Ready to turn your home into a haven of fresh air? Join me, Eric G, and my buddy John Dudley as we dive into the world of ventilation with our good friend Ken Nelson from Panasonic Eco Systems. We’re tackling the big stuff—like why proper ventilation is the unsung hero of home comfort and health. Spoiler alert: it’s not just about avoiding that funky bathroom smell; we’re talking about keeping your indoor air quality top-notch and preventing that delightful mold garden from sprouting in your garage. So, if you’re ready to breathe easier and maybe learn a thing or two about how to keep your air (and your home) feeling fresh, then stay tuned! If you've ever walked into your garage and thought, 'Wow, it feels like a swamp in here,' then boy, do Eric G. and John Dudley have a treat for you! In this lively episode, they sit down with Ken Nelson from Panasonic Eco Systems to tackle the often-overlooked topic of ventilation. Spoiler alert: it’s not just about avoiding that horrid bathroom fog! Ken dives deep into the world of Energy Recovery Ventilators (ERVs) and how they can transform your indoor air quality from ‘yikes’ to ‘ahh.’ We learn that moisture isn’t just a bathroom problem; it lurks in your kitchen and garage too, ready to wreak havoc on your precious belongings. Ken humorously shares his personal experiences with Panasonic products, emphasizing their longevity and efficiency. The trio explores the absurdities of building codes and how they often miss the mark on practical ventilation solutions. Plus, they discuss the importance of maintaining those fancy gadgets to keep your home breathing easy. So, grab a drink, kick back, and get ready to rethink your home’s air flow!

Takeaways:

1. Ventilation is not just about the bathroom; it’s crucial for kitchens and garages too, so stop ignoring those moisture issues, folks!
2. Panasonic's ERVs can reject up to 90% of moisture, meaning if it's 80% humidity outside, you could be breathing in a cool 55% inside. No more sweaty living!
3. Mechanical ventilation is key because relying on open windows is like hoping for a miracle every time the wind blows—let's be real, it rarely works like that.
4. The right ventilation system can save you big bucks on energy costs, so invest wisely instead of going for the cheapest options that just gather dust.
5. Don’t skimp on filter changes in your ERV; that filter is your home’s first line of defense against the nasty outdoor air, and ignoring it is just asking for trouble.
6. If your ventilation is only as good as your building code allows, you’re basically living in a barely legal house—time to step it up!

Companies mentioned in this episode:

1. Panasonic Ventilation
2. Panasonic Ecosystems

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You're tuned to around the House, the nation's number one home improvement radio show and podcast with expert advice that's helped millions tackle everything from remodels to repairs.

Hosts Eric G. And John Dudley have got you covered with the best advice and information about your home.

Now let's get this hour started.

Welcome to the around the House show, your trusted source for everything about your home.

Thanks for joining us today.

John Dudley, Good to see you, my friend.

What's happening, brother?

Always fun on this one.

We have got one of the OG guests back on the show today, Ken Nelson, Panasonic Ventilation.

Brother, good to see you again.

It's been a bit.

It's been a minute.

Yeah.

I think it was one of the trade shows last year where we connected for a while.

Absolutely, man.

And it's great.

Geez.

Trade show coming around here again soon.

Get to see each other face to face, I'm sure.

But man, I have been using your products for sheesh.

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.

But there is still, in my opinion, nobody out there that is competing head to head with Panasonic Ventilation.

And you guys are not paying me to say that.

This is just something that I've been using forever and no one's close, brother.

So great job that.

Still, 10 years later, to not have anybody that's really doing what you guys are doing.

Well, you know what?

So one of the things, one of the things I would like to talk about before our day is over is ervs.

But one of the primary pillars of ERVS is the motor.

And if there's one thing that Panasonic does, we build motors.

Our ecm, our electronic commutated motors, are so robust, in fact, in our fans.

For example, I have a fan in my crawl space that's been running straight for 18 years.

I just use it in a crawl space to evacuate moisture load out of the crawl space.

Right.

Continuously moving air.

I go down there about every five years and knock the dust out of the blower wheel and literally that's all I do.

But it is still running right now.

I haven't looked at it the last couple minutes, but I can walk by one of my foundation vents and I can feel the air coming out of it.

So nice.

We build these robust motors.

You know, when you're a builder, one of the things you want is resilience in your products.

Right.

Holy cow.

You don't want to put something in and then be on that speed dial in three years.

When you're a home buyer, your homeowner calls you up and say, yeah, this goofy little fan that you saved money on fails, and now I've got steam in my shower area.

It's just.

It's just too irritating to go cheap with that.

Yeah, yeah.

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.

And I always just went, why do you need to buy that if you just got good ventilation?

Right, Right.

Yep.

It's that simple.

Have nothing to add to that.

Right.

I mean, ventilation.

And ventilation is just really the key in that application.

But we want to remind everyone that ventilation doesn't just apply to the bathroom.

Right.

One of the things we often forget is where moisture or water vapor is generated from within the house.

Right.

We have a number of places as humans, we outgas moisture like crazy.

We have a kitchen where we cook and do all these other cleaning and projects.

And then, of course, there's the bathroom where we dump high volumes of moisture in a short time into the house.

So ventilation, or bathroom ventilation, however you have that ventilation working, it solves all of those problems.

It does.

And there's so many other rooms now getting added to this.

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.

But nowadays I'm seeing all these new builds around my house.

They've got the three car garage.

They've insulated it, They've sheetrocked it.

It's beautiful.

They've got the glass, the frosted glass garage doors.

And it looks like it's raining in there because they pull in in the wintertime.

About right now.

It's 45 degrees outside.

The car is soaking wet.

Two cars pull in there.

They go inside, and all that moisture and the heat of the engine is sitting there in an insulated space.

And I can guarantee you that every single storage tote of Christmas, Easter, whatever else is in there on sports equipment is a moldy, growing mess.

Has become the chia pet of the garage.

Yeah.

And it's something that unfortunately, building code really hasn't been addressing because technically it's not inside the structure, but it is.

You know what I mean?

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 and passenger class.

Yeah.

And then you have above code program.

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 because it's not just moisture.

Right.

You bring the car in there, you start it, you turn it off, it's out.

Gassing, Gosh.

Nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, PM 2.5, everything you can associate with a combustion process, outgassing.

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, 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.

That's it.

Yeah.

Paints, solvents, everything else.

Exactly, exactly.

Diesel.

I've got diesel.

I've got mixed fuel, I've got gasoline.

Holy cow.

Our garages are full of things that are not really the best things for us.

Yeah.

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?

Or what's your take on that?

Because code's not dealing with it.

Whenever I talk to builders about that application, in my opinion, we have like one of the most perfect fans.

We have what we call our whisper sense fan.

And what it is, it's a condensation sensor and a motion sensor all in one.

And so you drive in, the fan's going to come on for an hour, or you can actually define that value.

It'd be 40 minutes, 30 minutes, whatever you wish, but it'll come on and evaporate and evacuate whatever's in there out.

And then it's also got the moisture sensor.

So if you come in, we see this especially in our northern climates where the cars are as you described, they're wet or covered in snow, all that dribbles off.

And now you've got your engine block or whatever heat source rising.

I have shoe dryers in my garage.

I have all sorts of stuff that's creating water vapor.

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.

Problem solved.

Right.

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?

Right.

Because the occupant won't.

I mean, you might have a really savvy occupant that'll do it half the time or much of the time.

100%.

And it's the same thing in the bathroom.

That's the one nice thing about code, is that they've been putting timers and stuff in there.

And as far as current code, they've gotten that better.

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.

Another big brand.

I'm not going to bash them here.

But it's in every builder basic house that you see out there.

And it's been in those houses for 40 years.

I turned it on for the first time and I just went, oh my gosh, this sounds no different.

It's their high end fan.

It sounds no different than the nasty $29 squirrel cage one that every low end builder puts in.

And again, goes back to what you guys are doing.

My biggest complaint in 10 years of using those fans plus is the homeowner couldn't hear when it was on.

On a high ceiling.

Is it even working?

Yeah, it's working.

Yeah.

Yeah, I know.

Just because you can't hear it two rooms away doesn't mean it's not working right.

Exactly.

And much to my chagrin, I'm like, they put Bluetooth.

We have a, we actually have a Bluetooth band now that will play the radio.

Cool.

And I'm like, oh, my gosh, you guys.

You know, first of all, I already wrestle with builders based on cost and function and value.

Right?

But a Bluetooth fan.

And I love the idea of being able to put the speaker in the fan, but the reality is I got other ways to get music in my bathroom if I really want it.

It's just, you know, it just cracks me up.

How, how?

Vent fans.

Now I will tell you that the lighting on fans has evolved.

Yeah, right.

We have, I've got color changing lights that you can change the temperature of the light, the brightness of the light.

They're all dimmable.

The LED lights are the.

Some of the most robust.

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?

I would say, heck no.

The around the house show will be right back with more from Ken Nelson from Panasonic Ecosystems.

We are talking ventilation when we come back.

The kids these days will never understand.

What it's like to play an instrument.

What's up.

This is Sticks it Inia and Satchel from Steel Panther.

And you are listening to around the.

House with Eric G. Yeah, we love Eric G. And you should, too.

Welcome back to the around the House show with Eric G And John Dudley.

To find out more about us, you can find us at our website, aroundthehouseonline.com.

now let's get back with more from Ken Nelson from Panasonic Ecosystems.

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?

I would say, heck no, because I could put a thousand fans in and I would never get a phone call.

You put 10 lighted fans in, I would get at least a phone call.

I mean, it was just.

They were so unreliable.

But now these new chipset, these new chipset LED lights, I swear to God, I've dropped them, I've kicked them across my shop floor, plug them in, boom.

Look like it's here.

So lighting has really, really changed.

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.

You can give the code to people to log in if they're not feeling well.

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.

But you can.

I gotta tell you, though, I always lean towards what's the best thing for the structure and the people that are there.

Right.

The best thing for the structure is moisture management.

The best thing for people is indoor air quality.

So honestly, there's still place in there where music kind of comes into that mix.

But I'm a bit of a pure entertainment product.

Yeah, yeah.

If I'm going to spend money, I want to put it where the squeeze is the juicer worth the squeeze.

Right.

But yeah, yeah, that's, that's.

I don't want to deal with it.

I'm just saying that.

Not the best value.

I like it, Ken.

I like it.

I want to talk.

I mean, we've talked about kitchens and that stuff, but kitchens are so important in this whole mix of just good ventilation.

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.

When you see those over the range.

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.

This is the only thing.

But really having good ventilation in there really changes your indoor air quality just so quickly.

If you're cooking on that cooking service.

Right, right.

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.

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, Right.

So if you vaporize that, put that into the air, all that does is find a surface to adhere to.

And now that starch becomes food for mold and mildew.

And literally that's the first step to having compromised breathing issues when you live in a unit that's had mold and mildew over and over, over again.

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.

Right.

Because it was white behind it and yellow all the way around.

I mean, that's just material.

It's just material.

It is.

And it's interesting.

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.

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 the.

I call them forehead dusters because that's all they do.

They don't do anything.

They're worthless in my opinion.

It's the recirculation application and really all it tries to do is diffuse that moisture load throughout a wider space.

Quicker.

It doesn't remove it, it just pushes it out farther and faster out into the space.

Yeah.

It's unfortunate, but there's a lot of them out there.

It's an annuity to Panasonic, to our ventilation team.

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.

Yeah.

And that's building code.

I mean, that's here in where, where you live, Ken, 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 it vent outside.

And like in Oregon here, there are no working around that.

It's like that has to vent outside 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.

But it has to happen, you know.

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 through inhalation.

And part of that is because the cost of failure comes back to the building or the property manager.

But I do a lot of work in the South.

Texas and Florida.

Florida and everything in between.

And their codes are not nearly as.

As manageable there.

Right.

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.

But it can be done.

But it can be done, and it has to be done.

Yeah, it's smart.

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 into the attic space, and there's a plastic dryer vent laying across the insulation.

That's kind of just going to nowhere.

That's.

The other half of this.

Is.

Isn't that how you're supposed to install them?

You just throw the tube up in the attic and call it a day?

It'll.

It'll go out the sides on the, on the gable vents.

Right.

That's fine, isn't it?

That is, if it's out of sight, it's not a problem.

Yeah.

Until science gets right, just right.

I don't even want to put that out there.

That is inherent.

Even if somebody wants to clip this up, let's make that very clear.

That has to go to the exterior of the building.

Right.

So many problems in the Northwest.

Yeah.

And it gets you.

You're right, though.

And, Cam, we got a lot of stations in the south that listen to us down there.

And so many times in building codes and areas, they go, hey, it's got a window.

It'll open up.

Those people are not opening that up on a 95 degree day with 95% humidity.

But you still gotta get it out of there.

And I think the biggest problem we see out there with building code builders, homeowners, is they think it's just a humidity issue.

But the humidity is just part of that.

It's the chemicals that you're using in the Bathroom.

It's the chemicals in the kitchen.

You need to get that stuff out of there.

And I also want to say for all the.

There's certain people out there that I'll say are the.

Are the gas range haters.

Well, guess what?

If you cook on an induction cooktop, food that you're cooking, it is still putting off dangerous stuff.

So it is not just a gas combustion issue.

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.

Combustion is another form of phase change, right?

You're going from one gas to a much smaller gas.

Just like water.

Boiling water is a phase change.

You go from liquid water to water vapor that you're changing that phase.

And once it gets aerosolized, one of the things that we have to remember is as humans, you know what?

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.

And that's a problem, right?

The around the House show will be right back with more from Ken Nelson from Panasonic Ecosystems.

We are talking ventilation.

When we come back, foreign.

The House show with Eric G. And John Dudley.

To find out more about us, you can find us at our website, around the House online dot com.

Now let's get back with more from Ken Nelson from Panasonic Ecosystems.

We are talking ventilation.

I wanted to touch base real quick on the opening the window idea.

And while I love the.

I love having an open window at my house, don't get me wrong, but keep in mind that you don't necessarily have ventilation with an open window.

People forget in our natural physics that you have to have a pressure change from inside to outside for air to move.

It's when the wind blows, right?

When the wind blows, you have higher pressure on one side, lower pressure on the other side.

The wind moves and tries to balance itself out.

The same thing has to happen in a house.

I have to have a pressure difference in the house.

Whether it's higher or lower, it doesn't matter.

And move the air through the window opening.

You could have a window wide open and still not get ventilation.

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.

And that means I don't want to wait for the weather to change.

I don't want to wait to have a temperature delta inside to outside, because warmer air is going to have higher pressure than cooler air.

So I want it predictable and uneventful.

And that's why we use an exhaust fan.

I mechanically draw air out, and air naturally comes in to fill the void.

And many times, Ken, that air outside is way worse than the air inside.

It can be.

That's another issue.

Look at fire season on the West Coast.

Would we get wildfires out there?

You look at the.

You look at the.

You look at the air quality rating, you're like, wow, that's our area.

Our air today in our area is worse than Beijing, China, on a bad day.

Okay, maybe I don't want to open the window up and ventilate, because I better do something different.

Eric Panasoni has got this ongoing experiment going on in the south in Houston, Texas.

We literally built a house in Houston, Texas.

And one of the reasons we chose Houston is because the outdoor air down there is uncomfortable, would be the nice way to say it.

It's often super hot and super humid.

But even more so in Houston, they have one of the highest PM2.5 load areas in the US and what happens is.

And you and I will know how this works, because we live near the coastline.

We have an onshore flow, right, that comes off the coast.

So they're on the Gulf.

And that onshore flow goes by all these petroleum plants where they're outgassing 2.5.

And that onshore flow holds all of that particulate matter and drags it across the state going northward from south to north.

And at about Houston or just beyond Houston is when it gets warm enough to vapor change and lift.

So in the meantime, you have low.

You have low air streams dragging PM 2.5.

They have obnoxious PM 2.5 particulates in that Houston market.

Yeah, that is so bad.

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.

So, again, that's another place that'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, and that's all those mold spores are coming in.

You don't want to be opening the window up that day.

Right, exactly.

And let me tell you some of the findings that we're getting from this house.

And be honest with you.

We built.

We had a custom home builder build this beautiful house, right?

And soon as we took possession of it, our engineering teams moved in and started just pasting it with monitors and so forth.

And we've had it running now.

The house has been running for a year.

We're monitoring all this stuff.

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?

On every room has at least nine monitors in it looking at different things, whether it's humidity, temperature, carbon dioxide, PM 2.5.

But there's so much stuff that we're finding, right?

First of all, regarding ERVs.

We're running an ERV in there, and in the summertime, we're getting a 90% rejection of moisture running that supply air through the RV, meaning that if it's 80% humidity outside, I can put air in the house at 55% humidity.

I mean, literally, we're.

We're.

And what happens is.

And I don't mean to go all sciency on everybody here, but the way ERBs work.

Yeah.

The two Airstreams pass, right?

And I have a hot Airstream and a cool Airstream.

Hot.

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.

As it passes over, that hot material drives into the cooler, and all that goes right back outside.

So we wind up with a fraction of the moisture load in the house.

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 the south.

Because the dehumidifier is an expensive device to operate.

I mean, it is.

Now, let's.

Yeah, now let's talk about ERVs for a minute.

So let's.

Let's.

I know there's a lot of our audience out there going, erv, what are you talking about?

Of course, Energy recovery ventilator.

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.

So let's.

Let's dial this back for a second, Ken, and give them the 101 on that so people understand it okay, so.

The energy recovery ventilator or the erv, it goes back to that mechanical predictable airflow within your house.

Because what's happening today is that we all know that energy costs are skyrocketing everywhere.

So the builders are required to build a very good envelope.

When we talk about the envelope of the house, it's where the house, all the heating and cooling is inside the envelope.

We want to keep this envelope nice and, and tight so it doesn't leak air in and out.

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.

So what is that?

A 18,000 cubic feet of air to change every hour four and a half times.

It's obnoxious, right?

So we want to get a tighter house so I don't have to reheat all this air all the time.

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.

So we would mechanically move it.

We have an ERV that is simply to describe the erv.

It's literally two fans in a box.

One fan drives air out, one fan drives air in.

And as those two air streams pass, the heat energy from one airstream moves to the other.

So if it's cold outside and warm inside, that heat moves to that colder airstream and preheats that airstream coming in.

But if it's obnoxiously hot outside heating that airstream, the heat moves into the other airstream and is sent back out.

So I can keep the house cool or warm at the cost of running.

Two exhaust stands, right?

No heating or cooling required.

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 be, because now it also pulls any of that moisture load.

The other thing that you can do with the ERV is because you're mechanically bringing in supplier, we put a MERV 13 filter on there.

So now again, when we're in Houston and that high loads of PM2.5, 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 replace it.

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.

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.

So, Ken, have they got a technology wise yet?

And I don't know this answer, but it's something that I've been asking for a lot of years.

Have they gotten to a point now where that could actually shut off if the outdoor air is so poor?

Like, not all of this episode will end up on the radio show, so.

So make sure you catch the entire show on your favorite podcast player.

The around the House show will be right back with more from Ken Nelson from Panasonic Ecosystems.

We are talking ventilation when we come back.

All right.

Welcome back to the around the House show with Eric G. And John Dudley.

To find out more about us, you can find us at our website, aroundthehouse online.com.

not all of this episode will end up on the radio show, so make sure you catch the entire show on your favorite podcast player.

Now let's get back with more from Ken Nelson from Panasonic Ecosystems.

Fair assessment of what will have the best impact, not just the biggest, but the best impact on your house.

Absolutely.

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 the way, while you're at it, that ERV has to go in on that.

And so that's something that we're seeing kind of racing across the country as far as what we're seeing with that.

And I think it's really important for us to have that conversation because it's going to be in everybody's backyard.

Now, when you go into projects that state by state is building, science gets smarter.

And we know what we need to require.

Ken, you guys are doing so much with ERVs out there.

There's a lot of science going into this.

There is, there's.

And you know what?

Here's the thing.

The science, science is so simple, but the reality is simple is the most complex thing.

Right?

People always talk about, well, I want to, I want the easy button.

But the work that goes behind creating the easy button to make things happen is, is quite remarkable.

So we want more energy transfer out of the erv, I want to save more energy or I want to reject heat energy or I want to reject moisture outside or save moisture inside.

How can the ERV do all this super effectively?

And, and there's ways to do it bit I also can't raise your price.

I don't want to raise your price.

I want this to be done with.

You know, I talk about price, cost and value.

I need to keep the price and the cost down by it, but enhance the value.

So the four pillars, we kind of alluded to the motor being one of the primary pillars of ERVs.

Number two would be the core.

Excuse me, I'm going to jump around.

But 1 is the motor, 2 is configuration, 3 is the core and 4 is filter, right?

Because I want the core.

And honestly with an ERV, the core is 2/3 the cost of the ERV.

Because that material that allows that water vapor to go through there is just not something you can pull out of your kitchen, kitchen drawer and create it.

Right.

It's, it's, it's a piece of membrane that has been stretched, flexed and it has very precise permission permeable material that's, that allows water vapor to pass through.

So the core is, is quite unique.

And there's two types of cores.

There's this cross flow core where the air passes left and passes right and that's where the material goes.

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.

And what happens is to make the ERV more efficient, we have to add more pressure inside that core.

Each of those turn enhances that pressure in that airstream.

So it's going to move from one stream to the next.

It's literally, it gives us two, excuse me, gives us 90% efficient on those cores.

You know what, that core is more expensive.

If that doesn't work, we have lower cost cores, lower cost ERVs.

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 the long run than the couple, you know, the 50 to 20 bucks that you're going to save on a, on a lower priced product.

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, you go to Alaska and they have mosquitoes for heaven's sakes.

The filters are super critical and I have to make a device that will take a filter that's not going to set us all back.

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.

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 for builders, quieter, the whole package.

Yeah, that makes sense, Ken.

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.

There's enough filters around.

You got your refrigerator filter, you got all these filters.

But that ERV filter, you better stay on top of that because at some point it's going to be like that.

I always, I always call it.

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 didn't change that.

But it's a key piece to maintain.

Right.

And that's why life is simpler in Colombia, because we don't even have bath fans here.

So there's no filter changing going on.

Yeah, your windows are open.

I stayed in a place they didn't even have windows, they had slats.

It was a beautiful thing.

Yep.

Yeah.

But I gotta give Johnny a hard time here because he also has no hot water going to the shower.

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, and that's common there.

So you've got a 110 wire that's open with wire nuts in your shower.

It's not even in a box.

So it's fine.

It's fine.

But here's right.

So today I was helping Miguel's sister move and her little daughter wanted to play the game on my phone, Right.

And the phone was plugged in and her mom slipped out.

I know.

Not while the phone's plugged in, but we have shower heads with bare wires.

Get in there, kids.

Like it's a self that's not going to get it.

Yeah, yeah.

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.

Yeah.

Or it's going to work opposite of design.

Yeah, yeah.

Even worse.

Even worse.

I tell you what, Ken, it is always fun to have you on here, brother.

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.

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.

The latest stuff from Panasonic is down there.

Beautiful, man.

I can't wait to have you come by.

We'll go and monkey with all the buttons and play with all the.

All the toys.

I will be monkeying with it for sure.

So, Johnny, we're going to have to get you up next year for that.

Well, I was just going to say I might get up there for that or.

You do realize how close Florida is to fly over to Columbia, if you guys wanted to just come and visit for a spell.

You're not wrong, bro.

I am not wrong right now.

I got a thing, though.

I'm staying out of that Venezuelan airspace right now.

So I'm just gonna have to stay away from you, brother.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You're gonna want to sail around that point, really keep a wide breeze.

I would probably take my chances with the airspace more so than the ocean space below it.

Yeah, for sure.

I'm not going out in a fishing boat, let's put it that way.

Four motors.

Yeah.

That's no more unsafe than taking a shower here.

We don't worry about it.

Way to bring it around.

So, Ken, how do people find you guys?

I mean, you guys are in, of course, for builders and remodelers.

You're out everywhere out there, but you're not always in, like, the home improvement storage.

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 so much better.

And you're one of those.

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.

And you guys are kind of one of those rare ones, man.

Well, I'll tell you.

So finding us has gotten way, way easier.

We are now in most of the home improvement stores.

Nice.

We're at wholesale distribution.

If you're doing more design work, you'll see us.

And again, at some of the higher end wholesale distributions, where they do mechanical design and so forth.

The vent fan industry before 20 years ago was literally like the light bulb industry.

You had to go to a special place to get a special light bulb.

But today I've got product just about anywhere.

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 material and put it out on our Panasonic LinkedIn and Facebook and all that as well.

So some shared knowledge opportunities.

Man, I love it.

I love it.

And you guys are just continuing to innovate and I love that you're doing, doing it.

And Ken, thanks for coming on, man.

And I will see you in a few weeks.

I'm looking forward to that.

Yes, sir.

I just want to throw in.

I wanted to throw it in at the beginning, Eric, when you said 10 years plus, you've been using these products.

Right.

We used to have to special order or go to someplace special to get, which was definitely a bit of an upsell.

But we, that there was no competition for the Panasonic fans back then.

Right.

And it was just.

Yeah, no different, same thing.

Right.

Even back then you're talking about 25 years ago and people still were saying, is it on?

Is it on?

Like that's how, that's how long you guys have been great.

And again, you're not paying me to say that.

That's just reality.

It's, it's been the best for 20 plus years.

Yeah.

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.

But listen to this.

And there would be nothing but silence.

And they would still mock me, say, oh, people regular buy those.

And I'm like, what?

Just bring them in.

I'll go make all this happen.

And now our fan business is a 200 million dollar juggernaut that we couldn't be more proud of.

Yeah.

And well it should be.

Yeah, absolutely.

All right, let's wrap a bow around this one.

Ken, thanks for coming on today.

John, great to see you.

I appreciate you having me on and I look forward to seeing you guys at the builder show.

All right, sounds good.

I'm Eric G. You've been listening to around the House.

If you have a question for us, check out the website@aroundthehouseonline.com.

we will see you next time.