15 - Jeremy Clarke - Simple Life Homes
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[00:00:00]

James: Hello and welcome to Marketing Passive House, the podcast where we hear from architects, designers, builders, suppliers, owners, and other experts in the passive house and high-performance building space. We'll be talking about what's working and what's needed when it comes to marketing buildings that meet or aspire to the passive house standard.

James: I'm your host, James Turner, and today I'm joined by Jeremy Clark, founder and CEO of Simple Life Homes. Jeremy, welcome to the show.

Jeremy: Yeah. Thanks James for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

James: Thanks. So before we get into it, and for people who are just meeting you for the first time, could you share a little bit about who you are, what you do, and how you started on your passive house journey?

Jeremy: Sure. So I'm a bit of a master of none, Jack of all, as they say. So I've dabbled in real estate and finance training and construction and carpentry and did all of them about 25% of the way. And I, I like to think that they've all now come together under one roof here at [00:01:00] Simple Life where we are designing and coordinating and manufacturing, prefabricated, building enclosures for high-performance buildings, which often includes net zero certified or passivhaus certified houses or housing projects and and we're now, actually, as of 2025, split into two divisions. So we have Simple Life Building Systems, which is our official business name as a manufacturer and a supplier to the market where we design and sell the prefabricated panels, and then we operate as a, as a home builder separately from that as well to try to complement both sides of the spectrum locally, I should say, only for that side of things.

James: Cool.

James: So. How did you figure out how to coalesce these things all into one.

Jeremy: Yeah, well, I mean, I and I didn't mention, but I also for a couple years was flying as a corporate pilot [00:02:00] and in 2016, late 2016, early 2017, the company I was working for closed its doors. So I had a couple weeks to figure out what was next and I was you know, went back to what I knew, which was how to build things.

Jeremy: So I quickly wrangled up some local work and started building stuff again to fill the gap. And and then a friend of mine called me and said, Hey, my dad gave me a piece of land off the old farm property and I wanna build a house, but I'm busy working. Are you available? I said, well, it's good timing. I'm looking for something to do.

James: Nice.

Jeremy: I wasn't sold on the aviation industry. It's really fun to fly planes. It's not as fun to work as a pilot flying planes.

James: Hmm.

Jeremy: You know, it's kind of like a desk job at 30,000 feet. So so I jumped on the opportunity to build him a house and I should say his dad was. 25 years ago, he's one of one of the first people on Ontario. He built a a beautiful straw bale house just north of Nappanee in Centerville. So we spent the summer [00:03:00] 2017 building a house for Graham. And on the other side of this field, you know, about a half a kilometer off in the distance through a beautiful field was his dad's 25-year-old straw bale house. So it was really fun. The next generation of builders coming through. And so we built him a hybrid straw bale house, two by six framed wall dense packed cellulose with straw bales stacked on the inside.

James: Cool.

Jeremy: And then we did conventional siding on the outside and we did clay plaster finish on the interior. So really fun blend of old and new. And so that year I was drinking from a fire hose, anything and everything green and, and building and sustainability and then I, yeah, I, I, you know, I, I knew about the passive house world, but not extensively. And so I jumped in, took the training and yeah, drank the Kool-Aid really hard. and then I realized the thing that I wanted to do was actually focus on prefabricated building enclosures because it was about energy efficiency and health and [00:04:00] sustainability and sort of trying to like also fix the building industry because it just conventionally has been slow and has lots of flaws. And so I would like to think that now fast forward to 2025, where we've been focused almost exclusively on that, which is. Designing and coordinating and manufacturing, prefab building enclosures for low carbon high-performance buildings. So that kind of brought it all back together. So there's a bit of finance in running the business and

James: Mm-hmm.

Jeremy: know, we've got a team of people here that need support and, and I still really love building, but I'm definitely not the best carpenter out there.

Jeremy: But and designing. And so all of those things come together to create 3D digital models that we then turn into real world prefabricated panel packages to achieve the same thing that we were trying to achieve back in the day, which was efficiency, sustainability, healthy buildings. So just finding a way to do that that fits in our Canadian market.

James: That sounds awesome. [00:05:00] A great, a great coming together of things and that's really cool that you were building in the figurative shadow of a straw bale. That's a particular passion of mine. Straw bale passive is kind of like my dream unicorn home if I could ever get there.

Jeremy: It's cool. I also, I mean, I took it, I, in 2012, I took a course with the Endeavor Center in Peterborough in Ontario. And and at the time, chris, he is still to this day a real advocate and leader in the industry for everything low-carbon housing. And yeah, we built a house in Peterborough that year that had a whole variety of assemblies, one of which was site-built straw bale. also prefabricated straw bale. So that had in my veins too, the prefabrication and straw bale.

James: Nice. Awesome. So then the Canadian market, like how have people been, how do they react? Like how, [00:06:00] what's the reception been like? I.

Jeremy: So we shifted pretty quickly in the early years away from straw bale in our assemblies. I think that we'll come back in the future, but we have some real limitations in our building codes and our material requirements in Canada and I don't think it's too dissimilar in the US. Um, but I think that there's a little bit more variety, there's little more room to play down there than there is up here.

James: Right.

Jeremy: What we've been selling as a product is a more conventional set of materials. So, you know. Same lumber that you'd use in a regular build, wood fibre-board insulation and cellulose insulation and then some high-performance tapes and membranes. But we assemble those careful, carefully crafted way, build a, we call performance assembly. So all of our assemblies are vapor open, they're all derived from plain natural products, wood-based products. [00:07:00] We have, I think, entirely eliminated any red list chemical products from our assemblies,

James: Cool.

Jeremy: for many years now actually. Which is not that hard to do. You can do that off shelf materials for the most part. And and so now the. It's a great product for builders who are in the market of high-performance housing or for like the real nerdy DIY homeowners who want a super energy-efficient house. And prefab is a way to help them do that more easily. And then on the opposite side of that spectrum, we have the larger projects there, commercial or that multifamily world. So last year we did a project for Toronto Community Housing, and that was actually a prefab overcladding retrofit. Existing two story brick building with the tenants remaining in the building during the renovations. And we've provided them a new wall and roof panels to go on the outside of the building to, to upgrade its efficiency and performance and durability and so on. [00:08:00] Really neat pilot project for us to be able to participate in. And now we

James: Yeah.

Jeremy: In conversations with four groups at the moment who have really large projects of over 100 units per project. And that's a mix of single family and multifamily. And those all will be prefab overclad retrofit projects for 2026, 2027. So that's pretty exciting. Like that market I think is where things are really shifting towards.

James: Hmm.

Jeremy: the US and Canadian housing markets right now are in the dumps, especially the single family market. People are just struggling to afford to build new single family homes.

James: Hmm.

Jeremy: So although we still are happy to serve that market, it's just not moving very quickly at the moment. so, you know, we have to go with the flow and be adaptable. So we've kind of done a mix of it all. We've done single family, we've done multifamily, and we haven't done any any mid-rise. Nothing, nothing that big or that tall. But yeah, I think that gives you a good idea of what we have done and then what we're looking at for the, for the future.[00:09:00]

James: Yeah, very much. It's really cool, the prefab retrofit, I think that seems like a huge need rather than like. Building all the structure up and the foundation up,

Jeremy: Mm-hmm.

James: right? Like if you're trying to, in the big picture, also not, you know, spend the carbon budget. That's a, you know, not knocking things down is a good way to get there.

Jeremy: In 2012 when I took that course at the Endeavor Center, I was tasked with everybody was tasked with three, three roles through the project. One of mine was marketing the project,

James: Aha.

Jeremy: so on every Wednesday evening, I would do tours for an hour after the, the build day. And I remember there was one day I, I vividly remember this because I wrote down in my journal at the time. And there was a young girl, maybe 8 or 9, and I was giving the group of [00:10:00] 10 people my pitch about why this was supposed to be Canada's greenest home at that time, and she said, wouldn't it just be more sustainable to just not build a home? And I 20, 20-year-old me stopped in my tracks. I didn't have a good answer. I just said, I think you're right. obviously we need to build more new housing as time goes on. But I thought it was a good reminder about. You know, not getting too caught up in your own Kool-Aid. What are we actually trying to achieve here? And interestingly, you know, that's kind of led us in 2025. We, you know, we haven't built a project this year that will be certified to Canadian passive house standards or to the original German passivhaus standards, I should say, even, you know or to PHIUS standards. We could. We have the ability to to do that. And most of our homes, of our building enclosure packages probably are, are already meeting that mark or they're very close to meeting that mark.

James: Hmm.

Jeremy: but you know, I'm sure as you know, the building enclosure is only one piece of actually achieving [00:11:00] certification.

James: Yeah.

Jeremy: since 2017, I've found very few people who are keen on achieving the plaque on the wall. Mostly what we're finding these days is people want to hit the key performance targets, right. So, what I actually find to be a really valuable method is the Pretty Good House targets. Are you familiar with that book?

James: Hmm, I, I've heard I've, yeah, I've heard of it a lot, but I, I'd love just like a. Executive summary if you're willing to

Jeremy: Well,

James: the high points,

Jeremy: We, we bought 20 copies of this hardcover book from the authors and for all of our new clients, they get a copy free. I say it's free. Little do they know it's like homework that I make mandatory because they, you know, are gonna go through the custom home building process, which is really difficult. Most people just don't realize what they're getting into. And it really helps you as a reader, evaluate, you know, if you're about to embark on building a new home, [00:12:00] for most people, that's the largest investment in their entire life or one of them anyways. And so you really ought to do your homework and be methodical about how you go about it and who you hire and what your goals are. the reason I love that book as a like homework assignment for clients is I don't have to be the one to tell you that. These are the things that I think you should focus on that I think are important for you to consider or for you to put weight on these three things. But don't worry so much about these three things. The book does a great job of saying that and also providing the data to, to back it up and explain and, and of course it's a book. You can read it at your own pace or what we all do, which is read the parts you want to and ignore the rest. But the Pretty Good House from my personal perspective, is a great balance of reality. We don't want to achieve certified passivhaus standards using really carbon intensive materials like spray foam or, or you know, any foam for that matter that has high carbon content. Also, we wanna be thinking about building [00:13:00] healthy buildings. Also, we need to be thinking about financing those buildings because a super healthy energy efficient home that is squishing you financially is not a place that you're gonna thrive in as an occupant.

Jeremy: So we also need to think about finances. And I think the Pretty Good House book does a good job of saying, let's strive to build healthy, energy, efficient, affordable homes within, within thresholds that allow us to still thrive as the occupant of that thing that we're gonna build and put so much care and love into. So these days I spend way more time talking about financing or finances and value propositions than I do about product and technical components of what we do and who we are, because it's not that it isn't important, it's just that think we've done a pretty good job of figuring out how to build good buildings that are healthy.

James: Hmm.

Jeremy: More people figure out how to get into those homes, be it single family, multifamily and anything in between. Yeah. I'm definitely not anti [00:14:00] passivhaus by any means, I love it.

Jeremy: It, and my personal house is built to those standards, but I did not certify my personal house. I instead focused on what I thought was important, which was blower door tests, thermal performance, simple scanning of the building to see if I had any leaks or thermal bridges and then balancing the ongoing operating costs too, picking the right kind of equipment that's easy to maintain and affordable to operate. And you know, the one thing I'll say is fully electric too. So we have one fuel source, which is a nice way for us to be not just, you know, having a good sustainable path now and in the future being carbon free as best as possible, but also just a bit of resilience.

Jeremy: Like I have a small portable backup generator and the power has gone out many times since we lived in our house that we built, and we just wheel the generator over and plug it into our panel. And our house is completely powered so.

James: Nice.

Jeremy: Those are the things that I think actually affect our life [00:15:00] in a, in a positive way when done right and when designed properly. And so that's what I really put a lot of my emphasis on. And when I'm talking with our clients, our homeowner clients especially, Hey, here's something that you should consider. Like, you know, this is what I think really matters when you lay your head down on the pillow, this is the stuff that you'll say, God, I'm so glad we did that.

James: Yeah. And do you find that there is a sort of common set of value props that you come back to that seem to be the most resonant with people? Or do you have any insight on that?

Jeremy: You know, these days finances rule.

James: Hmm,

Jeremy: It's the reality of, I think, our economic climate. I think it always is, and it's probably that classic thing that each generation says, which is like the last generation had it easier.

James: Right.

Jeremy: I do truly though think, and I've done a lot of research on the data about this, is that the spread between current income and current house [00:16:00] prices is many, many, many, many times larger than it was in the eighties.

James: Yep.

Jeremy: You know? and, hopefully we're going to be able to close that gap as a country or two countries because we work so closely together on so much, or at least we try to. And but I think that no matter how energy efficient of a building I can offer people, if they can't afford it. They won't take that path. So for me, balancing the full circle of, the different set of values, you know, efficient, healthy, quick to build, predictable meaning we can de-risk the process, which brings, you know, reduced stress and more certainty and more enjoyable process. Like we all value those things differently and we all have different relationships with things like stress and money, and. Comfort. You know, some people are happy to be under a set of fluorescent lights and others would, you know, would choose many things before they would choose that. So it's actually quite [00:17:00] hard. This business is complex, housing's complex. It's a

Jeremy: complex landscape. We know what we can do, which is build really comfortable, really healthy, really energy efficient homes, very predictably, very quickly. But it's not the cheapest way to build. I.

James: Right.

James: Yeah, definitely. I mean, I've definitely noticed that the value proposition changes depending on what type of client you have, obviously. I mean, that's just like the basic tenets of marketing. But I wonder if you could talk to that, like the, the single family custom home builder has a very different, like, they're gonna live in the house, they're pro, you know.

James: Likely hoping that this will be the last house they have to build and all that, versus the multifamily where the person building it, it's usually not gonna live in the house. Do you have any have you noticed any, anything there? I

Jeremy: yeah, no, I mean it's a great point and I think it echoes a little bit of what I was just saying a minute ago, which is that the value proposition is different depending on [00:18:00] your circumstances.

James: right.

Jeremy: we meet with a housing agency who wants to build new or retrofit housing stock which is going to be rental housing, that may likely be subsidized. Then the value proposition to them as the owner of that asset is very different because there's a few things we have to balance. It's first we have to build it. So they wanna understand what's the value for them during the very risky construction process they have to answer to usually mayor and council. So it's

James: Hmm.

Jeremy: the pitch there.

James: Right.

Jeremy: to understand the financing strategy is when do you need money and how much do you need? At what point in the process and does that align with our procurement methods that we and are able to work within? Those often drive the entire story a lot of the time.

James: Hmm.

Jeremy: that's a important factor. And then there's the occupants will, will what we have to [00:19:00] offer, give the housing agency the right thing that they think their occupants need? And I say the right thing loosely because it's different depending on where it is and who the occupants are and how it's structured financially, or are they paying the bills? Is the housing agency paying the bills? So all of that stuff is, there's an answer for all of it. We, we, we always, we always have a way to say the product that comes out the door of this facility is usually very similar all the time. It's always vapor open. It's always healthy. It's always very, it's always going to result in a very airtight, energy efficient building envelope. But we'll make small tweaks in our contracts. We'll make small, small tweaks during pre-construction. We'll make small tweaks to the actual assemblies themselves, depending on. If it's a retrofit or if it's a new construction, if it's a single level building or a multi-level building, if it's a rental building versus condo, you know where there's gonna be ownership.

James: Right.

Jeremy: as simple as the operation of the [00:20:00] windows. You know, the, we've had the best luck with triple pane tilt and turn windows

James: Mm-hmm.

Jeremy: and ignore triple pane For a moment, let's just talk about the function of the window. A tilt turn. Windows is a European thing, right?

James: Yep.

Jeremy: Which is kind of silly because our climate is more severe than theirs, so really it should be a Canadian thing.

Jeremy: But here we're a tilt and turn window has two functions usually. So you turn the handle 90 degrees to swing the window in, and then you turn it another 90 degrees in the same direction to tilt the window in. This can be very confusing for some people and lead to the situation where they think the window has been shut and locked, but in fact it's just been shut and unlocked. And then they leave and the wind blows the window open. And now you have this window, not a

James: Hmm.

Jeremy: but an open window that is leaking. So when we are talking to housing agencies and they're building new construction rentals and it's [00:21:00] short term or medium term tenancies, then we'll say things like, Hey, well let's focus on the operation of those windows because we wanna make sure that they're easy to operate, that there will be few to no mechanical issues, and that your users will have no learning curve.

James: Hmm.

Jeremy: It's just something we never considered in the early days that we've learned over time. That you would think, why would that ever be part of our conversation with a housing agency? And then you realize, oh, actually it's quite critical because it doesn't matter how much energy modeling you've done, if somebody just leaves the window open by accident.

James: Right.

Jeremy: So,

James: Yeah.

Jeremy: I know that's not a super direct answer to your question, but it's

James: Oh, it's perfect.

Jeremy: way of, of, of helping people understand like that it's just actually quite complex and there's a lot to know about housing, housing people. How to finance, how to build housing, to push housing through procurement or building codes and certifications and and pulling all of that very [00:22:00] long, complex list of parameters together into one place.

Jeremy: And understanding how to guide a housing agency or a general contractor working for a housing agency a mayor and council looking to push a program forward or finance a project, or a family who wants to build a forever home. Those conversations are so wildly different. But the funny thing is the product that comes out the door usually is quite similar.

Jeremy: It's about how we get there. That is the most unique I, I think we've done a pretty good job of actually making the process of how we get there. Quite painless, it's not a. It is not, it inherently, it's not a simple process. We've worked really hard to make it as streamlined as as, as we can so that we can try to boil it down and make it digestible for people to say, we need you to make these three decisions and here are your options.

James: Right.

Jeremy: ask questions along the way, we, you know, we do our best to have the answers at [00:23:00] each step. Yeah, but it's really tough. It's a complex business when you're trying to build housing of any shape and size, and so it takes, what i'm finding is we're having these days, I think we can offer value to single family, homeowners and large multi-family developers or housing agencies Equally, we can offer value equally, but where we're having the most success is when we're involved in projects where there is a team of professionals at the table able to work with us in a collaborative way at a professional level. And so I often refer to that as the B2B market, you know, business to business market.

James: right.

Jeremy: this isn't to say that there aren't very smart homeowners out there who can't do this.

Jeremy: It's just that we require, we, we find that that is the right recipe for success is

James: Hmm.

Jeremy: Architects and professional engineers and housing agencies who have a procurement team. You know, like they have a lot of, a lot of people have to [00:24:00] come together to make this stuff go exceptionally well. And you know, there's a great way to say this, which is if you wanna extract the maximum amount of value out of prefabrication, just in general, that I find that. That's the right recipe for success, whether it's with a flat pack panel system like ours, or a modular company or anything in between. There's a right way and a wrong way to go about designing and procuring and manufacturing and delivering and installing and finishing those projects. Um, it's always a little bit different, but generally there's a clear path to doing that well that makes sure that the value to the occupants and the owners is there, and it makes sense financially.

James: That sounds like a lot of anticipating needs, and I can see in your layup there that having the team of professionals all kind of aligned before you start the project so that you're not [00:25:00] like learning things as you go like, oh, that would've been good to know three months ago, type of thing.

Jeremy: 1000%.

James: Hmm.

Jeremy: And this is a tweak we're making to our website in the background right now, but we're really pushing our building enclosure integration services, which is, i'm trying to make that as simple a term as I can, but I, I boiled it down to four words. I, if I can get it down any further, I will.

Jeremy: But a building enclosure, technical integrator, what we're trying to say is you need to bring us to the table at the beginning of design so that we can help coordinate and consult with you, the client, general contractors, possibly the occupants, all of the consultants who are gonna be at that table so that we can help. Value value, not value add, but but optimize, right? So if they say, Hey, what about this? You give us the opportunity to say, yeah, but have you considered how that will impact the size of the panels because of that structural decision? Which then in turn impacts the cost of [00:26:00] logistics because now we need wide load permits and those kinds of things. so there's a real domino effect if we're not at the table. And there's a term for this, it's called designing for manufacturing ability, DFMA. And more recently I've heard another one, which is more gentle way of telling the architects how our standards, but saying, Hey architects, these are our standards, now go design. Which is manufacturing informed design. Either way you say it, it means the same thing. It's here's the information about our product and our process. If you can design within those parameters or work with us to tweak those parameters, that's your best chance of success for your project. So yeah, definitely we want to be involved as a technical integrator as early as possible, whether it's us or any manufacturing team. That's probably true.

James: Cool. And I guess one last thought on that, and I know we're [00:27:00] getting close to time here. Do you, do you have, do you find that people come to you and so you're trying to make it so that they come to you earlier in the process or are you actively going to them and are now trying to figure out how to find people earlier in their process?

James: It seems, it seems like a hard dance to.

Jeremy: It's a really good question, and I think it's actually probably the number one thing on my mind in, in the last number of weeks especially for larger projects where they might have to follow standard procurement methods or procurement contracts. So in Canada we have what's called the CCDCs, Canadian Construction Document Center, and they are I think there's maybe 30 or 40 contracts. In my experience, there's about four or five contracts that get used for nearly all commercial projects. An example is a CCDC Number two is a design bid build contract. So they design the project, they put it up for tender, somebody's awarded the, the, the general [00:28:00] contractors is hired, and then the GC goes out and they, they get all the pricing and. They bid on it and then if they win it, they have to stick to that price unless the scope changes, in which case they, you know, they charge change orders. I'm oversimplifying, but generally that

Jeremy: design bid build process does not even allow, there's no opportunity inside of that structure for anybody to be involved in the design integration, because it's just inherently not the structure. On the far opposite of that spectrum is CCDC 30, which is a IPD, which is integrated project delivery. And that is a where you, you're bringing all of the parties to the table at the beginning and then going forward with, with all the stakeholders involved, right from, from day one. It sounds great, but it's actually quite complex and I don't even think that that's the perfect route.

Jeremy: Maybe on really, really large projects that might be a good option, but I actually think there's a bit of an in between, [00:29:00] which probably looks something like a CCDC 5-B, which is numbers irrelevant. The point is that

James: I love that you know them. That's great.

Jeremy: Yeah, well, they're, they're really important because a CCDC 5-B allows the client. To hire a general contractor during the design phase, in which time the contractor can then start hiring consultants or manufacturers to come to the table and help participate to finish the design and the coordination before they start constructing the building.

James: Hmm.

Jeremy: That's the approach that, you know, it doesn't have to be a CCDC 5-B or whatever. It just, ultimately what needs to happen is, if you wanna leverage prefabrication. The manufacturer who's going to provide the product needs to participate in the design. Otherwise, why are we even bothering? Right?

James: Yep.

Jeremy: So it's really hard because standard procurement doesn't always even allow for that. So there's a housing agency whose council says, Nope, we want the best value [00:30:00] for our taxpayer dollars; you have to use the most competitive quote-unquote, approach, which ultimately leads to people not always getting the best prices because they have to play it safe and looks good as a counselor, but in actuality isn't always the best approach. And so yeah. So sorry. I hope that, I hope that answers your, your

James: This is so great. No, I love it. I, I, yeah. This is like the side of it that I find leaves me with more questions than, than the.

Jeremy: Well here, I'll leave you with a final thought, which is if I could have my cake and eat it too, as they say, I would plead with ev everybody and anybody, whether you're a housing agency or a private developer or a homeowner, if you wanna leverage prefabrication. If you wanna use this method, offsite construction of any shape and size from, from Simple Life Homes or any other manufacturer, you need to contact them.

Jeremy: You need to thoroughly understand who they are as a company, what market they wanna serve, what product they offer, what their [00:31:00] experiences in your scale of project, bigger or small retrofit, new construction, and what are the ways of going through pre-construction with them. And if they don't even know what pre-construction is, then just go to the next one.

Jeremy: Because you need a preconstruction phase. You need to plan your project before you build it. That's just the simple way of saying that. Right. A building enclosure technical integrator. I'm just gonna repeat it again because it, it's written on our whiteboard

James: Love it.

Jeremy: in our office right now in big letters because we realized over the last couple months this is the key that we need to be able to offer.

James: Cool.

Jeremy: And it really helps people. With the, like, with the best chance of being successful with their projects. And so that's the service before we do any manufacturing that we're putting on the front end.

James: I love it. Alright, that's a great note to end on. Before we go, where can people find out more about you online? What's the best place?

Jeremy: I'm on LinkedIn, Jeremy Clarke, and happy to chat and connect. I'm really enjoying LinkedIn lately and our website is Simple Life [00:32:00] Homes dot ca and our Instagram is Simple dot Life dot Homes.

James: Perfect. Well, thanks a lot. Thanks for joining me today.

Jeremy: Yeah, such a pleasure.

James: You've been listening to Marketing Passive House. I'm James Turner, and I hope you'll join me again next time. I.