Shownotes
We have a huge guest this week that is always fun to talk to! Andrew Pace is a Healthy Home Materials Expert and Founder of The Green Design Center, a leading resource for homeowners and contractors looking to source products that are healthy and green and receive expert consulting advice on designing and building healthy green homes. Andrew is the host of the weekly Non Toxic Environments Podcast. He is a worldwide expert on green and healthy building products and services customers and contractors from around the globe. As founder of the oldest healthy building supply company in the United States, Andrew has become one of the single most helpful and educational experts dealing with the day-to-day concerns of those individuals who suffer from allergies, asthma and chemical sensitivities.
We dive into healthy building materials for your home. This is only PART of the conversation as we dive into the subject even deeper on the extended version of this discussion. You can do that as an Around the House Insider here: https://around-the-house-with-e.captivate.fm/support
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Information given on the Around the House Show should not be considered construction or design advice for your specific project, nor is it intended to replace consulting at your home or jobsite by a building professional. The views and opinions expressed by those interviewed on the podcast are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Around the House Show.
Mentioned in this episode:
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Transcripts
[00:00:24] Eric Goranson: So head over to around the house, online. com and sign up there. This is an interview you don't want to miss. And. We're on the house shows brought to you by pyramid heating and cooling serving in Oregon, the Portland metro area and Bend, Oregon. They are your one stop shop for heating and cooling and indoor air quality.
[:[00:01:08] Eric Goranson: One of my good buddies that every time he comes on here, we get off on sidetracks. We have a lot of fun talking about everything healthy home and maybe a little whiskey even if we can slide that into the conversation. Andrew Pace, Andy Pace, my friend, welcome back to Around the
[:[00:01:33] Andy Pace: A little bit of some side tangents that are always enjoyable, but this is fantastic. Great. Great to see you again.
[:[00:01:55] Eric Goranson: And usually get my emails or LinkedIn messages gone. What do I do about this? And it's
[:[00:02:00] Eric Goranson: strange.
[:[00:02:23] Andy Pace: And so anything that could cause a reaction just for somebody would be chemical off gassing, mold, bacteria, you name it. So I help folks remodel. Design and build healthy homes.
[:[00:02:49] Eric Goranson: And it's shocking where people like, Oh, go do this. And it's like, what are you talking about? Making that worse like that?
[:[00:03:08] Andy Pace: And that, uh, excites all the chemicals in the materials and it, it allows them to off gas faster. And I'll tell you folks, that's the absolute worst thing you want to do in your house. Because, yes, you will get more chemical release, but you'll also get new chemical compounds being formed that wouldn't be there unless you heated it up to that, uh, temperature.
[:[00:03:44] Eric Goranson: And the funny thing is, is maybe all of those plastics in your house and finally the oils on the outside have finally off gassed and they're slowed down.
[:[00:03:59] Andy Pace: [00:04:00] sure. We know that. A lot of building materials that are used, let's say materials that finish or cure on site, paints, stains, adhesives, caulking materials. Those can off gas anywhere from about two and a half to four and a half years after they reach a full cure.
[:[00:04:35] Andy Pace: I think there was a, an article written about 25 years ago by a scientist in hell, Levin wrote this article on how you can do a bakeout, but then he came back out with an article right afterwards saying, but don't do it because you can't do this effectively in a home without causing a whole host of problems.
[:[00:04:53] Eric Goranson: I think the only thing you might do is kill some bedbugs and that's probably you might do
[:[00:05:02] Eric Goranson: Oh man, I can, I just, I'm thinking of the, the different systems in your house that are going to go sideways with that.
[:[00:05:25] Eric Goranson: Let's just put the bleach away I don't really have a good cause for bleach to be used There's so many better products out there, even if it's on a hard surface
[:[00:05:44] Andy Pace: Look, to your, to your point, contractor says, Oh yeah, just bleach the wood. It'll be fine. I've been doing this for 30 years. I've never had a problem. That's my favorite line. My response always is, I've been golfing for 30 years and I'm still absolutely horrible. Just because you do something doesn't make you [00:06:00] at it.
[:[00:06:19] Andy Pace: They cause bigger problems. Bleach, especially makes mold worse. So do never bleach mold.
[:[00:06:38] Eric Goranson: And I just wish the government would take that page down. Cause it's misinformation in my mind. It's just, it's I'll get
[:[00:06:56] Andy Pace: Oh, it says I can use bleach. Okay. I can use bleach. It says you can [00:07:00] use bleach on non porous surfaces. No, you didn't read that next line. And so I, I would rather err on the side of safe and let's just not talk about it at all. Let's talk about what works in everything and you don't have to worry about it.
[:[00:07:30] Eric Goranson: Go get something like Caliwell or something. And I got that from you.
[:[00:07:58] Andy Pace: Callowell is a little bit different. [00:08:00] Callowell, after you encapsulate and you vacuum to get rid of the loose material, you literally paint two coats over the moldy wood and that's it. You're done. It saves 75 percent of the labor and the way it does it, it's not by using some toxic science, scientific, noxious chemical.
[:[00:08:33] Eric Goranson: Yeah. pH is science. And when it gets to the point where it's going to not.
[:[00:08:46] Andy Pace: And we've got, we've literally have hundreds and hundreds of years of, of experience using lime. Uh, farmers use lime, lime, wash the barns to get rid of the mold.
[:[00:09:15] Eric Goranson: It's basic science. Let's go ahead and use it. It's something we learned in fifth grade and it works. It's so smart. And I think topically, because we've had not, it's not been a bad hurricane season for most. But we've had a lot of storms on the East Coast and across the South that have been really hitting people.
[:[00:09:48] Eric Goranson: We're talking healthy homes
[:[00:10:10] Eric Goranson: the next generation of home improvement brought to you by our friends over at monument grills You If you're looking for a new grill, check them out at money, mcgrills. com. Now we're going to talk with Andrew pace here. Now this whole interview did not fit into the radio show or podcast. So you make sure and hit our premium episodes so you can grab it over there.
[:[00:10:41] Eric Goranson: And it's, it's one of the things that we see here in the Pacific Northwest. Cause we have a lot of basements and crawl spaces, house flippers go in and take an unfinished basement. It's been unfinished for 30 years because of water intrusion issues. And they go in there and say, cool, let's go add another thousand square feet to the house.
[:[00:11:15] Andy Pace: It comes down to that.
[:[00:11:37] Andy Pace: And this has a cyclical as well. We see this every 10 to 15 years. I know here in my state here in Wisconsin, it's about every 10 to 15 years, we get these summers of absolute torrential rainfalls. And then a summer like now, which we haven't had rain for two weeks. It's just, it's, this is what happens, but it's always safe to err on the side of.
[:[00:12:09] Eric Goranson: Yeah, so simple. And the science is out there. The materials are out there to do this correctly. And I just like to see people doing it right, because depending on the location, as there are some crazy rules for basements and stuff across the country, what is that in Colorado where they get frosty and they've got to have an adjustable floor by six inches on the, there's a lot of weird things that happen that all of our friends down in Florida and California are going, what are you talking about?
[:[00:12:45] Andy Pace: growing mold. And then you throw into this whole equation, the fact that in every state, you have a different set of building codes, energy codes, you bring up Boulder, Colorado, I'm working with a customer in Boulder right now, a large [00:13:00] contractor.
[:[00:13:19] Andy Pace: I understand that everybody loves energy efficiency, our bottom line, our wallets, love energy efficiency. However. If it's, if it's happening in a way that's making the, the occupants less healthy, let's reevaluate what we're doing. And so why would we use spray foam throughout the entire house if we know spray foam is problematic for a majority of people who have asthma?
[:[00:13:57] Eric Goranson: Yeah. It's almost backwards right now. It's, it's like [00:14:00] the energy efficiency right now is graded higher on the scale of building officials than the health of the human living inside the house.
[:[00:14:24] Eric Goranson: It's a hundred percent avoidable.
[:[00:14:41] Andy Pace: They're saying, we're going to submit based upon the codes, but we're going to build what we know works and what we know was healthier. And you gotta, you gotta be careful with that because you don't certainly don't want them to cheapen up the process to pad their own pockets, but they're the ones who have to deal with the angry homeowner when [00:15:00] they come back and say, listen, everybody in the house is getting sick.
[:[00:15:23] Andy Pace: Aesthetically pleasing meets the budget. It's going to last a very, very long time and as healthy for you and your family.
[:[00:15:48] Eric Goranson: You should be doing air testing before and after, before you hand it over to your consumer, to that end customer. So they know where you left it. So there's a baseline. And quite frankly, if you start seeing some bad air results, [00:16:00] you go, Oh, what product is causing this? Cause when Mrs. Smith comes in with her, you know, cheap wayfarer couch or whatever that came from wherever that's all filled up and off gassing for the next two years.
[:[00:16:20] Andy Pace: It's, it's, it's one of those things where some, some of the builders we work with will say, if what we don't know can't hurt us. And the more, the more, the more you want to know, the more you need to know, and then it opens up a whole Pandora's box of, of issues.
[:[00:16:59] Andy Pace: So the formaldehyde [00:17:00] levels, we can then look back through the construction schedule and the materials to say, it must have been one of these two or three things. And then those are obviously things we'll avoid in the next job, of course, but I've been involved in houses throughout the country where I get, I get brought into somewhat remediates the, the chemical issues in the home.
[:[00:17:45] Andy Pace: Requirements for VOCs, VOCs or volatile organic compounds are chemicals that can contribute to outdoor air pollution. This is the definition of what a VOC is inside of a home. There's not enough nitrogen new V to create low level smog. [00:18:00] So. You look at VOCs and say, some are dangerous. Yes. Some are dangerous for humans.
[:[00:18:21] Andy Pace: The rest of them are either not regulated as VOCs because they don't contribute out to air pollution or they're not volatile organic compounds at all, there are other things. And so I just I don't understand why we just Why do we strive to do low voc when if I peel the skin off of an orange for breakfast?
[:[00:18:41] Eric Goranson: Don't change that dial more with Andrew pace as soon as around the house returns. Don't go anywhere[00:19:00]
[:[00:19:17] Eric Goranson: So you make sure and hit our premium episode. So you can grab it over there. First 10 days are free. Now let's get back to talking with Andrew.
[:[00:19:33] Andy Pace: It's not going to hurt me. Yeah. It's nourishment. So we need to stop chasing these, these numbers and actually look at the details, how these materials are made, how our houses are built. So we're not relying on some esoteric score to tell us thumbs up or thumb down.
[:[00:20:04] Eric Goranson: Building codes. And so they're more city or, or county or township or whatever. And that's part of the problem too. Like I got a buddy being, having a house built down outside of Phoenix, Arizona, and I've been watching this thing get built. And I've been just, cause he lives up in the Pacific Northwest up my way.
[:[00:20:50] Eric Goranson: It's just been sitting there soaking in whatever.
[:[00:21:19] Andy Pace: And eventually that mold will, will come back and it'll come back very, very strongly. It's interesting because yeah, there are a lot of locations that don't have building codes. And then, then there's the other, on the flip side of the coin, there's a lot of locations that have building codes, but they don't have code officials to actually enforce them.
[:[00:21:54] Eric Goranson: Yeah, it's been interesting. I've been working on a few projects around here. I'm not going to say what part of the state where it's at and [00:22:00] and I did Helping out some friends and my brother and knocking stuff out And inspector walks in and goes, looks around, looks good and heads out. And I'm like, you didn't even walk in the room that I went, I'm following the rule of the law.
[:[00:22:32] Eric Goranson: We sent, we had to literally ask five or six questions because we're below the right permits on this and the billing department had to come back and say, let me get with the rest of the people in the office because I don't actually know that answer.
[:[00:22:52] Andy Pace: There's a lot of the people in the industry would not want to ask the question because it's like calling the IRS and ask him about your taxes. I don't want [00:23:00] to open up that Pandora's box. And so if nobody, Hey, if it's not mentioned, if it's not notated, I guess we're good. Move on. Yeah.
[:[00:23:08] Andy Pace: all
[:[00:23:10] Eric Goranson: We were
[:[00:23:10] Eric Goranson: ah, that says that, but that says the other thing. Which one is it?
[:[00:23:33] Andy Pace: I have one in particular where her kids developed these very rare neurological issues because of mold exposure. And it's all because the inspection never, never dug deep enough to figure out if there's a mold problem. Um, in a place like the Carolinas. Where mold is prevalent, but also their building methods absolutely stink.
[:[00:24:16] Eric Goranson: Yeah, yeah, such a great call because it's crazy like great example out of the project. I've been working on my brother out on the Oregon coast out here building code said, okay, it's an old 50s house. We went through and and we removed most of the material that was moldy exited. I'd literally had water leaks for 20 years inside of it.
[:[00:24:57] Eric Goranson: We used 5H drywall [00:25:00] inside instead of half inch. And Here's the thing, and this is one of the things that I've noticed with new drywall, for instance, and this is the light drywall that we're seeing. If you talk to firefighters and people that are out there testing this stuff, this new lightweight drywall drops down in a fire about 10 minutes earlier than it ever did.
[:[00:25:35] Andy Pace: there. So this is the problem that exists.
[:[00:25:58] Eric Goranson: Same with trusses, [00:26:00] trusses, where you have the metal plates, five minutes of flame contact on those plates and they go curl, curl, curl, and then you've got all these sticks there and you see these now a new construction where they actually built those trust joists for four systems. And I've talked to a few firefighters here on this show where they walked into a room, they're walking into a room and they could see that the carpet was holding up and it was the tack strip that had still held on the outside, but the center had floored.
[:[00:26:44] Eric Goranson: You wouldn't have that issue. It would still hold together during that time, but that would be such a simple code thing and take a trust manufacturer and extra two minutes of trust and put those in there, but it just doesn't happen.
[:[00:27:04] Andy Pace: With, with full cut dimensional lumber and why these homes, some of these homes still exist today is because of how well they are built with such good materials. Yeah, they had to deal with, with lead and asbestos and so forth. And we know how to deal with that now. The methods of how they did things. And the materials that they used last so much longer than what we we have now.
[:[00:27:44] Eric Goranson: And before we put the drywall up and started making all these mold sandwiches, trying to be more efficient. That's when these house things tended to go sideways.
[:[00:28:02] Andy Pace: And it, it caused commercial buildings and residential builders to start tightening up spaces. To save energy because energy costs were so high in the early seventies. In the eighties, we had that mentality of, of keeping things nice and tight, but then was the explosion in synthetics and plastics. Yep.
[:[00:28:33] Eric Goranson: Don't change that dial around the house. Be right back with more from expert Andrew Pace.
[:[00:28:59] Eric Goranson: the [00:29:00] around the house show, the next generation of home improvement brought to you by our. Our friends over at monument grills. If you're looking for a new grill, check them out at monument grills. com. Now we're going to talk with Andrew pace here. Now this whole interview did not fit into the radio show or podcast.
[:[00:29:21] Andy Pace: And there's a lot of adhesive used to when they apply this back or push this back together again for shredding it, that there's much more of a chance, especially of the edges of moisture getting in and swelling.
[:[00:29:56] Andy Pace: Yeah. But in, in, in any of these situations. This is just [00:30:00] one part of the of the entire system. It's one component. So it's one. It's one. It's one cup of water in the lake, right? Right, exactly. And so what you do on the outside of that, on the inside of that, this is where it makes a difference. If you have Uh, an air gap or rain screen between the sheathing and your siding, that's going to eliminate 95 to 99 percent of the moisture working from condensation and wind driven rain.
[:[00:30:27] Eric Goranson: have back there in the sense of water damage, because you've now stopped it and you've given a path for the water to go.
[:[00:30:45] Andy Pace: These adhesives that are being used now for moisture resistance, exterior grade use, are not urea formaldehyde based. Urea formaldehyde based adhesives can only be used interior because they're not moisture resistant. For [00:31:00] moisture resistance, OSB and plywood, they use what's called phenol formaldehyde or phenolic resin.
[:[00:31:22] Eric Goranson: Yeah. So great example. I just made a, for my around the house, Northwest TV show.
[:[00:31:32] Andy Pace: Nice. Love that stuff. It's awesome. It's great. And that is, that's the original phenolic based panel materials. This is. If you remember, if those of us who are old enough to remember Bakelite from way back in the day, Bakelite used for, for candles, for pots, and then like this, what's on top of the electrical poles, the wires wrapped around.
[:[00:32:09] Andy Pace: No big deal, but it won't dull your expensive knives. Yeah. So it's a great product
[:[00:32:27] Eric Goranson: So I don't have to have a fabricator do it, which I think is the other part. And the thing I liked about paper stone is the stuff I got was FSC certified. So it's clean. It's clean.
[:[00:32:45] Andy Pace: And that is a cutoff from one of our jobs. It's been there for, I think, 12 years in the rain, in the snow. I'm in Wisconsin, but it's 20 below zero in the winter and a hundred in the summer. It hasn't changed at
[:[00:33:04] Andy Pace: Exactly. Yeah. Beautiful material. Yeah, it's great. It's
[:[00:33:31] Eric Goranson: I put an air scrubber in my house. I'm not going to say the brand name cause I'm going to say something bad about it. But what I don't like about it is, is when my wife is going to go bake, I have to go turn it off and unplug it because it will actually kill the yeast and her dough will not rise. That's wild.
[:[00:34:13] Eric Goranson: It does great
[:[00:34:34] Andy Pace: It doesn't just take the bad stuff, but it takes the good stuff out too. And I think like these, these hydroxyl type cleaning systems, they, they sanitize so well that it sanitizes out the good yeast. Yeah, I can definitely see that. And I think that this is where having a good healthy home consultant in the project to say, To ask those questions.
[:[00:35:14] Andy Pace: That's going to kill off all the good yeast as well. So yeah, it's, it's, but we're learning this as we go. And you're right. It's the, because of COVID healthy home. Topics are now top of mind. Yeah. I think that it was a big awakening. Our homes can be the cause of a lot of our problems, not COVID, but all these other things that are happening that.
[:[00:35:56] Andy Pace: This is all just coming out in the last few years. I think we're on the tip of [00:36:00] the iceberg.
[:[00:36:14] Eric Goranson: I am like the canary in the coal mine. I can walk in and go, you've got a problem in here. Let's not talk about the kitchen. What's rotting. It's not about I'm, I smell mold. Where is it? You're the human mold dog, right? Yeah. I can get it in five seconds. Literally. I just, wow. I just do that. And so when I was out looking at homes to buy, it's bad.
[:[00:36:39] Andy Pace: ing you, you probably are then in that 25% where you have, um, mold sensitivity. Mm-Hmm, . But you probably also have a very good immune system where it doesn't necessarily affect you quickly.
[:[00:37:13] Eric Goranson: Because I'm exposed myself to that enough. Right. So that's
[:[00:37:38] Andy Pace: Major surgery or a car accident or childbirth. It can change the body chemistry. So these things can actually change the, how your immune system responds. And so, yeah, I I'm at 53 myself. I'm finding that I am, I am now. Uh, sensitive to things that I'd never thought would be a problem. And I'm in this business, I'm surrounded by healthy materials [00:38:00] all the time.
[:[00:38:10] Eric Goranson: how do people track you down? Because the green building is such a thing. That should be a normal thing out there.
[:[00:38:27] Andy Pace: Oh, thank you. Best way to find me is our website, thegreendesigncenter. com from that you'll find links to not only the products that I've curated over the years to be the healthiest of the healthy, but also links to consulting to I do a podcast called nontoxic environments.
[:[00:39:02] Andy Pace: It's not, it's not like social media. Or somebody can come on and basically blast you for whatever opinion you have. This is actually people helping people. And I absolutely love it. I do that as a free service for all my, my followers.
[:[00:39:19] Eric Goranson: It's been way too long. I'll have to do this again soon because I think we just scratched the surface on this today. Exactly. Thanks, Scott. I appreciate it, Eric. All right. All right, guys, go back and make sure you listen to this one again. Cause there's a lot of information here for you. I'm Eric G and you've been listening to Around the House.
[:[00:39:38] Andy Pace: Good work. That was fun.
