 Hi there, I'm Nate Adams and welcome to the Electrify Everything course. So we are going to begin the course with talking about what your why is. So we need to start with why. This is really, really important because I can't tell you how often I've watched friends and colleagues go down the cheaper but just as good path which is the path to hell is the other thing it's known as. And so you have to be really careful when you're doing this. So you are very likely an early adopter if you're here because electrification is not super common yet. And so it's really important that if you do a project you do it in a way so that when you show it to someone who's more of a mainstream market person they find it compelling. So your house needs to be comfortable, it needs to be quiet, it's nice if you can show them your bills are reasonable because that makes a lot of people nervous. But to do that you typically need to buy better stuff than what the basic equipment is. Single and two-stage equipment generally delivers mediocre or even poor experiences. So if you're going to spend more money there needs to be more value, it needs to be worth spending more money. So one of the first things to begin with is think about what you would pay every month for the rest of your life if your life could be electrified. When I ask this question typically about the highest answer I get is about 25 bucks a month. It doesn't buy a lot. So to work around that it's not really that hard. You just want to think about what things in your house are annoying. What would you like to have be more comfortable or not have a noise issue or reduce your allergies. Things like that. So that is what this Venn diagram is all about. This is the Venn diagram from the HVAC 2.0 comfort console. You're going to keep hearing about that. It's a very specific process that we built to make electrification far easier for both of you and your HVAC contractor who's likely going to be the one doing the work. So you need to understand what are your goals. What bothers you about your house that you want to fix. Then you need to understand what does your house need. And then lastly you need to understand what the budget is. So the budget, this is very very important. The budget is not about what will it cost. It's about what is it worth to fix or achieve these goals. That's what it's all about. So this is a question of value, not price. Very very important to understand because you want to think your way through this and you may end up deciding let's kick the can down the road. I would much rather you do that and wait until your HVAC is a bit older or you move to a house that you think is going to be your forever house. That's the time to do this. So it's very important to kind of get your why together and decide if this is really what you want and if you're willing to spend the money. Because again if you're going to do this, do this in a way that you can show your friends and family and they'll find it compelling instead of oh yeah look it's so and so got the latest whatever and then I heard about it breaking and blah blah blah. You don't want that reaction. It needs to be holy crap. I can't believe how comfortable this house is. That's the reaction you want and that's the reaction we consistently get in our projects. All right so here's where we are in the syllabus. We're right at the beginning. We have to start with why today. Next time we'll talk about how to scale electrification. Then we'll talk about what size panel you need, an electric panel for your house. Then we'll look at all of the appliances except for HVAC. Then we dig into HVAC and there's a whole bunch there. That is much more complicated than most people realize. Very doable. It's not that hard but there's a lot more to it. You don't just change the equipment and call it good. Then we'll talk about insulation and air sealing and lastly we'll talk about finding a contractor. So that's what we'll be doing. All right starting with why. There are four basic buckets that goals fall into. So I've got the Venn diagram hiding over here. And so the the biggest thing that most clients have called me for in our practice is comfort issues. So a really common thing would be over a garage you have a bonus room there and it's 10 or 15 degrees colder than the rest of the house in the wear time. So it's so cold that that space doesn't even get used or it takes a couple of space-eaters to make it comfortable. That's an important thing to know because I mean that's that's expensive square footage that you're paying for but if you can't use it part of the year you know do you want to get that space back. So that's one example another example really common thing that's happened here last couple of years our summers have been on the warm side. So a couple of clients have said it's so warm on my second floor in the summertime that I just go sleep on the couch. I'd like to be able to sleep with my wife again really common complaints. But that's something that is a good goal and these need to be emotional goals. So if you're thinking we call it intellectual BS and I don't mean building science. So you want to dig deep and think about when something bothers you why it bothers you and then begin thinking about what is it worth to fix. Because all of these things come together. So what comfort issues do you have in your house. So there are any rooms that don't heat well any rooms that don't cool well. Is your wife or your husband always complaining about one room or another. Those are the things to think about. Second bucket is health and safety. So a big one here recently is wildfire smoke. So we just took a big trip all the way around the country and we bumped into wildfires four separate times on our trip. Couple of them were burning couple of them had just come through and really made a mess of things. But wildfire smoke is really bad stuff to breathe. So if that's something that bothers you you want to have really good filtration for that kind of thing. But that is something that's going to cost some money to add to a system. It's not necessarily a fortune but it's something. If you have allergies so you come in outside and your nose is running and you're sneezing and you come inside and you're still feeling the same way that shouldn't happen. You should be able to clean the air in your house enough that it is a safe haven from allergies. Or if you have a child or yourself that has asthma. Those are really common things that can usually be affected by either HVAC or insulation and air saline. Third category is durability. This is moisture problems. So if you have mold and rot you have termites. This relates to a whole bunch of other pests too. So stink bugs can be a piece of it. Ants can be a piece of it. If you're getting mice in you have holes somewhere that they're able to sneak through. So you need to figure out what those are and seal them up. Or if you've got drainage issues outside. So you've got water coming through your foundation walls into the crawl space or basements or inside the house. These are all things that need to get dealt with. Because if you don't control moisture the moisture will tear your house apart over time. And the last one is efficiency. Now very important part about the first three. These meaning comfort health and safety and durability. These are all really good goals. So again when you're going to electrify. If you want to have a good result you usually have to look at higher end HVAC equipment. Which means you're going to be spending at least several thousand dollars more than a basic system. It just is. That's okay. There just needs to be value for it. So these three things typically carry some value to most homeowners. And we're not talking a huge amount of money. Like a hundred dollars a month buys fourteen thousand dollars over fifteen years. And that will typically buy an HVAC system. Depends where you are in the country and a bunch of things. But that's a basic idea. So these are all really good goals. And you want to make them emotional. Like I said get that intellectual BS out of there. Make sure that you're thinking emotionally. Like I can't sleep with my wife in the summertime. That's a good emotional goal. One client they like making bread and their kitchen counter was so cold that the bread wouldn't proof. And so they wanted to be able to make bread. And that was one that my partner did. And he got it so their bread would proof. That was a wonderful emotional goals. Think about your emotional goals. The one that sucks though is efficiency. So you're going to be paying more for equipment more than likely. And electrification versus gas it depends on a bunch of factors. Like if you happen to have cheap electricity and expensive gas. Yes a heat pump will look better. But I don't really know any markets in the U.S. that are like that. Usually they're either kind of close to each other. Or sometimes electricity is more. So if you're expecting to save a fortune in heating and cooling costs. I need to disabuse you of that thing. And so I really hate the efficiency argument. Because as soon as you mentioned it oh what's the payback. So now we granted we do pretty advanced projects with our practice in Cleveland. So they're not inexpensive. But the paybacks on our projects usually run somewhere between 50 and 500 years. So the house isn't even going to be there. Theoretically when the payback finally happens. It will have fallen over centuries earlier. So efficiency is not the way to look at this. So if you're pulled there or you're told to expect massive energy savings. Somebody's lying. I learned this years ago. If I want to be a liar talk about energy efficiency. It just usually is not the case. There are some exceptions. You know oil heats really expensive. So maybe the math is okay on that. But don't expect payback on efficiency. So efficiency is a really bad goal. Stay off the payback. Now we've come up with a pretty simple tool. So it's kind of funny how there's always quizzes online. They don't seem quite as crazy as they used to be. That's but remember the joke. Like you can take a quiz to find out what kind of potato you are. So we have the comfort quiz and it's four questions. In the case of this quiz I added a few extra ones about electrification. But the four questions are really simple. It's do you have any problems with comfort in winter. Any problems with comfort in summer. Are there any health and safety problems? And are there any durability problems? That's it. So there's a quiz. There will be a link below to go take that. And apologies. It's a Google form and it's going to collect your information again. I'm sorry. I didn't know how to do it otherwise. But if you put your email in there, you will at least get the results of the quiz. And if you're uncomfortable with that, don't put your email. Just run through the quiz and see what your score comes up with. But this is an important thing. Because this will ask you to rank all of these on a scale of one to 10. From not a problem to a big problem. And it'll help you begin to work through what you want to fix. So what your goals are in your house. And then next up you'll need to understand house needs. And then your budget. And there is a question in here about your budget. So what is it worth? Not so much. What will it cost? So these are the important pieces that you want to run through right now. You want to start with your why. Why are you wanting to electrify your house? And make sure that your reasons are good enough for you to get over the finish line. And not to cheap out and then have a disappointing result. Because I don't want to be blamed for that. So very important exercise to go through. Which is why it's first up. All right. That's it for today. Take that quiz. It'll only take you a minute or two to fill out. So I'm Nate Adams. Have a wonderful time. A wonderful day. And I will see you next time. Bye-bye.