 Good afternoon, Howard Wiig, Code Green, Think Tech, Hawaii. Luxury, Princeville, affordable green housing. Isn't that an oxymoron? Absolutely positively not. I have great pleasure in having as my guests this afternoon Tom DeGroote, Project Manager for Unlimited Construction Services. And they pulled off something that I would have found very, very unlikely. Affordable housing in Princeville on Kauai. I think when we all take an image of any new construction there, we're thinking, well, maybe the Donald needs a fourth or fifth or sixth home, he'll build something there. But, you know, the people who work at Princeville, they're not the highest income people. And all of those who are familiar with Kauai know you're gonna have to commute, generally a very long way to get from your humble home to Princeville and all the way back again. It sounds like half of your paycheck would be taken by the gas bill. So what a concept. Let's get some affordable housing in Princeville. So it gives me great pleasure to bring Tom DeGroote to the table here. Welcome, Tom. Hey, well, thank you very much for having me here. And like you explained, you know, that drive, it's a long drive for a lot of employees in Princeville, you know, they're working at the resorts and they can't really afford living up around Princeville in that area. It's very expensive for rent up there. And you're commuting from Lahoui, could be Puipu, you know, even the west side people driving. And with Kolaupua, I know it's been in the development for about 30 years, they talked about having affordable workforce housing in the Princeville area for the workers. And Kolaupua is dedicated to those workers. You have to work in Princeville, first of all, to get into Kolaupua. And next it opens up to Hanalei and also Kilauea. And it was so badly needed, these houses, the rental apartments, but it was so badly needed within three weeks, it was 100% full. I believe so. Yeah, it was just amazing how fast that went. If you'd put it out in advance, you probably would have had this great big waiting list. There was, there was. People were coming, the first time they saw us digging, they were asking, when can they get on the waiting list? It is badly needed and more is actually needed up there. There's a substantial amount of people have to commute. Absolutely, yeah. You can't live up there, you know. And again, these are not high income people. No. And gas, especially on Kolauea, is not cheap. Gas and housing, you know, figure for three bedroom, you're gonna pay three grand a month for living up in Princeville area. And here they had the opportunity, you know, we built 16 one bedroom, 16 two bedroom and 12 three bedroom. And, you know, the rent is, I think the one bedroom is 850, the two bedrooms, 1,100 and the three bedrooms, 1,300. Now that's very affordable. Affordable, yeah. And just a bit of background. The name of the development up there is Kolauea. And the way I saw it was the BIA, the Building Industry Association, has an annual Gala called the Renaissance Fair. And in that event, they give prizes for the best of the best of the best of housing built that year. And I happened to be the energy efficiency judge. And I took a look at this project and said it has all the green features and it's affordable and it's in Princeville. So I had no problem giving it an award. So I met your principals at the Gala. Why don't we take a look at the first slide where we have a construction project. So obviously it's wood construction. I see the hurricane clips there. There's a lot and lots of hurricane clips. Yes. They had to over engineer it because you'll get into it further but there's a lot of light, a lot of windows. So you don't really need that much lighting in there. It had to be really reinforced extra. And the more windows you have, the healthier your building is because we human beings were evolved in the great outdoors, the extent that we can continue to commune with the great outdoors, the healthier we are and the happier we are. So why don't we go on to the next slide here and get an overview of it. This, yeah, this is a pretty good sketch of the whole thing. What's going on here? Well, you're standing in the parking lot and we're looking up towards, on the right hand side are the one bedroom units. The middle is a one bedroom and the left hand side, those are three bedroom units. And as you can see, they were designed. They have the sunshades over the windows to help keep on the cooling. The siding is hardy panel. It's a cement composition board that was already colored. So we didn't have to use any paint to paint the exterior. It came like that. And I think it's pretty well weather resistant and more specifically salt air resistant. Very, very important that you're not all that far from the sea. Yes, and that was another reason why it was really over engineered because we were within one mile of the radius from the ocean. And that put us into a higher standard of building. Yeah, you and I had both seen some new construction as little as one year, certainly two years after construction, you're gonna see all this corrosion going on. So you probably had vinyl panels around the windows. The windows were vinyl. They were flashed, of course. Stainless steel nails were used for all the trim. And the siding is blind nailed so the moisture won't get to that. Of course, I do tie back to that helps with the weather resistance. Weather moisture control, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, let's take, if we can take another look at that same slide, you touch something near and dear to my heart, namely the overhangs that you mentioned. You see where there's a considerable, the roof goes over the building considerably. And this is a good shot because it shows a lot of the shading. Oh, and I see there's eyebrows over the windows also. Yeah, the sun shades. That's what I was mentioning. That helped with the lead aspect too. Yeah, yeah. Lead being leadership and energy and environmental design. So is this a lead certified project? Lead platinum. Lead platinum. Yes, we got platinum. We went, ooh. They were shunned for gold, but we got platinum out of it. Well, something near and dear to my heart, those eyebrows over the windows and then there's a considerable overhang from the roof itself. If you were to take a temperature reading of the gray wall, say at two in the afternoon on a very sunny day, you would get, you would get certainly up to 130 degrees on that gray wall because it's somewhat absorbent. And then if you shot the shaded portion up above there, you would go down to way under 100, probably maybe 95 degrees. Shading is so important in Hawaii. I'm the energy codes guy and we built in shading to our new energy codes. And this is just a perfect, perfect example of that. Any other lead type aspects we can see from this shot here? Oh, I imagine the windows are probably high performance. Yes, they are. And I know on the interior, you have insulation through all the wall, exterior walls and the roof has insulation in it too as well. Was that the spray foam or fiberglass or? It's just the roll. Okay, well, let's move on to the next slide then. This is, I had forgotten this was lead platinum. You see all the lighting, the exterior lighting is 100% LED. And they aren't timers, so people just can't turn them off and turn them on. Even their porch light, that's on the same timer as the side lighting, which again is LED. And you know, if I know anything about LED porch lights, they could be as little as 10 watts. They are, yep, yep. And then how about the pole lighting there? We can't quite see it from here, but I want to say that I'm thinking the pole lighting was 75 watts, but I can't give you a definitive on that. And then the bowlards, the little bowlards there, those were 25 watts. Yeah, and for those of you not in the know that little pillar looking thing, that's a bowlard. And it has a light in it and it has a lid on it also so that the light is directed down onto the pathway exactly where you need it instead of being directed up into the heavens too. Well, number one is bad visual acuity. And number two, you're wasting energy there. And again, I love the shading that these overhangs give here. Yeah, they were not your typical three-foot, they were three-foot six to wider overhang. Yeah, yeah, it just makes a ton of difference. A lot of the heat gain that we get from both homes and buildings in Hawaii is because of the lack of overhangs where you get that direct solar radiation on the walls. And again, I've shot with a heat gun, some of those walls, especially dark color, I've gotten 140 degrees on the exposed interior. Yeah, and so you reduce, just by the shading, you reduce the exterior wall temperature by easily 30 degrees. So that's definitely one reason why you got lead there. Let's just take a look at another shot here. This is very similar to anything new we're seeing here. Yeah, I see more on the right there. I see even more of an overhang there. I know a lot of the plants, the landscaping was based after Hawaiian culture. And there's like a little garden in the front. The tenants, there's taro and there are sweet potatoes. And there's also a breadfruit trees all around the property. Have you ever had a breadfruit pancakes? Pretty good. Yes, yes, or they make potato chips with breadfruit. Yeah, and I have a lot of Samoan and Hawaiian friends and I have a breadfruit tree. And when the season comes around, hey Howard, how's that tree doing? How's that tree doing? Yeah, just I'm very, very happy to give away all that. So when they mature, they're gonna be made very, very good use of. And it's a very high nutrient. But on that cheery note, we need to take a break, think take away. Howard, wake code green back in a minute. Looking to energize your Friday afternoon? Tune in to stand the energy man at 12 noon. Aloha Friday here on Think Tech Hoy. Aloha, my name is Richard Emory and I host condo and cider. We talk about issues facing the condo association throughout Hawaii and talk about solutions. When you think about it, about one third of our population lives in some form of common interest real estate. We broadcast every Thursday at 3 p.m. Please tune in, tune in and thank you. Aloha. Aloha, everyone. I hope you've been watching Think Tech Hawaii. But I'm here to invite you to watch me on Viva Hawaii every Monday at 3 p.m. I'm waiting for you, mahalo. Hello, this is Martin de Spang. I wanna get you get excited about my new show which is humane architecture for Hawaii and beyond. We're gonna broadcast on Tuesdays, 5 p.m. here on Think Tech Hawaii. Hey, look at this. Good afternoon again, Howard Wigg code green. I have as my honored guest, Tom De Groot, project manager for unlimited construction services. And again, in my humble opinion, they pulled off something resembling a miracle, affordable housing in Princeville and something that I'd forgotten. They achieved the whole thing and got lead platinum. There are not that many lead platinum projects, residential or commercial in the entire United States of America. So this is about as green as you're ever going to get. And it's affordable. And as we discussed earlier, it's for the workers on the North Shore of Kauai there. Why don't we bring up another slide here? Is that the bread? No, that's not the breadfruit. No, that's not the breadfruit, yeah. But the jealousies are right in the front there. Oh, okay. Jealousy windows. Again, I'm the energy codes guy for the state and something that we wrote in to the code unique in the nation is provision for jealousy windows. They wouldn't, if you follow the mainland code, you can't have it because they have too much air leakage and you try to make the home very, very tight. But in Hawaii, we want to make the home very, very loose. And the advantage of jealousies are of course that they can be opened and closed at will. And for those of us who go back here ways, we remember the old jealousy windows that were very, very easy to break into. There was a couple of friends' houses. They weren't home. When I thought they would be, I didn't have a key. And I just go into the back and I lose some windows and that crawl, crawl, it's weird. Get in very easily. Yeah, it's true. But the new brand of jealousies are much, much, much more burglar-proof and they're much stronger than the old ones. Yeah, you can lock them down better, that's for sure. Yeah, yeah. So if there's too much breeze blowing, you close them down. When you need the breeze, you open them up. And because they're pretty gosh darn safe, I would say that most people would feel very comfortable letting the jealousies be open when you sleep at night. And I assume that there's no air conditioning in these. No, there's no air conditioning, but the bedrooms do have fans and the living rooms do have fans in them. And that's another thing we built into the code. It's if you've built to the code that we're still, we have yet to formally adopt. And I would say, point out that fans can reduce your perceived temperature by up to 12 degrees. If it's a really, really hot, muggy corner day, you get that, you turn your fan to medium or even high and you absolutely feel cool. Yes. And this is something I've been really discussing with the Department of Energy or Department of Education. You don't need to air condition all classrooms. Many yes, but many will go get by very, very easily with fans. Much cheaper to install and the energy use is almost nothing. And unlike air conditioners, they're not gonna break down after five, six, seven years. The maintenance is much cheaper. And the new fans are made out of composite materials. Does that include your fans, you know? No, these are just your typical ceiling fans. But they do have very, very long lives now. I know the bearings are much better and the lubricant is sealed in there. And we're, our technological improvements are just so drastic and fancy. Yeah, yeah. So why don't we take a look at another slide here? Oh, what in the world is all this about now? Or is this just a fancy photo here? No, it didn't look like that this morning. But I think we're getting a better view of, you can see the sunshades and how they're on the southeast and west exposures. Oh, speaking of which, orientation, were you able to orient, so a lot of windows towards the north range answer? Towards the south, they had a lot of windows. Oh, because so, can you get a view of the sea from these? If not really enough. Steen and your tippy toes on the roof. But you do have a beautiful view of the Nepali. The, the, the mountains, yeah. It's beautiful because you're right across the street from where the tourists go for the lookout. And you can see the tarot farms and everything below. It's really, it's a beautiful location they are in. So, so they have a millionaire's view at a beautiful place. They have a very great view. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and again, I, this is a really clear photo of the, the sunscreens and looks like we've got more land. Oh, is that a barbecue thing? Yeah, there's two little areas for the residents. They could barbecue and again, you could do it at nighttime too, because you have the LED sight lighting. Yeah, yeah. And again, the, the, the eyebrows of the sunscreens are just on the east, west and south faces because you, you don't need them on the north because you get no direct solar radiation. You see how well they're shading. Yeah. An upper window there is completely covered on. Totally, totally shaded. Yeah. How about the lower windows? I see some kind of shading over them. There is on the lower, on the right-hand side, which is, or excuse me, the left-hand side, there's a sunshade on the right-hand side. What you're seeing is, that is the electrical meter closet. And there is a little roof over that, so it's acting like the same purpose as the sunshade. And all of the units are townhomes, I'm gathering. Some two homes to a unit and some three or four? Yeah, well, there's four. So you have one, two, one, two. Oh, oh, oh, there's upstairs, downstairs. I see, I see, I see, I see, yeah. What is the square footage, do you remember? You said you had studios, one and two bedrooms. The one bedroom is 676 square feet, so it's pretty good size for one bedroom. The two bedroom is 875, and the three bedroom is 1,100. And I just read an article and I've had considerable discussions about the needed size of living spaces. And for the longest time, in my opinion, of course I'm slightly prejudiced, we had two gosh darn much square footage. We were talking about the fact that especially on the mainland, you have 3,000, three and a half thousand square feet. And that includes, of course, a large living room. And everyone I talk to says the living room has nothing to do with living. It's kind of serving as a museum. It's your ancestral furniture from your mom or dad or grandparents or whatever. And it's all carefully arranged and sits there and looks pretty, well, nobody goes in. So these smaller sizes, including for families, they're fine and we are much better at being able to construct storage places and all that these days to make the room feel more homey. Then I can remember my grandma had, they had the formal dining room. And do you want to use it Thanksgiving and Christmas? Yep, yep, yep, same here. So we're getting out of time. Here's an interior shot. Let me guess everything is, if it looks like, is that a guest over? No, that isn't electric, but they are all energy star rated. Every appliance and even the fans, the exhaust fans in the bathrooms are energy star rated too. And we gave them some upgrades. I don't know, can't really see, but those are granite countertops. Really? It's granite countertops. My goodness, they had to pay a couple extra dollars for that. No, we did it at what we were, our budget was. Wow. And there was a lot of VE in for this project to get it into budget, but that's something that we take pride in doing on that one. VE being value engineering, and in the old days those nasty value engineers used to say, oh, that efficiency stuff, we don't need that, gotta have a granite countertop instead. Good, so you squeeze that in. So people get a feeling of luxury interior in addition to the exterior. And I don't have a picture of the restrooms, but the restrooms, the water closet or the toilet, it's a dual flush. So that saves on, you know, your water bill or water consumption. And the shower heads are all 1.75 gallons per minute, shower heads. And again. The faucets are probably 0.9 or 1.0? It's very low, I know, on the volume. And even the water heater, that was an energy star rated too. That's an electric, what are you? It's electric. Why, how come no solar up on the roof? They're going to put solar, but it wasn't in the budget right then. You know, the solar, it's kind of pricey, so. Yeah, but I, Are you talking about the solar water? Yeah. I think again, that was a budget driven issue. There is a solar water on the community center, which you'll see a picture of here. Yeah, so you made platinum even with electric water heaters. Yeah, that's a 0.970 efficiency rating, I guarantee that. And there's the community center. So yeah, there's your solar water heating and you've got a metal roof on that. And it looks like a dark roof. Well, it is dark, but my guess is that it's probably permeated with something like titanium dioxide so that you get a high reflectivity, heat reflectance, even though it looks like it's an absorptive material. That's just my guess. I knew that. I couldn't answer that. Yeah, yeah. So what else is going on in the community center there? Well, there's a laundry in there and there's also free wifi for the residents that could go sit there. And if they have to do research or just pass the time away while doing their laundry, they have that luxury. And it's staffed Monday through Friday and then Saturdays. Monday through Friday, nine till I think six o'clock. And then Saturday, it's from noon until five o'clock. And how does the staff serve the residents there? Well, they're the property manager. And you know, they'll go around and they'll fix whatever problems that might occur. They'll collect the rent and, you know, just probably summon to talk to at times too. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that was added amenity. Again, this is all for, you know, property managers don't come cheap. Well, they're not that expensive, but you have to pay them and you still are able to keep the rents. Way way affordable, right? This is just really astounding stuff. Yeah. Anything else you can think about that we didn't cover that got you to lead platinum? Lead platinum is really exceptional. Well, I know all the penetrations, they were either fire cocked or they were acoustical cocked when cocking. And the electric pad, all the receptacles, those were wrapped as well to keep out, you know, any drafts or anything between the buildings. And all the paint was low VOC paint, you know, that. And all the adhesives that were used in it were again low VOC. Which means incidentally that there are no toxic gases coming off of it, so you're utterly totally safe. On the mainland, you have some pretty unhealthy interior air issues, but because this is Hawaiian because you've opened up with the jealousies and used all these safe materials, you've got almost zero impact of any sort of air quality, indoor air quality considerations, that's my guess. I would agree with you 100%. There's a great breeze up there. Yep, yep. Because you said you're up, you know, you're not down in the Gully or anything. And you've designed for that microclimate. And on that cheery note, we're just getting warmed up, but we must leave, thank you so much, Tom, the Groot Project Manager for Unlimited Construction Services. This was an exceptional project. I hope you get some national awards out of this. Well, you know, you never know. Maybe your TV exposure will do that for us. Thank you.