 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Good afternoon, Howard Wigg, Code Green, Think Tech Hawaii. We're talking today about resilient homes that can withstand just about anything and be affordable and be comfortable and be resource efficient. Who else could put all of this together in little old Hawaii? Mr. Dennis Suzuki, Factory Authorized Representative for Strata International. What in the world is Strata International? Just a little company, 34 billion annual sales. Thank you very much all over the world. And we're going to get into the details of what makes Strata's buildings really, really, really special and particularly applicable to Hawaii. So welcome to the program, Mr. Suzuki, and thank you so much. Thank you so much for inviting us. So first give us a little background about what Strata is all about worldwide. Strata is a company that makes foam houses in one area that is insulated. And it's durable, low income housing. We also can go high end, commercial housing, and we can go up to several stories high. And our job is to make the shell on it. And we insulate the item with polystyrene as well as we use some additive. And we also use sand. And we also use items like some sort of adhesive to put them together. And it's a great thing for Hawaii. And this falls under the general heading of modular homes where you make building components, especially home components, at the factory, ship them in such that they can fit into a mats and container and onto the back of a truck. And then you truck them to your construction site. And say for a typical home, how many guys would it take, assuming that you've laid your slab, how many guys would it take to assemble, say, a typical 2,000 foot home? First of all, you don't need to have skilled labor. We can go on the raw end of the program. And we don't need any cranes, lifts or anything. They can do it themselves. It's lightweight for shipping. And it has a frame construction to lift out, bonded on one corner. And the homes can last more than 100 years. Yep, yep. And we're going to see the details of that if we could bring the first slide up place out. Now here is a cross section of your typical wall construction. Can you? It looks like an extruded polystyrene interior. And then, you have any idea what subscrete is? It's a cement. Now, what I'm wondering is, Hawaii is rich in certain natural resources, including basalt rock. I wonder if, and a lot of our concrete comes from that locally mined basalt rock. I wonder if the local basalt could be, if we went into assembly or manufacture locally, if the basalt rock could be ground up and used as that component. Well depending on where the rock is at, because I got a call from the people who want to use the volcano. And I'm against that because it might happen to seal her item. So what we can do is that we can consider the sand because it's something that we already have. We can have things like, it's an expanded polystyrene, but this has nothing to do with the polystyrene on the lunch container. Okay. Oh, totally different. Totally different. Okay. The adhesive that we make is going to be a fantastic thing to bond it together. And all we're looking at is finish. It's going to be at one and a quarter inch, one and a half inch, depending on where we put it. And the thing is this, is that the thing is strong. It can go hurricane, high winds, it can keep the temperature very, very cool. And it is a wonderful item. And one thing, one of the buzzwords that's going around the architectural community and the building community recently is resiliency. We know that more extreme weather is coming, coming. We've already experienced quite a bit of it in the last few years. And it ain't going to get any better. We know that. So the city planners and the state planners and architects, engineers are revolving around the idea of resiliency. And it sounds like this type of structure is kind of the ultimate in a resilient structure. It's going to take just about anything that Mother Nature can throw at it. Yes. Thank you very much. As you know, there's no framing in this. And you can shape it any shape you want. We even help the zoo if we need to. Superior performance, insulation, reliability, structure integrity. And we can compete with what's out there and get it cheaper. And as you were inviting me, it's green, eco-friendly construction material. And it's very fast to assemble, requires no heavy equipment, very lightweight, safe construction for unskilled workers, as I mentioned to you. Two-part system make for simple logistics, inexpensive to build while staying extremely durable and safe. And your part of safe is the weather, you know. And of course, we build a water table so we can do that in Cacaco or in Mapuna Puna. It looks like just from what you've shown me about how this thing is assembled that it really and truly is waterproof. So if we have flooding events and the water starts sloshing around, I think all you need to do is just ensure that the water doesn't get through the doorwells. It floats. It floats. Just like your boogie barn or just like your surfboard, it floats. So if we're in a lower part of Mapuna Puna and the flooding came up, it would just float up. And then when the water resided, it would go right back down again. You can't get much more resilient than that. So why don't we look at the next slide because you've got all kinds of different offerings. Now this looks like a thermal analysis about where, say, the heat is coming through the building. Do you know any detail about this? Yeah. When they design the thing, they have to make sure what the weather is like with the sunrise, the sunset, where they put in the equipment because you cannot put high-tech equipment in a warm place. Because it's producing heat as it is. That's everybody's problem. And you cannot put, if you need to put an overhang to make the rain go away, then you need to put what you call an extended roofline. And the thing is that this building is on the big island. This is a rendering of a big island building. Yes, it's a big island. All the colors you see there is all made out of the foam. So we can build any shape you want. And our job is to make sure that when the architect or the designer makes it, we double check it and check it. And we have to make sure the foundation sits where you're going to put the weight on it. And because ours is so light, it can hold the weight. So in this particular instance, this is a very, very complex building, the architect would send the specs to the factory. I think you have worldwide factories because you're worldwide. I assume there's one on the mainland. And they would figure out how to build the different components and how to make the components small enough so that they can fit under the back of a truck. So that you put it in a medicine container or whatever, ship it over here, it gets offloaded to trucks. And then the different components get shipped to the building site. You have your foundation ready. Already made. I had a tie ready, waiting for our unit to go on. And then it just, as you said, just takes a few guys to assemble it. And it could be if you unskilled guys, of course we've got nothing but skilled people here in Hawaii. We can use unskilled. Yeah. Yeah. We'll bring the people from the mainland to help. Yeah. And we get them going. So what we can provide is that we provide technical training, field training, construction and technical design. We can help structural technology, construction estimate, which we'll give. And training on CAD and software application, we even negotiate with the county code official to tell them what's right and what's wrong. Mm-hmm. We don't provide plans, equipment and produce our brand. And provide fire coding to suppress four hours. Yeah. Yeah. Just like Macapolo. We need to work on that. Yes. Yes. So I happen to be chair of the Hawaii Building Code Council. So we have all the different building codes sitting around a table once a month. And you struck on some of the basic concerns that we talk about as we're sitting around. Of course, after the Macapolo, we're all very, very, very fire conscious. Right. We've had some bad, bad residential fires just in the last couple of weeks, too. So it's something that we certainly can't solve overnight, but we really, really need to address it. And building with this type of material goes a long way towards doing that. Okay. Because we insulate the thing, we have high insulation, lower operation costs, which you concern about energy, extremely durable, lower maintenance costs. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Make non-combustible material, eliminate the possibility of structure fire. Mm-hmm. And structure is easy to modify, remodel, to reproduce the building if they want to do it for their children to make an extension, or we don't want to do so. We can do this to help them. Mm-hmm. And you mentioned high insulation. There's two ways to build, say, a residence in Hawaii. Either you make it really open, like our ancestral buildings, the type of home that you and I grew up in, single wall construction, so far, big windows, or you can seal the building up. And the homes that are going up in the Eva Plains and on the neighbor islands in the subdivisions, they are centrally air conditioned. So the better insulated they are, the smaller the AC unit can be. You're right. Because you don't have heat pouring in through the walls and the windows and so forth. And you mentioned overhangs, the more you can overhang, say, windows. You don't get damages. Yeah. Yeah, from the weather and the rain, like, you know, and I noticed a lot of houses are built next to the coal house. I keep on telling the businesses and people, move the building this way. Make your entrance on the opposite side. Don't do it that way. Make it so the water is not close to the house, away on the ground, away, and not put the water or the air conditioning dripping on the dirt next to your house. It'll cause termites. And by the way, our building is termite free. Yep. Yep. And polystyrene. Yes. Yes. A lot of things, but not EPS. Can we see the next slide, please? Okay. So the big island home that you showed, or structure, is obviously a luxury structure. Here's an example of another one. We just wanted to make certain that you, to say that you build on the high end and then we'll see the affordable side. So this looks like it's right on the coast. And another consideration is that from what I can see, the components of your building are resistant to salt air. Yes. Very, very important in Hawaii. I think every one of us has experienced the salt water damage, even miles from the ocean because the salt air is virtually everywhere. Yeah. We have three components. Now, two components on that. It's a shell of the foam. That's one thing. And we do have quarter-inch of insulation that will reflect, keep the walls from getting damaged. And it's easy to paint over, but you don't normally paint. We have the insulation paint that you can do it. And this will keep the salt air, the wind and the rain away from the house. And you said one of my favorite words, which is reflectivity. Yeah. Energy codes guy for the state. And I emphasize three things. Reflectivity, reflectivity, reflectivity. And I saw where you're building, that building is white, and we'll see the affordable housing. Those are also very light colors, which are ideal for a tropical climate. But on that cherry note, we need to take a break. Our wig code green with me is the honorable Dennis Suzuki factory authorized rep for Strata International back in a moment. Welcome to Sister Power. I'm your host, Sharon Thomas Yarbrough, where we motivate, educate, empower and inspire all women. We are live here every other Thursday at 4 p.m. and we welcome you to join us here at Sister Power. Aloha and thank you. Aloha. I want to invite all of you to talk story with John Wahee every other Monday here at Think Tech Hawaii. And we have special guests like Professor Colin Moore from the University of Hawaii who joins us from time to time to talk about the political happenings in this state. Please join us every other Monday. Aloha. Good afternoon again, Howard Wigg. Code green Hawaii, Think Tech Hawaii. The honorable Dennis Suzuki is with me and we've been talking about what he reps and so far we've looked at high end structures. Let's go, Mr. Suzuki, to affordable housing because almost every day we're asking ourselves how to get affordable in a place like Hawaii. Now here's an example of affordable housing. Nothing very fancy, but I don't think the homeless people on the street want anything very fancy. They just want a nice roof over their head. So what is this home all about? Well, first of all, that building is made out of the core of our product. And what it is is that we can bring it in like that if you like or we can have fast assembly. You know, we come out all in pieces and we can cut it to size. We have the equipment cutter and everything and required no heavy equipment to do this. Very lightweight, safe construction for unskilled workers, two parts making a simple logistics, inexpensive to build while staying extremely durable and safe because of our weather. And let's look at the slide after that because it's kind of similar. Here are examples of affordable housing under construction and I don't see any heavy equipment floating around there. And again, I like the fact that the exteriors are white or cream colored because that is exactly what we need. That's right. Not clack, not any dark colors. If you're going to, the fact that you're retarding the sun's heat from getting into the building means that you need little or no air conditioning, very often just a ceiling fan, we'll do it. And that's a great way, number one, to decrease your construction cost, number two, to get your utility cost monthly down to just about zero. So let's look at the next slide then. Okay, now as I mentioned, you can direct the factory, not you, but the architect or contractor can direct the factory to build to such and such specs and it can be sized such that you can get, is this the whole home? It looks like maybe a quarter of a house. You put them all together. And it can come in like this on maybe we can do it to maybe a barge company, break it in, maybe 50 of them one time and assemble maybe during the weekend, you know, you can do it once the floor is paved with concrete. So it would just be the barge or the boat would pull in to the pier, the trucks would line up and offload these components right at the pier onto the truck, off the truck goes to the building site. And that, oh yeah, here's, well this looks like, oh yeah, here it is, lifting that component and getting it right onto the site. So do you think that the building on the right is maybe several of these types of components? Yes, it's about maybe eight of them put together. And as you said they're, because they're so rugged that they are resilient against say hurricanes, earthquakes, whatever Mother Nature might throw at them. Oh and termites. Termites, oh I was surprised. And you showed me some specs earlier. These can be built at an estimated cost of $135 a square foot. Now that does not include the electrical hookup or the plumbing hookup. Right, nor the foundation, nor the land. Oh yeah, about $135 per square foot in Hawaii is pretty gosh darned inexpensive shall we say. We often see estimates double that and even close to triple that on a per square foot basis. And we're looking for affordable housing for goodness sakes. And our material is that we use are all eco-friendly. And if you burn the foam, yeah, it doesn't cause black smoke. It's already treated and what we do is that we can recycle them if you like, you know. But we're trying to make so that we don't have to get rid of all our trees. We leave it there for Mother Nature for a future generation. And it looks like there's little or no metal involved. There's no metal. I served on a PhD evaluation committee at UH Architects just recently and the thesis of the student was to take as many local materials as possible and use them in the construction of homes and buildings. And he certainly came up with modular construction also. Yeah. Any wood that we get has to come from the mainland. Any metal we get has to come from, usually, it's Asia. But we can use, I believe, some local materials here. Yeah. I'm sure it can be done. But the thing is very, how you can say, it's bonded together to make a stronger finished product so it doesn't fall apart. In other words, on the end, it's all bonded. Homes, like I say, last 400 years for superior traditional manufacturing homes. And we can do this right away by doing low income housing. And all we need to do is get a design and we can get a price, whoever is on the program. And people will love it inside and it's cool. Yeah. It has fans. You can put fans and blowers and the thing is that people will love it in the hot sun. Yeah. Yeah. You're keeping that hot sun out. When you mentioned 100 years, another thing that we always look for these days is what's called resource efficiency. Number one, the materials that we're building with here are energy or resource friendly, eco-friendly. And number two, they're not going to fall apart after 30 years. We can just do the refinish and paint it and the thing will be up there. And as we noted also, salt water resistant because a lot of our problems come from the salt air, even away from the coast from salt air penetrating. Yeah. Let's look at the next slide here. Ooh, what is a float house? The float house is built on the water. As you can see it from the picture, it has, you can have the foam with concrete that is in the water. Of course, the bottom part is concrete holding up the building, but this makes it very warm and cool and very exotic for having a float house. And people love it, especially people who live close to a river or they want to put something, put water around them, it will work. And again, I bring back that word resiliency, we're finding more and more and the insurance companies are really getting concerned about this. People love to live near to bodies of water, but guess what's happening? Those bodies of water are going up and up and up as the glaciers melt. We've got no problem on that. They will float. This is like a surfboard. We can see this already on the North Shore, out in the country area, where sometimes our Cam Highway is getting washed out. And the homes right near to there, if they're halfway new, they're up on stilts already. But in this case, you have your kind of built-in stilts because your foundation is number one raised, and number two, it's resilient, it's resistant to the forces of even saltwater. We also can build fence to protect from the wave from coming in, and this form will stand up to the wave, because if we can stand up to 260 mile an hour wind, 260, it can stand the wind and the rain and the wave. I was in Guam a few years ago, and they were in the town area, there were a lot of concrete slabs where there used to be buildings. And I said, what happened here? They said, not long ago we had a typhoon, they have typhoons over there, with 183 mile an hour gusts. And even though Guam's buildings are, they know the typhoon is coming, they still couldn't build strong enough. So what we need to do is that, like I would go to Japan or the Philippines, I find out they're building close to the water. I told them, like Hawaii, we should sail away from the water, put up recreation area, gym area, football field, whatever we want, and we should live in the mountain, on the mountain, like Hong Kong. Or like Hilo. After the 1946 tsunami, they just made that coastal area, they just made it into parkland. And we can build the houses onto the mountain, we will not fall down, we will get it going, and people will be much happier. And we should save all the agriculture land, and build affordable housing or middle income houses, or whatever you want to do. Well, what I like about this is you are emphasizing affordable. And one big reason why you and I and everybody else see all these people being homeless is they have, they're not bums from the mainland, these are local people who have been priced out of their homes, just can't afford it. It can, our program is very affordable and very competitive. And we like to go in and help people like them, as well as everybody else. But we need to get our product in. I haven't talked too much in Hawaii about this more abroad that I go, I fly out. But we need to get this stuff out on the market and save our people. And maybe, not maybe, we should get them to work for us too, to build their own house, we just provide the material, and this can be done. Yeah, yeah. And under supervision so that it's a very, very nice, safe, secure home also. Right. Yeah, yeah. So Mr. Dennis Suzuki, you said you like to help Hawaii. And I think that we have illustrated this very, very, very nicely. Oh, and I should say disclaimer, neither I nor the state of Hawaii nor the state of Hawaii are authorizing or endorsing these strata products. We are here strictly for an informational session. But we wish you all the best in your endeavor and look forward to reading about you in the paper as you supply affordable housing. Thank you very much for inviting. It's been a while since I've been trying to get people to listen to all the products that I have that I sell. But my job is to make sure when we have equipment and systems, it has to meet Hawaii's climate and weather and everything. And not just say, I'm going to build a road, I'm going to do this. And it doesn't work like that. And when we spend the money, we have to make sure we have the longevity of a good, long living house for our children's children. Well, I chair the Energy Efficiency Committee for the Hawaii Building Code Council, and I wish you there 100%. And just about everybody I know is with, cheers your dream. Thank you so much. A resource efficient, energy efficient Hawaii. On that very, very cheery note, we bid farewell to Dennis Suzuki and our beloved audience, Howard Wigg, Code Green. See you next time.