Latest / Around the House with Eric G®: Home Improvement Remodeling & DIY / Home Ventilation & Indoor Air Quality: ERVs, Exhaust Fans, MERV-13 Filters (with Ken Nelson from Panasonic)

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Home Ventilation & Indoor Air Quality: ERVs, Exhaust Fans, MERV-13 Filters (with Ken Nelson from Panasonic) · Around the House with Eric G®: Home Improvement Remodeling & DIY

0:10
From coast to coast, it's the nation's number one home improvement radio show and podcast with certified kitchen designer Eric G.
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And co host John Dudley, a former contractor and online technology expert.
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This weekend on around the House, we're bringing you a best of episode.
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Eric had to make a last minute trip out of town for a family emergency.
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Welcome to the around the House show, your trusted source for everything about your home.
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Thanks for joining us today.
1:00
John Dudley, Good to see you, my friend.
1:01
What's happening, brother?
1:04
Always fun on this one.
1:05
We have got one of the OG guests back on the show today, Ken Nelson, Panasonic Ventilation.
1:12
Brother, good to see you again.
1:13
It's been a bit.
1:15
It's been a minute.
1:16
Yeah.
1:16
I think it was one of the trade shows last year where we connected for a while.
1:21
Absolutely, man.
1:22
And it's great.
1:23
Geez.
1:23
Trade show coming around here again soon.
1:25
We'll get to see each other face to face, I'm sure.
1:27
But man, I have been using your products for sheesh.
1:31
Probably I'm going to date myself, I'm going to say over 10 years and I'll just leave it at that because it's been a bit.
1:36
But there is still, in my opinion, nobody out there that is competing head to head with Panasonic Ventilation.
1:44
And you guys are not paying me to say that.
1:46
This is just something that I've been using forever and no one's close, brother.
1:51
So great job that.
1:52
Still, 10 years later, to not have anybody that's really doing what you guys are doing.
1:56
Well, you know what?
1:57
So one of the things, one of the things I would like to talk about before our day is over is ervs.
2:01
But one of the primary pillars of ERVS is the motor.
2:06
And if there's one thing that Panasonic does, we build motors.
2:11
Our ecm, our electronic commutated motors are so robust, in fact, in our fans.
2:17
For example, I have a fan in my crawl space.
2:20
It's been running straight for 18 years.
2:23
I just use it in the crawl space to evacuate moisture load out of the crawl space.
2:27
Right.
2:27
Continuously moving air.
2:29
I go down there about every five years and knock the dust out of the blower wheel and, and literally that's all I do but it is still running right now.
2:39
I haven't looked at it the last couple of minutes, but I can walk by one of my foundation vents, and I can feel the air coming out of it.
2:46
So nice.
2:47
We build these robust motors.
2:49
You know, when you're a builder, one of the things you want is resilience in your products.
2:53
Right.
2:54
Holy cow.
2:54
You don't want to put something in and then be on that speed dial in three years.
2:58
When you're a home buyer, your homeowner calls you up and say, yeah, this goofy little fan that you saved money on fails.
3:05
And now I've got steam in my shower area.
3:08
It's just.
3:10
It's just too irritating to go cheap with that.
3:14
Yeah, Yeah.
3:16
I say this about your vent fans because you literally killed the business of mirror and medicine cabinet companies that were putting in heated mirrors and medicine cabinets.
3:27
And I always just went, why do you need to buy that if you just got good ventilation?
3:32
Right, Right.
3:34
Yep.
3:34
It's that simple.
3:35
Have nothing to add to that.
3:36
Right.
3:37
I mean, ventilation and the ventilation is just really the key in that application.
3:42
But we want to remind everyone that ventilation doesn't just apply to the bathroom.
3:47
Right.
3:47
One of the things we often forget is where moisture or water vapor is generated from within the house.
3:52
Right.
3:53
We have a number of places as humans.
3:55
We out gas moisture like crazy.
3:58
We have a kitchen where we cook and do all these other cleaning and projects.
4:01
And then, of course, there's the bathroom where we dump high volumes of moisture in a short time into the house.
4:09
So ventilation or bathroom ventilation, however you have that ventilation working, it solves all of those problems.
4:18
It does.
4:18
And there's so many other rooms now getting added to this.
4:21
And Johnny and I have talked a little bit about it in the past, and John, I'll let you jump in here in a second.
4:25
But nowadays I'm seeing all these new builds around my house.
4:29
They've got the three car garage.
4:31
They've insulated it.
4:32
They've sheetrocked it.
4:34
It's beautiful.
4:35
They've got the glass.
4:36
The frosted glass garage doors.
4:39
And it looks like it's raining in there because they pull in in the wintertime about right now.
4:44
It's 45 degrees outside.
4:47
The car is soaking wet.
4:49
Two cars pull in there.
4:50
They go inside, and all that moisture and the heat of the engine is sitting there in an insulated space.
4:56
And I can guarantee you that every single storage tote of Christmas, Easter, whatever else is in there, and sports equipment is a moldy, growing mess has become.
5:09
The chia Pet of the garage.
5:12
Yeah.
5:13
And it's something that unfortunately building code really hasn't been addressing because technically it's not inside the structure, but it is.
5:22
You know what I mean?
5:24
So what we see is, we see the building code, which is basically the barely legal house that you can build and the building code, that's your D minus.
5:35
Yeah.
5:35
And then you have above code program.
5:37
So if you built an Energy Star house, for example, in that attached garage, you would, to meet the energy star, the above code requirements of energy Star be required to have some kind of an exhaust fan in there.
5:50
Because it's not just moisture.
5:51
Right.
5:51
You bring the car in there, you start it, you turn it off, it's outgassing.
5:56
Gosh.
5:56
Nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, PM 2.5, everything you can associate with a combustion process, outgassing.
6:05
And then of course, at my house, holy cow, you go out to my garage and my wife, she has her fertilizer, she has herbicides, I have pesticides.
6:13
I'm bringing, I'm bringing the whole thing, the whole package into my garage and it's just separated by a self closing door.
6:22
That's.
6:22
Yeah.
6:23
Paints, solvents, everything.
6:28
Exactly.
6:29
Diesel.
6:30
I've got diesel.
6:31
I've got mixed fuel, I've got gasoline.
6:33
Holy cow.
6:34
Our garages are full of things that are not really the best things for us.
6:41
Yeah.
6:41
So Ken, in that kind of situation, is it better to put in a VIN fan or is that really where ERV should come in?
6:48
Or what's your take on that?
6:49
Because code's not dealing with it.
6:52
Whenever I talk to builders about that application, in my opinion, we have like one of the most perfect fans.
6:58
We have what we call our whisper sense fan.
7:01
And what it is, it's a condensation sensor and a motion sensor all in one.
7:09
And so you drive in, the fan's going to come on for an hour or you can actually define that value.
7:14
It'd be 40 minutes, 30 minutes, whatever you wish, but it'll come on and evaporate and evacuate whatever's in there out.
7:21
And then it's also got the moisture sensor.
7:23
So if you come in, we see this especially in our northern climate where the cars are as you described, they're wet or covered in snow, all that dribbles off.
7:32
And now you've got your engine block or whatever heat source rising.
7:36
I have shoe dryers in my garage.
7:38
I have all sorts of stuff that's creating water vapor.
7:42
And what I don't want it to do is adhere to a wall space so that fan will Sense that moisture load and trigger on.
7:49
Problem solved.
7:50
Right.
7:50
And again, part of our challenge is how do I make all of these functions so that the occupant doesn't have to go out and turn a switch on.
8:01
Right.
8:01
Because the occupant, I mean, you might have a really savvy occupant that'll do it half the time or much of the time.
8:09
100%.
8:10
And it's the same day in the bathroom.
8:12
That's the one nice thing about code, is that they've been putting timers and stuff in there.
8:16
And as far as current code, they've gotten that better.
8:19
And I want to say this because I did this at my, at my last house, I had another brand of fans that they said, hey, try this.
8:26
Another big brand.
8:27
I'm not going to bash them here.
8:28
But it's in every builder basic house that you see out there.
8:31
And it's been in those houses for 40 years.
8:35
I turned it on for the first time and I just went, oh, my gosh, this sounds no different.
8:41
It's their high end fan.
8:43
It sounds no different than the nasty $29 squirrel cage one that every low end builder puts in.
8:50
And again, goes back to what you guys are doing.
8:53
My biggest complaint in 10 years of using those fans plus is the homeowner couldn't hear when it was on.
8:59
On a high ceiling.
9:01
Is it even working?
9:02
Yeah, it's working.
9:03
Yeah.
9:04
Yeah, I know.
9:05
Just because you can't hear it two rooms away doesn't mean it's not working right.
9:09
Exactly.
9:10
And much to my chagrin, I'm like, they put Bluetooth.
9:14
We have a, we actually have a Bluetooth band now that will play the radio.
9:19
Cool.
9:19
And I'm like, oh, my gosh, you guys.
9:21
You know, first of all, I already wrestle with builders based on cost and function and value.
9:27
Right?
9:27
But a Bluetooth fan, and I love the idea being able to put the speaker in the fan.
9:32
But the reality is I get other ways to get music in my bathroom if I really want it.
9:37
It's just, you know, it just cracks me up.
9:40
How, how?
9:40
Vent fans.
9:41
Now, I will tell you that the lighting on fans has evolved.
9:47
Yeah, right.
9:48
We have.
9:49
I've got color changing lights that you can change the temperature of the light, the brightness of the light.
9:55
They're all dimmable.
9:56
The LED lights are some of the most robust.
9:59
When I first started out in the industry 15 years ago, if you came to me and said, hey, should I put a lighted fan in?
10:06
I would say, heck no, because I could put A thousand fans in, and I would never get a phone call.
10:13
You put 10 lighted fans in, I would get at least a phone call.
10:17
I mean, it was just.
10:18
They were so unreliable.
10:20
But now these new chipset.
10:22
These new chipset LED lights.
10:25
I swear to God, I've dropped them, I've kicked them across my shop floor, plug them in.
10:30
Boom.
10:30
Look like it.
10:32
So.
10:32
So lighting has really, really changed.
10:35
I will say the Bluetooth has one useful place in the powder room that's right next to everybody that's having the party down there.
10:44
You know, you could give the code to people to log in if they're not feeling well.
10:49
And then if you want to Hijack it with YouTube sounds, you can do that when you're having the friends over, but play your own stuff while they're in there.
10:57
But you can.
10:58
I got to tell you, though, I always lean towards what's the best thing for the structure and the people that are there.
11:05
Right.
11:06
The best thing for the structure is moisture management.
11:08
The best thing for people is indoor air quality.
11:11
So, honestly, there's still place in there where music kind of comes into that mix.
11:16
But I'm a bit of a entertainment product.
11:19
Yeah, yeah.
11:20
If I'm going to spend money, I want to put it where the squeeze is.
11:25
The juicer.
11:25
Where the squeeze.
11:26
Right.
11:27
But yeah, yeah, that's just saying that.
11:30
Not the best value.
11:31
I like it, Ken.
11:32
I like it.
11:33
I want to talk.
11:34
I mean, we've talked about kitchens and that stuff, but kitchens are so important in this whole mix of just good ventilation.
11:41
And I'm not talking about just turning on that little tiny thing, the microwave, because the microwave is probably the worst ventilation product in the world for moving air.
11:52
When you see those over the range.
11:53
Microwaves, as a designer, I refuse to put them in unless it was a must have in like a condo or something like that, where you're like, okay, I'm stuck here.
12:03
This is the only thing.
12:04
But really having good ventilation in there really changes your indoor air quality just so quickly if you're cooking on that cooking surface.
12:14
Right, right.
12:15
And again, one of the challenges in the kitchen is when you're cooking, you're not just vaporizing water, you're picking up things that are into the food groups that you're cooking, starches and whatnot.
12:27
If you think about in the way back when we were kids in school and you wanted to make glue, you used a starchy material and water, and it would adhere.
12:35
Right.
12:35
So if you vaporize that, put that into the air, all that does is find A surface to adhere to.
12:42
And now that starch becomes food for mold and mildew.
12:46
And literally that's the first step to having compromised breathing issues when you live in a unit that's had molded mildew.
12:55
Over and over and over again.
12:56
I just, I remember we went into a weatherization project in Seattle and we went into a low income thing and literally in the kitchen you could see where a picture frame was.
13:07
Right.
13:07
Because it was white behind it and yellow all the way around.
13:12
I mean, that's just material.
13:14
It's just material.
13:16
It is.
13:16
And it's interesting.
13:17
I really wish that there's another company you see in the home centers and it's the same one I was ripping on earlier.
13:23
And I'm not going to use the name, but these recycled vent hoods, I wish that we would just ban them because we need to not have.
13:33
I call them forehead dusters because that's all they do.
13:36
They don't do anything.
13:37
They're worthless.
13:38
They, in my opinion, it's the recirculation.
13:41
Application and really all it tries to do is diffuse that moisture load throughout a wider space quicker.
13:48
It doesn't remove it, it just pushes it out farther and faster out into the space.
13:53
Yeah.
13:54
It's unfortunate, but there's a lot of them out there.
13:57
It's an annuity to Panasonic, to our ventilation team.
14:00
Those are annuities because at some point they're going to have to figure out that that's a problem and they'll put a fan in.
14:08
Yeah.
14:08
And that's building code.
14:10
I mean, that's here in where, where you live can up in Washington, where I live, down in Oregon and many states across the country, when you do that kitchen model, they require you to upgrade that ventilation and make
14:23
it vent outside in like in Oregon here, there are no working around that.
14:27
It's like that has to vent outside.
14:29
So gets a little interesting when you got condos and HOA boards and things like that where you're like, hey, I got to drill a hole in the outside.
14:36
But it has to happen, you know,.
14:38
In our climates here, our climates in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, honestly, pretty much the northern part of the US we do have, I think we have pretty darn good codes and code acceptance for ventilation.
14:52
And part of that is because the cost of failure comes back to the building or the property manager.
14:58
But I do a lot of work in the south in Texas and Florida.
15:02
Florida and everything in between.
15:05
And their codes are not nearly as, as manageable there.
15:09
Right.
15:10
So it's, it's a Different educational process to tell someone in the south about how to manage water vapor, how to manage moisture within the house when their humidity outside is far, far higher than the humidity inside.
15:24
But it can be done.
15:25
But it can be done.
15:26
And it has to be done.
15:28
Yeah, it's smart.
15:30
John, how many times did we tear into stuff and we see the vent fan that was venting into between the floors and the, you know, in the joist bays, or it went right up out of the kitchen, right
15:42
into the attic space, and there's a plastic dryer vent laying across the insulation.
15:47
That's kind of just going to nowhere.
15:49
That's the other half of this.
15:51
Is.
15:51
Isn't that how you're supposed to install them?
15:53
You just throw the tube up in the attic and call it a day?
15:56
It'll.
15:57
It'll go out the sides on the, on the gable.
15:59
Ven Sense.
16:00
Right.
16:00
That's fine, isn't it?
16:02
That is, if it's out of sight, it's not a problem.
16:05
Yeah, yeah.
16:06
Until science gets right.
16:08
Just put it out.
16:09
Right.
16:10
I don't even want to put that out there.
16:12
That is inherently.
16:14
Even if somebody wants to clip this up, let's make that very clear.
16:17
That has to go to the exterior of the building.
16:20
Right.
16:22
So many problems in the Northwest.
16:25
Yeah.
16:25
And it gets you.
16:26
You're right, though.
16:27
And Cam, we got a lot of stations in the south that listen to us down there.
16:30
And so many times in building codes and areas, they go, hey, it's got a window, it'll open up.
16:35
Those people are not opening that up on a 95 degree day with 95% humidity.
16:41
But you still got to get it out of there.
16:43
And I think the biggest problem we see out there with building code builders, homeowners, is they think it's just a humidity issue.
16:51
But the humidity is just part of that.
16:53
It's the chemicals that you're using in the bathroom, it's the chemicals in the kitchen.
16:58
You need to get that stuff out of there.
16:59
And I also want to say for all the.
17:01
There's certain people out there that I'll say are the.
17:03
Are the gas range haters.
17:07
Well, guess what?
17:08
If you cook on an induction cooktop, food that you're cooking, it is still putting off dangerous stuff.
17:16
So it is not just a gas combustion issue.
17:20
You're still putting out pretty bad air with a really high PM 2.5 that's still going out inside the room, no matter what surface you're cooking on.
17:29
Combustion is another form of phase change.
17:32
Right.
17:33
You're going from One gas to a much smaller gas.
17:37
Just like water.
17:38
Boiling water is a phase change.
17:39
You go from liquid water to water vapor, and you're changing that phase.
17:44
And once it gets aerosolized, one of the things that we have to remember is, as humans, you know what?
17:50
I can swim in a dirty bathtub, but doggone it, if I have a dirty air and I breathe that in, that's passing all of my body's defenses into my body.
18:01
And that's a problem, right?
18:03
That's a problem.
18:04
So, yeah, I wanted to touch base real quick on the opening the window idea.
18:08
And while I love the.
18:10
I love having an open window at my house, don't get me wrong.
18:14
But keep in mind that you don't necessarily have ventilation with an open window.
18:19
People forget in our natural physics that you have to have a pressure change from inside to outside for air to move.
18:26
It's when the wind blows, right?
18:27
When the wind blows you up, Higher pressure on one side, lower pressure on the other, the wind moves and tries to balance itself out.
18:33
The same thing has to happen in a house.
18:35
I have to have a pressure difference in the house.
18:39
Whether it's higher or lower, it doesn't matter.
18:41
To move the air through the window opening.
18:43
You could have a window wide open and still not get ventilation.
18:47
The randomness of open windows, and I'll tell you that the way I always frame this, the builders and renovators and whatnot, is that mechanical ventilation should be, or all of ventilation should be predictable and uneventful.
19:03
And that means I don't want to wait for the weather to change.
19:06
I don't want to wait to have a temperature delta inside, outside, because warmer air is going to have higher pressure than cooler air.
19:13
So.
19:13
So I want it predictable and uneventful.
19:16
And that's why we use an exhaust fan.
19:17
I mechanically draw air out, and air naturally comes in to fill the void.
19:24
And many times, Ken, that air outside is way worse than the air inside it can be.
19:29
That's another issue.
19:30
Look at fire season on the West Coast.
19:33
When we hit wildfires out there, you look at the air quality rating.
19:38
You're like, wow, that's our air today in our area is worse than Beijing, China.
19:44
On a bad day.
19:46
Maybe I don't want to open the window up and ventilate because I better do something different.
19:52
Eric Panasonic has got this ongoing experiment going on in the south in Houston, Texas.
19:59
We literally built a house in Houston, Texas.
20:02
And one of the reasons we chose Houston is because the outdoor air down there is uncomfortable.
20:10
Would Be the nice way to say it.
20:12
It's often super hot and super humid, but even more so in Houston.
20:18
They have one of the highest PM 2.5 load areas in the US and what happens is, and you and I will know that how this works, because we live near the coastline.
20:28
We have an onshore flow, right, that comes off the coast, so they're on the Gulf.
20:33
And that onshore flow goes by all these petroleum plants where they're outgassing 2.5.
20:40
And that onshore flow holds all of that particulate matter and drags it across the state going northward from south to north.
20:49
And at about Houston or just beyond Houston is when it gets warm enough to vapor change and lift.
20:55
So in the meantime, you have low.
20:57
You have low air streams dragging PM 2.5.
21:01
They have obnoxious PM 2.5 particulates in that Houston market.
21:06
Yeah, that is so bad.
21:08
And you're right, that's a great place to sit there and do that testing because again, you get down in Texas and some of these other states, unfortunately, it can be the wild west on some of this ventilation issues.
21:20
So again, that's another place.
21:22
It's good to do the math because I think that really tells a perfect story because I've had homes that I've seen where they're right next to a beautiful wetland, but it's moldy, marshy mess out there.
21:33
And that's all those mold force are coming in.
21:36
You don't want to be opening the.
21:37
Window up that day, Right?
21:38
Exactly.
21:39
And let me tell you some of the findings that we're getting from this house.
21:42
And be honest with you.
21:43
We built.
21:44
We had a custom home builder build this beautiful house, right?
21:47
And soon as we took possession of it, our engineering teams moved in and started just pasting it with monitors and so forth.
21:56
And we've had it running now.
21:57
The house has been running for a year.
21:59
We're monitoring all this stuff.
22:01
And the builder is just like beside himself looking at us as we're putting monitors at, you know, three different levels in the vertical column, right?
22:09
On every room has at least nine monitors in it looking at different things, whether it's humidity, temperature, carbon dioxide, PM 2.5s.
22:20
But there's so much stuff that we're finding, right?
22:22
First of all, regarding ERVs, we're running an ERV in there.
22:27
And in the summertime, we're getting a 90% rejection of moisture running that supply air through the ERV, meaning that if it's 87% humidity outside, I can put air in the house at 55% humidity.
22:45
I mean, literally, we're, we're.
22:47
And what happens is, and I don't mean to go all sciency on everybody here, but the way ERBs work.
22:54
Yeah.
22:54
The two airstreams pass, right?
22:56
And I have a hot Airstream and a cool Airstream.
22:59
Hot.
22:59
Remember I said hot has higher pressure than a cooler Airstream as they pass over the course of this membrane material, which is much like Gore Tex, only even smaller.
23:09
As it passes over that hot material drives into the cooler and all that goes right back outside.
23:17
So we wind up with a fraction of the moisture load in the house.
23:21
So now as the house, as the function of the house, our dehumidifier, we put a dehumidifier in there, but it hardly ever runs, which is a big thing if you're building a house or you're owning a house in
23:34
the south.
23:34
Because the dehumidifier is an expensive device to operate.
23:39
I mean, it is expensive.
23:43
Yeah.
23:43
Now, let's talk about ERVs for a minute.
23:45
So let's, let's.
23:47
I know there's a lot of our audience out there going, erv, what are you talking about?
23:51
Of course, energy recovery ventilator.
23:54
These are required in new homes across the country and even remodels in places like Washington state and things like that now as well for, of course, getting fresh air inside the house.
24:05
So let's, let's dial this back for a second, Ken, and give them the 101 on that so people understand it.
24:10
Okay, so the energy recovery ventilator, or the erv, it goes back to that mechanical, predictable airflow within your house.
24:18
Because what's happening today is that we all know that energy costs are skyrocketing everywhere.
24:23
So the builders are required to build a very good envelope.
24:29
When we talk about the envelope of the house, it's where the house, all the heating and cooling is inside the envelope.
24:35
We want to keep this envelope nice and tight so it doesn't leak air in and out.
24:39
My, my old house that I live in has an air change leakage of about four and a half air changes per hour, meaning that I have the potential for this 2,000 square foot house with nine foot ceiling.
24:51
So what is that?
24:52
18,000 cubic feet of air to change every hour, four and a half times.
24:58
It's obnoxious, right?
25:00
So we want to get a tighter house so I don't have to reheat all this air all the time.
25:05
But on the other hand, remember, as I said, if there's no pressure difference there's no reason for air to move one way or another.
25:12
So we mechanically move it.
25:14
We have an ERV that's simply to describe the erv.
25:18
It's literally two fans in a box.
25:21
One fan drives air out, one fan drives air in.
25:24
And as those two Airstreams pass, the heat energy from one airstream moves to the other.
25:31
So if it's cold outside and warm inside, that heat moves to that colder airstream and preheats that airstream coming in.
25:38
But if it's obnoxiously hot outside heating that Airstream, the heat moves into the other Airstream and is sent back out.
25:47
So I can keep the house cool or warm.
25:51
At the cost of running two exhaust fans.
25:54
Right.
25:54
No heating or cooling required.
25:56
The erv, from, from a economy standpoint, if you're running in a climate where you have moisture loads, where you have cooling required or heating required, the ERV is as a mainstay for that heating and cooling system, or should
26:13
be, because now it also pulls any of that moisture load.
26:17
The other thing that you can do with the ERV is because you're mechanically bringing in supplier.
26:23
We put a MERV 13 filter on there.
26:26
So now nice again when we're in Houston and that high loads of PM 2.5, while we recommend that you check your filter every 90 days, that filter, we change that every 30 days and it's just black when we
26:41
replace it.
26:41
Because what happens there, hot, humid, picks up the mold, the pollens and so forth that sticks into that filter rather than bringing it into the house.
26:50
But it only takes three days for that to turn into again, your giant Chia Pet, your black Chia Pet, where it's just nasty.
27:00
So, Ken, have they got a technology wise yet?
27:02
And I don't know this answer, but it's something that I've been asking for a lot of years.
27:06
Have they gotten to a point now where that can actually shut off if the outdoor air is so poor, like let's call it a West coast fire day, where we've got so much smoke or so much pollution that
27:18
filter isn't going to handle it.
27:19
Have we gotten to a point yet where there's any kind of technology or are we working that way so that can actually go, oh, wait a minute, I don't need to go turn it off.
27:27
Because if a homeowner goes turns that off because they've got a horrible, disgusting outdoor air quality, the chance of them turning it back on again are slim and none.
27:36
Right, Right.
27:36
And the answer is yes.
27:38
And I want to qualify that answer because it's all a function of money.
27:43
Right.
27:43
I have automated controls that look that go to your WI Fi that will look at outdoor air quality and they can turn the F high or low or off.
27:53
We can do all sorts of things like that.
27:55
The challenge for us as a manufacturer though is how do I build this product that's at a price point where I'm not going to chase builders away.
28:05
And I got to be honest with you, I'm a big supporter of the builder and when I say that, I mean that I work really hard to keep our prices down because if I blow up the transaction cost
28:18
to the builder and no one can afford to buy the house, I've failed all of us.
28:23
Right.
28:24
So I have to help the builder build a better house.
28:29
So yes, if you, Eric, if you wanted something, a control function that would turn it off when the outside air got to a certain point, I'm all in.
28:37
I've got a solution for that.
28:38
All of the ERVs, I can't say all.
28:41
All of most of our ERVs are now have a WI FI compatible module that will allow it to communicate with other devices to measure that will measure either indoor or outdoor or whatever.
28:53
It's just more money, of course.
28:56
Yeah.
28:57
No, and that's good.
28:57
And that's good.
28:58
And again, I want people.
28:59
And you're right, because what happens, these builders and people make these builders to be out.
29:03
The evil developer, the evil builder.
29:06
And it's actually the exact opposite.
29:08
These guys are out there trying to create a product that people want to buy that they can afford and that they can make enough money on so they can build the next one.
29:16
It's really that simple.
29:17
A lot of these builders out there are your next door neighbors.
29:20
They're the guy down the street that's just trying to, trying to build a dozen homes a year or less and they're just doing their thing.
29:27
But if you turn around and say, okay, well hey man, I added these new features, but it's 500 bucks more, they go, man, if it's a hundred bucks more, I want to buy it.
29:36
Right, Right.
29:37
So we know for a fact that we're 4 million houses short in the US right now and probably 3.9 million of those houses are need to be at the affordable, almost low income level.
29:51
I mean, and I work with builders who build million plus dollar houses all the time and God bless them.
29:56
But if you call me and say, Ken, I've got a ventilation issue on my 5,000, 6,000 square foot house, I need your Help.
30:04
I'm going to say sure, all over it.
30:05
But if you call and say I've got a 500 square foot or under a thousand square feet, two, two bedroom, three bedroom house.
30:14
I'm trying to put a family of five or six when I'm getting in my car and driving over there because ventilation is super critical to that market.
30:23
A big huge house, you can, you can make a lot of mistakes on your ventilation and still have a pretty darn good house.
30:29
500 square feet.
30:30
Pretty tricky, right?
30:32
Pretty tricky.
30:33
It's a whole different animal.
30:35
That's exactly right.
30:37
And the other problem too, and again with smaller spaces and we haven't talked about it yet, but it's definitely something I want to bring up, man.
30:44
Makeup error.
30:45
I looked at my house.
30:46
My last house that I had before I sold it, 1977 build had a, you know, not a lot.
30:53
One surface of the wall had redone.
30:55
So it had.
30:56
It very, was very high tech on its building envelope.
30:59
But the rest of it was T1 siding with 2 by fours tar paper and aluminum, R11 pink fiberglass.
31:08
Johnny, you've ripped, you've ripped semi trucks of that stuff out of houses, right?
31:12
I'd rather not talk about it.
31:14
I know.
31:14
And there are a lot more houses just like that to be.
31:18
Yeah, pretty good.
31:20
But I had a 1200 CFM kitchen fan over my 48 inch pro style range.
31:26
I had a couple hundred thousand, I mean a couple, couple vent fans that had a 100 plus CFM on it.
31:32
And even at that you could create a semi vacuum inside that house because you were just moving so many cubic feet per minute that it was even around all the leaks that that house had because it was definitely
31:46
breathing.
31:48
It still was kind of tough.
31:49
You would see the dark marks around things where air was sucking in from the outside.
31:54
And I would worry in that application.
31:56
And I'll give you an example.
31:57
I had a, a rental house.
31:59
It was 3,500 square foot.
32:00
It was, it was, did not, should not have been a rental house.
32:04
But it was built in the 60s, early 60s.
32:08
And I had the interior painted right.
32:10
And it was two stories.
32:11
I had the interior painted so they put this queen down on the floors.
32:16
And I came in there the following morning and the visqueen was four feet high.
32:20
Right.
32:21
Because the draw, the stack effect was pulling it through.
32:26
Remember the old car decking out when I was building?
32:28
We always.
32:31
Yeah.
32:31
So all that air was coming right through there and it lifted that up and it was just a phenomena.
32:39
Yeah, exactly.
32:40
It was such a Phenomenal magic.
32:42
Yeah, but.
32:43
But which tells me that all the air in that house.
32:46
Not all, but most of the air in that house is probably coming from under the house.
32:50
There's a whole nother.
32:51
Okay, how's my crawl space world, by the way?
32:53
That's a whole other world that lives under that house.
32:56
Yeah, man.
32:58
I see we just talked about this in last week's show about the wet basements and wet crawl spaces.
33:04
And I tell you what, crawl spaces is the still number one most neglected part of the house outside of the attic that is just not planned, not taken care of, and not maintained.
33:17
And it's everything from dirt, mold, dust mites, to radon to everything else coming up through there.
33:25
Everything.
33:26
It's got a sight.
33:27
Out of mind outside.
33:28
Out of mind.
33:29
My wife and I have lived in this house for 20 plus years.
33:32
I could count without even lifting a hand how many times she's actually been under the house.
33:38
She never under this house.
33:40
Right.
33:41
And there's a lot of people like that.
33:42
I mean, I go under the house because I go down and check that and every couple of years, but every now and then, there's a reason to go into the house.
33:51
I don't always know what it is, but there's.
33:53
I've been down there.
33:54
She's never been down there.
33:55
And how many people are like that?
33:56
And then it's always kind of weird when you go into your house and you see all your insulation's been ripped off of your.
34:02
Off your furnace ducting and your.
34:04
Your hot water.
34:06
Your hot water pex has been pulled off.
34:09
How does that happen?
34:11
You know how rodents get up there because it's warm and then it just.
34:14
Raccoons.
34:16
Yeah, well, I don't have raccoons here in my house anyway.
34:20
But I do have other road.
34:22
There's no question about that.
34:24
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
34:25
And Kenneth, or as we've seen in the news a couple times, we had one here in the Portland area that had a few months ago.
34:31
It was the homeless guy that was living under the crawl space of the condo, and he had his own house set up down there.
34:37
And he tapped into some wires, had some lights in, and literally in the crawl space, it was like seven foot high down there.
34:43
He had his own little city going in the crawl space, and somebody saw the door open, stuck their head in there, went.
34:48
That's where that noise is coming from.
34:51
So somebody's been.
34:52
You never know what's in that crawl space.
34:54
Yeah, well, I saw one in California where they had a bear had gone under somebody's crawl space.
35:00
That must have black bear coming out.
35:03
Of the crawl space.
35:04
And I'm like, that is a crawl space.
35:05
I would not have wanted to get down there and see the glowing eyes and hear the bear.
35:10
How fast could I crawl out?
35:11
Not fast enough.
35:12
Right.
35:13
I've been in crawl spaces and I've seen the glowing eyes and they're always, you know, maybe an inch or two off the ground.
35:18
But could you imagine looking in there and the glowing eyes are like right up against the joist?
35:24
Bigger than yours?
35:25
That would be bigger than yours.
35:26
Yeah.
35:27
Guys, stuff, man.
35:29
Man, I tell you what.
35:30
No, thank you.
35:31
But that's the thing.
35:32
I mean, guilty is charged.
35:33
I had the home inspection when I sold my house this last year.
35:37
I was, ah, crawl space is fine.
35:38
I kind of knew it probably wasn't all the way fine.
35:41
But I'm like, al, let's give the inspector something to find.
35:43
Yeah.
35:44
They went down there like, ah, you're plastic.
35:46
I'm like, yeah.
35:47
And it was the worst crawl space because it was 18 inches in spots and rock.
35:53
It was enough that you could just barely get through without ripping your Tyvek suit on the floor.
35:57
Nails coming through for the hardwood floor through the car decking.
36:00
You know, Ken, that whole crawl space mess is just one of those things that I think if people pay attention to it, get the right building scientists involved with either ventilation, encapsulation, whatever's best in your climate, then you
36:12
can deal with the rest of the house.
36:13
At least in my opinion.
36:14
Yes.
36:15
I mean, it's all intertwined.
36:17
I hate to, I hate to prioritize one over the other because.
36:21
Because the tightening of the envelope reduces all of the expense of operating a house.
36:25
But they, you know, each one comes with a kind of a side effect, if you will.
36:31
Right.
36:31
I tighten the house up now.
36:32
I have to enhance my ventilation, but I, on the positive side, I can reduce the cost of my heating and cooling load.
36:39
It is, it's it.
36:40
And I always advocate that you, you get a professional in there to look at it.
36:44
Right.
36:44
And there's plenty of people in all of our communities that can come in and give you a really fair assessment of what will have the best impact, not just the biggest, but the best impact on your house.
36:56
Absolutely.
36:56
And Ken and John, this is something since you've gone to Columbia scene, but nowadays in Seattle or anywhere in Washington state, if you dive into a significant kitchen remodel or remodel inside the house, they are saying, hey, by
37:08
the way, while you're at it, that ERV has to go in on that.
37:10
And so that's something that we're seeing kind of racing across the country as far as what we're seeing with that.
37:17
And I think it's really important for us to have that conversation because it's going to be in everybody's backyard.
37:23
Now when you go into projects that state by state is building, science gets smarter.
37:28
And we know what we need to require.
37:30
Ken, you guys are doing so much with the ERVs out there.
37:32
This isn't that 1980s weird box in the ceiling of the laundry room with a bunch of rubber bands in it.
37:37
There's a lot of science going into this.
37:39
There is, there's.
37:41
And you know what, here's the thing.
37:42
The science, science is so simple, but the reality is simple is the most complex thing.
37:49
Right?
37:49
People always talk about, well, I want to, I want the easy button.
37:52
But the work that goes behind creating the easy button to make things happen is, is quite remarkable.
37:58
So we want more energy transfer out of the erv.
38:01
I.
38:02
To save more energy or I want to reject heat energy, or I want to reject moisture outside or save moisture inside.
38:09
How can the ERV do all this super effectively?
38:12
And, and there's ways to do it, but I also can't raise your price.
38:16
I don't want to raise your price.
38:17
I want this to be done with.
38:19
You know, I talk about price, cost and value.
38:21
I need to keep the price and the cost down by it, but enhance the value.
38:26
So the four pillars, we, we kind of alluded to the motor being one of the primary pillars of ERVs.
38:33
Number two would be the core.
38:36
Excuse me, I'm going to jump around.
38:37
But 1 is the motor, 2 is the configuration, 3 is the core, and 4 is filter.
38:44
Right?
38:44
Because I want the core.
38:47
And Honestly, with an ERV, the core is 2/3 the cost of the ERV.
38:52
Because that material that allows that water vapor to go through there is just not something you can pull out of your kitchen.
38:58
Kitchen drawer and create.
39:00
Right?
39:01
It's, it's a, it's a piece of membrane that has been stretched, flexed and it has very precise perm.
39:09
Permeable material that's, that allows water vapor to pass through.
39:12
So the core is, is quite unique and there's two types of cores.
39:16
There's this cross flow core where the air passes left and passes right and that's where the material goes.
39:23
And then there's this transflow core where the air comes in and then it's turned to go a straight line and then it's Turned again to exit it.
39:33
And what happens is to make the ERV more efficient, we have to add more pressure inside that core.
39:39
Each of those turn enhances that pressure in that airstream.
39:43
So it's going to move from one stream to the next.
39:46
It's literally, it gives us two, excuse me, gives us 90% efficient on those cores.
39:53
You know what, that core is more expensive.
39:55
If that doesn't work, we have lower cost cores, lower cost ERVs.
39:59
But the reality is if you live in a cold climate and heating is expensive, or you live in a hot, wet climate and heat cooling is expensive, those more efficient cores will far, far save you more money in
40:10
the long run than the couple, you know, the 50 to 20 bucks that you're going to save on a, on a lower price product.
40:18
So, and then the filter, because, just because, just because we live in a world has wildfires in here in the Northwest, we see moisture loads down in the south.
40:30
You go to Alaska and they have mosquitoes, for heaven's sakes.
40:34
The filters are super critical.
40:36
And I have to make a device that will take a filter that's not going to set us all back.
40:42
So we're, we're working really hard to work on those four pillars of the ERV to make them more affordable, but more effective.
40:49
And that's, if you go to when, when you come to the kitchen and bath show, that's one of the things we're going to talk, we're going to talk about how we're making ERVs more efficient, more affordable, better configurations
41:01
for builders, quieter, the whole package.
41:04
Yeah, that makes sense, Ken.
41:05
And I think that's one of the things too that people, new homeowners especially, and it's something that even the longtime contractors like Johnny here, you got to remember to change that filter.
41:16
There's enough filters around.
41:17
You got your refrigerator filter, you got all these filters.
41:20
But that ERV filter, you better stay on top of that because at some point it's going to be like that.
41:24
I always, I always call it.
41:26
It's like that, that cabin air filter in your car that you forget about until it's not working and you go, oh, you need to change that.
41:32
But it's a key piece to maintain.
41:33
Right.
41:34
And that's why life is simpler in Colombia, because we don't even have bath fans here.
41:38
So there's no filter changing going on.
41:41
Windows are open.
41:42
Yeah, your windows are open.
41:44
I stayed in a place they didn't even have windows, they had slats.
41:48
It was a beautiful thing.
41:49
Yeah, but Ken, I gotta Give Johnny a hard time here because he also has no hot water going to the shower.
41:56
And they have this heater that's sitting there, that's a point of use water heater with wire nuts that are hanging in the shower.
42:05
And that's common there.
42:06
So you've got a 110 wire that's open with wire nuts in your shower.
42:11
It's not even in a box.
42:12
So it's fine.
42:13
It's fine.
42:14
But here's right.
42:16
So today I was helping Miguel's sister move, and her little daughter wanted to play the game on my phone, right?
42:24
And the phone was plugged in and.
42:26
Her mom slipped out.
42:27
Ah, no, not while the phone's plugged in.
42:30
But we have shower heads with bare wires.
42:33
Get in there, kids.
42:35
Like, is it so funny that that's not gonna.
42:37
I love.
42:39
Yeah, yeah.
42:40
That maintenance stuff that you could have the best stuff in the world, but if you don't maintain it, it's not going to stay up to date for you and it's not going to work as designed.
42:47
Yeah.
42:47
Or it's going to work opposite of design.
42:50
Yeah, yeah.
42:51
Even worse.
42:52
Even worse.
42:53
I tell you what, Ken, it is always fun to have you on here, brother.
42:56
And I can't wait to see a face to face here in a few weeks down at the design and construction week in Orlando, where we're all having to fly across country to go do that.
43:04
And that's going to be a lot of fun to hang out with you down there and take a look and see and touch and feel.
43:08
The latest stuff from Panasonic is down.
43:11
Beautiful.
43:11
Man, I can't wait to have you come by.
43:13
We'll go and monkey with all the buttons and play with all that.
43:16
All the toys.
43:18
I will be monkeying with it for sure.
43:20
So, Johnny, we're going to get you up next year for that.
43:22
Well, I was just going to say I might get up there for that or.
43:26
You do realize how close Florida is to fly over to Columbia if you guys wanted to just come and visit for a spell.
43:32
You're not wrong.
43:34
I am not wrong right now.
43:36
I got a thing, though.
43:37
I'm staying out of that Venezuelan airspace right now.
43:39
So I'm just going to have to stay away from your brother.
43:41
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
43:42
Ye going to want to sail around that point.
43:45
Really keep a wide Bree.
43:48
I would probably take my chances with the airspace more so than the ocean space below it.
43:53
Yeah, for sure.
43:54
I'm not going out in a fishing boat.
43:55
Let's put it that way.
43:57
More motors.
43:58
Yeah.
43:59
Exactly.
44:00
That's no more unsafe than taking a shower here.
44:02
We don't worry about it.
44:04
Way to bring it around.
44:05
So, Ken, how do people find you guys?
44:07
I mean, you guys are in, of course, for builders and remodelers.
44:11
You're out everywhere out there, but you're not always in like the home improvement storage.
44:14
But I think it's something that if even a homeowner is doing a DIY project and they just need to put a fan in, they need to be using your stuff instead of, instead of others because it just works
44:23
so much better.
44:24
And you're one of those.
44:25
There's not a lot of companies out there that I can say there's no competition to really, as far as quality and what they get.
44:31
And you guys are kind of one of those rare ones, man.
44:33
Well, I'll tell you.
44:34
So finding us has gotten way, way easier.
44:37
We are now in most of the home improvement stores.
44:41
Nice.
44:41
We're at wholesale distribution.
44:43
If you're doing more design work, you'll see us.
44:45
And again, it's some of the higher end wholesale distributions where they do mechanical design and so forth.
44:51
The vent fan industry before 20 years ago was, was literally like the light bulb industry.
44:58
You had to go to a special place to get a special light bulb.
45:01
But today I've got, I've got product just about anywhere.
45:04
And you can certainly go to our webpage and Eric, I'll send you some links to some videos that we've done and I'll capture your, your material and put it out on our Panasonic, LinkedIn and Facebook and all that
45:16
as well.
45:16
So some shared knowledge opportunities.
45:19
Man, I love it.
45:20
I love it.
45:20
And you guys are just continuing to innovate and I love that you're doing it.
45:23
And Ken, thanks for coming on, man.
45:25
And I will see you in a few weeks.
45:26
I'm looking forward to that.
45:27
Yes, sir.
45:29
I just want to throw in.
45:30
I wanted to throw it in at the beginning, Eric, when you said 10 years plus, you've been using these products.
45:34
I will tell you that as a contractor in the early 2000s, with Kevin working with me.
45:40
Right.
45:40
We used to have to special order or go to someplace special to get, which was definitely a bit of an upsell.
45:47
But we.
45:49
There was no competition for the Panasonic fans back then.
45:53
Right.
45:54
And it was just.
45:54
Yeah, no dip.
45:55
Same thing.
45:56
Right.
45:56
Even back then, you're talking about 25 years ago and people still were saying, is it on?
46:04
Is it on?
46:05
Like that's how, that's how long you guys have been great.
46:07
And again, you're not paying me to say that.
46:09
That's just reality.
46:10
It's, it's been the best 20 plus years.
46:13
Yeah.
46:13
I just remember taking fans into the distribution and saying, these are going to be three times more than the ones you have in stock.
46:20
But listen to this.
46:21
And there would be nothing but silence.
46:23
And they would still mock me, say, oh, people aren't going to buy those.
46:26
And I'm like, what?
46:27
Just bring them in.
46:28
I'll go make all this happen.
46:30
And now our fan business is a 200 million dollar juggernaut that we couldn't be more proud of.
46:36
Yeah.
46:37
And well it should be.
46:38
Yeah, absolutely.
46:39
All right, let's wrap a bow around this one.
46:41
Ken, thanks for coming on today.
46:43
John, great to see you.
46:45
John Douglas.
46:46
Thanks, Ken.
46:47
Thanks, Ken.
46:48
Appreciate you, brother guy.
46:50
I appreciate you having me on and I look forward to seeing you guys at the builder show.
46:54
All right, sounds good.
46:56
I'm Eric G.
46:57
You've been listening to around the house.
47:09
No one ever talks about the nights they went to bed counting them she catching seas, getting Beauty Rest at 10 your dates to make for good story, knock one back, no buzz, no worry no one ever talks about
47:23
the shops they didn't take drinks, they never drank hell, they never raised Yeehaw.
47:29
Y', all, it's only.