45 - Leo Cheng - ResilientHAUS
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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 Leo Cheng, total loss survivor of the Eaton Fire and co-founder of grassroots community awareness organization ResilientHAUS. Leo, welcome to the show

Leo: Thank you very much, James. Pleasure to be here

James: Excellent. I'm glad to talk to you today. So before we get into it, and for people who are just meeting you for the first time, could you share a little bit more about who you are, what you do, and how you started on your Passive House journey?

Leo: Sure. So my journey started I first heard about Passive House through a coworker of mine Rob Hall, who was a coworker of mine at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. We both worked there. And he was retiring, and I asked him, oh, what he's gonna do, and so he said he's gonna do this Passive House consultant thing, and I was curious about that, so I- that's when I first learned about it. But really my journey started last year in January when we had the Los Angeles fires. There was multiple fires going on in the Los Angeles area. The one that affected me was the Eaton Fire. I lived in Altadena, California, and the Eaton Fire, really basically burned my house down that's where I realized, first I gotta rebuild, 'cause I wanted to rebuild. I wanted to continue living in my community. And what best- better way to rebuild than rebuild a Passive House, which we know through all sorts of data that it's the best resilient... the best home that offers you all sorts of levels of resiliency from both fire resiliency, re-resiliency to smoke and ash, and also resiliency from an energy perspective, right?

Leo: We're basically building a net, net zero home, so when we have future energy issues either increasing energy costs or also just, power outages the fact that, we have a net zero home with solar panels and battery backups you can basically have a home completely nearly off the grid, right?

Leo: So that's why I decided to go this route. yeah, so through this tragic event where I lost my home and everything, all my possessions essentially we're now at a journey where actually I had another incident later in the year about about nine months after the fire. I got laid off from my job at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where I was working for, working there for 29 years.

Leo: so all of a sudden, yeah, exactly, all of a sudden I had this double whammy of a life, o-of life change, unexpected life change, where now I all of a sudden have to find a job. And since I was already s- in, in the throes of researching Passive House and learning about Passive House and in my own project I decided, might as well join the, the thousands and thousands of people working in the Passive House space and become a Certified Passive House Design Consultant and all sorts of... try to leverage all that I've been learning to something that I can m- have, have a second career essentially.

James: Wow. That is an epic and tragic start to your your passive house journey, as it were.

Leo: Yeah. And I'm finding that there is a bit of a a need for someone who has gone through a fire like this that's lost everything and a homeowner who's rebuilding rebuilding Passive House. And the perspective that we offer is, I think, unique in that, instead of a top-down approach where you have architects and builders going to a community and trying to make the case for Passive House, I'm doing it from the bottom up, right?

Leo: I'm doing it from the point of view of a- an actual survivor, someone who's gone through the whole experience. And when I approach other total loss survivors, we come from... A- as a peer, right? What happens in-- after these natural disasters is you have a lot of people coming in from outside the community trying to sell you something, right? And some of them are even scammers, right? what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to approach it from the point of view of, look, I'm a peer, I'm not trying to sell you anything. The only thing I'm trying to sell you is this idea, not a product. The idea of a passive home, idea of a resilient home, of a net zero home, of a home that you want to feel comfortable in, that will give you indoor-- excellent indoor air quality that blows away any traditional homes. So that's the idea I'm trying to sell you on, right? So it's not really a product. So I think that's an approach that is really needed now, I think, i-i-- especially when we have a lot of these, wild- wildfires and other natural disasters. Yeah

James: Yeah, and you've got instant like credibility is the wrong word, but credibility for lack of the right word coming to me, with other people going through what y- you've gone through, right? Like you can say "No, I understand."

Leo: Yeah,

James: Yeah.

Leo: a level of trust there, and I think there's also this kind of emotional connection

Leo: Where perhaps if you're coming from, if you're an architect and, certainly you have sympathy for the community that suffered a great loss, but it's very different than somebody saying, same thing's happened to me.

Leo: I, we can immediately bond with all sorts of things. We do this rather I meet with fellow total loss survivors all the time where we have similar stories about how, for example, the, the little things that we no- don't have. We now move to a rental house, and like a few weeks afterwards you s- finally got all our kitchen stuff together so we can actually cook, right?

Leo: There's a period of time in which we couldn't even cook.

James: Great

Leo: then I'm cooking, I'm doing my usual thing, and I'm opening up a bag of peas, frozen peas, and usually what I do is when I've just used half of it, I close it up and I take a little rubber band that I have. I'm just doing my thing. Next thing I know I go, "Wait, I don't have any rubber bands. God." Something simple like that, it's like, just like all of a sudden brings you back to that tragedy, and it's just these kind of few... And we all of us who've gone through this have this exact same moment in which there's the little thing that you thought you had, also you don't have. So I can totally bond with my fellow survivors because, yeah, we're all, we've all gone through this and it's not an easy thing to go through.

Leo: And one of the things that you know for me when I was already thinking about how am I gonna, retire perhaps in my career last thing on my mi- on my plate is to build a house from

James: Yeah.

Leo: up. It's a challenge definitely. Yeah.

James: Yeah. Yeah, and I see... I find there's so many interesting angles, but one of the things that I think about is what you're identifying to me is that it's your identity. In these, in this day and age, if you've lived in your house for a while and you're established obviously there's, different levels of it.

James: But I think for a lot of people, where they live and the way their house is set up and just, like, all of that is part of who you are, and then to just have it taken away,

Leo: Yeah.

James: it's... Yeah. And it's interesting because homes are so emotional, but- But you only have these moment-- I don't know.

James: It's like a, it's like a slow burn over... Oh, sorry. A slow build over time,

Leo: No,

James: right?

Leo: jokes.

James: Yeah.

Leo: We could do it for

James: That wasn't meant to be a joke, though.

Leo: that's fine. That's fine.

James: But it's

Leo: definitely is a slow burn. It's a slow, constant ... No doubt. No

James: Yeah

Leo: And it's just there are things, there are times in which, it's just, you just laugh at that.

Leo: Ha, I don't ... Oh, I don't ... But there are other times in which it w- it is actually, emotionally where you do have tears in your eyes and stuff.

James: Right

Leo: It's a thing that we all go through, and, the perspective again that we bring to is, my, my friend Jaime, who's c- my, my colleague in this, our grassroots organization that we started he was actually the guy that I credit for bringing the Passive House in the community. While I knew about Passive House, and I was on my own little journey, when I encountered him, he was already already had a group going in Altadena, it turns out. It turns out he was one of these people who was already thinking about doing a Passive House, retrofitting it for his own house, before the fires started.

James: Right

Leo: I f- when I, met him and I realized, oh, wow, we can actually start something here where, have a point of view of, those of us who lost our homes, you know, we can rebuild back that much better really. So it's ... so yeah. So bringing it all together, this community-led effort, the fact that we have people who've gone through it all the same things ourselves. And, there are people who are still today struggling with insurance, for e- for example. I lucked out because I had a good insurance company.

Leo: They paid us out. But there are so many people who are still fighting the insurance company to get little pieces of insurance, portions of payout. And it's a ... That, that's also another challenge that we have to be sensitive to, those of us who have lost our homes, is that, when we talk about rebuilding a house, budgets and so forth, that's a sensitive area because not a lot of people have the budget to build They're under-insured. They can't even build back a normal house, let alone a passive house. Even though we know that the margin is not that much I think it's totally worth the extra cost. But for some people, as soon as you start talking about, improvements, they right away think, dollar signs, and they go, "Oh my God, I can't afford that." And so that's another challenge that we have when we talk about communities that's gone through this kind of tr- trauma and loss, is that you have to be aware of ... You're trauma informed, I think is the term, right?

James: Yes

Leo: we've all gone through this and it's ... A- and we all have our struggles here and one, one of the, one of which is financial

James: Yep. Yeah, I was-- That was definitely one of the things I was gonna dig into a little bit, 'cause I could imagine an insurance company, even if the cost wasn't different, saying your insurance covers rebuilding the exact same house, period." And even if you can find a cheaper way... actually, I can't imagine they would mind that.

James: But even if you could find a cheaper way that was different, they would maybe still... it would... Would it be a kind of a gray area for them?

Leo: That, that's how they operate. They- it's always replacement costs. It's not improved. And then they usually give you a, a small amount for code upgrades, right? And

James: A

Leo: on your building codes, right? And in California we're ... Even though California prides itself to be the leader in environmentalism and so forth in the country, we're la- California has lagged behind in terms of the type of airtight resilient structures that we need, right?

Leo: So the, the

Leo: code upgrade, yes, there's some code upgrades. There have been some improvements in the California energy code that deals with energy efficiency, but it's not anywhere near the Passive House levels, right? There's not even a airtightness, for example, airtightness specification for single family homes.

Leo: And so right away, it's like I'm gonna build a airtight home. It's not part of the code upgrade, and so you have to make that case to the insurance company. And in fact what's really ironic in this particular example is that it will help the insurance company avoid paying out

Leo: the cost that they need to pay out for mitigating smoke and ash damage. To, to this day, I have several, many people the two people that are s- that live south of me whose homes stood, okay? Their homes did not burn down in my community but they had so much smoke and ash damage that a year and a half since the fire, they still haven't moved in because they're struggling fighting the insurance companies to

Leo: And in a way it's the fact that my h- my house burned down completely, it was very easy for them to say it's a total loss, they'll pay me out. But when you have a situation in which it's a gray area where there's all this dust and smoke damage, they're trying to push back as much as they can, do the absolute minimum

James: Right

Leo: To do the remediation of all the toxic stuff when really you need to completely get rid of all of that stuff, right?

Leo: And so an airtight house will help insurance companies to not pay out the, the, the sums of money they need to pay out to remediate. So this is one of these areas where it's very frustrating, where w- we have to face these things even though we're trying to make things better for you insurance company,

James: Yeah.

Leo: you're still fighting us

James: Yeah. Have you had any wins in that regard? Or heard of any wins from, people within who ResilientHAUS has connected with?

Leo: Yeah, so we are. It's a growing community, right now we have about, say about 12 homeowners who have decided to build Passive House. Now, when we say Passive House, from our perspective, it doesn't have to be certified PHRF year. So as, as long as you're following the five core principles, right? So as long as you're building an airtight house with super insulation, high-performance windows ERV, HRV, to me that's ... As long as you're doing all that in a systemic way and you're doing energy budgeting then to me you're building a Passive House, right? So yeah, we do have a lot of wins.

Leo: There are a lot of people who are finding out through their neighbors. I tell-- I talk to people as much as I can, and the group spread, spread word of mouth spreading. There's also some... Recently I've been engaged in a Facebook group that is a community, an Altadena community Facebook group. Not Passive House specific, but it's a larger Altadena community. And I've been engaging in a conversation about Passive Houses from the point of view of, as we record today, there is a major warehouse fire in the Los Angeles area. It's a massive complex that's been on fire for the last six days it's spewing out all this toxic stuff PM2.5, PM2.5 particles that are really hazardous to your health. All sorts of air quality warnings. Los Angeles has been placing, saying close your windows, seal everything up, be, stay at home, shelter in place, that kind of thing. It's been going on for days. And right away I seized the moment. I said, "Okay, I'm gonna post this this Facebook group saying, 'Hey, this is a good time for those of you who've, lost your homes in the fire.

Leo: If you're rebuilding, you should think about an airtight, building an airtight home.'" And I linked to the Passive House Accelerator. Their nice little videos explaining Passive House. I...

Leo: interesting that I don't talk about Passive House I talk about airtight homes,

Leo: and then I link to the Passive House, and then I later on in the discussion...

Leo: That's ge- start generating a lot of interest and

James: That's good

Leo: what this is. And I start to say, "Okay there are these core principles that collectively is called Passive House. But air tightness is a major component of it. Having an ERV/HRV that works closely, that acts as a whole house filter also is integral.

Leo: And then of course let's not think about windows and doors and high performance doors." And so that's the approach, and we're getting some good feedback. The challenge really is because the fire that burned our house down, homes down has been, it's been about a year and a half, people have various degrees of of their when...

Leo: If you're rebuilding, you're in the various stages of development, right? Whether you may already have plans drawn out by architects, or you may actually be building right now. And they're, then these people are coming to me and s- and asking me, "Hey, how, what can I do to add an airtightness barrier?" the answer is, it's gonna be a, it's gonna be hard if you're already framing your house because you need to really have the airtight m- membrane in the des- in the design to begin with. To retrofit it now may mean tearing down some of your structure that you're already building. Now, it's not completely bad because it's not like you already have a house, right?

Leo: That's even a worse... But you have already a structure that you may have to take some stuff down. And so these are the conversations that I'm having now with this community, where now they're realizing air tightness is important through this actual event of bad air quality from this fire. And then they're now coming circling back and me trying to get them to think about air tightness and then also making the case that, what you end up with is also a super energy efficient house.

Leo: Did you know that? And that's the thing that I wish somehow Passive House people can package the air tightness plus the energy efficiency aspect of it. This is really, I think, our secret sauce, right? We can provide h- a healthy, fresh, healthy filtered air and also give you a net zero home where you can be nearly off the grid if you have solar and batteries. And so that, that's... So that kind of defeats the concern about how much it's gonna cost. I... What I try to do is I have to bring back yes, there's a little bit of upfront cost, but you're gonna save, end up saving a lot of money in the long run. You're gonna, you're gonna pay back the fact that you have a net zero home, it's gonna pay back in droves as far as your energy costs

James: I love that's a, a footnote, like a s- a side benefit in, in, in this context, right? Like in this context that's not... 'Cause I think for a long time, it was sold as a energy efficiency solution, and people didn't feel like they had an energy efficiency problem exactly.

James: And yeah.

James: A couple of things really stood out. So one thing I have to say, just like a, a mass rebuild effort is the perfect time exactly because it's best done from a blank slate from the start, like you were saying, right? I think that's, it's an interesting like way to get a, a bunch of houses built to a better standard all at once and

Leo: Absolutely

James: And with everyone in a local area doing that, I think there's probably some, some synergy to be had amongst, if there's a group of people doing the same work, then maybe there's like shared teams or at least the awareness factor.

James: But I wonder, yeah, like

Leo: the purpose of our group is to share information.

Leo: Ideally, of course, we would be very, if you think about the point of view of a developer, right? There's economies of scales. And i-in a very ideal sense, it would be good to have one kind of builder and one architect and standardize it, and that'll save a lot of cost

James: Yeah. Group, group purchase your windows or whatever?

Leo: exactly. But the reality is that we're all going through it in different phases. And I'll talk to you about the insurance issue as well, right? It's

James: Right

Leo: who are, who what was- were paid out we have the money right away to build, whereas others they have to still fight the insurance company.

Leo: And so the reality is that we don't... We have our own timelines. It's

Leo: unfortunate, but that's how it is. But we do try to collaborate as much as we can. Like the windows and doors, exactly. That's... We've had i-in the ResilientHAUS group we meet once a week online, and then we have a in-person meeting once a month.

Leo: And so we've been inviting various window vendors to come, and there's definitely some good leveraging of the economy of scale. Definitely shipping costs, right? Some of the

James: Yeah

Leo: Are outside our state, and they need to be shipped. And so there's definite cost savings just from shipping perspective.

Leo: Yeah, so we are doing some of that.

James: Cool

Leo: It's it... Yeah it's because it would be good to have the same... like another issue is finding contractors who have experience building Passive House.

James: Right

Leo: if we can find one contractor, but it pro- but again, because of the different timelines, we all have chosen kinda different contractors.

Leo: Although there is one group actually about little less than half of our group is going with one design build firm. But some of us because of the different timelines, we're doing different things. There are also some people who are doing panelized systems as well. We have several people going through Collective Carpentry and their system, their panelized system and so forth.

Leo: So there is a good mixture of people. And I actually, when I presented at the Passive House Network Conference, one of the things I ended with i-in the presentation is that this is a good opportunity to collect some data, right? Once these homes, these Passive Houses are built, right?

Leo: And especially in the Los Angeles area, you don't see much how Passive Houses at all. We can put sensors in the homes and collect actual real world data on the performance of the

Leo: Passive House, because we know that these houses have performance from the get-go, right? We design through a performance standard, right?

Leo: We have numbers, targets, right? Various, air quality targets as well as, the amount of BTUs per year you use and so forth, and your heating and cooling cap- capacity. We have those

Leo: Right? But let's see if these houses will perform. And so we'll, we have the ability to collect a lot of data, I think

James: That's great, yeah. Yeah, such a, a big opportunity if, i- in, in some ways.

Leo: Yes

James: I was thinking too, going back to when I, talking about the identity part of it, but in, in a way this is ... I like that you chose ResilientHAUS, 'cause i- I feel like in a way now you're also having the opportunity to recreate your identity as someone who's more resilient, your house, but also you. You're like, "Okay, I've been through a thing," and y- I'm assuming you don't feel like you're the same person

Leo: No, I'm not the same person. It, it's-- and again, this is very common for us

Leo: total loss survivors. It's a life-defining moment. It's life before the fire and after the fire, everything's changed, right?

James: Yeah

Leo: so definitely I'm now, instead of a, a space systems engineer for NASA, I'm a Passive House, a practitioner. I actually did get the Passive House Tradesperson credential took

James: Nice

Leo: Emu Passive course. Shout out to Emu Passive. Those guys do a great job.

James: Definitely

Leo: to do that first because I wanted to get the hands-on experience because I was I was-- I'm now, I got my house. the-- So where we are now in my own house we're fully permitted. We have a GC on board, and we just about a month ago, cleared out our lot, ready for building. We're just waiting for on the compaction of our soil and so forth, and we're ready to go. So that's why I did this tradesperson course first because I wanted to get in there with my hands.

Leo: I wanted to partner up with my contractor. My contractor, while he's not a Passive House contractor, he's very open to learning about it. He has some e- some experience in this area. And he's actually real- really cool that we started talking about having build mock-up wall assemblies, and that's one of the things that I've been hearing that's important, you know, through all-- through the Passive House podcast and so forth, because the, the workforce the tradespeople who are building it, they may not be familiar with some of the, the details that we have in passive homes, the air tightness details, for example, right? And so you need to have some kind of a mock-up wall assembly

Leo: To teach them how to do it, and it-- what best to teach this, to show them this is how we do it, and have a little demo in a corner in a-- my, my lot, and they can always go there and refer to how it's gonna be done.

Leo: And so when I bro-- mentioned this to my contractor, he says, "Yes, let's do it. Let's do it. Let's do it together." And I love that. I love the idea that you-- we're now building it-- I'm now building this mock-up with my contractor, and then we're gonna use that as a teaching tool for the workers

James: That is so cool. Yeah. One of the things I love... So we met at that Passive House conference you spoke at. One of the things I love about Passive House conferences is all the cool mock-ups and cutaways, so you can see how windows are made, and

Leo: Yeah

James: find that so fascinating, and I think it's r- really, I'd never heard of having a mock-up on site to help teach on site for the thing you're building now.

James: But I think that's, it's...

Leo: yeah,

James: maybe it's widespread and I just don't know about it, but I'd never heard that, and I think it's such a good idea

Leo: Yeah it's absolutely important. I've heard this in other podcasts as well. People are saying, "Oh, you need a micro." Some- sometimes they'll do, like they'll build like a little, a room, like a part of the house. They'll finish a room first, which is strange, a little bit hybrid-ish where you can just go to that room.

Leo: But then it's when... If you're build- I don't think that's how builders operate necessarily, 'cause

James: Ray

Leo: build everything. In fact, the framers come in, the plumbers come in. You can't just say, "Just build this one little bedroom first," and then...

James: Right. Yeah. But having like a, a mock-up so you can look at all the layers and you can look at how things are put together and

Leo: Yeah

James: can... A- and these are skilled craftspeople, right?

Leo: Yes

James: at it and say, "Oh. Oh, that goes here. Oh." And it... I imagine that for many of them, they'll look at their next project differently too, just thinking of if the details work

Leo: Yeah.

James: better

Leo: I'm very much in trying to also increase the workforce training aspect of it. This is something that Jaime and I Jaime in particular, he's been s- stressing recently about how we really need to, there are just so many issues with Passive House that, that needs improvement, and one of them is the workforce.

Leo: One of

James: Right

Leo: is a trained workforce, and we all know that it doesn't... It's the same skill set, right? It's not anything new for them. It's just the level of detail that they have to do, and then the,

James: and the sequencing

Leo: the sequencing of it exactly, and then the membrane and where it goes and so forth, and how to do it efficiently so that you don't have to tear down stuff that you just did because, oh, I forgot to, seal this p- properly or so forth. But, so it's really something that, that we all need to do better, and maybe this is a good opportunity since we're all building homes kinda roughly in the same

Leo: timeframe and the same geographical location, that this is a good impetus. And we're even talking about maybe partnering with some of the community colleges.

Leo: We'll have to see how that goes. That, that's another subject in another podcast is how do you partner with the existing infrastructure, the existing, for example training systems that we have, like community colleges and trade schools, and also building codes, right? Also, how do move Passive House into a world in which, in which the established institutions can be open to it?

Leo: Because as I'm going through my process, there's a lot of stumbling blocks we have to fight a little bit.

James: Yeah. I thought too when you were saying about the, how there's a little bit of payout from the insurance companies to compensate for the code that's im- improved since you built the house. And imagine if the code had included passive house. Now, I don't know how that would map out, but that, that makes a strong case for wow, like that would be a way to move insurance companies whether they wanted to or not, is just

Leo: Yeah

James: if the, code was, took a, a, a bigger leap

Leo: . So the thing about insurance and the code upgrades is that they only give you the amount of money, and you have to document that what you're doing, meets-- exactly meets the code, right?

Leo: The code says you need to have insulation values, R, X, whatever for this. Or even the, the other one that, that we have to all do is in in, in the county of Los Angeles, there's there's sprinkler systems we now have to put in inside the house, which is counterintuitive.

Leo: Those of us who had a wildfire, you-- anything, you want the sprinklers maybe on the outside because the fire's coming in from the outside, not from the inside. Anyway so that's so like we have to-- we're forced to do these sprinkler systems now. And so you have to, just show, documentation that this is what you're doing.

Leo: But for Passive House yes, there are energy efficiency upgrades, but there's no air tightness. And if I try to make the case that I need this air tightness envelope, and I'm trying to make the case that helps energy efficiency, th-they're probably gonna say, "No, man, we're just gonna pay you the-- for the insulation, and that's it."

Leo: If I'm gonna upgrade my windows to triple pane Passive House certified windows, they may come back and say no, you don't need that. We don't-- this is Southern California. You don't need triple pane windows. We're not gonna pay you for that." So that's what is probably gonna happen, but I'm gonna try anyway.

James: Yeah, for sure.

Leo: Yeah

James: Yeah. And another thing that you said you were talking about the fire that's going on currently,

James: June 2026, for tho- for those of you listening. They were putting a warning out to seal everything up, and I thought "But you..." Now I know you can't. You actually can't. You can close all the doors and windows, but you're not able to

Leo: Yeah. I- I'll tell you what's interesting about that. So I'm hearing the, the, the various warnings and reading the newspaper warnings about this, right? What they're saying is they say, "Close, close your windows and doors and don't turn on your AC," right? A- AC, because that just... That's because of the infiltration, you see.

Leo: Because of the leaky houses.

James: Ah yeah

Leo: you turn on your AC you're gonna suck all that air in anyway because of the leaky houses that we have. And I'm just laughing. I'm like, "Oh my God, are you crazy? You're asking people to close their... In the dead of summer, close their windows and don't turn on your AC?

James: Yeah.

Leo: Come on.

James: Yeah

Leo: That doesn't make sense at all.

James: Totally. Yeah, so there's another, another strong case for if you did this, you would be able to seal up your house.

Leo: Absolutely.

James: like

Leo: Even

James: at all. Yeah. Yeah

Leo: also a little bit of a education, right? It's like, "Hey,

Leo: homeowners, did you know that your HVAC system just cir- recirculates?" There's no... The V in HVAC, there's no ventilation. It's recirculating. And because your house is leaky, the fact that you recirculate air, it's actually sucking in air from the outside.

Leo: And so there's a little bit of a education on home... people... Not everybody's gonna think this way, 'cause I'm an engineer, I think that way,

Leo: but not everybody's gonna think that way that HVAC, oh yeah, why do I have to turn off the AC- HVAC? Don't... Am I ventilating? so that kind of stuff I'm just like, yeah, that's why we need to have a passive house

James: Totally. Yeah. So when my family, we upgraded to put mini splits in, and that was some time ago now, not 10 years ago, but maybe five or six. And definitely it's been since then that I learned that the air coming out of it is just recirculated air. I didn't know that at all. And

Leo: Yeah. Yeah

James: And I'm someone who's interested in this kind of thing.

James: Obviously I wasn't as deep into it then as I am now, but still, I- it was an eye-opener. There's wind coming out of it?

Leo: yeah, and in traditional homes the fresh air that comes in when you have the windows, the air, the ventilation is really the infiltration. It's the leakiness of it,

James: Yes

Leo: right? If you start to go into the building science rabbit hole, you'll realize, wow,

Leo: They actually calculate the infiltration of a regular leaky home, and that's kinda how you're ventilating when you

James: Yeah.

Leo: have everything closed up, right?

Leo: When

James: Yeah

Leo: windows closed and you turn on the AC, that's how you're v- it's oh, that's really... that... through poor design, you're actually int- integrating poor design to your house to somehow ventilate. Does that make sense?

James: Yeah. And then you're not controlling where it's coming through, and so what materials it's passing through on the way or

Leo: totally.

James: kinds of... Yeah.

Leo: Oh, totally

James: Yeah. Because that's one of the things, I don't know, maybe not where you are, but around here where it's a, more of a winter-focused climate,

James: People say "Oh the house needs to breathe.

James: You need that..." And it's yeah, I know. But what if it only breathed through its lungs instead of through its arms and legs and

James: Everything as well?

Leo: that, someone had the analogy maybe, I don't know if it's in one of your podcasts that I listened to about how we don't breathe through our skins, right? We breathe through our lungs, and so basically you're sup- you're putting in as better lungs with the ERV, HRV in your home. And the, the fact it's sealed up, you're breathing... You're actually having lungs in your house.

James: That's great. Yeah, I don't think that was on this podcast.

Leo: Yeah.

James: But yeah, it's a really good analogy.

Leo: Yeah

James: This has been great. I think maybe before we go, where would be a good place for people to find more about you or about ResilientHAUS? I'll link to all of the different things we talked about throughout the conversation, but where would be-- Where would you like people to go to?

Leo: So our community-based group, again, this is a grassroots group.

James: Yeah

Leo: We're not Passive House professionals at all. We're just homeowners. It's the, the website is resilient.haus, H-A-U-S, the German spelling. I think that's the website. And you can reach me.

Leo: My email address is leo@resilient.haus, H-A-U-S

James: Awesome. I will be sure to include those, or if you just heard that, write it down.

Leo: Yeah

James: so cool. I really look forward to staying in touch and hearing how the build goes, and maybe we can do a, a follow-up,

Leo: Sure.

James: How it went.

Leo: Yeah, definitely.

James: That'd be really cool.

Leo: Yeah. Yeah, we also have a YouTube channel as well, same thing

James: Oh, nice

Leo: I don't think it's resilient.haus, but it's a You- if you look up... If you do a search on Resilient Haus, H-A-U-S, one word one word then you'll probably find us. And the, the idea is that as we start our builds, we'll probably have little video blogging, video logging kind of thing with our homes.

Leo: So

James: Awesome

Leo: to follow along. At least that, that's my intent at least to to have some release periodically updates about my house.

James: Great. I will personally be following along for sure. And yeah, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me today

Leo: Oh, you're very welcome

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