Discover the secrets to a healthier home and lifestyle with the insightful Paula Baker-Laporte, who brings a wealth of knowledge from her co-authored masterpiece, "Prescriptions for a Healthy House." Our heartfelt discussion traverses the journey from traditional, potentially hazardous construction practices to those that envelop us in the harmony of nature's embrace. As your host, I open the door to my personal expedition toward natural living, sharing the simple joys and profound benefits of reconnecting with the earth beneath our feet and the invigorating chill of an ice bath.
Embark on a thought-provoking exploration of our living spaces, as we scrutinise the role of foam insulation and radiant heating in our daily comfort and long-term health. With Paula's expertise, we unravel the complex web of modern construction methods that, at times, counteract the very essence of our instinctual needs. Together, we muse over the ancestral pull towards the warmth of a fire and the coolness of natural shade, inspiring a critical reevaluation of the industry's standards that shape our homes.
In our final chapter, we reflect upon the true meaning of building homes that go beyond mere shelter, fostering careers and communities that resonate with a deeper sense of connection and quality. We extend an open invitation to join us as we forge ahead in a collaborative movement towards healthier, more sustainable housing—a testament to the shared vision of wellness and ecological responsibility that Paula and I passionately advocate for. Tune in to experience a convergence of ideas that could redefine the future of home construction.
We're on a mission to elevate the professionalism of the residential construction industry, and help everyone enjoy building and renovating homes.
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check out more podcasts here...
https://levelupwithduaynepearce.buzzsprout.com
Discover the secrets to a healthier home and lifestyle with the insightful Paula Baker-Laporte, who brings a wealth of knowledge from her co-authored masterpiece, "Prescriptions for a Healthy House." Our heartfelt discussion traverses the journey from traditional, potentially hazardous construction practices to those that envelop us in the harmony of nature's embrace. As your host, I open the door to my personal expedition toward natural living, sharing the simple joys and profound benefits of reconnecting with the earth beneath our feet and the invigorating chill of an ice bath.
Embark on a thought-provoking exploration of our living spaces, as we scrutinise the role of foam insulation and radiant heating in our daily comfort and long-term health. With Paula's expertise, we unravel the complex web of modern construction methods that, at times, counteract the very essence of our instinctual needs. Together, we muse over the ancestral pull towards the warmth of a fire and the coolness of natural shade, inspiring a critical reevaluation of the industry's standards that shape our homes.
In our final chapter, we reflect upon the true meaning of building homes that go beyond mere shelter, fostering careers and communities that resonate with a deeper sense of connection and quality. We extend an open invitation to join us as we forge ahead in a collaborative movement towards healthier, more sustainable housing—a testament to the shared vision of wellness and ecological responsibility that Paula and I passionately advocate for. Tune in to experience a convergence of ideas that could redefine the future of home construction.
We're on a mission to elevate the professionalism of the residential construction industry, and help everyone enjoy building and renovating homes.
Easy to use Quoting software for Builders. Produce professional and accurate proposals. Quickly and accurately measure and markup plans in minutes. Win more jobs and track costs. 21 Day Free Trial.
check out more podcasts here...
https://levelupwithduaynepearce.buzzsprout.com
The bottom line is the gold standard for healthy human environment is nature and to the extent that we can introduce the health giving properties of nature into what we build.
Speaker 2:G'day everyone. Welcome back to another episode of A Level Up. This is definitely going to be another cracking episode. Today we have a really special guest that I've been waiting quite a while and getting pretty excited about having on. So Paula Baker Le Port is with us today. She is an expert in healthy homes. She lives in Ashland, oregon. She's a co-author of multiple books Econess, creating Sustainable Centuries of Clay, straw and Timber and one that I really want to talk to her about is Prescriptions for a Healthy House. She's on a mission to design, construct and transform built environments to simultaneously support exceptional human and planetary health. She also does a lot of building with her partners, with her husband, robert, who has Econess constructions, and I definitely want to get more into that. But, paula, huge welcome and really appreciate you taking the time out to join us from the States this morning. Paula.
Speaker 1:Baker, thank you very much. I hope you can understand my accent.
Speaker 2:G'day everyone. Paul Le Port. Yeah, yeah, for sure, it's all good. So look for people that are listening. We were just talking a little bit about Zara Dakota. So we had Zara Dakota on the podcast probably five or six months ago and it was one of our most successful podcasts and I think the reason for that is it was something that a lot of people haven't heard of or talked about, and our audience for this podcast is mainly people that are interested in the construction company industry. So and I'd never really heard about it, I didn't really know. Like she was talking about EMFs, electromagnetic fields and all these types of things and the chemicals that are in the products we're using, and, like it just absolutely blew me away and I was a little bit conscious about this sort of stuff, just being the person I am. But yeah, after listening to her, I just can't find out enough about this stuff. So how do you want to? Can we get a little bit of your background and how you've become so passionate about what you're doing there, Paula?
Speaker 1:Baker Sure I was. I had a very typical architectural education in Toronto in Canada, and then I moved to New Mexico, which was the land of natural building, luckily for me. But I got sick in a building there. It was a brand new manufactured home that I was living in for a while and it did some real damage to my lungs, among other things, and I didn't know what was wrong with me. My doctor didn't know what was wrong with me, and then we finally discovered that I as well as her, we were both suffering from chemical sensitivities, from overexposure.
Speaker 1:There was nothing in my architectural education whatsoever that connected the environments we were creating with human health just was not in the language. And once I found out I thought, oh poor me, I can't be an architect anymore because I can't go on job sites because they're so toxic. And then I had an aha moment like wait a minute, if this is doing this to me, what's it doing to all my clients and all the people who move into these buildings? So I began to research and there wasn't much out there. There's a couple of books at that time, pioneers who'd written about how you can build healthier, but it was mostly how to build conventionally and then put plastic on the walls so that the stuff in the walls didn't leach into the building and make you sick, and this just didn't feel right.
Speaker 2:It's unbelievable, isn't it Like we talk so much these days about the foods we eat and the chemicals, and yet most of us are living in homes that are letting off all these chemicals? Because, all the like, so many of the products we use these days are not natural. They're all manufactured and they're full of chemicals.
Speaker 1:The good news is now. This was 30 years ago, and to build a healthy home was a real special order, and now, at least on the chemical front, we've made great headway, and so there are many, many options of materials that are much more readily available that at least, will not poison us. But what I went on to learn is about building biology and, like you, once I discovered that there was no looking back, and I don't know how much you've already talked about on the show with Zara about the foundations of building biology and principles, but the bottom line is, the gold standard for a healthy human environment is nature, and to the extent that we can introduce the health giving properties of nature into what we build, to that extent we're our home service. Yeah, buildings.
Speaker 2:Yeah, can, you can you dive into that a little bit more, because that really interests me. I didn't I haven't talked about that with Zara, but just you saying that now that the gold standard is nature just resonates with me so much Because, like, at the end of the day, I'm I don't know. In the old days I used to call it woo, woo, but I like I can't do enough now of walking bare feet and ice baths and breathing exercises and just connecting with nature. So to me that's the ultimate. If we can live in a home that's connected to nature, like isn't that the best thing for us?
Speaker 1:Yes, and I think it's not so woo, because at some level we all know this, we all gravitate to nature when we can, when it's good weather, we all gravitate to places that have very high levels of negative ions, without even knowing why they feel good seashores, pine forests, waterfalls, and it's I didn't really understand. So, building biology a little history was created in in Europe, mostly in Germany, after World War Two, when they began mass rebuilding. It coincided with when they took all these new chemical factories and turned them to peacetime production, and so what came out was a lot of new building materials that had chemicals embedded in them, and it became clear by the 1960s that people were getting sick from these new buildings and they were well in the old buildings and so they had. They got hit over the head faster and unlike.
Speaker 1:I don't know how it is in Australia, but in the United States there are now green building programs, but they're mostly formulated by the industry or people within the industry themselves. Building biology is unique in that it was multidisciplinary. So there were people from, you know, concerned citizens, doctors, wood scientists, architects, planners so people from different disciplines got together and the basic question was what makes people thrive indoors? And they very quickly made the connection that these old buildings the post World War Two most buildings were more or less natural buildings and in Europe they had. The advantage that we don't have here in North America is that mass building using massive wall materials is the standard.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah it's. I don't know like it's. Obviously we've got a massive population to support these days, like I. There's plenty of old homes here in Australia and you look at them and they are like old hardwood timbers and like timber claddings and just so. There's so many natural materials, they're like nothing was treated and it's a lot like.
Speaker 2:The thing that blows my mind is a bit like here in Queensland anyway, like I. Like the other thing that's really come to my attention probably recently is obviously different climate zones required different methods and different materials. But like, speaking from where I am located in Brisbane, Queensland, in Australia, like we can drive past we call them Queenslanders, so like we can drive past old Queensland homes at 140, 150, 160, 180 years old and literally a lot of them that get looked after and maintained, are still in really good condition and and the products were natural. There was no treatments, there was no building wraps, like the buildings were made to breathe and all these types of things. And yet I'm not sure what it's like over there. But like we call them volume builders here, like mass produced homes that are that are like companies that are building thousands of homes a year and they're built for a lifespan of 20 to 30 years.
Speaker 1:Exactly yeah.
Speaker 2:And the products that go into building them are horrible, and yet in 20 to 30, 40 years time, they're going to be demolished and put in a hole in the ground. So not only are they unhealthy for the people that live in them. In those timeframes you're putting all that material in the ground Like it just. It's just. It's disgusting.
Speaker 1:And the driver is so often cost per square foot but it really should be cost per square foot per year.
Speaker 1:And then you know, both your country and the US were new countries in terms of the way we live, and Europe has the advantage of buildings that are 500, 600, even 700 years old, continuously occupied and relatively comfortable. It's not like before forced air was invented that we shivered in the cold. Every European, northern European country found ways to heat themselves using very, very little fuel. So the biggest thing I find when I walk into a conventionally built building, besides chemicals and all those other things, is that even with all of the technology, they don't begin to compare and comfort to a solid mass wall building that's built according to the climate. So, as you say, you know, just as with food, medicine and clothing, along with building, every bioregion knew how to feed itself, clothe itself and use what was growing naturally to treat itself medicineally, and it was unique to the bioregion.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think that's something I don't know. I've got pretty strong opinions on this as well and I'm probably going to stir things up and butt heads with people, but, like, I feel like we're really losing touch as humans, like where we expect everything we use and have to look after us. So, like our homes, like we expect them to stay at the same climate to filter our air. So like as humans, like you just touched on, like throughout time, if it was cold, people found a way to keep themselves warm. If it was hot, they found a way to keep themselves cool or comfortable, and we keep expecting our homes to be doing all this for us, which, in turn, is using a lot of these products that are not really good for us, but also it's adding a lot of product to the house.
Speaker 2:Like, I loved going through your website and seeing the homes you build and how many natural products you're using.
Speaker 2:But one of the other things I really loved going through your website and your Instagram and stuff like we're terrible in Australia at the size of our homes and I noticed that a lot of the homes you're building are sort of one that between sort of 1000, 2000,. There's one 3000 square foot home there. So I guess, for people listening like we talk square meters in Australia, so like there's, I think there's, I'll talk my head I think it's about 10.7 something square foot to a square meter. So a 1000 square foot home is roughly 90, 92, 93 odd square meters, whereas in Australia our average size home is over 300 square meters. So they're big homes and bigger Like they're four, five, six, like we build 600 square meter home, so there's a lot of product goes into them. I don't know. I think as an industry and this is what's what's exciting me about talking to people like yourself I think as an industry we really need to be educating ourselves a lot more about the stuff that you talk about.
Speaker 1:So the sizes, I want to add. A psychiatrist tell me she loved her wealthy clients because they already knew that their money wasn't going to make them happy, whereas you know, her per client thought if I only had money, all my problems would be gone. So I think that's what's interesting about building with square footage If a building is really built, I say, using the principles of building biology there's a level of comfort and subtleness and peace in it that belies its size and that's, you know, as an architect, that's one of our only secret weapons is, if someone comes in and wants a building, I think they know the size. If they want a certain quality, then if we can show them how to do it in less square footage, we have more money in the budget to bring in that quality. And in my experience, if people are shown what they can buy in terms of quality, what's available, that's really what they want.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1:So it's the same here. The average house is much bigger than the nest we've built for people. We've done large projects too, but we it's getting to the point where it's very hard for anyone of middle class to even afford the process of building now, but we can still build some small jewels.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah. What are the main principles of building biology and a healthy home?
Speaker 1:Well, there are 25 of them, so I won't go into all of them, but they cover the electromagnetic climate, as you talked a lot about with Zara. They actually cover community planning. They cover don't poison yourself. And then I goes far beyond that to what is well-being within the built environment, and that's a much deeper study. And also what is our relationship to the bigger environment, so our ecological impact on the environment? And I, digging up in the old translations of building biology, I once found some statement that was very, very potent for me, and it said that there's almost always a direct correlation between the biological compatibility of a building material and its ecological performance, and that's been my filter. If it does one and not the other, it's not a good choice. If it does neither, it's a very bad choice. And so there are many things being advocated by green so-called green which are for the purpose of energy efficiency, but if they conflict human health and I dig a little deeper I find that they're also not the most ecological choices.
Speaker 1:Various foam products how long you know? What does it take to produce them? What kind of chemicals go into them? And, yes, they keep their energy efficient. They have more insulation value per inch. But what happens if you're building a 30-year home and that's it. What happens to that foam after the building ends up in the landfill? It will stay there for a long, long time, and we've had a lot of fires in our west coast of the United States and firemen are now dying more prevalently of cancer than from the danger of the fire, from the fumes they're breathing in, and foam is a huge culprit in that whole scenario.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's definitely something that I've never considered, like the fact that firemen are dying because the fumes they're breathing when these house their own fire.
Speaker 1:So there's a perfect case of something that has become the industry standard because of insulative value and we need to be energy efficient. But there are so many other factors like how big is the home we're building to serve how many people, or how long is that home going to last ever, you know, we, we. One of the one principle I'd like to go into some examples. Maybe one principle is that the health benefits of radiant heating as opposed to other types of heating.
Speaker 1:So again, how does the sun heat? It's a form of radiant heating, so it's heating bodies and not not trying to make the air around us comfortable. You know all a uniform temperature and as it turns out that not only is that following the principle of nature, but it's much healthier for us. It's healthier for us when the air is cooler. It's healthier for us when parts of our home are one temperature and other parts are another temperature, and when we're not blowing air around or having mechanical noise or all of the other things that accommodate. I don't know about there, but typically here homes are heated and cooled with forced air.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's. I'm just trying to look up a name while you're talking there, because this, this really resonates with a guy. I was listening to a a podcast the other day. I can't remember the guy's name, but he's a founder of a company called Wild Fit and I'm not sure if you've heard of him, but he was talking about how we've just, we've really just got to listen to our bodies. Our bodies tell us what we need and what we want. And when you were just talking then about heating and and you touched on earlier about how we tend to go towards the beach or the bush or the waterfall like that's our bodies telling us that we need to get outside and get some sunlight. We like sitting on the sand and and salt water and all those things, and like, even with heat, like like humans forever have sat around fires and like how good does it feel when you sit around with a group of friends around a camp fire and you're all chatting?
Speaker 2:And yeah, we're trying to and that's what I was getting to before. Like that's we're, we're wanting our homes to do all this stuff in a very unnatural way.
Speaker 1:Mm, hmm, I once wrote an article called a sheep's sheepskin caviar, a bottle of wine spread out before the forced air heating vent, you know, instead of in front of the fire, and something was wrong with that.
Speaker 1:And that's just the element you're talking about and we do know it. For me, when we built our, for my husband and I built our first home, I actually read about him and got from the article even though they didn't mention it that he was familiar with building biology, and called him up and said Where's your next workshop? Went to that and then I came away so happy because I knew there was a way to apply those principles in this country and I snapped him up. But when we built our first home and you know we really we applied all 25 principles and then we went in that home there was such a level of wellbeing and comfort that I spent the rest of my I spent the rest of, you know, my career trying to understand and be able to explain to other people why those principles work so well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it just makes so much sense that shows that's found it for me. That guy's called Eric Ed Meads. He's just recently done a podcast with the real Bradley. It's a really good one to listen to, but it just connected with me so much how he was saying that, like, listen to your body, and not just with your health, with your home, with everything. Like your body is telling you what you want, what you need. So I love what your, your husband. I'd actually I'd love to come next time in the States. I'd really love to come and meet you and your husband and while I was watching your videos. So it's, he's your partner in both businesses. You have Econes architecture and Econes building company.
Speaker 1:Well, sadly, at this point he's semi retired, he's not building houses anymore, but he is still teaching, especially woodworking, to students. But there are other people coming up now who are doing the same thing that he was doing. I think, he just about invented the workshop in the United States. He was out there doing this a long time ago.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so what? What do you've had? Is that your workshop or his workshop? You've had two and a half over two and a half thousand people through the workshop. Is that correct?
Speaker 1:Oh, he has had that many students through his yeah, his workshop courses you said he's given.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I just love the the natural framing and like all the craftsmanship Like and again, that's like it's. It's very hard to replicate Like I'm. I'm working so hard behind the scenes to really take our building business in a different direction over the next couple of years and build a lot smaller, comfortable, healthier buildings for our clients.
Speaker 2:And like I read all these books and listened to all these things and, like you, you go right back to the really old days and like it was a community affair, like you would come together and the community would build the frame and lift the structures into place and like at at various stages, like when the frame was built, when the roof was put on, when, like, the community would get together and they'd have a gathering, and like everyone would connect with each other, and like we've we've recently recently purchased a, a farm, and like we're hoping to create something like this, where, because it's like a healthy home isn't just about the environment you live in is it Like you touched on before like it is about how it treats its occupants, it's about how its occupants have friends over and how everyone interacts within that home, like it's what it does for the community. It's really powerful stuff, isn't it?
Speaker 1:When you really start thinking about all this, yes, I mean, the best thing you can do, dwayne, is build exactly what you believe in and invite people in. That has been how we have created very unlikely careers and kept them going all these years. Because people are starving to feel that we all flock to Europe and love the buildings. We don't exactly know why, and I've seen it the other way too, where Europeans come here and they're frankly, a little shocked by how much space we have, how much stuff we have and how poor the quality of what we have feels, how it feels when we're in it.
Speaker 1:So if you can build it. I can tell you they will come. That has been what we've done our entire for the last 35 years is build what we've believed in and invited everyone in. And people are hungry for that in our countries because there's not a lot to compare it with or there's nowhere else to get that experience.
Speaker 2:Well, having people like yourself on this podcast, that's exactly what I'm trying to create, or we are creating, like I want. I'm sick of people just being sheep and just following the leader and doing things the same way, that it's become the standard. And I think like I'm not sure about in America, but Australia we have this national construction code and the standard is the same across the entire country, even though we have deserts, we have mountains that get snow, we have areas that get to minus 20. We have areas that get to plus 50 degrees, like climate zones range dramatically. We have areas that have enormous amounts of rainfall and yet we have areas that barely have any. And yet we're all meant to follow this one standard set of rules. And unless you're someone in the industry I'm like myself or a lot of my listeners that puts time and effort into talking to people like yourself and reading people's books and learning more about this stuff, how can we deliver the best product we can to our clients if we're just following a set of rules that is broken?
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, changing the rules is a lot of work. We have now, lightstruckly is in our build international residential code, and that was a lot of work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so tell us a little bit about that. I actually only read about that last night.
Speaker 1:Well, we were fortunate because there were some folks in the straw bale industry who were very passionate about getting their product in the code and one of them, martin Hammer, called me up and said would you like to try to get Lightstruckly in the code at the same time? And I think they had turned down straw bale so many times that they finally you know they kept building the evidence and giving them everything they needed that they finally accepted into the code and I think we got in in the tailwind. But since then other natural building methods have also gotten in the code. There's a code for Adobe. Here your government put out one of the finest documents. It's so fine that we always recommended it to our building biology students as reading material and it was about design, passive solar and design for the climate. So I had, I had this image that your country was different and more advanced than what we're going through here.
Speaker 2:Oh look, it's definitely getting like, even like. I feel like this year it's been like a tidal wave, but there is a lot of people really starting to get behind things and there's a few people in government that are pushing. We've just had, only literally in the last couple of months, some of the biggest changes to our building code in a long time around ventilation, condensation, mold, energy efficiencies, and, look, there's a lot of us that are really adopting them and wanting it to go even further. But again, because a lot of our industry is driven by those larger volume builders that build down the homes, they keep pushing back on the change. But and again, it all comes back to dollars. But, paula, can we jump in? I really want to learn more about your book Prescriptions for a Healthy Home.
Speaker 1:OK.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Like, can you run us through? I actually haven't read it yet. I'm really looking forward to getting stuck into it. But what I'm really curious about the title Prescriptions for a Healthy Home.
Speaker 1:OK, so here this is what it, the current volume, looks like. The first volume was written 25 years ago when my doctor discovered what was wrong with me from the chemicals. She also found out that that's what was wrong with her, and it was nothing in her medical career that made her understand the connection between the chemicals so prevalent and ill health. It was her own ill health and then a patient who came in who knew about multiple chemical sensitivities who opened her eyes. And then I got, and it just so happened we were in the middle of designing her house. We were all in a co-housing community together and she called me up and said Paula, we're going to have to build this house differently. And I was pretty outraged by that. She dragged me in, kicking and screaming, and we did it. We did all the research. We found the best that was available.
Speaker 1:At that time it was still conventional building and we started. This is before the internet was 25 years ago and we started to get calls from all over the country from people like us who'd been injured from chemicals, asking what paint did you use, what sealant did you use, what you know? All of these questions and we thought you know, erica, we should write a book, because then we can get back to business. We'll stop having to answer all these questions all day long. And so the prescriptions for a healthy house was a doctor and an architect working together. And then we're very fortunate that a fellow called John Banta joined us and he's a national mold expert and he did forensics on buildings for many years.
Speaker 1:And so, as architects or builders, we go away. For you know, I don't know about where you are, but we have a one year warranty from the builder on a new building, but after that they're pretty uninvolved. So, and as architects, we walk away. When the clients love us. It's spanking new, might get invited back for tea or dinner, but we're not. And then 10 years later they sell it to someone. We lose touch with the building often, so we don't see what goes wrong with them. But having a forensic scientist as part of our team, we were able to reverse the engineer from what causes building failure to what could we do differently. So the book covers although we inform people about what alternative natural alternatives there are it's meant for everybody and it goes through from foundation to rooftop to from pre-designed to post-occupancy.
Speaker 1:What are the salient points about making a home healthy. Our first book was a little skinny thing and this one now is bigger format, smaller print, 400 pages. So, dwayne, don't feel obliged to read it from cover to cover, but if you have trouble falling asleep at night, it's great, because it's not the most exciting literary piece, but it has a lot of technical information in it. So we wanted it to be a book that you can pick up as a reference book, and we do a lot of consulting on buildings around, really mostly around, north America, but we've been as far as Italy, costa Rica, even Bali, and what we do for our clients and their builders is make a short form that only applies to each building, so it's usually about an 80-page document with everything hyperlinked with all the rules of engagement, so a builder can take it, price it nobody's getting into, run away if compelled, but go in with eyes wide open and then not have to become a research expert. So that's what we, what our goals, have been with that book.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and now definitely I'm gonna make my way through it. But again, it's like most of things in our life, isn't it? Like you don't know what you don't know. So unless you've got the mindset of looking at different things, talking to different people, and it really resonates what you just said about how you build something and then you go away and you don't really get to see the long term, like one thing look at different parts of Australia, different here where I am in Queensland, like we actually have a warranty on the house for six years and three months. It's a bit of an odd time frame, but we do a few things in our business. So like we do off our own boat, like we do a compulsion, we make a compulsion in our business a 12 month inspection. So even if the client tells us, hey, look, there's nothing for you to come and look at, I just like to go and look around the building and see how it's performing. And because that educates me on the materials we've used and how we've used them and how the?
Speaker 2:house is performing and then, wherever we can, we do try and go back to our houses years later and just see and I've learnt so much as a builder from doing that, especially when it comes to like roofing and guttering and flashings and your external cladding and things and like, because again, we do a lot of things that are in our building code. But then when you see how they're performing on site they're not good enough and like. Just one example I'll give you. That is like a lot of people don't. I believe in in Australia anyway. Don't run there.
Speaker 2:I'm not sure what they're called in America, but their window flashings or their over flashings far enough past the edges of their windows so all the moisture is just tracking down the side of the window and then all of a sudden you get all this, these moldy marks and like, all this residue building up and your house looks filthy, whereas if you just run your window flashings 150, 200 mil past your windows, it gives a, gives the water enough to run past and run down the wall and you're not getting all these horrible marks and you're getting away from your penetrations around your windows. Here there's less risk of water actually entering the home. Lot this and without going back and seeing past projects and how things are performing like, and if you're just following a book, you're not going to learn how to improve things no and further.
Speaker 1:You know the. If you look at the history of building throughout mankind and then the last blink that we call let's just call it post-World War building, there's a huge difference. You know, you could say that history from World War two till now is the history of unintended consequences. One of the principles of building biology is history of use. What is the history of use? And you know, buildings used to be built by gillsman, the trades. You know you didn't have a sheet walker who came in after a framer who you know, and no one remembered to vacuum out the wall or anything that was. It was a holistic process and change happened, but it happened so incrementally, these small improvements, that by the time you get to you know if you I don't know if you're ever taking a good look at the foundation details of Versailles, but and you know that there was mastery in every respective building. And then suddenly we get all.
Speaker 1:Now our choice of products is dictated by production, by the producer. Then there's very few large producers of those products and they come out all the time and and everything sounds fabulous on paper the latest, greatest, and what happened to the product we were using ten years ago? While you look it up and there were all these class action suits or it failed and there's nothing said about it on the website anymore. I once called a manufacturer and asked about a product that was fairly new. I was trying to get information. They said this product is fantastic, it's been on the market for six weeks and we haven't had any complaints. So you know it's six weeks compared to hundreds of years is the kind of time frame. So no wonder why you know the newest, greatest best three years ago is silently off the market now or there's a newer, greater, better it's. We're learning, but we're learning at our deeply at the expense of the homeowner. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I believe, like our homes. So we've got this process. We've developed and we call it our pack process, paid as a consultant, so clients come to us and we develop a team. So me myself as a builder, we're involved with the architect or the designer right from the first sketch being put on paper and so since we've been doing that process, I just believe I'm just becoming a better and better and better builder because I'm learning more. I'm not just I'm not just a builder anymore. I'm actually learning why things like orientation and overhangs and window placement, like I've, I've learned so much and through that process, like I believe so strongly now that our homes, like at the position we're in, the, the feelings we have depression, anxiety is all well, has a lot to do and is a big reflection of what we live in.
Speaker 2:And I've seen through this process, like when you, when you live in a well-designed home and this is this is before I found out about healthy home, but this is when I was just getting like starting to get interested in design like when you live in a well-designed home that has natural light and that heats naturally, you change as a person like you and it like I'm just sitting here so excited because everything you've been talking about like the beaches, the fires, the natural heating, like that's what it's about, isn't it like? And so if you live in a home that has all those things, naturally you wake up every day more excited and more healthy and you look forward to the day you don't wake up in a dark, moldy home with no natural light and that smells because it's got condensation or mold in the house or and you walk through a dark hallway because your neighbors gutters are touching your gutters like there's. I don't know, like I could I could talk for years about this. I just think it's. I feel it a healthy home, a well-designed, healthy home, actually has a big role to play in society, in people less depression, less anxiety, people reconnecting with each other, all those types of things yeah, you're talking, thank you.
Speaker 1:You're talking about something so dear to my heart and any meaning any architect's heart is the benefits of good design. You're gonna put all you know. You're putting thousands of hours into each home that you build. Why not start with a good design? So it's you know you have that pleasure all the way through of giving this gift to the client, and teamwork is everything I learned very early on that my best ally is a builder who I have a good rapport with, and it takes both and I'm all you know.
Speaker 1:Often we're working with people who are, who are ill and need special purpose housing to become well again, which is even and even more crucial process. The outcome can be life or death, and the client goes in scared, stiff, because it's their one chance left in their life for wellness is to build a home that can support them so they can regain their health, and they're usually very frightened. What if I fail? And the first thing is you have got to have a builder who's on board with your mission. And guess what? Builders are natural problem solvers. They are problem solving problems from the time they wake up, probably to the time they come home, and probably all through the night, but it's what you're good at and so if you're on board with the mission and know what the mission is, and you can be just so invaluable on the team as from every phase of everything. We don't like doing projects when the builder is not there from the beginning.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think we'll probably have to wrap it up soon.
Speaker 2:A couple of things I'd like to just touch on.
Speaker 2:So, again, I'm not sure how it is in the states, but I know here in Australia we've ended up in this position, I believe, because of the values of real estate.
Speaker 2:So there's a lot of people out there that would love to design a smaller, a healthier, better home, but they've bought a block of land and then, to be able to build that home, they've got to get finance, and to get that finance they need to get a valuation.
Speaker 2:And so the people doing the valuations and the lending companies that are lending the money have a criteria, and that criteria says you need two and a half bathrooms, four bedrooms, four garages, and it lays this out, the guidelines for what they really need to build. And so, even though there's a lot of people out there that would love to do something different or build a healthier home, they can be restricted because the lending companies might not lend on what they want to be able to build. And so because and I think real estate agents actually have a big role to play in this as well, because they push this, they market the big house and the multiple living rooms and the five garages and the four bathrooms and all these things, because people have this perception that more is better, when, like we touched on before, actually less is more, like far less is more, better quality, better design. So like, do you have an opinion on that? Like, what drives it?
Speaker 1:Well, first of all, it says this we are in the same situation. You need an appraisal to get a loan and people are in a position where they need a loan. And what appraisers? What's appraisable is comparable. We have comparables here. So it's set up so that there are many strikes against someone who just wants to build a more modestly sized, higher quality building. So all I can say is we all have our work really cut out for us to change the paradigm. You have seen it change in other industries.
Speaker 1:I always get great hope from the food industry. First of all, had the big food industry, like big pharma, big food, known that the farmers market was going to succeed, they might have lobbied against it. But every town has a farmers market and people go in groves and support local farmers, to support organic, to not support the middleman. It's been a huge success, the whole organic movement for what it's worth. I mean, I'm old enough to remember the first health food stores which had, you know, just these gigantic vats of rancid peanut butter and honey and meat substitutes and cans on the shelves and that was it. And now you can find organic food even in our regular grocery stores.
Speaker 1:So who would have known? And you know if we could make those same kind of headways and with the building industry. People know that good food is better for them. A lot of people still eat junk food, but we have the choice now and it's really the same. I mean, it's so parallel in the housing industry. So unfortunately, you're going to have to be a pioneer and that is not the easiest position to be in, but you have passion.
Speaker 2:Oh look, I'm definitely on a mission. This. It's my passion. Now to look, I'm creating a new industry and I'm not going to stop until I've done it. So, before we wrap it up, just for people that are listening, that haven't done a lot or looked into the healthy home, and for people in the industry or people thinking about building or renovating their house, what's a couple of products that they shouldn't use, like in your point of view?
Speaker 1:In my opinion, the big ones are don't drive your car into the house, try not to have a then this may not be as relevant in your way of building, but try not to have a crawl space or basement under the house because they so often become moldy. So it's big picture things. If you can not heat with four stair, but do more radiant heat, design the place so that it doesn't. You know, you can add technology for comfort, but design it so that it doesn't have to be on life support, so if the power goes down, you can still survive in your house. These are the very basics in terms of products. There are so many good choices now and you just need to go to my book or someone else's information to find good products from building biology. If you can use as many unadulterated natural materials natural clay, plasters, natural unsealed woods, natural sealing products that leave things breathable you're going to get a home that's so far superior to what is the norm out there.
Speaker 2:Breathable is a big one, isn't it? I don't think people understand why it's so important that products breathe, their houses breathe. Paula, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on this morning. When I come to the States, I'm definitely going to reach out. I'd love to come and meet you and your husband.
Speaker 1:We would love to have you as our guest. We'd love it. So please look us up. We're just above California.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure. But look for everyone that's listening that maybe hasn't heard about or got involved or knows much about the healthy home sort of movement. Make sure you go and check Paula out, go and check Zara the cotter out and look as a builder or a tradesman or a contractor in the building industry. We have a massive role to play in the success of this and I believe I take this stuff very personally and I believe my job as a builder is to make sure that I'm educating myself enough so that I can deliver my clients better products. So, yeah, if you don't know about this, go and check it out. Paula you they can find you on Instagram. They can go and read your book. Is there any other places you do courses or anything?
Speaker 1:I teach for the building biology Institute and we have a lot of information on our website, which is eco nest architecture dot com. Yeah, all one word, and we are going to start some courses also on our website coming up maybe this new year.
Speaker 2:Yeah, awesome, we'll put links to that all your stuff on this and look again. Thanks very much for your time. Really appreciate it.
Speaker 1:You're so welcome. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 3:Are you ready to build smarter, live better and enjoy life? Then head on to livelightbuildcom. Forward, slash, elevate. To get started. We discussed during the level up podcast with me, dwayne Pierce, is based solely on my own personal experiences and those experiences of my guests. The information, opinions and recommendations presented in this podcast are for general information only and any reliance on the information provided in this podcast is done at your own risk. We recommend that you attain your own professional advice in respect to the topics discussed during this podcast. Thank you.