Using technology and innovation, Evolve Stone delivers a high-performing stone veneer that is simply installed with the tools you would use for wood. A chop saw and a finish nailer. We talk with Dom Rybak about the product, the right way to install it and some popular uses of the product inside and outside your home.

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A new kind of decking and siding from Millboard

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Baldwin Hardware

Baldwin Hardware

[00:00:08] Eric Goranson: that that's there. I mean, that's,

[00:00:25] Eric Goranson: you got way other bigger problems in the neighborhood when that's happening. Yeah.

[00:00:35] Eric Goranson: You'll know which panels yours cuz they'll still have a evolved stone hook to 'em.

[00:00:45] Eric Goranson: pick em back up and you know, found your wall two and a half miles away.

[00:00:51] Dom Rybak: It's an unintentional breakaway wall. Exactly. Exactly. When it comes to remodeling and renovating your home, there is a lot to [00:01:00] know, but we've got you covered. This is around

[00:01:10] Eric Goranson: Thanks for joining us today. We've got a friend here in the studio that I worked with down in Florida that I had a blast with. Do. From a evolve stone, welcome to Around the House, brother.

[00:01:33] Dom Rybak: Dude,

[00:01:48] Dom Rybak: I came outta school like a lot of people do with a my, my Bachelor degree and, and. , it was, it was a business degree and I, I didn't know where to go with it and what to do. And, [00:02:00] um, you know, my, my best friend's father had a contracting business, and I, I always thought about it. It was always in the back of my mind.

[00:02:36] Dom Rybak: And, and that's kind of where I got my start. Um, I became the defacto. Uh, waterproofing, um, an enclosure. Mm-hmm. , uh, guy over there. Nice. Um, and I was there for three years and I learned a ton. You know, George, uh, we call, I call him H two. No. He's, he's a huge hater of, of, of, uh, water and moisture and vapor and all [00:03:00] the things that, you know, that he's learned over his 40, ah, I don't know, 45 years of.

[00:03:27] Eric Goranson: Nice man.

[00:03:44] Dom Rybak: Yeah. Once or twice. So it's, it's funny because, you know, it stateside, um, you know, construction and contracting. There's, you know, there are plenty of opportunities for apprenticeship and journeymen and all this, you [00:04:00] know, you know, getting trained and honing your trade. Um, but a lot of times, especially with like smaller operations mm-hmm.

[00:04:29] Dom Rybak: dude,

[00:04:55] Eric Goranson: And they just learned and all of a sudden they're the master.

[00:05:16] Dom Rybak: Nice. So, so you're spraying the, you know, you're spraying the stuff below grade and you have to make sure that it's the certain thickness. And, you know, I had that around my nice people making fun, but I, you know, those kinds of things. But so spraying foam and. Um, spraying, waterproofing and understanding, you know, working closely with the other trades.

[00:05:57] Dom Rybak: So you had to learn. You had to learn quick cuz [00:06:00] those, you know, the tighter and tighter people are making these homes. It becomes a problem when it magnifies that problem of, of some kind of a leak or some kind of moisture intrusion. You know, it can, it can be very, very costly. When you're home so tight and you've got this hydrostatic pressure that you know is drawn all this stuff in, you have to pay attention closely

[00:06:23] Eric Goranson: You can have a very unhealthy home really quickly. If, uh, if all the details were not covered from waterproofing to ventilation, you know, they all go hand in hand in that system.

[00:06:42] Dom Rybak: Yep. Uh, and, and, and almost common knowledge. Almost tribal knowledge. Yeah. But common knowledge for, for the, for the guys that are seeing that work, the, uh, the, the, uh, the supers, the supers on site, they are, are vigilant and paying attention to, you know, everything that has to be [00:07:00] done by this book,

[00:07:02] Eric Goranson: Nice. Gotta have the book and that's how you keep everybody heading north. Well, let's talk a little bit about a evolve Stone Man, because you know, I've heard about it, I've seen about it in the trade shows and, and watching you work with it at the trade show up there is super cool. Let's talk about this cuz you know, there's, we have such a hard time finding trades out there to show up on job sites.

[00:07:42] Dom Rybak: Yeah, so the material has a, uh, a long history in the nineties. Uh, this stuff, uh, came about by a sculptor who was working up in, uh, New England in, in Southbridge, Mass. And he, uh, developed this material that. You know, he was creating [00:08:00] stuff like uht, taxidermy, mounts, you know, Uhhuh, his father was a, a big game taxidermist and nice.

[00:08:31] Dom Rybak: And now we're into the theming world, and now we're into the Smithsonian world and we're doing all this, uh, uh, stuff with, uh, adventure parks and, and even, um, you know, we have a, we have a playground business. So it, it developed into a bunch of these things. And when we came on, my CEO, Greg, he goes. Take a look at this material.

[00:09:13] Dom Rybak: Mm-hmm. . And we still have a, a thriving playground business today. Uh, evolve play. And uh, we went from that. Now that's back in, that's back in 2013. Wow. Um, and we, it took that long to develop. Test do all the ICC stuff and, and everything to make everybody happy to get this product onto the market. Nice.

[00:09:44] Eric Goranson: time. You know, it's funny, the development stuff is the hard part. I mean, you think about even automakers, they spend seven to 10 years building a car to get it through its own process, just to get it out as.

[00:10:15] Dom Rybak: man.

[00:10:42] Dom Rybak: That's why you have those textures and those shapes and, and, uh, everything, uh, that makes it look so dang realistic. I'm, and I never get tired. I, I got, I saw it with you. I, I, I didn't get to see Walt's, uh, first reaction. But anytime you hand somebody the piece of stone, they go, Holy smokes, [00:11:00] cuz they're ready.

[00:11:20] Dom Rybak: I, I never get tired of that. And, and also it's, it's how realistic it looks. It, it plays a trick on your mind. And I can't tell you how many times that. Done these little one off projects where I have to match color for color, you know, a piece of slate or, or, um, or a tree or certain bark or something like that.

[00:11:57] Dom Rybak: You know what I mean? So, so you can, [00:12:00] the, the outstanding equality of that material is how naturalistic it looks. Yeah. And we get that by forming off of. Um, not just the material and the color process and the manufacturing process, but a, a lot of it is the fact in which we're, we're molding from the, from the natural stone.

[00:12:20] Eric Goranson: It was fun when we did that seminar, cause I had you throw a piece at me like I was gonna catch it and then I pretend like I wasn't. Paying attention hit me in the chest. People are like,

[00:12:44] Dom Rybak: Look, I, there was a guy doing, uh, we're at a Exxon station, uh, in the, in this Virginia market, and there was a guy doing. He's doing stone columns around the, the pumps. Mm-hmm. , right. And he's working [00:13:00] over there and, and he's got his, uh, lick and stick stone in a pile there. And I, I just happen to have one in the truck and I take my stone and I tuck it over in his pile and.

[00:13:30] Dom Rybak: And I, you know, seeing that reaction as organic as it was, you know, that that's what, that's what makes you, you know, You know that that's what makes you really excited for the, for the product that you

[00:13:54] Eric Goranson: There are so many things you can do with this. And you're literally just using the same [00:14:00] tools you'd use around the house. There's no stone saws, there's no nothing. And as long as you do the construction process, right, you got something that's gonna last a heck of a long time.

[00:14:11] Dom Rybak: Now that the product's been around a little bit and we're gaining some steam and some notoriety, and I'm talking to contractors every day, the. The siding guys love it. Right? Because now that, now it's now the siding guys can do the stone. Yeah. A lot of times the masons are, you know, They're hesitant at first, and then they can see that, Oh, I can do a fireplace.

[00:14:49] Dom Rybak: It's cutting like wood.

[00:15:03] Dom Rybak: You're not worried about, you're not worried about your, uh, your scratch coat.

[00:15:33] Dom Rybak: And then you gotta come back the next day and you gotta, you know, put that up and then, and then you can finally get started on your stone. Yeah. Um, for us, Is, is your surface ready, uh, for exterior? That means, you know, you and Wal had had a conversation about, um, uh, your weather-resistant barriers. Yep. So for us, yes, we, we absolutely want a, uh, a good superior type one, type two weather resisted barrier, and then we have [00:16:00] our own rain screen.

[00:16:21] Dom Rybak: Uh, you can start at the el window, elevations with some sills. You know, we, we have a a, we have sills that just, you know, honestly just get face screwed. Right on. Yep. And, um, you can start there and, and put it on just like siding. What's

[00:16:40] Eric Goranson: Filling it in between. You can literally go one direction and then just go with it and not have to worry about, you know, going in a certain order, which I like. Yeah.

[00:17:08] Dom Rybak: Come see and learn about the product. I dump a box right out on a sheet of plywood and I just start clicking stones kind of randomly. But all I'm trying to do is, um, you know, stagger my, my vertical and, and horizontal scenes on most of them. The styles have a similar theme, right? It's a running bound.

[00:17:47] Dom Rybak: And it counter sinks perfectly. And, you know, based on the color of the stone, you're, you're not seeing the nail heads.

[00:18:15] Eric Goranson: Now you don't have something back there that's got any color to it, or white or anything like that. You've got that black layer that's just now a shadow. .

[00:18:33] Dom Rybak: Sure. You know, when, when you're 40 feet up in the air on a, on a, on a chimney, um, they might get a little bit gappy, but if you have that black, um, you know, rain screen behind it, or, or even a gray, I know. Uh, I know, uh, DuPont has, has one that's gray. What you don't want is, you know, if if Dow made one, it would be pink.

[00:19:15] Dom Rybak: Yeah. I got a type one, type two weathered barrier. Yep. My eighth inch rain screen. Uh, currently eighth inch with a hydrophobic facing mm-hmm. . And then, um, you know, cuz those gaps and cracks, we know that during a wind driven rain event, the water's gonna go through there a hundred percent. and now we're giving it that drainage plane somewhere to, you know, drain and rapidly dry when the sun comes back out.

[00:19:56] Dom Rybak: You know, a page right from the book of, of Dr. Joe's, you know, [00:20:00] Perfect wall that, you know, this system has been tested and tested and tested and electively tested, and also forced, forcefully tested by icc. Yep. So, you know, everyone's very, very happy from a building science perspective. Uh, installers are happy because, you know, you're not having callbacks once when, when you have a rain screen and it's becoming code, you've, you're gonna see.

[00:20:38] Eric Goranson: because you've gotta give a place for that water to go. And this is all about controlling that moisture and giving it an out, getting it a place to get some air back there.

[00:20:59] Dom Rybak: Yeah. Not [00:21:00] just, not just water in the form of, of rain. Uh, but you know, this, this material is, you know, home based out of Massachusetts.

[00:21:32] Dom Rybak: You have to have it. Well, it's,

[00:21:56] Eric Goranson: And uh, that's where that rain screen really helps out because [00:22:00] when we get into summer, I mean, we've, we've had probably in the last 75 days, one or two days of a little bit of rain, but that's it. So we're dry, dry season. Wet season. It's almost like a pool. It's just

[00:22:14] Dom Rybak: Yeah. It, it, it starts for you right after Halloween, right? Yeah, sometimes

[00:22:31] Eric Goranson: But it's just usually the water driven and. Where we have a big problem with, with new construction here, cuz we, we'll see a multi-family unit that's five or six stories that's, you know, stick framed and by the time they get the tresses on that building, the bottom two layers of OSB are block just because of the water that's been sitting on 'em for three or four weeks as they frame.

[00:22:55] Dom Rybak: It's just nasty. You have to consider either getting it wrapped up real quick or, [00:23:00] you know, I know, I know. Zip makes their, uh, Huber makes their, their product that their products. Well, that works pretty well for those, for those situations. But yeah, I, I took my clo, I flew into Portland to meet with dealers, contractors.

[00:23:27] Eric Goranson: see 'em out there playing golf, but they, it's, it's, it's like the guys out playing golf with a dark ball in the snow.

[00:23:36] Dom Rybak: Yeah, I'm not, I'm not good enough for that. But yeah, it was, it was, uh, crazy to. it, uh, how much, how much precipitation, uh, and how, how gray the skies actually are. And, uh, it's encouraging for us because, you know, we're promoting this, uh, system, uh, which is perfect for not only your territory, but you know, the seven different, uh, building climates in North [00:24:00] America, right?

[00:24:22] Eric Goranson: Yeah, this works great.

[00:24:32] Dom Rybak: Yeah. Yeah. And, and that is the, uh, beauty of, uh, all the testing that we did. We did do, I mean, you, you also learn a ton about, uh, your materials, uh, limitations if you know, if there are any, um, by, by implementing these systems.

[00:24:52] Eric Goranson: So let's start to kind of start to finish your, just so people can get an idea for all of our DIYers out in the crowd out there, if you've got, [00:25:00] uh, let's see. You're gonna do an exterior wall with. Where do you start? If you've got the, let's say you got your, uh, o SBS hanging out there, Maybe you took the old siding off and you've got some new os OSB on the wall up there, and you're like, I'm gonna do a, a stone looking wall right here.

[00:25:16] Dom Rybak: Uh, step one. Uh, and this actually has nothing to do. Honestly with, with our product, but just like any siding, step one, how are my flashings? Right? Amen. So any, any detail, whether it's soffit, roof, drip, flash, head flashing on windows, uh, uh, si, pans, um, anything like that, you know, that has to be right and tight before.

[00:26:05] Dom Rybak: Right? Right. So, who, who is, who is the guy that, who is the guy that's, uh, responsible for the, um, for the flashing? Is that the siding guy? Is that the roofing guy? Is that the framer? You know, who's, who's in charge of the flashing and, and that changes from territory to territory? I've, I've seen framers that are responsible for the house rep.

[00:26:45] Dom Rybak: Uh, everything else is almost superficial, especially in an open cloud system with a rain screen like ours. Yeah, so step, step one, flashing, pay attention to it, know what it is, uh, make sure it's done right. Mm-hmm. , um, and, and make adjustments [00:27:00] if, if you know that you

[00:27:04] Eric Goranson: So assume that it is and make sure that you get it taken care

[00:27:25] Dom Rybak: Uh, you know, your substrate has to be in good condition. Your flashings have to be good. So step. Revisit all those flashings. You got old call, call holding stuff together. Get rid of it, you know, Uh, go is never, is never, you know, a flashing. Exactly. Uh, shouldn't, shouldn't be. So, um, you know, take, take that, uh, take that before you unload the truck full of all your siding materials.

[00:28:18] Dom Rybak: Yep. . And in order for you to be able to get, uh, by doing something like that, you have to have a quality, uh, weather resistive barrier. Right. Um, we did a lot of our testing with, uh, Like a, a Ty Par product. Yep. Um, DuPont has their Tyvec. Yeah. Uh, they also have a commercial grade. Um, funny story,

[00:28:51] Eric Goranson: And I walk by at the other day walking the dog and I'm like, Is somebody, somebody actually gonna tape the. The, the Tieback , [00:29:00] Nope. They're gonna sign right over the top. It, they, there's no taping on stuff. And I'm like, Really? Come on guys. I wanna throw, So I got tape here. I can literally throw it out my feet when I go by.

[00:29:17] Dom Rybak: We're, we are critical because we've, you know, you've done however many, uh, remodels that you've done and opened up walls and just, it, it affects the bottom line too. You go, time out, this project is coming to a halt because there's, you know, we're, I'm seeing vertical mulch basically everywhere, right?

[00:29:59] Dom Rybak: Um, [00:30:00] so, you know, that was, But, but that's also a project that has that budget in mind. Yeah. You know, they want, they want something that, you know, you couldn't, you couldn't put a hole in it with Abram's tank if you wanted to. So, You know, they're also using three quarter, three quarter, uh, plywood, you know, sheer panels.

[00:30:18] Eric Goranson: It's different. Something we don't see much on. Slightly different work, but yeah, no,

[00:30:34] Dom Rybak: Yeah. , you know, house wrap being also tied into your flashing. Yeah, I, You were just mentioning the tape. So nothing's, nothing's more, you know, saddening to your soul than going on a job. And they've, they've got the house wrap, reverse, uh, shingled, , uh, just, just, just, just creating dams. , Yep. Just a dam after dam and, and all.

[00:31:30] Dom Rybak: It's worth looking at. Yeah. You know, there, there's wrong ways to hang, house, wrap and . There's some guys out there that find every single dang

[00:31:46] Eric Goranson: How'd you do that? How did you do that? How did you do that? Why? What? You know, I, I, yeah. And it's bad cuz you know, you, you're probably no different than me. Uh, I'll be driving around with my wife and I'm running around and I'll see something get [00:32:00] built and I'm staring at it going, Oh, come on guys. Really?

[00:32:10] Dom Rybak: job. And I'm sure if that's done wrong, that the sill isn't pitched or anything like that. Oh, so you're just, you're just, you're just, it's a ticking time, Bob. I'm waiting for, um, you know, in the, in the nineties the big scare was mold.

[00:32:28] Eric Goranson: but I, I think, I think there's a scare for everything now. I mean, really. I mean, it's mold, it's VOCs, it's, you know, there's, there's, there's a box, I think to be checked for everybody now.

[00:32:43] Dom Rybak: But so, so you're flashing in your weather resistive barrier. They have to work together. Right. Um, and the products have gotten so much better just in my, just in. 10 years now of, of working with this material. I have seen the different type of [00:33:00] flashing tapes, you know, whether it's acrylic, bele or, or, uh, you know, bitch have been, they have gotten so much better.

[00:33:32] Dom Rybak: But the products have gotten so much better. You know, the guys kind of have it, not easy, but it's better. Well, I mean, they could be so

[00:33:50] Dom Rybak: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And I'm sure you guys have stressed the importance of the roller, but you know, all those pressure activated ones, they need the pressure. Yeah. [00:34:00] Don't go, don't go using your speed square. Trying to get away with your hand. Use back of that. You got the roller use, the

[00:34:07] Eric Goranson: I've seen the tape measure. That was always the good one. Um, the tape measure. That's good. Yeah.

[00:34:30] Dom Rybak: And then the rain screen, the rain screen is the most to our system. The rain screen's the most important. Now, that's a tough sell on a guy who's building in. Las Vegas and he doesn't want, he goes, Hey, I don't, we don't have any precipitation here. I'm in the desert. Uh, we're not going to get the rain green.

[00:35:07] Dom Rybak: Yeah. So you, you want to ha and that'll happen once every 30 years. Mm-hmm. and you'll, you'll be, you know, somewhat prepared. Um, and then so the rain screen is, is I, I. Couldn't stress it enough. That is the most important part to this system. And even that hydrophobic facing on it. If you take, I do it a lot of times at shows and whatnot.

[00:35:51] Dom Rybak: And then a, a hydrophobic facing that's, Preventing most of that, uh, bulk water from even getting, [00:36:00] uh, back to the wrb. Yeah,

[00:36:13] Eric Goranson: So if you've got that, you know, desert heat hitting down on the side of the house, you've got a little bit of thermal break there that's between.

[00:36:36] Dom Rybak: Um, and funny enough, our product is, is rated at R two in the, in the. Testing that they, you know, have to do for it. But again, you've got a bunch of thermal breaks between the stones, so how, how effective is that? Uh, it's, it's just a cool little, uh, benefit of our, our product, we think. But yeah, and then following your, you know, code and compliance type stuff, you know, [00:37:00] if you're in a flood zone and you can't have, you know, siding until this far up the wall or, you know, all those things, I get calls for that all day long and I go, I, I'm not familiar with code in your territory.

[00:37:31] Dom Rybak: How do, how do I convince him not to do that? And

[00:37:37] Dom Rybak: The 10 reasons why, and, and three of them are ones that I miss so good. But yeah, following your, you know, your local building codes is important. And, um, that's all for exterior. Um, my recommendation to somebody who's in, in the DIY world or in the, um, Uh, you might be hesitant.

[00:38:18] Dom Rybak: Sometimes I, I'll, I'll, you know, I'll take pictures of it just to make myself. Feel good and say, Hey, you know, mechanically fastened, we're pretty spook. I'm on the wall there. But yeah, you know it, and they probably did it for the most part. They probably did it kind of right. Um, but they might not have the brain screen or there might not have been something in the ad mix that day.

[00:38:38] Eric Goranson: was off, tempera was too hot, too cold, whatever.

[00:39:01] Dom Rybak: It's, you know, and it's only, it's only in the corners of the house. And they sometimes these guys do what's, what I call structural siding, which is they nail the siding on 16 inches on center. Well, I have that on my house. Yes.

[00:39:26] Eric Goranson: That's all she's. Yeah. But in the

[00:39:50] Dom Rybak: I'm trying to get familiar with this evolved stone product. Be that a Mason, a diy, or a siding installer, a general contractor, someone in design like yourself. Like [00:40:00] let me just get my hands on it and kind of play with it. The perfect project for that is, and interior accent while, or a fireplace, uh, using our Class B fire rated product.

[00:40:38] Dom Rybak: You can't put it in the fire box. You can't put it in the non combustible zone. Um, basically anywhere you can, anywhere that you have the drywall, uh, you can have the, uh, evolve stone and I just hang a sheet of lu on like that. Um, that sometimes it's flooring under lament. Yeah, what have you. The lu on, I put, I put that right over the dry wall if it's a, if it's a remodel.[00:41:00]

[00:41:19] Dom Rybak: Say that, hey, if I'm, if I got a hundred square feet uninterrupted, no windows, no doors, no dryer events, no no funny business outside, I can just run with the style.

[00:41:42] Eric Goranson: Durability inside with being that it's made to handle exterior. So even if somebody, something gets splashed on it, spilled on it, somebody spills their wine or cocktail, guess what? It ain't gonna hurt it.

[00:42:15] Dom Rybak: It is very labor intensive, and this is not replacing natural stone. This is just. An alternative for, for siding. There's always going to be that market that is wanting and willing to pay for and wait for, you know, natural stone and, and the skilled labor that is required to put that up. You know, we, we are a stacked stone for a reason.

[00:42:49] Eric Goranson: Right off Right. Cause it, yeah, popping right off. A good place to go.

[00:43:05] Dom Rybak: But sure. For the time being, you know, that's, that's something that's important and I can't stress enough. Um, how the lightweight save the savings that you see from it being so lightweight. Here's an example. Guys working in York, Pennsylvania not too long ago. They're doing two massive columns on a, uh, commercial job.

[00:43:50] Dom Rybak: Right. So, So I, And that lets them just keep going. There's no hangups. Wow. You don't have to have crazy amounts of, you know, [00:44:00] if, if you have a fireplace, you don't have to have all these crazy amounts of, of, uh, steel, uh, for supporting this amount of weight. It, it, it doesn't weigh anything. Yeah. I was shocked

[00:44:17] Eric Goranson: The amount of steel that was needed. I had a, probably a 25, 26 foot ceiling in there. I was shocked at the weight that we had going up on that thing and what the architect and engineer had built for that. Just to hold everything together.

[00:44:39] Dom Rybak: It was a prototype product, but the, uh, there was a house out in Maryland. that needed, uh, a veneer on these chimneys, uh, to match, um, for the historical society. Mm-hmm. and in order for them to. The real stuff they needed 33. It was a change order for [00:45:00] $30,000 worth of steel work. Yeah. And then we came in there and said, Nah, just shoot this stuff.

[00:45:32] Dom Rybak: I mean, it, you can load it up and you're, and, and you're, you're not, you're not gonna be riding too, uh, too low. It's

[00:45:51] Dom Rybak: And with that comes, you know, with that weight, a lot of times that you'll see the cementitious product or even natural stone, you'll see, uh, [00:46:00] fracturing when in transit, like a crazy amount. I, we had a, a sales rep in, um, the Carolinas that used to work at a. a lumber yard that had, you know, some stone products and, and the biggest complaint that he would see is people would come in and say, Hey, can you find me a box that's not broken, please.

[00:46:51] Dom Rybak: So that's the beauty. And you're not Yeah, you're not seeing the scrap that you are in some of these other, you know, masonry, uh, products. Um, the [00:47:00] cool part is, you know, if you're running, say it's a big exterior job, you're running left to right, you're only making cut. At a window, at a intrusion or the end, you know, at a or or at the end.

[00:47:30] Dom Rybak: It's just how math works out. So, so have two, have two piles. You know, have your cutoff pile and have your scrap pile. And funny enough, at the end of a, at the end of a day, you know, if you're being material conscious, your, your scrap can fit in the size of a shoebox. I mean, it's. It is minimal. That's awesome.

[00:48:04] Dom Rybak: Yeah. So that's kind of where I, you know, my career was birth, right.

[00:48:37] Dom Rybak: One of these tra trampoline parks. And, and you know, they needed an attraction for a climbing attraction, so, We get their overall dimensions. I work with an engineer for their steel super structure and then I've got molds basically, uh, of different cliff faces from around the country and how cool that I can.

[00:49:20] Dom Rybak: But you know, if the, if the, if the budget is there and somebody's willing to, uh, work with us on that, you know, we can, we. Pretty easily, pretty quickly get them a, a, a custom climbing wall to their parameters. I've built, I've built custom climbing walls, and I'm not an avid climber, but I, you know, I know how to get around on a climbing wall.

[00:49:54] Eric Goranson: you're that person versus me getting up there and who's bla certified. But I got up there and I'm like, All right, [00:50:00] this is kicking my butt.

[00:50:26] Dom Rybak: And, and I was not in climbing shape at that point. And I mean, parts of your shoulders, you know, are just burn muscles that you didn't know you had,

[00:50:39] Dom Rybak: Ah, this is the worst . It was the worst. And it's after hours and it's dim and you're behind a, you know, climbing wall.

[00:51:12] Dom Rybak: We we're not trying to do stuff in house that we're not good at or don't have room for. That's its own world, man. . Oh yeah. You know, we're not, we're not a, we can fabricate a little something here or there, but it's easier for someone who's set up for it. Yeah. And I'll, I'll send my couple of trucks. You know, if this climbing wall takes two or three trucks, we cut it down and this mountain down into a couple of trucks and, you know, ship it out across the country.

[00:51:47] Eric Goranson: fun. But that tells you about the, the durability and the realism of this product that you can turn around and build a, a high end climbing wall out of it.

[00:51:58] Dom Rybak: rock up there. [00:52:00] Yeah. I, There's nothing that looks, uh, quite like it. And, and you think too, I mean, we've been featured at places like SeaWorld. Uh, Cabellas Dick's Field and Stream stuff where they got, uh, you know, we do, we do some work on, uh, insane Paul's with Lucas Lagoons, where they got these grottos that are seeing hundreds of gallons per, you know, just dumping over the edges of these things.

[00:52:49] Dom Rybak: You just take some dawn. Mix it up with some water, spray it on, wipe it off simple. No, you could, you could lightly, lightly power wash it. It if you wanted to. [00:53:00] Um, you could seal it honestly, if you wanted to seal it for a little bit more, uh, uh, ease of cleaning it down the road, you know, it's, it's super, super easy to maintain.

[00:53:34] Dom Rybak: Mm-hmm. , it's the A S TM E three 30, and what they do is they take four by wall assemblies that you make and. Point in time of testing, I was making the stone by hand one a couple stones at a time. Mm-hmm. , and I'm putting 'em on these four by eight walls and we bring this assemblies to the testing site.

[00:54:13] Dom Rybak: Wow. And uh, the, the first time we ran that test without a single stone coming off, we bent the os. So far that it drug the, uh, three and a half ring shank nail right out of the center, Stu Wow. Yeah, so that was, so they, they had us make a more spook and wall assembly, so I had to go home, make a couple more stones real

[00:54:36] Eric Goranson: You're like glu and screwing and you're just trying to make it all hold together. I'm just like, guys,

[00:54:54] Dom Rybak: And this was the last test I think that we did and. They draw a vacuum on that wall [00:55:00] and we snapped the two by six stud and half lengthwise on the outer side before the stone came off. So the stuff is on there.

[00:55:14] Dom Rybak: So that was, uh, 397, uh, uh, pounds, a square foot, uh, worth of withdrawal.

[00:55:29] Eric Goranson: other bigger problems in the neighborhood when that's happening. Yeah,

[00:55:39] Eric Goranson: panels yours cuz they'll still have evolved Stone hook to 'em.

[00:55:43] Dom Rybak: the still be on it. You just, you know, if anyone's still a lot around, they can

[00:55:55] Dom Rybak: an unintentional breakaway wall.

[00:56:03] Eric Goranson: Did we get it all?

[00:56:29] Dom Rybak: So, um, you know, if you cut a, a stone, you know, square and flush, and you've got that lighter. Edge, you could actually take a little bit of Thompson's clear water, seal, and a spray can. Mm-hmm. spray that edge and it kind of just brings that sheen back to it. And you can put that right in the wall. No one, it'll be any of the wiser, You could texture it up.

[00:57:17] Dom Rybak: Yep. You know, whatever, whatever they want to use, uh, or feel comfortable with. I feel most comfortable, you know, I'm not a exactly a, a trades guy. I don't claim to be. Um, and my skillset is, Uh, particular because I've been doing this for such a long time that my skill set is turned into installer of a evolve stone.

[00:58:00] Dom Rybak: That's where I

[00:58:06] Dom Rybak: Evolve stone.com. That's the, that's the best place to take a look. We have, uh, basically national distribution. Um, and, and Canada's also a big market for us because you can put the stuff on, Uh, I, I, I was on a job in.

[00:58:44] Dom Rybak: But when he got to you got to, Yep. So, , you know, distribution basically. Uh, if, if you're listening to the show, you can probably , you're probably in a territory where you. Uh, get your hands on it.

[00:59:07] Dom Rybak: Perfect, Eric. Thanks. Thanks the time. I appreciate it, man. Thanks