Building homes are more complex than ever with all of the things you need to do to protect it and keep it a healthy place to live. After all it will be most likely your largest investment. We dive into building science with Emily Mattram and we discuss everything from new home construction to heat pumps in cold areas.

Emily is the founder and principal of Mottram Architecture, a boutique practice specializing in new homes and renovations that are beautiful, functional, comfortable, healthy, and durable.  

Emily received her Bachelor of Architecture degree from Penn State University and is a Registered Architect in Maine, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania; she has also previously been registered in New York and Texas. Emily is a member of the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB), the Maine Indoor Air Quality Council (MIAQC), and the Natural Resources Council of Maine (NRCM), the state’s leading organization working to protect and preserve the environment.

An educator at heart, Emily also teaches building science and sustainable design at a local community college and has served as a consultant for projects in a secondary school trade program. She hosts the weekly podcast E3: Energy and Efficiency with Emily and co-hosts the live-streamed BS* + Beer Show, a weekly building science show for professionals and “civilians” alike. 

For more information check out Emily: https://www.mottramarch.com/

For more information on Around the House visit us on social media or our website: https://aroundthehouseonline.com/

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[00:00:06] Caroline Blazovsky: concept out there that if we live in a cold climate, we can't use it. So I was curious about what your opinion is on it.

[00:00:26] Emily Mottram: Right. First across the board, you can't just put a heat pump in an 18 hundreds. And expect it to work, right. There are definitely criteria for how it works, whether you need a ducted heat pump, or whether you need a, you know, a mini split that goes on the wall. Um, we've learned a lot of things. Um, in our first couple of houses, we had one compressor and we might have three or four heads on the compressor.

[00:00:56] Eric Goranson: it

[00:01:07] Eric Goranson: welcome to around the house with Eric G and Caroline, be your one-stop shop for home improvement, interior design, healthy homes, and construction every single week. Thanks for joining us today. Hey Caroline.

[00:01:25] Eric Goranson: Oh, yeah, this is going to be great. Emily mantra, Mottram architecture.

[00:01:33] Emily Mottram: Hello. Thanks for having me. It's awesome to, uh, join you, uh, you know, Erica and on your coast as well. Caroline. I know you're over here hanging out with us on the east coast. It is awesome.

[00:01:56] Eric Goranson: We were having fun out there. We were preaching. [00:02:00]

[00:02:21] Emily Mottram: It's great. And sometimes I want to just like put it all in the corner and I don't want anything to beep or notify me or go off or do anything like it's so, so great. And I'm really, really into it. And at the same time, I want to just like live in a cabin with no electricity and have nothing that beeps at me or notifies me.

[00:02:46] Eric Goranson: Well, it's so true. Well, Carolyn and Emily, you guys both kind of, well, not kind of are both in that healthier home. Type of field, even though you're in different parts of it, which is kind of fun to me.

[00:03:03] Caroline Blazovsky: So you can kind of, I went to the BAC or Boston architectural college for sustainable design. So you can appreciate that.

[00:03:16] Eric Goranson: we're

[00:03:20] Emily Mottram: I think that lead did what it was supposed to do in the market, which was bring awareness to things. Um, I think that it is a rating system that you can game the system, which is unfortunate. Um, and I think personally that a lot of the certification programs are fantastic, but they can sometimes be short-sighted for the U S market.

[00:04:13] Emily Mottram: So with lead specifically, I think that. All of the certification programs are great in that they push the market forward. They make us think of more things and they make us, you know, take a look at it is the checklist. Good. Yeah. If you don't know anything else and you start with the checklist you're doing better than, than other people, then you do.

[00:04:58] Emily Mottram: Who's doing what, how can we do it [00:05:00] better? What can we do more efficiently, et cetera. And that's where, where that came through. But it's always kind of the joke, cause it's the rating system, but how to build a better house, how to think about these things. How to think about carbon, how to think about your health, how to, how to think about not freezing in the winter.

[00:05:18] Eric Goranson: it's the anti rating system rating system

[00:05:25] Eric Goranson: go. That's awesome. Yeah. As you know, when it first came out, I was struggling with it from the interior design sort of things, because like with cabinetry, sometimes you're like, oh, you need to use this straw based particle board stuff.

[00:06:04] Eric Goranson: So we were kind of winning and trying to gain through the system as well. But it was, there were some struggles there where I was like, okay, this you're checking a box, but it's not the. Box to check for the project. Exactly. And then Caroline, what's your take on it. And since you're asking the question, I got to ask it back now.

[00:06:39] Caroline Blazovsky: So it's the same concept, right? So it's very deceiving, you know, metric wise, you can meet a lot of parameters, but fail tremendously and have something that's completely toxic and it still be lead. So that's my concern with it. And it's kind of always been that way, but I agree with her when we were learning or when lead came out, it forced us to look at sustainability and to [00:07:00] look at different product types and to start selecting products that were better and building envelopes that.

[00:07:26] Caroline Blazovsky: But they were so deep and thick that I said, if you ever got water down in this building envelope, how would you ever get the mold out? Like it was so, and you can sort of, and I remember bringing this up to one of my professors and saying, well, okay, but what if you get a leak in the. Well, I don't know, like how do you get in there to get it out?

[00:07:45] Emily Mottram: talking my language. Now water is the number one enemy to any building and building science. Isn't the enemy of buildings, not understanding the science is the enter, the, you know, the enemy of buildings. And so the very [00:08:00] first thing that we need to do is manage where the water's going to go.

[00:08:20] Emily Mottram: Building is complicated. Now it is not the simple, easy thing where, you know, in the fifties you could put up the two by fours, you could put, you know, you could build your own house. And I don't mean to say that people shouldn't DIY or build their own houses or whatever, but it's so complicated. And even those of us in the industry, every time a new product comes out or, or something, you have to think about what the science of, what am I asking this product to do?

[00:09:07] Emily Mottram: So Eric got to spend a lot of time in the textile, and I don't know if you got to spend much time in the building zone. Um, Loved about what, uh, what Ben did with his program in the building zone was to talk about those things. But just in general ways, like, okay, here's this product. And one of my expecting it to do that's building science right there.

[00:09:46] Emily Mottram: And then they swap a product or they do something. And now all of a sudden you have a super risky assembly. And that to me is super scary. Um, because man, we don't want to be building stuff that is, who said it, [00:10:00] uh, vertical mulch. I heard that, I heard that conference. Like, you know, we we've got vertical mulch, cause it basically is just disintegrating in five years.

[00:10:32] Emily Mottram: That's not even building science. That's just general good practice of building as an architect and a builder. You gotta know how to manage water and manage risk in your assembly and what you're expecting your product to do. And that's actually the joke on BSN beer on Thursdays. I say it depends a lot.

[00:11:06] Caroline Blazovsky: is that what it's

[00:11:19] Emily Mottram: We would toss ideas out. That's where the pretty good house came around, where just other professionals in the field could get together, ask questions and get answers and talk about things they did well during the pandemic, because we've created a really great network here in Maine. We just hopped on zoom and said, you know, is everybody okay?

[00:12:05] Emily Mottram: It's just. A great place. I mean, you guys do tech, you do audio, you know, it's not like it's the worst environment for somebody to actually hear something. Or, um, so we had always said, no, they got wind that we were popping on zoom, you know, once a week just to make sure everybody was okay. And that turned into, well, we could.

[00:12:49] Emily Mottram: And we've moved to once a month. Now, now that things are. You know, people where people are back out working, they don't have the time to tune in every Thursday night. Right. And so, [00:13:00] um, my podcast is called energy and efficiency with Emily. And I talk about building science on that too, because if you can't tell already that's kinda my thing.

[00:13:34] Emily Mottram: It's worthwhile, maybe college isn't for everybody and the trades. Aren't just the thing you do. If you can't go to college. Oftentimes craftsmanship and artwork and things that people are really proud of and making more money than you would go into college and coming out with a hundred thousand dollars worth of debt now.

[00:14:00] Eric Goranson: you, our preaching our language. And,

[00:14:18] Caroline Blazovsky: I mean, it's diverse when you say trade, people think, oh, plumber, they think maybe an electrician, but now you're branching out into a whole different thing when you're talking architecture and building science. And we just, everybody's been saying the same thing that trade, you know, We all we need to all get together.

[00:14:36] Eric Goranson: jobs. Right? We've got millions of jobs out there that we could fill across the U S right now in the trades as a general thing, we just don't have the bodies to put in there and we need to fill those positions. And they're great.

[00:14:54] Emily Mottram: So this past Thursday, we did a whole show on the nuts and bolts of solar installations, because I mean, solar is [00:15:00] becoming this great thing. And, um, it w it was awesome to just kind of talk about what are the parts that go into a solar system with someone who's going to come put solar on your roof. What does that mean?

[00:15:28] Emily Mottram: Right. So, I mean, and that's just the solar industry, right. Which, you know, some of the younger generations are. Maybe more in tuned to that. They think it's slick. They think it's cool. And I think the best takeaway from that show is someone said, we need to start talking about this in K through 12. And someone said, I think it's important that you said K through 12, because by high school, it's almost too late.

[00:16:09] Emily Mottram: Well, I had to know how to use calculus in my structures class, but I didn't actually like calculus till I took structures where it applied to something I thought was cool and interesting. And so I think, you know, how we teach it is so important to get people like project management. That's a skill that you can be great at in the trade field, in so many different opportunities.

[00:17:00] Emily Mottram: wait to try something you thought was cool.

[00:17:22] Emily Mottram: So, but that one was just because I really horrible physics teacher didn't have anything to do with physics. I just. Yeah, just

[00:17:49] Eric Goranson: And we've talked about this on the show a couple of times, but I can drive around in the winter time because we have rainy season that goes from about October through June. And we [00:18:00] could get, you know, six weeks of drizzle and rain and just wet. I can drive around new builds, especially when we're seeing stuff a little slowed down due to, you know, missing products and stuff out there.

[00:18:36] Eric Goranson: And it's like, come on guys, we've got to pay better attention to building in this, you know, in this climate and other climates, because that's just mold. And I mean, that's just going to be a freaking mass when that gets wrapped

[00:18:59] Emily Mottram: [00:19:00] That's what it is. Um, You're talking about it's, it's, it's not durable, it's fallen apart, right. Just call back whatever, but you know, they they're covering that up and they're capsulated and now it's inside your house. And so now we're talking about homeowners moving in, having asthma issues, having, you know, all kinds of health issues and maybe have a no idea why that's the case in their house.

[00:19:55] Caroline Blazovsky: And then what happens is the homeowner. So we go in right as an environmental consultant. Now I've [00:20:00] got to drop a bomb that the homeowner has a massive mold problem. And they're like, well, what can we do to fix it? Unfortunately, your building envelope is compromised. The entire sheet thing of the house has compromised your, your iPads or what your, your stucco has been compromised.

[00:20:36] Caroline Blazovsky: And they're stuck. It's a horrible situation to be in. I've been in it many, many times in the last, you know, 25 years. And I've seen people get sick. I've seen people, you know, death cases that I've had to represent where people got sick from iPads and, you know, passed away. Got to find out they did

[00:20:52] Emily Mottram: Yeah. And, and the worst part about that is the thing that's getting the bad rap is the [00:21:00] way that they did it. Right. Like building science, like, oh, we shouldn't be wrapping our buildings with, with this. Or we should. And it's like, no, man. We've been building for a lot of years. And water has always been the number one issue.

[00:21:34] Emily Mottram: I'm like, you basically just made a Yeti cooler house. Like, I mean, yeah, maybe it'll work. And if you managed all the right stuff, you don't have any moisture movement through there, but what about the. The offgassing of the stuff that you'd like, what what's in that I don't think I'd want to live in a Yeti cooler plastic foam and, you know, I mean, no,

[00:21:59] Eric Goranson: It's, it's like [00:22:00] there's for every problem, there's an extreme to fix it, which creates a whole other issue. And it seems like in building science, we've been battling that since the 1990s. Right. You know, and it's, it's crazy. And my favorite one right now is watching the DIY influencers on social media, trying to install windows and not understanding flashing one-on-one.

[00:22:47] Emily Mottram: Like, we can't be swayed by social media and what that looks like. And for me, I also personally have a hard time with a lot of the design and renovation shows on TV who [00:23:00] give people a really unrealistic expectation of what things cost

[00:23:07] Emily Mottram: Yeah. Well, I mean, I feel like in the interior environment, you must really see this a lot, because so much of that, like we complain about it as our building envelope and that's stuff that people just don't even understand.

[00:23:39] Emily Mottram: Paint the toilet and call it renovated. Like, I, I mean, you can't even get your plumber to show up for 10 grand, let alone beautiful tiled showers and you know, custom vanities and like what, who are these people?

[00:24:07] Eric Goranson: So what happens is, is if you see the KraftMaid truck out front and the Caesarstone guys carrying the countertops in the kitchen, and then you've got kitchen aid rolling in the appliances. Okay. So the countertops done in the $10,000 package, the cabinets aren't in the appliances are well, it's a lot easier to get.

[00:24:33] Emily Mottram: And I, I really feel if they were just transparent about that, I am all for KitchenAid getting all the sponsorship deal they want, you know, with donating the appliances, get people to buy kitchen aid, but just be up front about that.

[00:25:07] Emily Mottram: I mean, I think it's awesome that they're highlighting trades and design, but at the same time, they make it really difficult when somebody comes to you and they've gone to, they've gone to, with watched online shows or they've gone to house. My favorite is they've gone to house, right? Well that $400,000 kitchen is absolutely gorgeous.

[00:25:42] Eric Goranson: know. I get it. But the other part that I have a hard time with on the design side is like, oh, that didn't meet building code.

[00:26:00] Emily Mottram: you got us anywhere. Yeah. I can't tell you how many times I've refrained from commenting on a photo, a video or something with somebody with a gas range in an island with no hood.

[00:26:39] Eric Goranson: There are plenty of states, even in the Northeast that as long as there's a window in the room, oh, I don't need a hood. I could open the kitchen window. And that's

[00:26:59] Emily Mottram: Uh, [00:27:00]

[00:27:18] Caroline Blazovsky: They bought the house and all of a sudden everybody started getting sick in the room and they're like, what's this? And then they realized no vent. Nothing.

[00:27:38] Emily Mottram: And the first thing we would do we into the house is if you had an unvented propane appliance, we wouldn't even talk to you. We were just turned around and we'd walk back out. We'll come back. When you get rid of your unvented propane appliance, and here are all the reasons why this is, you know, and for Maine than the ice storm of 98, they had all these people who ran generators in their basements and passed out from carbon monoxide.

[00:28:05] Caroline Blazovsky: And Maine. So in Maine, what is the code for

[00:28:21] Emily Mottram: 13. When does the 62.2 wine? 2013, I think. And so we do have some mechanical ventilation requirements. Um, they just moved to 2015 last year. And so there's still a lot of people trying to figure out what they're supposed to adopt. I don't know that everything has to be vented outdoors. It, depending on how you have your ventilation structure, like it doesn't have to be done with a range hood, but you do have to provide 200 CFM in the kitchen somehow.

[00:29:18] Emily Mottram: And I was like visual inspection. Interesting. How does that work?

[00:29:28] Emily Mottram: Well, and I agree, and we try to roll into our, our plans. Like if the 2022 code is out or 2021 code is out, then we're going to build to the 20, 21 code as a minimum standard.

[00:29:57] Emily Mottram: So I mean, 2015, it's 20, 22 and we're doing [00:30:00] 2015 and 2021 is out available. Right. So, yeah, wild

[00:30:24] Eric Goranson: There's a dollar figure and a percentage of house remodeled. You have to put an ERP system in. So if you do like a kitchen living room remodel, all of a sudden you have to put an ERP system in required. Whether you need one or not, it's gotta be put in there. They're not giving you. It's just like you got to check that box.

[00:30:58] Emily Mottram: Add final [00:31:00] at final. Oh, it's so much harder to do at final. I mean, it's hard enough to do in a renovation anyway.

[00:31:09] Eric Goranson: Because they didn't, if you pulled the permit, they didn't tell you that was required in the new code. So guys, we're just going out and getting their countertop, their counter permits for the remodel, nothing structural, just remodeled kitchen and bath, get their counter permits walked off and at final, the inspector's like, ah, okay, now where's the ERV.

[00:31:35] Emily Mottram: for those of you out there in radio land, Eric had the best phase.

[00:31:53] Emily Mottram: right. Yeah. And I think some of that stuff and code also goes back to the [00:32:00] rating systems and stuff like it's a little bit hard to get an ERV into an existing house depending on what you're doing.

[00:32:31] Caroline Blazovsky: I mean, humidity becomes a huge factor and people just, what blows my mind is that my clients will say, well, why do I have bad air quality? I have an ER. And I'm like, well, do you really understand what your ERV is doing? Like somehow they think it's like this big, giant vent fan. Remember the old, like people would put them in their hallways.

[00:33:04] Caroline Blazovsky: Like they think that there's going to be this huge, like benefit and not that there isn't, but with vault organics, and especially if you're building these tight building envelopes that have so many views. I mean, I've worked on houses where we've had 60 RVs and it wasn't doing

[00:33:32] Emily Mottram: Right. Because diluting, it isn't always the solution, just like you just actually diluting it. Didn't didn't solve your issue. Right. And so are we going to dilute it and filter it? And do you know now we're adding all of these extra things that we have to do to kind of handle, what do we put in our, what do we put in our building and in the first place.

[00:34:16] Emily Mottram: Like you can't just solve for one thing because you might be creating other issues.

[00:34:44] Eric Goranson: And everything was dirty. You were changing your air filter on a bi-weekly basis in your house. If it was halfway decent. And it was just a complete hot mess. And if I would have had an ERV system, my house, I would have been bringing air that was [00:35:00] so much worse. And then all of a sudden I'm depending on that Merv filter to take care of that at Merv, filter's going to get loaded up quickly.

[00:35:18] Eric Goranson: I heard this, I heard this thousands of people going, wow.

[00:35:35] Eric Goranson: Exactly. But that's, you know what I mean, though? It's, it's, it's, there's so much more maintenance as well, talking with homeowners about this stuff, because you know, we, we do a great job at talking to people out there.

[00:36:04] Emily Mottram: Yeah.

[00:36:27] Caroline Blazovsky: The standalone filter, just one place in the space. Let's take a bedroom or running. So running a clean air cycle for 15 minutes per hour in the household with your cooling system, with a Merv 16 filter. Central forced air heating

[00:36:53] Emily Mottram: But can you get enough air flow from the other places, but if you're circulating the stuff, I don't know if anybody's cleaned [00:37:00] out duct work, right? Duct work scares the crap out of me. Right? Clean out duct work and everything. And you're filtering that through your whole house. You really have one room with good air.

[00:37:16] Caroline Blazovsky: study, I think they put one free standing in the bedroom and one in the living room. And then they compared it to, you know, putting

[00:37:31] Caroline Blazovsky: It just kind of interesting that just came out today. I was fascinated.

[00:37:37] Eric Goranson: Can you find those bats in the system a couple of weeks ago, she found how many bastards you find in the, in the ducks,

[00:37:52] Caroline Blazovsky: So like, when I come in, if you, I'm your environmental consultant, you're cleaning your ducks. That's the heart and lungs of that house before I even start, because [00:38:00] if that's all gone awry and you've got mold and dust mites and everything else growing in there, I can't assess the rest. That's gotta be fixed first before I can even look at your building envelope and all the IAQ issues you have.

[00:38:22] Emily Mottram: Yeah. Well, and people don't replace their filters, so they're not cleaning their ducks either.

[00:38:35] Eric Goranson: And it's interesting, you know, we were talking about in Florida, you and I, Emily were talking about one time we were diving into humidity. And then what happens with humidity when you get all that stuff inside those docs, high humidity, I mean, you can just get, it can get ugly.

[00:39:01] Emily Mottram: Right. Because John's a Nikki, because after you watch one of her presentations, you're like, I need whole house dehumidification, or I know this stuff and I need to make sure I'm not growing anything. And it, you know, oh man. Yeah, because. And we've seen it in the building science world. Right. You, you know, you're, you're doing it.

[00:39:41] Emily Mottram: It's just so yeah, you just trapping everything inside. Well, and then also knowing

[00:39:59] Caroline Blazovsky: Cause we go [00:40:00] to this cheaper way of doing things. It's easier, you know, think about it. It's like a big slinky and you can just easily. Crimp it and put it along beams and you don't have to actually build duct work with sheet metal. And so we'd get these easier systems and they just think about that when you have all these little rivets and a slinky gets all gunked up with all kinds of stuff, it's just cheap way of doing it.

[00:40:30] Emily Mottram: professionals? Okay. So, um, I'm nerdy and I admitted, I like tech. I also am super, super interested in HVAC.

[00:40:42] Caroline Blazovsky: I would have gone back for HVAC if I had. You know, thought about it.

[00:41:01] Emily Mottram: This is the beginning. There's no dust in it, right. Or there's maybe some construction dust in it, or it's, it's gotten kinked because it's held up with some kind of wacky strap and, oh my gosh, the things

[00:41:18] Caroline Blazovsky: And it's

[00:41:21] Eric Goranson: or so many rolled across it in the crawlspace. And it's like, you know, it's flat, it's oval, you know, cause somebody cut across the crawlspace and drag it down or something, you

[00:41:41] Emily Mottram: Right. You can use this manufacturer, that manufacturer, whatever, whoever you can get, especially now with the supply chain, whoever you can get it from, it just can't be, you know, it can't be flexed duct, and it can't, you know, I can't go out the you talking about ERBs, it can't go out the same port, right?

[00:42:24] Emily Mottram: We all have smartphones and it puts it in your calendar. And it sends you a little reminder. You could change the filter today, or this is the system that you have, or this is who you call when this thing breaks. Right. Because. Especially with the new, new construction. I mean, that's probably like this and renovations, but, um, with new construction, you move in.

[00:43:01] Emily Mottram: Furniture showing up. You're not going to remember all these things. So here's where you need to go to get the information. Here's my phone number, give me a call. Um, I love to ahead a new client. They had never lived with heat pumps before they moved in, in December. They called me up and they're like, next time you're on site.

[00:43:30] Emily Mottram: I'm like, it, it's just not the same. You know, it's not an old boiler. It's not a forced hot air system. It's that, you know, it doesn't work the same way. The thermostat isn't. Four feet off the floor, you know, it's up on top of the unit at nine feet, it's going to be warmer up there, you know? So it was really fun to go through with them again, kind of after the fact, it's just like, it doesn't have to be complicated, but it is different than what you're used to.

[00:44:01] Emily Mottram: have enough crushing, crushing do too. So it's mutual. This is so

[00:44:24] Caroline Blazovsky: So I was curious

[00:44:40] Emily Mottram: Right. First across the board, you can't just put a heat pump in an 18 hundreds farmhouse and expect it to work, right. There are definitely criteria for how it works, whether you need a ducted heat pump, or whether you need a, you know, a mini split that goes on the wall. Um, we've learned a lot of things.

[00:45:15] Emily Mottram: It's got a D defrost, whatever. And so if that goes down, you have no heat anywhere. So we definitely have. We definitely have some backup systems. One, we always put under floor electric. Floormates in our bathrooms because who doesn't love a warm tile floor when they go to the shower and where's the one place in your house.

[00:45:58] Emily Mottram: So, um, and [00:46:00] we're going to start seeing more of this and, and this is where it gets into like techie Emily's just into all kinds of new technology is, um, you know, Eric out there for you. We talked about this on stage in Florida, we're going to see power grid shutdowns on purpose for wildfire. You know, here in Maine, we see power grid shutdowns because the power lines are down.

[00:46:42] Emily Mottram: So I think there's some cool ideas for that. So. For the most part, we only have a couple of houses that are heat pumps only, and they work fine. Um, what we do is we put them on separate compressors so that if one goes down, the other two are probably working, right. You might have one in the basement, one on the first floor, one on the [00:47:00] upper level.

[00:47:18] Emily Mottram: And so it's, it's absolutely possible. Now I'm starting to get on board with this, like heat pumps have become popular. And so we have more installers and they're not always installed well. And the. To get more efficient as being built cheaper. And that can be an issue. And Freon in the air is almost as bad as burning fossil fuels, right?

[00:48:03] Emily Mottram: My house is 11, you know, it's 11,000. BTU's like, this is, this is, you know, not work, which is why we went to heat pumps. Um, which is great. But, but there, there are definitely challenges with them, but you absolutely can do it all day long.

[00:48:35] Eric Goranson: So the problem with that is, is that with all of those trees, I can't have solar in my house. There's no way I am 90% shade all the time. And it would take me probably a two year process to even get rid of one of those trees, if they'd allow me to do it right. So it's going to happen. So I went with this, uh, I went forced air, um, and I did gas.

[00:49:22] Eric Goranson: And I liked that for me.

[00:49:44] Emily Mottram: So yeah.

[00:50:10] Eric Goranson: And they told me what the LA. Of leakage was in the docs and I'm like, oh, that's kinda cool. And they went and okay, let's go tighten it up. Let's see if there's any other places. And, and they could work on that, but I'm like, that just came off of the thermostat that told me that. And so there's a lot of cool new technology that starts to get people headed the right direction without having to turn the system apart and do a bunch of testing on.

[00:50:33] Caroline Blazovsky: Emily another question.

[00:50:36] Caroline Blazovsky: I ask personal questions. I get a little personal, but it's, I think it helps us. So I find it funny because like we can live in all kinds of different houses, right? As home improvement, people and indoor air quality professionals and Eric and I both kind of live in houses that were built around the same time mine was built in the thing 65 Eric's was built in the seventies.

[00:51:16] Caroline Blazovsky: So what would you pick, like if you had to pick and you may say new, you may go totally new build, but I want to know if your ideal house one, if you want to share where you live, what kind of house you live in and then two, what you would pick as your personal.

[00:51:36] Eric Goranson: Vintages mind.

[00:51:46] Emily Mottram: I think they knew some things about design. Then they threw away in the eighties. I lived a lot bad things in the eighties and nineties, you know? So they, they, they were doing some good things in the seventies.[00:52:00]

[00:52:06] Caroline Blazovsky: Jim drive in mind. Crazy.

[00:52:09] Eric Goranson: I was going to say, Vinny's probably going, ah, she's at 80 houses, so yeah,

[00:52:28] Emily Mottram: Right. So that's kind of always the joke. People are like, oh, I want to go to the architect's house. I want to go to the builder's house. No, we are all winged net wing that testing. In our house, right? Like all of us we're trying something out. And so, um, you know, um, there's definitely some improvement, but, uh, I was making my husband watch some home improvement shows without him knowing what I was doing.

[00:53:15] Emily Mottram: Right? So our wingnut test or trial has been living in this house and having it dry out in the winter time. It kind of dealing with that. And you know, I talk about this on, on my Instagram and everything. And people seem to love these posts the most, I was like, what is Emily blown up? Right. My blower door is 8.5, but I have to, I have to work through some of the issues to get to the point where I can really air seal everything that we're doing.

[00:53:59] Emily Mottram: But, [00:54:00] um, would I build new? I'm not sure if. Uh, I'm not, I maybe I could build new. Um, I definitely believe in all of the new houses that we build and what we're doing and the materials that we're putting in it. Um, but I think I'm an architect because I like so many different styles, right. So I love helping my clients do modern designs and do classic designs and all that stuff.

[00:54:51] Emily Mottram: Beautiful. I one don't really want to build new things that don't already exist on the water for environmental reasons and do there just isn't a lot of that [00:55:00] left. So then you have to work with what, what you can get. And so, um, just like you said, there are older houses that are filled with all kinds of stuff or that people just didn't really take care of.

[00:55:33] Eric Goranson: a lot of bad things in the eighties too, so I can understand how the eighties houses got that way, but that's going to date myself a little bit.

[00:56:01] Eric Goranson: And there was like rubber bands that were that word.

[00:56:05] Caroline Blazovsky: was the one he talked about

[00:56:06] Emily Mottram: Broan yeah. Hilarious.

[00:56:23] Eric Goranson: You wouldn't. I took mine out cause I was like to clean it. You almost had to like cut the ceiling in the laundry room out just to get it out, to clean it. And I'm like, this is disgusting. And we were learning a lot in the eighties, obviously of trying to do things better, but we just didn't know what we were doing.

[00:56:40] Emily Mottram: Brut. Are we there? Nothing wrong with that? Just there are a bunch of bad things happen. Yeah,

[00:57:00] Emily Mottram: Oh man. Yeah. I mean, mechanical and HVAC really, you know, mechanical and ventilation, right. That for the longest time we said nobody knew what the V and HVAC was. So I'm super interested in, you know, the Northeast has been really good on pushing the codes and doing better buildings and building, you know, passive house levels.

[00:57:47] Emily Mottram: And like, I mean, just some cool things that I think are coming on board, um, as far as how we handle heating and cooling in our houses. Um, and also that. [00:58:00] Maybe people are really starting to catch on to what is in our building materials. So I think that, um, just like lead was great at getting people to start thinking about things.

[00:58:34] Emily Mottram: Because like you said, um, about solar, solar is not a great, uh, option for your house, but if everybody who solar was a great option for did solar, that gives us a small opportunity of people who can't do it. And we have a much lower impact, right? Like it's all so much bigger than we are. Um, and so for me, I think that's, what's cool is maybe it's the pandemic, but.

[00:59:18] Emily Mottram: There's been conferences. I mean, I don't even know how many, how many years the international builders show has been going on, but I

[00:59:26] Emily Mottram: Right. And so like, these things are out there and I think more people are starting to get aware of that. And as an architect, I thought, man, every architect needs to come and just sit in the build zone and IBS who cares about the pro I mean the products and the tech and stuff.

[01:00:04] Emily Mottram: And so I think that the, the tech and the sharing for me has been the best part, because I remember it was like being a young architect and knowing absolutely nothing. So, you know what

[01:00:22] Emily Mottram: anybody who calls me and asked me in architecture school, what's the best thing I can do.

[01:00:30] Eric Goranson: actually do that when I was owning my own kitchen about design firm, I would sit there and I would send out my designers out in the field and work with a contractor for. There's an easy way to do it. Yeah. So Emily, we are running out of time.

[01:00:46] Emily Mottram: down? Oh man, there's all kinds of places for you to track me down. Um, as far as social media goes, Instagram mantra mark on Instagram is a great place to see. Uh, I share work and connections. Uh, you can watch me [01:01:00] on BSN beer, the BSN beer show.com. It'll take you to all of our past shows and our, uh, live monthly show on Thursdays, the podcast.

[01:01:29] Eric Goranson: There we go.

[01:01:39] Emily Mottram: on today. It was great to be on so much fun. We will come over and

[01:01:47] Emily Mottram: You guys, all the questions. See,

[01:01:56] Eric Goranson: This is going to be fun.

[01:02:03] Eric Goranson: so after ward being on stage with you. We're going to get along. Fine. All right. Well, I'm Eric G

[01:02:12] Eric Goranson: you've been listening to around the