OREP 023 | How to Build a Healthy Home: Expert Tips, Best Products & Biggest Mistakes w/ Bo Stephens

In this follow-up episode, I sit down again with Bo Stephens to dive deeper into the essentials of building a healthy home. We explore the best products to use, smart strategies to implement, and critical pitfalls to avoid.

Discover how creating a healthier, more sustainable home can increase your property value, differentiate it in a competitive market, and attract discerning buyers who are willing to pay a premium. Bo shares actionable insights on how these simple upgrades not only improve your quality of life but also maximize your return on investment when it’s time to sell. Whether you’re a homeowner, investor, or builder, this episode is packed with tips to set your property apart and get more bang for your buck. Tune in to learn how to build a home that’s healthier for you—and your wallet!

🎧 Don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more episodes like this!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Welcome to Optimize real Estate Podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of the Optimized real
Estate Podcast. I'm Rod Wilson, your host, and it's my
job to basically pick through some of the top strategies
ideas approaches to the residential real estate industry. And so
I talked to the movers and shakers and some of
the top people in the field and basically pull out
their hacks and things that you should be considering in

(00:29):
your own real estate business. And today is actually one
that I think you'll really enjoy. It gets a little
in the weeds as far as building materials and whatnot,
but what we cover is how to build a healthy home.
And my guest is actually a repeat guest, Bo Stevens.
He was formerly an environmental engineer. He ran some different

(00:51):
product companies, and he'll call it a hobby builder. So
he's been building homes for himself and for spec for
a long time and as he's learned some of the
new ways of building as well as the different building
materials and through he'll even mentioned that he's environmentally sensitive
to a lot of the bad things they're in building

(01:11):
materials and it was really affecting his health. And I
got bomb this topic with him because I've known Bone
for a long time, but we got on this topic
because of my sleep and he was giving me some
hacks on how to improve my sleep. So anyway, some
of the things we cover dirty electricity, VOCs, EMFs, we
get into water air. I mentioned sleep. We covered more

(01:32):
of that on the first one, and just overall kind
of toxicity that resides in a lot of the building
products that it proven it affects human health, but most
manufacturers don't do much about it, to be honest, And
there's more and more people that are coming out, like
our food supply, I feel like people are getting more
in tuned with how this stuff is affecting our health

(01:53):
and focusing more on human health than profits and reducing
costs and whatnot. And by the way, most of this
does not increase the price for the investors and developers
out there. This is not going to be a big
price tag ad or increase. So some of the things
we talk about, he talks about the types of wood
to use windows, there's some stuff related to electricity, plumbing, insulations,

(02:18):
and wallboard and sheet rock. There's some great alternatives to
paint that actually I believe it's even cheaper. From what
I remember, there's also stained ventilation, all these things that
basically can create a much better house and living environment.
And what I think is interesting, And he did it
on his property. The last spectal that he did, he

(02:41):
got a very quick sale and a really good number
because he was able to market all these things. So
I think for some of you that are in these
highly competitive markets and you're trying to sell your product,
your property, I should say it's important to differentiate yourself,
and this is one way to do it. And you
could basically highlight all the things you've done differently or
changed or altered that you can deem it a healthy

(03:05):
home versus just a standard home that has all of
these things, all these products and materials that basically outgas
some of them for a very very long time. One
of his clients that he worked with where they had
significant mold poisoning. I think the wife was actually bedridden,
healthier whole life, did a big remodel, and then she's

(03:25):
basically bedridden and had basically was poisoned by black mold.
So that's obviously the extreme case. And then we won't
even talk about we actually mentioned it we're not going
to focus on the liability side. So if you're a
builder developer, you can be liable for a lot of
this stuff if you're putting in some of these toxic products.
So that's it for now, longer than normal intro, but

(03:48):
you're really going to enjoy this episode. That's all for
now going, Hey, I'm doing good. Good, thanks for jumping
back on. So to kind of recap from our last
By the way, everyone who's listening, go listen to the
original podcast we did. It's good. And what I told
Bot a minute ago is that we're going to kind
of jump from what it is and why you should care,

(04:09):
which I think he kind of outlined the things we're
talking about, you know, building the quote unquote healthy home.
We talked about dirty electricity and VOCs and all the
things that all the things that kind of lurk inside
a new or old home. It could be either one.
And obviously from my audience on the real estate side,
whether it's developers, investors, even real estate agents, I mean,
they're always looking for ways to you know, differentiate themselves,

(04:32):
differentiate their product, which is the house. So I have
a very keen interest just because I'm interested in healthy,
healthy living, healthy hacks, whatever you want to call it.
And so this is pretty cool because you're doing it
related to building products and building homes, which hasn't been
on the radar. I mean, you've got people know clean
your ducks and do certain things. EMFs have become a
kind of a bigger thing as far as affecting people's health.

(04:54):
And by the way, I'll keep saying this, but go
back to the other podcast. We talked about sleep and
you're improving your sleep with the right sleep in environment.
So what we had talked about doing today for everybody
who's joining is the building process. So getting into the
kind of nuts and bolts and the process that BO
goes through when building a home. And I will put
together a pretty in depth show notes after this one.

(05:14):
But why don't we just start from what you would
see a step one in the building process BO, and
how do we build a healthy home?

Speaker 1 (05:21):
Great? So what we can do is what we, like
we talked about before, is talk about let's just build
a home right now. Like we'll just go through and
I can discuss kind of the ways to environmentally and
talk in terms of toxicity lead you in healthy pattern
and away from what might be a more toxic and
unhealthy pattern, and at the same time discussing the costs

(05:41):
relative to those choices. And you know, like I was
telling Rod, it really isn't that much towards expensive. And
that's a huge key.

Speaker 2 (05:48):
That I actually meant to mention that at the very
beginning is for a lot of people that hear this,
especially when you're either flipping houses, developing real estate, or whatever.
The first thing is, well, I can't do that because
it costs you much. So I'm glad you brought that
up because that's the huge key from last time. And
just to go back to the last podcast, your example
was in a one point six million dollar build on

(06:09):
the last home. You didn't quiet it was about a
fifteen to twenty thousand dollars and you thought it was
quite a bit less, but worst case, fifteen to twenty
thousand dollars cost ad to basically create a top to
bottom healthy home.

Speaker 1 (06:20):
Yeah, I mean one point six actually include the lot.
So the building materials were a million dollars of labor
and building to build that house, because I contracted it
myself and did some of the work myself. But that
was about right. And we'll go through those numbers, and
sometimes it's not it's actually less. I mean some of
the pieces are less expensive, and it's really sometimes just

(06:41):
understanding which alternative to choose that's out in the industry.
Zero VOC non toxic. It's like this big buzzword, but
it's very inaccurate in many many cases. And I've I've
learned that by trial and air. It's like thirty five
to forty years ago, nobody really knew what a VOC was,
and certainly other than an environmental engineer in the mainstay
and wasn't one of those then, but I learned. But

(07:02):
you know, if we start building a house, so the
first thing we're putting down is the foundation. We're digging
and we're putting a foundation down. And when I was
in Kawai, it was it was interesting because this truck
pulls up and I'm like and it was a pesticide
truck and I'm like, well, what are you doing And
he's like, oh, we're gonna spray the dirt and I'm like,
for what they're like for termite? And I'm like, what
are you gonna spray it with? And he shows me
this thing that had danger. It was a herbicide, right,

(07:24):
And I said, well, okay, so but we're going to
pour concrete into that ground. It's a post and peer foundation, right,
And I'm like, what they're going to come through the concrete?
And is there another alternative? And certainly there was. We
could have used boright and which is fork acid? Right?
So like right at the beginning, we're talking about where
we talk about a dirt lot, right, and the guy
wants to just literally wholesale spray this nasty herbicide in

(07:46):
twenty mile an hour winds. So I said leave and
I went, and we'd sprayed boring all over it now.

Speaker 2 (07:50):
Not to imagine what it does to the soil and
the water and everything.

Speaker 1 (07:54):
It was so much. I asked him how much he
was going to do and I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa,
he was going to just do everything. I'm like, wait,
we have a garden there, an organic garden on the plans.
I mean, that's five years from now that we're not
going to be able to eat out. It would kill
Nobody would have known. Wow, nobody would have known. Nobody.
It's not it's not in part of the building permit process.
Nobody checks it. And certainly When the permit guy came
a year later and said, you do your TERMITI i'd spray.

(08:16):
I said, yeah, because I did BORI. He didn't ask
me what I use. But it's but here's what's interesting
about that. So the wood in Hawaii, it's mandated, but
yet they don't mandate it. I'll explain that. On your
building permit it says you must use bory treated lumber
because the termites are so vociferous there, like California, we
think we have termites. They're a joke. I mean every

(08:37):
house in Kawai, before they were done building, the house
had to be tented except for mine, every single one
on the island. The permit, that inspector came and he goes, yeah,
well have you attended your house yet, and I said, no,
there's no termites. We checked for termites. There was nothing.
And it's because I used everything that was safe, non toxic.
But also termites wouldn't eat, which is boring and pregnant.
So humans can tolerate boric acid. We can't tolerate herbicide.

(09:00):
But we can tolerate boric acid, but the termites cannot.
So they literally make you impregnate the lumber. But yet,
so I asked the permite the guy, the inspector. I said, why,
if you guys are mandating boor eight lumber, why do
they have termites. He's like, well, nobody really uses it.
It's too expensive. And it was. It cost me ten
thousand dollars on the job over all my lumber to
do that lumber. That's not expensive on a eight hundred

(09:21):
thousand dollars of building materials, like it's going to last
for ever. And he's like, and I said, what, but
you mandate it. What does that mean? And he said, yeah,
that's just why we just put it on the thing.
They're too lazy, right, So.

Speaker 2 (09:31):
Yeah, I wonder how many, yeah, how many yards are
infected with all that toxic you know, spraying people don't
even know.

Speaker 1 (09:38):
I had never built there before. So anyways, talking about foundations,
let's start there. So I'm not so you have your
slab foundations, and you have your raised foundations, which would
be post and peer. You could do a concrete block
raised foundation, you know together, which is hollow tile. And
I'm just a real fan of airflow. And if you
raise your house just a little bit, I mean crawl space, right,
not dig it down necessarily, but I mean in some

(09:58):
areas like Hurricane area, you have to you certainly have
to sink your piers way low, but you don't necessarily
have to dig down. But you get natural airflow. And
that airflow can be designed. And I'll explain later in
this podcast that the air that's coming through, if you
have any breeze or any wind at any time, moving
air will come through your flooring. It'll cool your house,
it'll ventilate your house, it'll dry your house out, it'll
prevent mold. Just the airflow and the house that I'm

(10:20):
going to tell you about how we designed. It was
all about controlling airflow and making sure we had it
and this was not a slab then I did in Hawaii.
I visited fifty slab homes in a hunt and all
one hundred cent of them had mold. And the reason
is is because the concrete traps moisture. It can't not interesting.
But all your you can put all your vis queen
and your moisture, it doesn't matter. Eventually it's going to

(10:40):
break down and that water's gonna come or it's going
to condensate in there on the top of that concrete right,
and concrete is porous, so you end up with moisture
in your house. That's why basements smell because they're concrete
piered dug into ground that gets wet because they're below
the water table, and the smell goes the water goes
right through, even though the dry that are not dry
humidity wise. So we started with that process with making

(11:02):
sure we had a raised foundation. And then the first
thing you do when you have your foundation is you
start building your subfloor. You start building your you know,
your your your choice and your subfloor. And there are
counties that make you use copper sulfate pressure treated subfloor
with and that is truly poisonous and it doesn't last
any longer than the boy treated which is local to everyone.

(11:23):
But people just don't know what exists.

Speaker 2 (11:25):
So you never heard of it, honestly.

Speaker 1 (11:26):
Because it exists, but you have to order it right.
So it's like in California we have it like home
depot carries. You just have to ask. So I had
no order lots of materials over there. But in Hawaii
they have it localized, and so I prefer that because
you know that I mean typically with a copper stule
fate you're not necessarily touching it, but they're sawing it,
they're cutting it, and it's it also outgases. It's a poison.

(11:48):
That's what it's to do. It's to kill and also
maintain your integrity from moisture. But then you lay down
your subfloor. Right, So the two choices of the three
choices of subfloor that people mostly will use, probably only
two is OSB or a CDX type material. You know,
some kind of inch and an eighth. Why it's only
three quarters because they don't have a earthquake. But some
kind of plywood waterproof exterior plywood. Lots of people think

(12:11):
that exterior plywood because it's treated from moisture. Right, the
glue is actually less more toxic than interior plightwood, and
it's the opposite. Interior plywood is treated with phenol from aldehyde,
which is the or excuse me, youurea from aldehyde a
set of backwards I apologize urrea from aldehyde, and exterior
plywood is treated with phenol from aldehyde. Phenol last thirty

(12:32):
days percent out zero toxicity, better waterproofer urea twenty years.
It literally outcasts is so slow because it's water based.

Speaker 2 (12:41):
So this is like plywood the dumb question is sheet
rock paint all that doesn't matter and you're still going
to get the effects of that outgassing. Well you're not
sheet rocking your floor, Okay, Well you put whatever your
floor material is on top of that. It's still gonna
you're going to get the effects or.

Speaker 1 (12:56):
Yes, yes, yeah, I mean yeah, because lets you tile
your whole house. You put wood down, Air travels through
the wood. I mean, pour a bucket of water on
your wood floor, and it's going to go through. It's
not completely water, right, preventive, right, So if water goes
air way easier travel than water. So yes, the subfloor
will will come up, but it's also just go ahead.

Speaker 2 (13:16):
I was just going to say, and it's not more expensive,
is what you're saying now. So this is one of
those things where just all keep chiming in and just
saying like this is something you can market and advertise.
It's not just about like being a good guy and
building a healthy home, although I think it's important that
we should be doing that, But for the investors and
developers out there, I mean, you know, this is something
that you can market. We'll get into your house in

(13:38):
Kawaii and I've talked to other people about you know,
just you know, being able to say that it. You know,
you've done these things and you get you know, two
buyers on you know, or I should say, you have
two houses that are for sale. The one that has
all these little you know, tweaks and and you know
materials that are thought through and are going to you know,
impact human health less are the is the one that's

(14:01):
going to sell.

Speaker 1 (14:01):
I think, if you're absolutely I mean that's how I
marketed my house. But I marketed my house because that
was the truth. But I was the only one on
the island, so it made a big difference. I me mean,
we had fifty people come in the first hour, sold
in an hour, you know. I mean we didn't market
I hadn't even finished the house. I just put it on.
We just put it on with dirt lot and it
wasn't even close to finish it because I knew I
was going to sell at that point, and we just

(14:22):
had somebody, you know, commit at whatever we asked. It
didn't upbid. I didn't care. We just made a price,
happy with it. They gave it to us. We built
the house and finished it.

Speaker 2 (14:31):
Okay, So I interrupted you so the foundation, so that
the flooring.

Speaker 1 (14:34):
So we got that. I'm just saying, if you there's
OSB can be cheaper in some places in CDX. It's
not always CDX. It's just it's not osp is. So
it's just a bunch of pieces of board with a
ton of glue in it, right, and it tends to
not handle it's a poet. They thought it would handle
water well and kawhi, you can't even use it. It's
just like bents. It's bent because it just it can't

(14:56):
handle the moisture. So they don't even use it over there.
It's like particleboard after a while. Oh but I have
so always to be is a is a cost reduction
feature in a house, but I don't consider it one
because everybody forever is always used like a regular you know,
plywood exterior plywood flooring, And I'm just saying, stick with it.
There's nothing wrong, and it's actually safer than the plywood

(15:17):
that you're going to be using it in your cabinets,
which we'll talk about later, which is always massively toxic.
So now the flooring that you put down does make
a difference. So now before we've we're going to finish
that at the end because we're not flooring now and
you're framing the house. So you frame your house, you
can if you're worried about you know, there are in California,
it's very common that that you frame your house and
they come in a spray borate on all the timbers,

(15:38):
on all the framing. They spray it after well, think
about that. They're spray and it's good, I mean, but
think about that, it's not impregnated, it's not internal, it's
just sitting on the surface. It's like dust, right, it's
moisture dust, and that's you know, they literally just spray
the whole house. But right after they're done with it.
And they've had great success with that with not having
to you know, ten houses anywhere near as you know,

(15:59):
as quickly. But the boy treated lumber prevents it's cheaper
than doing that for one and it's better doing it.
So now your frame in your house. Now we're going
to talk a little bit about we haven't got we'll
get to electrical and plumbing in a little bit, but
we're going to get to windows and window design makes
a big difference in a house, whether you're going casement
or double hung or slider windows. You know, the slider

(16:20):
is the lowest typically the lowest version of a window
in terms of aesthetics, and the casement is the most
expensive or awning windows style, and I love those windows.
But if you can get into a double hung window
and you're in an area and that has seasons, you
can control the temperature in your house much better. And
if there's moisture, if you're in a wet area like
Florida or you know, some places in Texas or Hawaii

(16:43):
or any of those places I built use double hung windows.
You leave the bottom window because you go out to
the beach for three hours and it rains two inches. Right,
you can't leave your windows open. Your whole house will
be wet because there's wind. But if your awnings are
far enough out, I mean, your overhangs are far enough
out and you crack that top window, you always have
airflow running through your house. And I mean I've built
my house without air conditioning, and it was never hot.

(17:04):
Even if it was ninety degrees outside, My house was
seventy eight degrees inside with airflow, and I could control
the temperature of the house with those windows. So you know,
vinyl windows, wood windows clad windows. Those are the style
of windows. Personally, I think if you bake on your
finished exterioror product and pre prime your interior product, you
are at a you know, first of all, it's cheaper,
that's way less expensive because a painter is going to

(17:25):
come in and nowadays a really good painter and have
to paint the sash on a window times forty, you're
gonna pay. I mean, my ex neighbor who Rob knows
Rob chat but he just painted his house. So he
built and designed is a beautiful craftsman home. Fifty thousand
dollars to interior paint repaint. That's not you build fifty grand.
That's a big number because every sash, right, But if
you have a pre big prime, then you don't have

(17:47):
to go into the weather stripping. So those are some secrets.
But window design, I think is a really big deal.
Let's talk about the electricity, because that's the major component
of this. Most houses, well, let's just do it this way. Residentially,
every house is wired with romance vinyl sleeved wiring. That
vinyl sleeved wiring does nothing to inhibit the electrical field
that comes through the wiring. Nothing. I mean minuscule amount

(18:09):
for US one hundred and ten volts is traveling through
that wiring. We use alternating current. Here are cars, we
have direct current. It doesn't change. Alternating current means that
it's changing current depending upon the appliance that can pull
less or more. And what happens is it's still shoving
one hundred and ten volts through that line. Where does
that extra go. Well, that's dirty electricity and that's leaking

(18:30):
voltage into your house. So I clad my This is
where I spent my money. It costs me two thousand
dollars in building materials to do it this way. I
used metal clad or mc cable, which is what they
use in commercial buildings. Mandatorily, you cannot use romex in
a commercial building because of fire because vinyl the vinyl romex,
a rat can eat it. But the real reason that

(18:51):
Europe uses it even in a residential is because they
don't have they have two twenty volts the rep they
don't have a fire. It kills people, right, so they
use commercial wiring inside. But the benefit of that is
it blocks one hundred percent of the radiation that's coming
through that line in terms of dirty electricity and in
terms of voltage leak, which we measure on our body.
So everybody remembers the electric plank it in the seventies

(19:12):
and nobody remembers where they went. Well, there was a
trillion dollar class action lawsuit because everybody's sleeping in a
vault and a half minimum in their bed at night.
So that I mean, a car battery is twelve volt
that will kill you. But why would you want to
sleep in a vault and a half. It's pricking you
all night long and it's certainly not it's inflammatory, So
why would you want to do that when whon doer
we have sleep issues? So they went away quietly because

(19:34):
that lawsuit got settled, and you can buy them from China,
but you don't have a US benefitment extor because they
all went under. So when we're sleeping in our bedrooms
and we'd have our romex wiring, when our two prong
cables like we talked about the last podcast, we're sleeping
in volts like more than one. I go into every house.
I can measure vaults on people's body, I mean, and
they don't know you put it an MC cable. So

(19:55):
the European Physicians for Safer Health and technology. It's tens
of thousands of physicians around the world. They spect three
hundred milli volts or less for a healthy person, a
person without any EHS environmental hypersensitivity or electrical hypersonativity. The
color bult I'm one. I'm an EHS person. I believe
rod is too. But it's supposed to be like less
than fifty milli vaults for those of us like this, Well,

(20:19):
in a house, I'm going a measure to vaults on you,
not mill of volts. Volts. We'll think about that. So
it's like ten times or five times what you should
be in my bedroom in my house with that cabling
is thirty five to forty millivolts.

Speaker 2 (20:30):
And it's basically it's how many millible bolts is not
to get in the weeds too far. But I'm curious
how many millivolts would you say, is the average house
is kind of pumping into.

Speaker 1 (20:39):
Well oh oh, well, it depends on where you are
in the house and what appliance is pulling. But I
and you measure it on the body, like it doesn't
matter what's in the air, it's what our body grounds
it like grounding you to ground so easily of volts
and with romex, by the way, the lowest you can
even get potential wise, like I can fix everything in
the house, but since remember that vinyl leaks is three
hundred millibles, the lowest can get. Wow, that's not bad,

(21:01):
but that's the perfectly healthy person who does it also
have four and five G wireless running through his house
and doesn't have diry electricity. Blah blah blah. So once
we've tacked onto this, I believe pretty much everybody is sensitive,
which is why we have these sleep issues. Like everybody
like you just don't even talk to people. What do
they talk now? It's like, how'd you sleep? That's like
the biggest question anybody says in the morning.

Speaker 2 (21:22):
Right, Oh yeah, sleep has been an epidemic, you know,
the lack. It's not like so when we're going to
lose the entire audience here if we go too much deeper.
But basically, in Layman's terms, without you know, the shielding
or the metal clad or the MC cable, basically your
system is getting I'll use the word attack, but it's

(21:42):
not really attacked, but your system basically it's just a
constant kind of pinging dery electricity on your body.

Speaker 1 (21:48):
Your system is excited when it wants to sleep. There
you go, right, And when we want to sleep, the
term now from doctors, right, the hot term is rest
and digest. That's what the country talks about. Now that's
the new term is when you're sleeping, you should be
resting and digesting. Well, you can't rest when you're excited.

Speaker 2 (22:02):
And so would you just do that? I mean, if
you're really trying to stay on the cheap, because this
does cost extra and you got to kind of think
through it. And by the way, I'm going to get
Boat to provide kind of a list of all this
stuff for us. But would you want to just do
your bedrooms or is it just not even worth the
effort to do the whole house? It sounds like for
a couple grand on a million dollar build, I mean,
it seems like a no brainer.

Speaker 1 (22:23):
Okay, So the couple grand is the material cost? Extra
material cost to buy the rolls of mc cable. You
have to use metal boxes instead of plastic because they
have to be you have to ground it all the
way back to ground right, So it was about two
thousand dollars in you know, in the extra wiring. But yes,
you could, but then you have labor on top of that.
But you're running wiring anyway in a new house, right, right,

(22:46):
So that's nothing different, right, You're already running it. So
I recommend doing the whole thing. But I mean, yes,
the answer is where do you spend your time? Your bedroom,
your office, your living room, your kitchen. Maybe there's all
kinds of other lights in your hallway and your bathroom.
I mean, if you're spending too much time in your bathroom,
there's something wrong, right, So you could cut some money
doing that easily. But if you're going to say your

(23:07):
house is and you can still say your house is
healthy because you're spending time. When I go into houses
and i'm remodeling, it's very difficult to run the MC cable.
It's to Swiss cheese your house. So we target what
the problem is, and we typically don't get into the
MC cut cable rage unless somebody wants to spend some
money because it's expensive to remodeled that way.

Speaker 2 (23:25):
And then just I know you've covered done the last one.
But you can go in and test room by room,
you know what, on a remodel, you can see where
the problem spots are. Easy, Yeah, and.

Speaker 1 (23:35):
I'm actually writing a book about it where I'm giving
away those secrets of people because I want them to
be able to identify these problems in their house by themselves.
Everybody can do a lot, I mean a low hanging fruit.
It just takes a little bit of knowledge how to
use the meters and equipment. But they're not rocket science.
Believe me, they're not that difficult. Once you understand what
you're looking at and explain to you it's five minutes

(23:56):
to learn the equipment, ten minutes to learn all of
the equipment, and then you it's really not that big
of a deal. And save the work that I do
for people that you know they because there's gonna be
things and especially houses that are already built, like what
do I do now? Right? Going into better sleep and
all that? So moving along into the house built when
the electricians there right? What else is there? The plumbers
there right?

Speaker 2 (24:15):
Right?

Speaker 1 (24:16):
So at this time we're going to talk about water,
we're gonna talk about plumbing. And you know, PEX is
a real common thing that people are using. But you're
in an area where you have high rat content, you
have a lot of rats. That's a that's a tough one.
People try to stay away from copper because of the cost.
But I like copper for that reason alone. But and PEX,
I don't like drinking hot water through that PEX line

(24:37):
because you're heating plastic, right. But you can get around
that by putting in a water system in your house,
a whole house system that does two things. One, it
has something like zinc in it, so it doesn't mold,
because that's the problem with whole house water systems. They filter,
but when the filter media gets impacted, it mold grows
in the bacteria that's in there, right, I mean it's
sitting in there. It's bad. They're really bad. So so

(25:00):
there's a guy in the Midwest that created this water
system that installs just like anything else. But he was
smartenough to put zinc oxide in it, which we eat
zinc oxide people that take zinc pills, you know, or
you want zinc when you're sick, Right, that's sinc oxide.
So now it's in your water and it's not a
bad thing, and that's enough to keep the mold from growing.
So his filters, like have two types of sanitization that

(25:20):
we use in the US, chlorine and then sometimes they
add ammonia in southern California. They automonia. It's called chloramine.
It's people don't even know. It's so dangerous to have
chloromines in your water. I mean, that's is way worse
than chlorine. It's higher on the chart of the periodic chart.
If that's why we have ammonia free windex right, we
use they use vinegar. Right, So imagine having your water

(25:43):
that you're bathing in and it absorbs to your skin
because it's the biggest gland, so really difficult to get
chloromine out of water. He developed a really great system
and it doesn't mold and it lasts. Like instead of
changing your reverse housless system every six months, it's a year,
and your whole house system and go three to five years,
which is a really long time.

Speaker 2 (26:03):
What's the cost of that?

Speaker 1 (26:04):
Roughly, they're really inexpensive. I mean, forget the plumber because
the plumber is gonna have to cut. I mean I
did my own. They weren't that hard to do. But
you know, like six seven hourred Bucks for the whole house,
for a three thousand profit house.

Speaker 2 (26:15):
People think about this, everyone, you know, I've had an
RO system I had, I've got on the whole bandwagon
with the hydrogen lately, but way back in the day,
it was like alkaline water that machine. So I've always
been in the drinking water, but I've had docs tell me,
like you said, I mean the water that you're bathing
and showering in is is just as important because you're
absorbing all of it.

Speaker 1 (26:35):
So yeah, so But anyways, you know, in terms of
the plumbing systems, those are the types of things that
you think about when you're building a house. I mean,
you put in a water system like that that's not
more expensive than another water system, but it's not soft water.
The thing about soft water is you're taking the minerals out.
I mean, that's a good thing about minerals. They go
into your skin and we need them and we absorb them,
and that's why we need alcoholine water. But you don't

(26:57):
need so much if you're bathing in the ocean, by
the way, right, you know you don't. But you take
all that out and then you put a reverse osmosis
the system. It lowers the pH so low that you
can only really drink that water when you're eating, because
you want acidic water when you're eating. But when you're exercising,
you want high pH water. So this guy makes us
like everybody does. You can you can put a mineral

(27:18):
cartridge into your rosystem and that way you're mineralizing your
water to however high you want your pH to be.
You can tailor grit seven five, eight, five nine, whatever
you want by how much you know the Reman cartridges.
So that though you put that that in a house
and now you have a healthy you have healthy water.
We lifted up the house to start healthy air. Right.

(27:39):
And the next thing about that is Stockman insulation. And
you know there's all types of different insulation, and I
am a big, huge proponent of wool insulation. It's hydroscarpic, hydroscopic,
which means it does not absorb water, it does not condensate.
You know, you can look up like fiberglass insulation and
you can get two different answers on the internet, whatever
you want, whoever's paying for the right. But it insates

(28:01):
and it molds. It doesn't have bold because it's plastic,
but it doesn't dry out that it's plastic. But mold
is actually anti fungal, anti bacterial. That's what wool is.
That's just by its nature, so bacteria doesn't grow on it,
and moisture doesn't grow on it, so you can't have mold.
So and it insulates easily in my opinion, double what
fiberglass does. It's denser. What's the cost of that? And

(28:24):
so you're gonna ask, yep, it's gonna cost you two
thousand dollars in your house extra two thousand materials.

Speaker 2 (28:30):
You have to is that harder to get is wool?

Speaker 1 (28:33):
Every homebie depot has rock wool.

Speaker 2 (28:34):
You're kiddy home, no Oka, but.

Speaker 1 (28:37):
It is more expensive because you're by But here's the thing.
I just laugh when people like, so you have to
strap wool in the ceiling. And the reason is is
because I have no idea in my mind why anybody
would put paper on insulation so your walls get more
Why because so you can staple to it right, right,
But it's paper and paper does for water, and then

(28:57):
the bold grows on your insulation. It's worse than the
fiberglass in it of itself. You can't have paper, which
is the backing of sheet rock. By the way, we'll
talk about that next. So I love whole insulation. You're
going to be in an environment that's more like a coopler.
It stays one temperature. You can use concrete foam. It's
really hard to find that's blown in concrete and it
expands and it's literally like a concrete foam in your

(29:20):
wall and your house will be an igloo. I have
it in my house and I tried it, but it's
and it's not cheap. You're you know, that's a twenty
thousand dollars upgrade. But I mean if you live in
an area that's like super freezing or super hot, that
would work. But I still like a little better because
it's cheaper and it's readily available, and you throw it
in you don't need any big solution. But that's just

(29:41):
talking about the highest end solution. So now we got
our house built, we got our it's wired, it's plumbed right,
and we got our insulation, and we're about ready to
put our wallboard onto the interior. Let's talk about exterior
first before we do that. You know, you have paneling,
you have stucco, you have shingles. You know, what we
up doing is painting your house, right, and you pay

(30:02):
your house with an enamel gloss pain or whatever it does,
and you may steal our house really well, so it
doesn't breathe, So I really I'm a real proponent of
using taivek on the outside of walls because it breathes
one way, it does allow moisture in breathes out, and
having rock here wood houses because like a you know,
a slatted house, like a lap siding house or a

(30:23):
plantation style house, everything does get cocked up and it
does prevent moisture from coming in, which is what you need.
And that's fine as long as the ventilation is coming
underneath the house and into the house. But I really
like rock holmes for the matter is that rock does
breathe and you don't have to seal it or paint it.
So it's really, you know, it's really a really good choice. Brick, rock,

(30:44):
all those types of things. I mean, they're more expensive
to finish on a house, but how much more expensive
over fifty years or forty years if you're not painting it.

Speaker 2 (30:51):
Coming back into the from a developer investor perspective, knowing
you're not going to do a rock house, I mean
on the lower end, it's the typical sighting, right is
that problematic or is it just a matter of just
you know, sealing it and painting it. With quality paint.

Speaker 1 (31:05):
Our podcast cut out for a little bit the last
part paint the.

Speaker 2 (31:08):
What Okay, the rock obviously would be on the kind
of higher end, Yeah, so what about on the lower end.

Speaker 1 (31:14):
So I like hardy play a lot, and that's a
concrete fiberboard. But the best thing that anybody's come out
with is magnesium oxide board, which we're going to talk
about as a replacement on the interior. But they make
it for subfloor and they make it for exterior, so
it's very similar to a panel wood panel siding. Breathe
really well, but it's super non toxic, Like you can

(31:35):
eat magnesium we all do, and it will bold, it
won't rock, it won't degrade, and termites can eat it.
It's as good as having a concrete wall in my opinion.
But I like hardyboard too. Hardiboard really paints really well
because it comes pre primed and glue just sticks to it.
I mean a paint just sticks to it like glue,
like really really really well. In some areas, hardiboard is

(31:56):
not more expensive than ugly t one to eleven, which
is just you know, basically flat sheet with grooves in it. Right,
it could be less expensive, so but hitting into the inside. Well,
almost all houses right are sheet rocks, right, and sheat
rock just to go over. It has two sides. One
side is they're both paper, but one side is kind
of almost a water resistant paper to handle the wet mud,

(32:19):
because if you put it backwards and you put wet
mud on the back side of that single faced paper,
it's gonna mold instantly. Most sheet rock is shipped in
areas where it's not perfectly covered and comes with moisture
content into it that the mold's already growing. Just saying
it's you can you can. You may not be able
to see it, but it's you can smell it. I
hate the product, and magnesium oxide board is our future.

(32:42):
They make Magnesium oxide board is just not made prevalent
enough in the United States for us to get it enough.
But there is a manufacturer of Forever board and he's
he did a house for me, a test house for me,
and it's great stuff. It costs about the same as
sheet rock. So there you go. You can dip magnesium
mocks side board. They've done twenty year accelerated tests. It

(33:03):
cannot mold because the pH is so high the mold
won't borrow. You can screw one eath inch from the edge.
Which tried that with sheat rock, it's just going to break.
So and it's not any heavier and it's not any
more expensive. It's just it's not even funny. But so
those are a must to be in a bathroom or
any wet area, laundry room, bathroom, kitchen. And if you're

(33:23):
not going to use magnesium oxide board, you just do
not put sheet rock in a bathroom. The sheetrock that
they're putting in bathrooms has you know, you got your purple,
your green board. That's literally the same damn sheet rock.
And they've sprayed a herbicide on it again, toxic to outgas,
toxic when they're cutting it, breathing in your house. But
it's paper. Still, it's stupid. And I've pulled off so
many of those things in mold remediations and they're just

(33:44):
mold growing all over it with the bottom side. And
the funny thing about that is the sheet rock back
of it has that thin paper single face and it's
facing the interior wall which has the plumbing like you
don't even the new stands, you know, like right, I mean,
so they face the top side which you put mud
and paint on it, and that protects it from the
you know, you get some water and moisture on it
from the bathroom ubidity. Right, But what's happening when you

(34:06):
plumbing lake on the backside, and if you had magnesium
oxide board, you don't have to tear it off like
you do sheet rock. You drill a hole in it,
you put air in it, it dries out. The wood's
going to dry out if it's you know, only a
couple of days in pull out the insulation. Well, actually,
if your installation's wool, nothing mold, you could just think
about the cost savings, and it is a cost savings.
When we finished, we just finished my house to the

(34:28):
point where we were plumbing the water in Kawai, so
we had temporary water and now we're plumbing our full
water system in our main line. I hadn't done anything
but work one hundred hour weeks for nine months and
it was a swell and I drove to the west side,
thought I'd take an afternoon for two hours, and I
get a call vote you got to come back. The
house's flying.

Speaker 2 (34:44):
I thought that was the reason you built over there,
so you could surf every day.

Speaker 1 (34:47):
I know, but that was but nobody showed up. I
had to do more work than I thought. I did
kind of surf it. Not sometimes I surfed it like
by full moon. It's crazy. But I come back and
the kite was hanging the cabinets in the garage over
the laundry room, and he drilled a hole that hit
a knot and hit the hit the water system, which
over there they don't run copper all the way through.
They run copper into the house through it. Then when

(35:08):
you get into the walls they run pecks. So he
hit pecks lined. But there was a bathroom there and
a closet there. Thank god, it had magnesium oxide. I
didn't do the whole house because we couldn't get enough
because the guy couldn't make enough. So I did all
the wet areas, and this happened to be in well
the wet area because there was plumbing running through it
right right. We just pulled that panel off, both pulled
my insulation out. I didn't even replace it. I put

(35:30):
it out in the sun. It dried out. We put
a decubitterfier in there, and the next day I put
back the magnesium oxide board and we were moving. Wow,
that would have been a ten thousand dollars mistake. If
it would have been a sheet rock, I would have
had to tear out all the closets and everything. But
because it was magnesium oxide board, def tear anything on
except for what the league was.

Speaker 2 (35:48):
So I wouldn't consider myself a builder, but I've been
around real estate and up this is stuff I just
didn't know. I mean, you know, when you deal with
I've dealt with plenty of leaks and moldy remediation and whatnot.
And the paper sheet rock it made it. It seemed ridiculous,
but you know, we thought that's all there was.

Speaker 1 (36:05):
So that's all there is. And so there are so
many builders that you and I both know and everybody
else know that no are they are builders than I am.
I mean I'm a hobby builder, but I train these
guys now on materials like and they say the same thing.
Ei They're like, and they someone get angry. They're like, well,
this is what we've been using for thirty years, Like
I doesn't make it right?

Speaker 2 (36:25):
Yeah right, Well, and you automatically think any anything like
this would be a quote unquote upgrade, meaning cost war
for home owner it might be one thing, right, if
you're sensitive to stuff and whatever you want to do
this healthy home. But for an investor developer type person,
I mean, any extra dollar you spend is going to
be at least you perceive it to be one less

(36:45):
dollar profit on the back end. But in this case,
it's very it's minimal. Ad In fact, some of them
are actually gonna save you money.

Speaker 1 (36:52):
Yeah, you know. For like at the interim product that
I like in bathrooms too is if you can't get
magnesium oxide board, Georgia Pacific mikes a board called dense Armor.
Plus it's fiberglass instead of paper, right, that's all the
difference is in a wet area, you know, if you
get a little spill on it, right, it will dry.
And I know earlier in this cast I said fiberglass
can mold, but fiberglass can dry as well if you

(37:13):
get it dry sheep. That flat panel is not the
same thing as a chunk of insulation that is just porous, big,
you know, it's like hot and candy, right, right, You're
gonna get the water out of that, right, But on
a surface, it will dry easy on a flat surface.
So I really like to get pstwised about fifty percent
more material cost than regular sheet rock, not the green

(37:33):
and purple board, maybe only thirty. So you know, I
mean again in the house, I put dense armor in
some of the places we couldn't get the bagboard shipped over,
and eight hundred dollars of a chill for having that. And
if I hadn't done that, I would add a ten
thousand dollars right exactly. We played for it a brain,
it's a no brain. So now we got are wiring in,

(37:53):
we're plumbing in. We have put wallboard in appropriate air is,
we have insulation that doesn't bold, we have wall that
doesn't mold. And you know we're gonna talk about flooring
and trim, tiling and things of that nature. Going into trim.
Most of the pre prime trim is using a water
based prime, and although they're all organic compounds in a primer,
there's a lot less than others, and they do outgas

(38:15):
before the person moves in, so but the paint itself
that's sitting on top of that is different. But they
do make these press board waterproof trim for bathrooms and
they're awful. They test high from aldehyde. They're literally press board,
and they everybody sells them and they look nice in
the outside, but they mold when water gets on them,

(38:36):
and they're waterproof. You're paying extras for these, So I
would I was gonna put trim in something. You know,
my first choice would be, let's just talk about a bathroom.
You know, the sheet rock doesn't belong in that bathroom,
so you you know, and this is where you're gonna
spend your money. You're gonna spend your money. You're a
little bit of money. You're already gonna you're already gonna use,
you know, a cement board behind your tile. Anyway, that's
not spending more money. No, nobody puts tile up on

(38:57):
top of sheet rock anymore. But it happened forty years ago, right, right,
So it's not incurious money, right. But your floor should
be it should not be wood in a bathroom. It
should be LBL which is luxury vinyl plank, which is
waterproof and as a membrane backer. If you're going inexpensive,
you can run the house right into the bathroom, which
gives you a sealed membrane. You have to run it
right into the tub, right into the sinks, and you

(39:19):
do really good trim pieces around that. So that's your
lower end inexpensive follution that that is two dollars a
foot and it's beautiful. They make long wood plikes but
it's nice to stand on. But there's a higher end.
Homes that I'm proceeeding now have this because especially in
human areas, I mean wood buckles right right, and nobody
wants what is that called again? That LVL luxury vinyl plank.

(39:42):
And there's differenties, but you have to get one that's
got you know, like really high carb two which is
the compliance, which is the VOC ratings. I like life
proofs from home depots shocking. I like the product. I've
tested it over and over again. In houses. You pull
out of the box, you let it accimate for a day.
The smell is gone, and I mean registered gone on
a me No low or organic compounds in that because

(40:02):
it's recycled material going in right, and the membrane makes
it so easy. You don't have to lay a membrane
over your sub floor because it's on the back of
the damn thing. It's the least expensive good looking flooring
there is. You step up into hardwood, you step up
into tile, but the bathroom should have that or tile
and so. But you know you start widening your mortar
joints to make it look nice. Your mortar has to

(40:22):
be sealed. Now they do make non sealed mortar, I
mean more than that to be sealed anymore. I just
don't know how well it really behaves after ten years.
But you want butt joined various tiny mortar seal, you know,
like eighth inch or less, because that's where your water
is going to get down into your subfloor where the
lvl it it's a snap overlap, there's not water's not

(40:43):
going down. I mean, I'm sure if you poured five
gallons on there, it would you'd have to pull it up.
But you can put the floor back downside even row
and tile you can't even get to it. So I
like tile in the bathrooms and I like it coming
up in a ways coat or in the wall. So
where you're going to spend your money is what are
you going to do above the tile on the walls
and what do you do in the sealing Because the
only thing protecting you from mold and moisture is a

(41:03):
code of paint. So if you use dense umber plus,
you got more than a code of paint. Right, you
got the actual fiberglass lining on the sheet rock, which
is still sheet rock drywall, but it's got a waterproof
membrane on the outside which prevents it from getting into
the studs and all that. You have mag board, you
don't have to worry about it at all. But I
or you tile all the way up. But you know,

(41:24):
you go into so many houses. I just did a
house last year. They spent a million dollars to remodel
three thousand square feet and didn't add a square foot.
So do the math. That's a lot. How do you
I mean what I mean? It was Italian marble brought
in from Italy right right like, and the house had
mold in a year. So the contractor called me and
she's like, and I know really well because I was
part of this coalition. I was starting down in southern California,

(41:45):
this healthy building coalition. But they wanted it to make
it like all of a sudden, we had chiropractors and
doctors there and I'm like, no, no, it's you know, and
people are it was like everything but building, and I'm like,
I just wanted it to be some small little scope, right.
So I left that but she was in that and
you know, eight hundred dollars a foot, thousand dollars a
foot for no new I mean, that's just gutting the

(42:06):
house and redoing it, right, And so I went in
the house and had looked down and they had put
that waterproof trim around the shower. But I walked into
the shower, which had a pivot door alcove, and I
looked at it and there was a freaking window in
the shower, right, which is I mean that happens in
old days, but it was a wood window, and I
went why, And then I looked out, here's the ceiling

(42:26):
this sheet rock on it, and a fan in there
in a sheet rock and paint in an alcove shower
with no but they didn't have the window open ever,
and so I said, how often do you run this
exhaust fan? And they like they said never, And I went,
So you're sitting in an alcove with one little thirty
inch door with paper on the ceiling, a fan that's
not running, a wood window that's not open, and you

(42:47):
got plastic trim around here, and it's cracking. And I said,
guaranteed on the outside of your shower when you open
that pivot door, it's moistures dripping on that ground and
on that ledge, and you pull that up, there's going
to be mulled. I didn't know it would be stacky
botress which is black mold, or Chaetonian which is black mold,
but it was. These people were so sick. They had
retired and they put their entire life. They were scientists,

(43:08):
they put their entire life savings in this house. And
they were both neurologically sick. His wife was seventy one
years old, had never been sick your life. She was
bedridden for wold. Didn't even know she had mold. So
I bring in analogies or where it came from.

Speaker 2 (43:19):
They're like knowing every thinks for the house.

Speaker 1 (43:21):
The trim was peeling. I mean it was cracking. Brand new.
They brought me in the you know, the contract was like, yeah,
is it in the bathroom and they didn't decide The
shower was solid marble right there was beautiful And I'm like, yeah,
but you didn't do the super basic part. So he goes,
what's the fix and I said, pull out the trim,
pull out the wall. We got to hermetically steal your
bedroom and the worst part is there was not even

(43:41):
a door in the bedroom, so they were sleeping in
it because it was a walk in bathroom. Oh yeah,
So they were just living breathing in this molt. And
so I said the medically steal, well continue it, pull
it out. And they're like, well, how are we going
to fix it? And I said, well, you're gonna pull
the window out. You're gonna put glass block in there
for light. It'll be nice. But you know you're gonna
we have to come to that hole. You're not gonna
rip up the whole wall. Then we're gonna take the

(44:03):
ceiling down. I'm gonna give you the bagboard in my
garage that I have saved. We're gonna bag board that ceiling.
We're gonna put a timer on your exhaust fan so
that you don't have a choice because the light's connected
to that timer and when you go take a shower,
it runs an hour after and you don't have to
think about it. How is that timer cost six dollars
and ninety five cents And so they look at me
like and then they of course looked at the contractor
and they were not happy. I wasn't trying to make

(44:23):
her look bad. I was just like, and so they go, well,
how are we going to treat the outside of this
shower now that there's wood trim because there's moisture there
because there's no ventilation. They said, you're gonna you're gonna
find that marble and cut a piece and that's gonna
cost you. I mean, that costs from like three grand,
but they didn't pay for it. The contractor had to
do it all right. So I said, you're gonna make
a piece of marble and you're gonna bulldoze that marble

(44:43):
and rout it. It's gonna beautiful and it's going to
match the inside of the shower. You're just gonna bring
the marble out and trim it. So I just designed
the whole bathroom all over again, and which I'm not
a designer, your wife is, but you know, it's not
that hard to do. And it looked beautiful and and
then we got mold cleares. But it's like people, they're
putting all the money into these things, but they're not
using upper building materials into the wrong places.

Speaker 2 (45:04):
So you made me think of something, what's the liability
for that contractor? I mean, not to bring up kind
of a negative point, but it's real, and I've worked
with it and dealt with enough contractors to where you
got that whole ten year tail of once you install,
and you got ambulance chasing, attorneys and everybody else. This
just say a no brainer.

Speaker 1 (45:23):
So these people are salt of the earth. They were
neat people, and so they were She was lucky because
their liability is that they got sick. Doctors would have
testified they got mold in their house. Once I gave
them a mold report that showed they have mold in
their house, and she had just gutted the house. She
was one hundred percent liable, which is why she was
there fixing it at her cost. But she got lucky
that he didn't mean disaffected their life. I mean they

(45:45):
were sick, badly sick, And so that liability is too
scary for you to think about.

Speaker 2 (45:49):
Now. I fit around enough people with mold poisoning and
it's extremely serious, and you know it just your the
whole system. Your immune system for sure is just completely
out of wax. So obviously that can create other issues,
and it's one of those things it's very very difficult
to get rid of.

Speaker 1 (46:04):
Imagine and it's even harder the older you are, right,
your system is a violent it's a violent detox.

Speaker 2 (46:10):
Well I wonder you know you and not to get
into into it going a total rapple on this, but
how many older people are just you know, struggling with
whatever the yellman is. And it's like I hate to
think of how many homes are just basically killing them,
killing them quickly.

Speaker 1 (46:25):
Yeah, you know, I find I'm I'm just an average
guy really that's had a lot of experience. But I
go into these houses and every single time I go
into house, it's like I can find mold if I
want to, Wow, if I want to, if I'm looking,
I'll find it.

Speaker 2 (46:38):
So I think that's another great kind of motivator for
you know, builders and developers to start thinking about this stuff.
It's like, you know, obviously we're I'm talking about like
the front end sales, increase your profits, sell for more,
do all that and be able to market and differentiate yourself.
But I think on the other side of the coin
is really just kind of liability and protecting yourself against
someone coming back.

Speaker 1 (46:58):
Well, there's the do the right thing and.

Speaker 2 (47:00):
That's obviously yeah that overright.

Speaker 1 (47:03):
Then there's the the which unfortunately we have a world
that cares more about profit. But if you just care
about profit, it's smart. Exactly care about profit and that's
all your business model is about, then you'd want to
protect yourself by building it. And when we were young,
the more commonly the builders were just good and now
it's hard to find one well.

Speaker 2 (47:22):
And the material actually it was the materials were better.
You know, there weren't as toxic as they are now.

Speaker 1 (47:27):
Well that I have to contend with it. I think
they're today speaking, they're way less toxic. But there was
a period between when we were young and then ten
fifteen years ago that they were.

Speaker 2 (47:38):
Was at the TV dinner phase that we went through
from a.

Speaker 1 (47:41):
Yeah, yeah, that was bad. That was bad. I mean
that would but no, but people would use beautileing and
I mean they would tar use tar paper in your house.
I mean you had tar paper bringing your walls in
your breathing walls like tar paper, like tar we were
driven by somebody tarring in the tar truck that's sitting
live in many houses in the forties and fifties, that's
what they waterproof houses, not taiek tar.

Speaker 2 (48:01):
So you could smell it.

Speaker 1 (48:02):
You could smell in a block away and yet it's
in your house. Well, it's not outside the house. It's
between the wallboard, on the outside of the wallboard. It's
right outside the studs. So you have I mean your
house wall. The interior is not air I mean it's
not air tight. You have outlets that have little covers
on them. Right you lookther than there's all kinds of
air in there that's coming right into your house. All

(48:23):
that stuff, all whatever is behind your walls in your house. Well,
it's at fifteen years old. I was tearing off asbestos roof.
So there you go.

Speaker 2 (48:30):
We we didn't know how much.

Speaker 1 (48:32):
You said a lot more toxic today, but I think
it was more. We've done a lot of good things,
but the paints were so I mean.

Speaker 2 (48:38):
We had lead paint. Okay, I don't know. Did you
mention paint.

Speaker 1 (48:40):
We haven't got there yet.

Speaker 2 (48:41):
Okay, go ahead.

Speaker 1 (48:43):
Sorry, we were just talking about flooring and I was
going to finish with wood flooring and say, you know,
ten years ago, these vinyl floors, they were really dangerous
when were kids, they were really dangerous. Probaly vinyl chloride
is a bad thing. It outgases for years. You know,
it's got hard vinyl doesn't outgas like soft vinyl, but
shower cur burtains and floyd and so it's important when
you're using vinyl flooring that you are getting something that's

(49:05):
been tested, like a life proof flooring to be not emitting.
But would I mean, we use the lacquer, and lacquer
is great when it cures, but it's soft. When it
heats up, it outgases again forever. So they came up
with a crylic coatings which outgas the water. They're water based,
so they outgass very little baked coating. So if you're
working with wood, you know in the old days they
were oiled, right and they were semi toxic, but you

(49:28):
just oiled your floor. If you're working with wood, you
want I mean, if you're working with a eurothane. Would
let's say that's a common eurothane finish that has a
pretty high I mean, they make euthane that goes all
the way down to fifty micro leaders with middle grounds
per leader that's very low and that'll off gas in
days three days, but some of it's like five hundred.
So you got to be careful about what you're choosing
and you want it baked, so let's just talk. So

(49:50):
you refinish your floor and they bring in a sealer,
they're not able to bake it, right, that's the danger point, right,
they're laying it down and it's and you're living in there.
You got to make sure. There are ways we can
talk about another podcast, like how do you handle your
air when it's bad? Like enduring building process. There's a
I mean, I can write a whole book on how
to protect yourself during the building process. If a lot

(50:10):
of people remodel, they're just cutting it off part of
their house. They're not moving out. But even if you
move back in right after you finished the house, there's
a slew of toxins in there. You're going to take
in your system and your liver right away. And they
used to just turn on the heat bake the house out.
They thought that was good enough. But what if it's summer, right,
you know, and you close your house. In California, we
steal our houses up now because that's what the code says.
And they don't breathe. They're horribly toxic. Air is not

(50:32):
coming in, air is not going out. The AC's running,
it's not pulling in fresh air. That's why we have
some problem.

Speaker 2 (50:38):
This is the funniest pet Peeven my father in law,
who you know, building for almost seventy years, sixty five years,
and the codes and making these houses air tight is
just a terrible thing.

Speaker 1 (50:51):
It is a terrible idea. It's efficient for energy, but
there are better ways for us to use our energy
system than. I mean, your father in law, who I
know very well heat was smart enough thirty five years
ago to use radiant heat in his houses in Reno.
I use it now for all my clients. It's brilliant.
Why because it's low amverage input. It doesn't blow air

(51:11):
all around and waste it and rise. It comes from
the floor and it is the least costly and healthy
solution you can possibly have because you're not asperating dust
all over your house. You don't need to be blowing heat,
you know. And radiant heat. Actually, if we talk about
heating systems now for a second, the HVAC system, it
was generated because it's convenient for people. Oh, I come
in my house can warm up like that? You know, Well,

(51:33):
all the heat's up there right, it's sitting down here
and your way. It's the biggest waste, and it's blowing
toxins and air and dust and everything right through you
at a higher rate. Because it's got a vacuum pole.
You put in radiant heat. If it's radiant truly, it
heats the objects like literally, and they make heaters like
I did a house, my own house. There's heaters there.
Some in the United States but use it. They're in Europe,

(51:53):
but they are far infrared heat. Well what as far
we use it in saunas. It's an anti inflammatory. So
imagine instead of heating with gas where you're blowing shit
around and you have off gasing and it's wasteful, heating
something that actually reduces your inflammation in your body and
is lower cost. There's one of my wealthy home.

Speaker 2 (52:10):
You're living in a sauna, so.

Speaker 1 (52:11):
You're living in the sauna without the humidity right right.
So they make radio heating for flooring super expensive to
do it that way, but he put them in wall heaters.
You can also have panel eaters. They're beautiful and made
out of marble. They look like art, but they run
on a n amp and a quarter You have to
run the best ways to run two twenty for those
in your house when you're building, and that doesn't cost
hardly anyedymore. But two twenty is so much more efficient.

(52:33):
Why we use one ten in the United States is hilarious.
I mean people in Europe laph atous. The poll that
comes into your house is two twenty. It's two one
ten legs. And let's just talk about magnetic fields and
voltage for a second. Would they come in together like
that to the house that one leg's going in, one
lenk's going back. Okay, that's how it is, and that's
what two twenty is. It's traveling like this right, Well,
they cancel their magnetic field and their voltage field out

(52:54):
because one's positive going one direction and one's negative going
the other. Well, what does one tend do? It doesn't
have a place to go, there's no cancelation. It comes
into your house canceled. But when it gets into your wall,
there's no other leg. It's the doublest energy ever, and
it's that's what's causing our problems. If two twenty is
super healthy, there's zero magnetic field on two twenty. You
don't even need to run an empty cable. You don't.
So anyway, that's heating and you know and just.

Speaker 2 (53:15):
I'm gonna go back and just clarify one thing. So,
just what's the like the dumb it down on the flooring.
You talked about quite a bit of different options on
the flooring. What should we consider if we're doing wood.
What is kind of the best wood from a cost
effective perspective?

Speaker 1 (53:29):
Well, picking the right wood that acclimates to the environment
that you're in. Right, you don't put eucalyptus flooring in
you know, ha whi, it'll buckle, You'll come home and
it'll be three feet off the ground. You have to
pick the wood that has the moisture content for where
you live. That's number one. Any wood guy, any wood manufacture,
any wood store, or will tell you what you use
in your house and whatnot. You know, typically oak is
a really good wood, right, that's why it's hard. Doesn't matter, right,

(53:51):
but it's really So let's just talk about flooring for
a second. There's manufactured flooring, engineered flooring, and it can
be pretty toxic because it's got glues in it. Solid
hardwood can buckle because it doesn't have the strength of
a plywood. So engineered floor is a plywood with a
veneer Oka Vinia is. It can be different thicknesses. It
can be a half inch, an eighth of inch, whatever

(54:11):
it was. It's a ware layer, right, and then it
has a seiler on top of it or a stain
in the ceiler. So those stains are pretty they're toxic.
They're going to outgas through the ceiler. So you need
a Carbon two compliant or better seiler. So there are
certain companies, and I mean I like Cali Bamboo, that's
one in San Diego. But I mean there's you know,
there's other companies, but you want to make sure they're
using non toxic sealers and non toxic stains because that

(54:33):
stain is trapped into that ceiler and then you put
that flooring in your house and for the next five years,
it's leaking through the porous water based seiler into your
breathing mechanism, right, and you don't know it. You can't
smell it necessarily.

Speaker 2 (54:45):
Is there a way to identify it? So I was
definitely big into the wide plank in most of my projects.
And then to do wide plank, you know, I would
go engineered so it wouldn't buckle. Is there a bit
more toxic yeap, so they are more toxic, just you know,
by virtue of what they are and what options do
I have as far as like low toxic, low VOC
type floors. I mean, would you still go engineered? Like

(55:07):
what did you do in Kawaii?

Speaker 1 (55:08):
Oh? I put LVLL in because in that moisture environment
you didn't want to walk on tile and wood doesn't
belong in Hawaiian buckles it's too humid.

Speaker 2 (55:14):
Okay. So just if you're you know, doing the healthiest
home you can, I mean, is it LVL. Is that
kind of the main option you'd go with?

Speaker 1 (55:22):
Oh No, I think I think you can do a
wood floor in a healthy home. It's just if you're
talking costs healthy, healthy and costs at the same time.
You got your LVL maybe LVL and tile, and you
got your wood and tile right, and so I think
that's going up in cost. I think wood is fine.
You just that's where the skill of understanding the materials,
because no two wood floors are alike. They are very

(55:42):
very hyper allergen sensitive because of the glues used and
because of the sealers used. There are some wood floors
out there, I mean there insanely expensive, though. You got
you start getting into mineral based stains. That have no VOCs.
We haven't got into stains and paid yet, but I
mean there are mineral base they're made for rock minerals
and therefore the solvents are inherent and they're beautiful stains,

(56:05):
but they don't have the they don't dry that fast.
You know, they're not that right, right, But they make
wood floors with those mineral stains on them and then
a water based seiler so it's not trapping anything bad.
You get a water based seals, it's gonna out gas itself.
You take it out of the box, it's gonna out
gas in a week by the time people move, and
it's fine. That's where I help people decide. Because it's wood.
Floor is a difficult subject to you can't really box

(56:28):
it in. But you're building a high end of home.
There are solutions that are cost effective. That's why I
mentioned Cali bamboo. They make a bamboo floor that has
solid bamboo. Bamboo is awesome. You know how hard that is.
It's harder than oh, it doesn't buckle, you know, and
they have the acrylic sealers on them. They outgas in
a day and they're you know, four bucks a foot.
So I mean there are and that's just one suggestion.

(56:48):
I'm just saying, there's tons of flooring that can be conspective,
that can be healthy.

Speaker 2 (56:52):
So we should probably wrap it up. We got what
do we got left?

Speaker 1 (56:55):
Paint paid and stain. I just kind of went, you know,
so paints and stains. I'll do this quickly. Water based
paints are not all alike. They have vego sees. The
government created a zero VOC list and I've got to
and then two lean was the big chemical they wanted
out of it. But I'm telling you that they create
a zero VOC list with the chemical industry that didn't
get out all the chemicals. So they put a list

(57:15):
together and said, if you have everything on this list,
you're zero VOC and I can measure VOCs on them
because these other chemicals are still in there. That makes sense,
so they're not created equal. Now we stay away from
anything in any big box store that says zero VOC.

Speaker 2 (57:28):
Paints.

Speaker 1 (57:29):
The glintens the bears there, they don't come out great.
Benjamin Moore makes a paint called Bend b e N.
I've talked to the chemist there. Over all the years.
They used to have one called Natura. It was plant
based zero VOC for real. This has the lowest VOCs
and literally within a day that paint outgases one day gone.
You know, smell the o VOCs and and it's middle price.

(57:51):
It's like forty seven bucks a gallon in paint. That's
I mean, got paint sixty five bucks a gallon each,
Save yourself thousands of dollars using that paint and it's
a beautiful paint. So that's my suggestion. Paint seilers stains
big thing. If you're doing stains by hand in the house,
they need to be mineral based because the solvents in
the stain are really toxic, and then when you cover
them with the seiler, they're trapped, so they're gonna outgas slowly.

(58:15):
Makes sense. You just put plastic on top of the
on top of the stain and it can't get out
right fat, okay, so if you're going to breathe it.
That's how we finish up the house. There's other things
to talk about in terms of you know, ventilation in
the house through the roofing, to be able to let
that airflow that you brought underneath the house through the flooring,
which is why LVL and Wood' flooring is really good.
Because the air will come up in with your windows,

(58:36):
it goes out through your roof and your ceiling, and
how you ventilate your roof and your attic and your
attic vents, you know, with solar attic venting up there
is crucial to getting the air to travel through and
keep airflow through your house. Keep them mole levels down
overhead fans. Brilliant. Okay, so I'm sure we didn't cover everything,
but that's no. This is great.

Speaker 2 (58:57):
This is really good. I appreciate it. We'll cut this
up into this is all great. I appreciate the time. Again, Bo,
this is like I said, I mean, obviously this is
kind of near and dear to my heart just because
I've dealt with sleep issues and various little health things
here and there. So you help me a lot just
in my sleep environment here at my house. And that's
what kind of prompted this discussion. And honestly, I didn't

(59:18):
know that you went this deep and all the various
areas in creating this healthy home. So anyway everybody can
find so it's Bo Stevens. You can all find BO
at SCG. That stands for Stephens Consulting Group. But it's
SCG Healthybuilding dot com and on that site you can
go there and you can set up a consultation with
bo directly. I'm gonna have some show notes to where

(59:40):
we'll go through some of the sources and strategies we
talked about. I'm sure we'll have a follow up because
there's always, you know, more to talk about. Name of
the company is SCG Healthy Living And is that should
people go find you anywhere else or is that kind
of the primary?

Speaker 1 (59:54):
That's it, that's the best way. The actual company is
the SCG Healthy Building. But for some reason, my guy
that designed my web architect just put that moniker on
there and it's been there for ten years. But it's
SCG Healthy Building, it's Steven's consulting group, and it's our
Healthy Building division.

Speaker 2 (01:00:07):
Okay, great, So that's it for now. Thanks for your time.

Speaker 1 (01:00:09):
It's great, Senior Rod, Thanks again too.

Speaker 2 (01:00:11):
I'll talk to you soon. Well, we covered a lot
of stuff in that podcast. I hope you enjoyed it,
and some of it got a little deep, maybe more
than you wanted to know, but hopefully it'll help you
in your real estate business in the future. And if
anyone's just into living a healthier, healthier life, or dealing
with any kind of chronic illness issues. Hopefully that'll help.

(01:00:33):
And I just want to let you know you can
find Bo Stevens. His company is SCG Healthy Living. SCG
stands for Stevens Consulting Group and you can find him
online at Scghealthybuilding dot com. Feel free to look him
up there. He is, like you mentioned, he's just very open.

(01:00:53):
He's helping people deal with some of the bad things
they are in our homes as far and affecting human health.
And by the way, as far as this podcast, depending
on where you listen to it, you can always find
this on our YouTube channel at the Optimized real Estate
Podcast YouTube channel. And then I post everything on my
personal website which is rod dash Wilson dot com. And

(01:01:15):
that's it for now. Thanks for joining and we'll see
you next time.