space into the house and all the stuff that's in
(17:33):
your attic, not only just the air and the temperature, but all the dust and debris that isbringing with it.
Here's like quick, like simple example.
So I was at a person's house and they said, man, this tiny little hallway.
like main living space hallway into a bedroom.
Okay.
That hallway each, there were doors, a door from the living room into the hallway and adoor from the hallway into the bedroom.
(17:56):
said, gets so hot in this hall.
Why does it get so hot in here?
So I'm, you know, looking at it.
It's like, well, first of all, you have a return, an AC return at the bottom of thesheetrock in the hallway.
And right above me was the attic stair.
And so I actually just closed the doors, turn on the air conditioner.
(18:18):
had my little manometer and I stuck a hose under the door and it depressurized by eightPascals that little space.
And I'm like, it's just sucking air from your, every time your air conditioning kicks on,it's sucking air from around that attic stair into your living space.
So you need to air seal your attic stairs or we're
(18:40):
We're going to start installing, we're doing our first one next week, the FACRO AtticStair.
Did you see those at the build show?
Dude, those are amazing.
They lock, they have like a little key lock them and it's an air sealed Attic Stair.
Cause how are they?
simply using like weatherstripping around the hatch?
It's the way they build it.
Yeah.
It's a, you know, they're not cheap.
(19:00):
It's, think we're getting one that's a, it's a, about a $700 door.
and you know, there's different prices.
They, this one we're getting has a cool like metal stairs, but, you can maybe get them aslow.
wooden stairs, maybe as low as like 350, but basically because there's weather strippingand the way they built it, when it shuts and you turn the key and it latches, it's
(19:25):
airtight.
And they also make a cover you can put on it to have another layer that has an airtightdeal.
know,
encapsulated foil contraptions that go around the top of the attic access.
Yeah, the funny thing about those, I've got some funny videos about those.
Everyone thinks, I'm insulating.
It's like, yeah, but you're not air sealing.
So I was in an attic and it was a great friend, Evan, who's a mold inspector.
(19:50):
He's part of our BS and beer group here in Dallas.
And he's done his own, like a lot of DIY stuff at his house.
And he thought he'd done a good job of sealing that attic stair and he had the littlesilver.
And so we go up in the attic.
have the blower door running and I've got my little retro tech air tracer running alongthe seam and it's just sucking air into the house.
(20:11):
It's like even Evan, who's a very conscientious knows what he's doing.
It's just, it's just not the sometimes just not the right product.
You just need a better product to serve that purpose.
I've got a question on this simply because again, you know, when I got into the homeinspection field almost 10 years ago, a lot of what you heard people talking about was
(20:32):
that you wanted the house to be able to breathe, right?
You wanted the house to be well ventilated, be able to breathe.
And yet a lot of the modern language is about air sealing.
Like, do you actually want the house to breathe or do you want it to be airtight?
Which is it?
So, Allison Bales has been writing this blog for years called Energy Vanguard.
(20:54):
He's out of Atlanta.
He's a brilliant guy, brilliant building science guy.
And he wrote a book called, A House Needs to Breathe or Does It?
And he talks about it.
said, look, if you're inside something that's breathing, you better get out.
No, he said, a house does need to breathe only to the extent that we make it breathe.
(21:17):
Controlled ventilation.
it's controlled.
it's like, and another phrase you'll hear the building science guy say is build tight,ventilate right.
So it's cause where do you want the air coming from?
Do you want to breathe naturally from like who wants to spend time in their attic?
If you have an unconditioned attic that you don't want to breathe that air.
(21:37):
So we want to air seal all of that.
if you get tight enough to where you need the highest end fresh air, like an ERV, you dothat.
But maybe you just need a ventilating dehumidifier just to get some fresh air in there.
And if it's an older home, you may never get it so tight in a retro that you need freshair coming in.
(21:59):
It can't hurt.
But yeah, I think you have to, it's a
An attic, an unconditioned attic needs to breathe.
We want good ventilation, but a house only needs to breathe to the extent that we arecontrolling it.
It's about control.
Now, I think like to add something to that and to like kind of expand upon what yourquestion was, Brad, like, you know, when you're talking about these old houses, I think
(22:23):
you should kind of compare them more to an attic.
Okay.
Like the fact of the matter is like we are building houses to try to achieve better energyefficiency.
This has been going on for a long time now.
And while we're, we were making advancements like into like passive houses and houses thathave like crazy energy efficiency.
(22:43):
There's this space where like, you know, we, we have the old houses that like basicallyweren't efficient.
And then we have the houses like in between the high performance that are like somewhatefficient.
you know, anytime you get past that old house where like it was completely, I mean, you'dhave a 2000 square foot house with like a four and a half ton AC on it.
(23:06):
Cause they had barely any, if any insulation, they had single pane windows.
There was like,
no R value anywhere going on in these things.
You don't want to encapsulate that, right?
Like you don't want to eliminate air movement.
Like you have to, and that was the reason why you think like, okay, well how we didn't airseal things like back in the day, like why were houses not just completely filled with
(23:28):
mold?
Well, they compare them to an attic.
mean, air was literally moving through them the whole time, you know, but now, but therewas also costing a lot more in energy because you know, you had to have much bigger units.
and you had to run them a lot more to cool them or heat them.
You you're constantly losing heat in these houses.
And so, you know, as we get into more modern construction, we're getting more energyefficient and then it becomes more important to manage ventilation and to have everything
(24:00):
be air sealed and control what is going through the house.
Because I mean, that's where the danger happens is whenever we get into this zone wherewe're getting energy efficient and we lose control of ventilation, that's when all of a
sudden the stuff from outside starts making an inside where when and where it's notsupposed to.
(24:20):
And we end up in situations where we have mold, where we are not just uncomfortable, butwe have a health concern.
I'm sorry, Travis, you're the building science guy.
How did I do on that?
yeah.
That's I think what, what has happened is.
So it's like, think about an airplane.
Some of the early airplanes.
(24:41):
There was like, you know, you had a little windshield, but it was open to the air, right?
You weren't worried about getting fresh air in the airplane.
just breathe.
And then as airplanes got more sophisticated and wanted to climb higher, now you have todo more things.
You got to, it's got to be more airtight.
But once it's airtight, now we got to make sure we're filtering it.
(25:01):
And then if you want to go to space in a rocket ship, the higher performance the airplane,the more you need things like the right kind of ventilation and airflow and filtration.
It's the same thing with a car.
It's one thing to ride in a convertible, but when you get in your car, we think of howmuch we've improved the way climate zones and air and all that.
(25:25):
But those all have filters and all that.
What's happened is with our homes, as we've gotten them tighter, we don't always bring inthe right, technology, the right mechanicals.
Right.
So Corbett Lunsford is one of my mentors in the, in the home performance space.
He's got an incredible YouTube channel, home diagnosis.
(25:46):
They, he's got three seasons of a TV show where they talk, they go in and figure out howto solve these problems with, with a home.
And he says his, his kind of model is very simple.
Air seal, insulate, mechanicals.
So I do the air seal, insulate part, and then I have a great HVAC contractor to come inand say, all right, now that we've air sealed and insulated, what do we need to do on the
(26:10):
mechanical side?
Dehumidification, fresh air, filtration.
And then sometimes, how many times, you know, or...
You go to a house and they had, they knew they needed by code some fresh air.
So they're just pulling a duct from a soffit and they have a motorized damper going intothe return.
And it's, and it's basically been disabled, right?
(26:32):
Why, why did they disable it?
Well, but what's happening?
There's a reason that they came out and said, let's disable this fresh air.
It's cause they have too much humidity, right?
that is the culprit, but oftentimes that is not the culprit.
That is controlled ventilation.
And where the culprit is, is the areas where they slipped up and we have uncontrolledventilation.
(26:55):
Well, it can be though.
Here's the thing.
If you dump fresh air in Texas into your return plenum, what are the chances that air isgonna be a lot warmer than the air that's in your house?
Pretty good.
That warm air coming into that plenum is now gonna hit that evaporator coil on your AC andit's gonna increase the humidity.
(27:24):
in the system.
So I think they disable it because it's every time the fresh air comes on in the summer,it just makes it more humid in the house.
Well, there's a reason it's cause that hot air coming in is warming up the coil and addingmoisture to the air.
So that's just not a good way to do fresh air.
It's a shortcut.
It's acceptable, but that's where doing it through a Santa Fe ventilating dehumidifier sothat you're not or an ERV.
(27:51):
So you're not dumping hotter air into the return.
You know, so that's part of the problem is it's as we get tighter and the code requiressome things and not others.
Guys don't understand how to, they don't know what to do.
had a, talking to a guy.
I'm not, I won't name the builder, but they do really nice homes.
And he was telling me, yeah, we put a fresh air.
(28:12):
We build tight enough that we have to put fresh air in all of our houses.
It's like, well, do you put dehumidifiers?
He's like, no, why not?
Well, the code doesn't require it.
It's extra.
You know, they're like a high end production builder.
And he said, they keep getting callbacks for if they're lucky, people say it's too humid.
But if it's really bad, they say, I have mold.
And it's like that we should be putting dehumidifiers in, but we don't, especially at thatlevel of air tightness.
(28:39):
Because now the air conditioner is more efficient.
It doesn't run as much.
It doesn't pull out as much humidity.
So you need dedicated dehumidification.
It gets very complex.
we need great HVAC contractors.
We need more of them to help solve these issues.
I, I start to wonder if we're introducing some of our own problems to fix down the line,right?
(29:03):
you know, for example, it's, and I'm not, I'm not advocating against more efficient homes,but down here in Florida, you've got, houses that have weathered everything from
hurricanes to termites to everything in between.
And they've been here for over a hundred years, right?
I mean, every, every part of the country where you've got ancient homes and it's like, sowhat, what has allowed those houses to hold up?
(29:24):
without modern efficiency codes over the years and still be relatively durable, still berelatively sound to have aged gracefully in such a way, whereas with the sophistication
that we have now with some of these new systems, we have to now think extra hard about,for example, like you're talking about air sources, how much humidity?
(29:45):
It's like, okay, we solved one problem, but by doing that, we just created another one.
And this to me is now so regionally specific that, you know, one specific building code isnot going to solve for it.
You're going to have to do this by region, right?
You guys have a lot of humidity in Dallas.
Imagine building things that tight in Florida where humidity is just, we have air you canwear, right?
(30:08):
So how do you solve for that?
You know, something that I kind of was thinking on as you were talking about sealingthings.
is like how does air tightness better affect or negatively affect things like stack effectin the wintertime because in Dallas you guys still deal with winter to a small degree.
(30:28):
Can you speak to that at all?
Well, sure.
mean, if you have the more air sealed your attic is in the winter, right?
That hot air is wanting to push up.
Well, you're keeping it.
You're trying to cut off the path for the air to get out of the conditioned space.
Right.
And so, there's a, I call him building science Yoda.
(30:51):
name is, Ken Allison.
He's coming to speak at our BS & beer next next or this month, but he likes to say,
If you stop the flow of air, you don't need much insulation.
A lot of the heat transfer is air transfer.
And so I think getting it air sealed is going to help that.
(31:16):
And I think maybe to zoom out and say, why do we build to begin with?
What is the purpose of the built environment?
We're trying to separate ourselves.
from the outdoor conditions, right?
And if you've ever been, if you've ever had the privilege of on a warm night, being acamping, on a camping trip and you're in a tent with another guy.
(31:43):
It's not a pleasant night's sleep, right?
It is not a pleasant night's sleep, right?
And you gotta roll those, right?
It's like we've cut off the outside, now what's, the thing is as humans, we create a lotof stuff.
We have humidity, we have smells, we have skin that sloughs off methane.
(32:03):
Yes, we cook, like the act of cooking in your, you're throwing off all kinds of VOCs andpollutants.
So we've enclosed ourselves so we can stay,
out of the elements, right?
mean, the whole, South really grew after the air conditioner was invented when Carrierinvented the air conditioner.
Cause people are like, well now we can, now we can live in this stuff.
(32:25):
But the more you live in it, it's like, what else is happening in the space and how do wedeal with it?
And you're right, the tighter we, there's always a consequence.
It's a, there's, and maybe it's a way of thinking of it's just trade-offs.
You know, the tight, like think about it with roofing.
We see a lot of houses that originally had a wood shake roof on it.
(32:47):
And they were a big gable and they just have two little gable vents on the end and theyhad wood shakes.
Well, eventually we couldn't do wood shakes anymore.
So we took those off.
We decked the house and now we have an asphalt shingle.
So that whole assembly used to breathe really well with just these two little gable vents.
(33:08):
It does not breathe well anymore, right?
Because
Just the shingles themselves.
It wasn't airtight all around.
So that whole assembly could breathe.
But then we changed the surface, the primary surface and didn't change the ventilation.
like, let's put whirly birds.
Let's put Ridge vent.
(33:28):
Let's put, you know, I there's a house I've been working on that there is no soffit.
There's just not any to pull air.
And it has gable vents, Ridge vent and whirly birds.
They have basically three different kinds of exhaust.
It's not working.
Yeah.
But the house wasn't designed to work like that.
So we have to say, okay.
(33:49):
It's we've changed something.
What are the unintended consequences?
How do we need to, and now what do we need to do to update the design, change the roofassembly, et cetera.
Right.
So I think we have to do that with everything.
And, we, does, it's going to be a, it takes time to evolve into how we need to handle allof that.
(34:09):
You know, everything from the wall and roof assemblies to the inside to all of it.
We're just continually losing.
you're, you're asking like, you know, basically like, why don't we build like we used tolike things were fine.
Why do we had to go mess with it?
I think some of it comes down to like changes in code, um, that, know, kind of like whatyou were saying, you know, some things that we are not allowed to do anymore for other,
(34:35):
for various reasons.
I mean, we used to do all kinds of crazy stuff.
They used to put asbestos in homes, lead paint, galvanized water piping, you know, we comeup with.
better ways of doing things because we learn more.
And then I think, you know, the, becomes this gray area because you want to, uh, you know,well, okay.
(34:56):
If, if, if we can, if we know this now, if we have this knowledge now, let's use thisknowledge to create something a little bit better.
And then, so, so we do that.
But I mean, yeah, every time you try to get some, make something a little bit better,there could be something else to, oh, well, we did this, but we didn't do that.
And this is.
really what's happening in production building right now because they're kind of like, gota toe in building science because people want energy efficiency and that's the other
(35:21):
driver, right?
It's people.
People want energy efficiency, right?
The people want that.
And so builders have to build this or the people are going to buy the houses or at leastthey have to sell them on it, right?
So production builders are selling them on the energy efficiency, but they're notdelivering.
They're not meeting the expectations and there's not really a whole lot of people that
know what those expectations are, how to achieve them, not in construction these days.
(35:46):
And man, it is seemingly a dying breed, construction, people in construction.
We need people in the trades for sure.
we do.
Now, Matt, you hit on something interesting there, which is the consumer demand as well.
I remember seeing these were new construction homes.
Gosh, like I said, almost about 10 years ago when I first started inspecting andWashington, DC was going through a new construction boom where I was at the time.
(36:11):
you know, the guy that I kind of learned under, he pointed out a few things as I was goingthrough on a few phase two inspections and he pointed out some of the some of the caulk
work that was being done around
exterior joints in the wall framing.
And he's like, yeah, so if you look at this corner over here, if you look over thesewindows here, a lot of these builders, we didn't use to caulk these areas, but they're
(36:35):
doing that now to sell it as being more energy efficient.
You really think that that little bead of caulk was really doing anything?
No, but the buyers coming on site and they're going, well, this separates them from thisguy down the road, this builder down the road over here in this division.
And for them, it was just that one little thing that they could do that made them.
more valuable than the other builder, right?
(36:56):
But from there, you started to see fully encapsulated basements.
You started to see closed cell foam, spray insulation, things like that.
so, you know, I guess maybe consumer awareness does help to drive some of this to adegree.
Travis, how have you really seen that affect your roof business?
Man, the roofing business, it's the wild west out here in Texas.
(37:18):
So there's no, there's no license.
There's no mandatory license in Texas.
The only roofing license is voluntary and it's through RCAT.
And what I got, I was able to get it last year and became one of literally 350 roofers inTexas with a license.
(37:39):
We have like 15,000 roofing companies and now some people like, the license doesn't meananything, but, okay.
It's marketing, you know, whatever.
Hey, I went through the, I want the accountability.
want to keep getting better, but the incentives, if you ever heard the phrase, show me theincentive and I'll show you the outcome.
Like, what are we incentivizing?
(38:01):
So unfortunately the way most people, especially in DFW get new roofs is insurance paysfor it.
So they're always like, I get a new roof.
My insurance is going to pay for it.
Well, as deductibles have gone up, that becomes a problem because guys used to just eatthe deductible.
And then how do they do that?
How do they do a roof for less?
Well, they cut corners.
(38:22):
So people are used to this idea that, well I can, I shouldn't have to pay for a roof.
I've been paying my insurance premiums, which are high.
They feel justified and I get it.
Right.
But.
Because the roof, like I said, is this umbrella for your house, and it's important tore...
to do it correctly, to protect your home, protect your investment, protect your family.
(38:44):
really, to me, it comes back to the consumer.
They have to get educated about what kind of roof do I want?
I'll give you an example.
So we've been out doing repairs the last couple days after this big windstorm.
And in fact, I just went to one.
my last call before I came back to do this podcast and I get there and he's got threelittle hip and ridge cap shingles in his hand.
(39:12):
It's the only thing that happened to his house.
It's the reason he had to call me.
And I look at it.
was like, well, this is three tab.
It's not a ridge shingle.
It's three tab because
Low wind rating.
To save a couple hundred bucks, so many roofers around here will buy, instead of buyingridge shingles, they'll buy three-tab, they'll cut it, and they'll create their own ridge.
(39:37):
Okay, a three-tab shingle, at best, on a roof is at a 60 mile per hour wind rating.
A ridge shingle, you can get 110 mile per hour wind rating.
And ridges and hips are the most vulnerable to wind.
Like, why would you take this cheap product and put it here?
(39:57):
And so he paid me more to fix it.
I was like, look, I'm just going to reattach these and nail them.
them.
Here's another shout out for Sacha.
Use them through the roof to seal it and, and you'll be good.
Okay.
And so I had to charge him.
I went out there, did the work.
What I charged him is more than it would have cost to buy the right product to begin with.
(40:23):
That's ridiculous.
It's, is.
doing it all the time.
And I guess that's the deal.
you you carrying that license and that means something, right?
It means, Hey, I, I, there's, there's something here to say, I am trying to give youvalue.
(40:43):
I'm trying to bring the best, you know, possible product to you as, the client, you know,and this is, and I'm licensed to do so I went out of my way when I didn't have to, to
achieve this, to try to give you that level of comfort.
Yeah.
You know, and then what I do, Brad, too, is part of why I, in my, on my Instagram,especially, I'm just trying to, and I made, I didn't just do the repair.
(41:08):
I made a couple of videos I'll post later because I'm trying to educate homeowners.
And I'm, and, I can't remember who said this.
It may have been Matt Rice here.
was talking about it.
He's like, look, educate your competition for free.
That's good, man.
And so I have literally tomorrow we're doing a fortified roof.
(41:29):
And I think at least one guy's coming down from Oklahoma to see it.
But I have, I've invited three of my competitors to come and learn how to do fortifiedroofs while I do one.
Because at the end of the day,
I like, I'll tell them, I'm like, look, we need more good guys.
(41:49):
know, the race to the bottom, that knows no end.
And I'm not interested in competing and I'm not competing with the guys that are racing tothe bottom.
The guys that are doing it well.
I would love to lose a job to one of those guys.
Cause there's so much work.
that's a whole nother episode altogether because we deal with this from the homelessfraction front, right, Matt?
(42:10):
I mean, it's dealing with guys that are trying to undercut the competition.
I had a hopefully she's not listening to the episode because I'm doing a home inspectionfor tomorrow.
But you know, there's a an agent north of me, who I used to do a lot of work with up inDC.
And she said, Hey, I've got this client for you, but you better not charge me those DCprices.
(42:31):
I'm like, I'm going to charge you what I charge you.
Because I just had somebody that was just up north of Tampa call me and goes, hey, whatdid you charge for this job that you last did?
Yeah, we raised our rates.
We would have charged $200 over that.
You should probably do the same.
And it's and he's one of the leading guys in the area.
But I had lost work in that neck of the woods before because an agent goes, yeah, I'msorry, a standard inspection, a four point and a win.
(42:56):
I can find somebody that could do that for 375 all in.
I was like, then you can use them because I'm not making that drive for that money.
You know, but it's there's always, yeah, there's always going to be those scalpers.
So you're bringing value, you're adding value, and you're doing it in ways that are goingto be much more noticeable and realizable to a consumer than, you know, just making a jump
(43:19):
to something that is a massive upfront cost in the form of something like solar.
These are practical things that they could do to really improve upon their home.
That's that's huge.
So, dude, we could talk about this all day.
But there's a couple things that I want to talk about before we wrap up the show.
One.
because I've only got a little bit left here.
I wanted to reintroduce a segment that I used to do on the show back in the day called thedrink of the day.
(43:41):
And this would be at some point in the future where we have a really cool little cutawaything.
let's go left to right on my screen.
Matt, what are you sipping on tonight?
tonight I have got a cup of Eagle rare.
I, I poured the, yeah, I went, I went, semi special occasion for this one.
(44:02):
I was feeling good about this podcast.
So I went, with a 10 year Eagle rare.
Cheers.
I love it.
Cheers to you , Matt.
Travis, How about you buddy.
All right.
So this is funny.
It's a little embarrassing, but I was inspired by Matt's green light.
You know, we talked about St.
Patrick's Day is coming up, right?
And so I have my little green light.
It almost looks like I'm my like from the three person view.
(44:25):
looks like my screen is bleeding into Travis's screen.
That's pretty awesome.
Totally.
I have a son in law and I have a son in law to be my middle daughter is getting married inMay.
My son in law to be his, he lives in Colorado.
His name is Dallas and he bought me a bottle of that Eagle rare and I would have pouredit, but I finished it.
(44:50):
Congratulations, it's important to do.
So my other son, my son-in-law currently, God love him, Zach, he's a good old boy.
And he brought this over and cause there was some green in it.
You'd see that not quite the color.
It's a little light.
Guys, this is the Jim Bean apple.
(45:13):
This is, you know what?
Hey, it's a.
Apple liqueur infused with Kentucky straight bourbon.
So, you know, it's a little on the sweet side, but hey, cheers.
had relatives
a Thursday kind of drink.
Yeah, that's right.
That's it cheap stuff on there is you know somebody told me before you know what thedifference between a nine dollar bottle of wine and a 90 dollar bottle of wine is About 90
(45:39):
91 something like that.
Yeah, they're $89.
I can't do math Yeah, yeah, it's that's all it is.
Hey, whatever gets the job done, you know, but Yeah, it's you know, whatever way it getstough
So for me over here, I am wrapping up a little Sazerac, which I made with an ice cubetonight.
You're not usually supposed to do that.
You're supposed to use a chilled glass, but I cheated and I wanted it cold fast because wewere recording this show.
(46:03):
So I whipped up the traditional New Orleans cocktail, the Sazerac, which is a great plugbecause Inspection Fuel 2025 will be in New Orleans this September, I believe.
So stay tuned for dates on that because the show will definitely be live there too.
But Matt, let's wrap it up here.
Dude, what were some key highlights from the Builders Conference,
(46:25):
man, key highlights.
You know, I, when I go into this thing, I mean, I really never know what I'm going to seewhenever I go through the expo.
And so, I did find a few really cool products.
There is a product made by, you know, the, the cassette tapes, Maxell.
Okay.
They have, a, I can't remember what the acronym stands for, but I made a video on it, butthey make up here.
(46:48):
have one right here.
They make a product.
MAP is another company that they have same company.
makes this product right here, which is a piece of flashing.
is basically just rubber, it is self.
It's got an adhesive on it, self adhesive.
And so, you know, they make these with different size holes.
They make them brown.
They make them square as well.
(47:09):
And a couple of different things that you can use for flash wall penetrations.
Obviously, you know, we've got companies like quick flash and green skin that makeproducts like this, but they are made with a lot of material.
Well, the one thing about like quick flashes, they make a big
Plastic piece which is great and easy to tape but that same plastic base is used for everyone of them So they have that same wasted material that's used for every one of these You
(47:34):
know if you got a small hole like this They just use this small amount of material andit's just the self adhesive so you don't even have to have any tape So I think that's a
super cool product I also ran into a company called Hydro block which I think is out ofUtah I think they're out of Utah
(47:54):
And they make a product that can be used for drywall.
I've got a sample of it somewhere here, but it can be used.
It's completely 100 % waterproof.
Now I've not used this, so this isn't a plug for them, but it's completely 100 %waterproof.
It can be used in place of drywall.
It can be used for sheathing.
(48:14):
It's structurally rated and can be used for sheathing.
It can be used under stucco.
So you know how they were doing like,
Therefore a little while they had like a hardy backer or a hardy board they would use andput a stucco material over it.
I haven't seen this in a while now, but, uh, because there's so many problems in like ourarea.
So humid, it's, we have so many problems with, with moisture and stucco, right?
(48:37):
Uh, not just humidity, but just rain period.
Uh, we have so many problems with that.
And so they were trying to find solutions to that.
So they had this time type of fiber cement board product that had like a cement, uh,coating on the outside that looked like stucco, but it wasn't, this can be done very much
in that way.
only the board itself is completely 100 % waterproof, super duper light, but yet superdurable.
(48:59):
I feel like it's got like a, like a, it was like an hour or two hour fire rating orsomething like that.
Like it is a long time before it actually burns.
It's almost like everything the guy told me, and again, I have no experience with it, buteverything the guy told me was like, wow, like this is a pretty spectacular product.
So Hydro Block, that was another one that I thought was pretty cool.
(49:19):
Those are probably the two takeaways that I can really remember.
I mean, I got a bunch of material, a bunch of things that I filmed.
Also, Dyken, I visited the Dyken booth and didn't even realize that they have a largefacility out here and real close to me and invited me over to take a look at some of their
equipment and do some videos over there.
So I'm looking forward to that as well.
(49:42):
Cool.
awesome, man.
Good stuff.
So well, Travis, we got to have you back on the show, man.
Seriously, this has been an awesome conversation.
Truly.
And honestly, I think like next year, that we need to just have you podcast live from thebuilders conference.
That'd be pretty awesome, too.
Truly.
Yep.
But no, Travis Matt warned me he's like, Hey, look, this might be the easiest episode thatwe've done, just because look,
(50:08):
Travis can rip on so many different things.
Seriously, I mean, we're at 50 minutes.
This is gonna be one of the longer episodes.
I hope you guys are stuck around for the whole thing, seriously.
But Travis, where can they go follow you?
Seriously, where can they follow you on social media?
So I do most of my stuff on Instagram.
Travis builds it and, um, would love to interact with people, comment, you know, askquestions.
(50:28):
I, you know, I love it.
You know, my, uh, I'm, I'll be 52 in June.
And one of the things I've liked to say is, um, a couple of phrases that had become a partof my life more so in the last, I don't know, 10 years than before is.
(50:48):
I changed my mind about that or I was wrong about that.
And I think that's part of, part of my journey in being able to share stuff is it's notall cause I just know everything.
It's cause I want to learn.
want to grow.
And if, if I get new information, I want to, I want to change my mind.
(51:10):
And we get too stuck, I think, in our way.
So I loved the whole Instagram world.
That's kind how Matt and I connected.
And I've connected with so many others that way.
And the great thing is there's a lot of people out there trying to do some good.
So I appreciate that.
Matt, super appreciate all your stuff, man.
(51:31):
It's inspiring to a lot of people.
And we love it,
Likewise, my friend, likewise.
That's awesome.
Well, you guys go follow Travis, follow Matt, follow the show to definitely make sure yousubscribe because there's going to be a whole lot more of this coming down the road.
Honestly, Travis, I feel like for our first long term, like if we're to go full three hourJoe Rogan show style, like we're just got to bring you back because this was easy.
(51:55):
The easiest, you know, we've done truly.
So thank you guys so much for watching.
We'll see you right here next time on The Ride Along
awesome.
All right.
I'm hitting end here.
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