 Welcome to Howard Wiig's Colt Green here in beautiful Hawaii Honolulu on every other Monday at three o'clock. So welcome. I'm not Howard Wiig. How could I? Howard is our one and only. He's not to be replaced, but he's all-violence today on his mission of biochlamatic design, and me, Martin Despeng, has the privilege and honor to welcome him. So Howard is our hero. I had him on my show myself recently, and so Howard in his sort of other life goes out and changes the world, so we actually can do what we want to talk about today. And my guest today is Chris Wittig. We agree that you allow me to spell it the original German way. Absolutely. And so, Chris, you are from Mokalua Builders, and thank you very much for being here with us. Absolutely. Happy to be here. It's a pleasure. And we will talk about one very spectacular project that you guys have been doing on this island of Oahu, and you got awarded for it by the BIA, the Building Industry Association, with a renaissance award for it very recently. And Zuri is so kind to walk us through the project a little bit. We are every now and then sitting on the porch. It looks like they've superimposed this onto the porch of the house. It's a nice touch. Exactly. And now we're up in the sky like birds and look down at the house. So, since we only have half an hour, Chris, why don't we jump right in and you talk about the shits of the house, the nutshell of the house. What is the house about and where is it? The house is about sustainability, and it's on the Einaheiner Ridge by Foodland, and it's up almost to the top of that ridge line, where we have a lot of trade winds and a lot of beautiful landscaping out there. But the house is mainly an energy efficient home, and that was kind of our goal in going forward and building it. A lot of the important parts of the house happened during the design phase. So, most of the details that we go into, we want to make sure that they're in there during design so that we don't go on site and then have to make those decisions as we are building. So, most of those are specced out before we even start. Simple things. Most of the stuff for making an efficient home is very simple. They make it easy enough for every homeowner to do it without costing any more money. So, they've kind of got it down to a science now. If you want to name some, maybe, for the audience. Absolutely. So, we don't usually, in Hawaii, there's a product called Thermorap. It's a fantastic product, and we're one of the only ones using it because they don't sell it here. But everywhere else that lives in hot temperatures with a lot of UV radiation, this is one of the newest, greatest products. It's super easy. It doesn't cost any more money, and it gives you an extra R value for the installation on your house, which is here in Hawaii. That's great, especially against UV radiation. And it reflects the heat out, right? Correct, yeah. It's kind of similar to Tech Shield, which is on the roof. This product is like a Tyvek that you wrap your entire house with. So, it's on top of the insulation, but under the siding, right? Correct, yeah. So, if you were to have a shear wall, it'd be shear wall, then Thermorap, then you're siding. So, it's... Talk, as me being an architect myself, I always treasure and credit the fact that you can make a house without an architect, which I'm sort of not always happy about, as you probably can figure, but you can never make a house without a client, and especially not a good house without a client. So, not to disclose too much personal information, but maybe you can talk a little bit about the client nature of that project, because I think that what it took, you know, a great client and a great builder. Oh, absolutely. That's one of the reasons why they sought us out. We were one of the only green builders on the island that, from start to finish, and they were involved in, you know, you can choose to have your house demolitioned and have all that taken to a landfill. They wanted to make sure that this house was taken apart piece by piece and all the old pieces of the house that were able to be reused. Reused Hawaii came in and did the deconstruction. Which was great. And they got tax credits for doing that. It ends up being a little bit more upfront, but they make it make sense in the back end for tax credits and refunds. And it's a great thing to do if you have the ability to deconstruct a home. So, that was one of the main things that they wanted to make sure that their house was being reused. And then they had the same sense of mind to going forward, not to over build a house that they didn't need. You know, they're going into retirement. They wanted to be, maintain their bills, kind of set everything in and have a durable home. And that's part of how we build as well. You want it to be durable, low maintenance, nothing that requires annual work. You want it to be, you know, build it. Try to maintain as little as possible and just make it easy to live in. Since we cater to a general audience that is generally mutually interested when it says at the bottom of your company's name on your shirt, it said working and people see, obviously, a lot of wood. Or I assume that everything that's white here on the porch in the car is wood. How do you deal with Hawaii being paradise and also termite paradise? How do you deal with that issue? You definitely have to take steps every step along the way. When you're building your foundation, you have to make sure that the termites don't die out here. There's no winner to take them away. So they're constantly going to be a problem. So that's kind of keeping plants away from the home so they don't have anything to crawl on. When you do your foundation, you know, fill your block, don't leave excess holes for things to live in. Build it airtight so that insects aren't constantly getting in. You can still utilize airflow but have screens on everything and just kind of keep it as tight as you can as you build. We even caulk the studs to the floor so that nothing comes through. Even if it gets past the studs for some reason, it'll hit something on the inside. So every step of the way, you just cover it all up. The ancestors in some of these homes are still around. They were built with redwood, and redwood is naturally resistant to termites. So I guess these days are gone. There isn't that much redwood around these days anymore. So I guess there's some solutions. We talked before, maybe there's some collaboration we can do about some research I'm doing in some potential wood enhancement process. So it'll be interesting to do. But how did the client, the owner, the future owner approach you, or how did you guys get together? And obviously, if there's someone interested through this show here, how do they reach out to you? How does that work? Because your company, we have to say, you're sitting here and this is an impressive house. So people might think you're like a super big company, but you guys are actually fairly small, which is a good thing. Obviously, you could grow. There would be not a problem, but I think you guys are proud. You've been around for 10 years and are really sort of a small custom builder, right? Absolutely. If you want to get in contact with us, it's 263WOOD. It's our phone number and my name is Chris. And anytime you're looking at building a new home or if you just want ideas, we're not afraid to... Everything that we know is open information. So any information you want to know about building a new home, if you're just curious or you're actually looking at building a new home, we're happy to answer any questions. And how was it in that case of that home, was them reaching out to you and if so, how did they hear about you? So they heard about us through friends of them actually recommended us. But they've also seen our ads. They've seen what we're about. They've gone through our website. They're like-minded as they want a sustainable home. So that's what they were... That was on their top priority list. So it was pretty easy to find us, especially if it's recommended by a friend. But they were able to kind of, before they called, do a background check on us and check our website out, mokaluahpb.com. And check out all of our past projects. We have a good gallery of kind of... This isn't the only type of house we build. We also do a lot of different houses. You and I talked a little bit earlier. Not everyone wants a lead certified house for certain reasons. But we'll build anything. But we try to add in our little elements into any house that we build. It doesn't cost a homeowner any extra money. But we like to build to a certain standard, no matter what. And one correction we should make, if the audience read the announcement of this show, there was actually Mike Farrell announced to be here. And obviously you're not here, Chris, as I'm not Howard. So we're the things around a little bit today. But please talk about Mike a little bit and what his role is in your guys' company. Mike is the founder and the owner of the company. And he plays a pretty significant role in keeping us educated about all the new green building standards. He actually flew to Pennsylvania for a couple of years to take courses and try to get his green rating license out here in Hawaii. But in that time, he was working for a green company learning everything that we're not doing over here. This is still a learning process for me. I'm learning new things every day. But to come from somebody that does a lot of commercial work that has to do lead certified and then to bring all of that information back to Hawaii is he's played a huge role in making this company successful and also just transferring a lot of knowledge, which has been great for me because I love to learn. So we do hear through you, so thank you for that. Yeah, absolutely. And you're doing mainly residential, right? And you're really committed to make a difference and obviously see a market for more. I myself, as an architect and as an educator where the students always sort of sense a little bit that certain terminology and we get to that, you already made a nice indication about that. We thought we might spend the second half of the show to look into the future and be critical about certain situations, about certain rating systems. But when we talk about sustainability, it's obviously a term that certain industries have almost hijacked and brand everything out of it and not necessarily in the best interest of the philosophy behind it. So you really got to watch out just like when you go for it. You talk about food land, right? It's like look at the labeling and look what's really the deal, right? So it's the same thing that it's about education, as you said. And you guys obviously are interested. That's why you submitted the work for the award, right? So are there any other suggestions you would have to spread the word? I mean, there's word of mouth obviously you were talking about. There's submitting things for awards. Are there any other ways you could think of that would just get the masses excited, right? Because to really have an impact you need to get almost everyone. Yeah, that's a tough question because to excite people about, you know, that's kind of an entire community has to be behind that. And also all these products that we're now bringing in have to be readily available. So, you know, when we tried this six years ago, these products weren't here. We had to ship everything in. It was expensive. You know, you couldn't build green and say that it wasn't going to cost you more, whereas now you can. So that kind of, at least here, excites people a little bit more. They're more in tune to it because everyone can build to that same green standard without costing more. So that's one small part of it. The rest of it is, you know, education. Just helping educate people like, you know, the show. Let people know that if they want to build to a certain standard that doesn't cost more, it's not, but it's environmentally conscious. And so we just need to keep the education going. And I don't know how to get into the masses any more than just being, everyone has to be conscious when they're building a new home because it is one of the biggest sources of waste in the United States is construction waste. So how do you get rid of that? Thank you. Okay, education. We're going to talk more about that after the short break we're going to take, and then we're going to be back with you, Chris, about what Howard gave a very complicated title. We're going to simplify it to the mature majesty. Okay, very good. I'm going to call the project. So see you in a minute. My name is Richard Emory, host of Condo Insider. More than a third of Hawaii's population live in some form of association. And our show is all about educating board members and owners about the responsibilities and obligations and providing solutions for a great association. You can watch me live on Thursdays, 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. each week. Aloha. Aloha. My name is Danelia, D-A-N-E-L-I-A. And I'm the other half of the duo, John Newman. We are the co-hosts of Keys to Success, which is live on ThinkTech live streaming network series weekly on Thursdays at 11 a.m. Aloha. Aloha. Welcome back to Hardwigs Co-Green. Today, his deputy, Martin Despeng, with the guest, Chris Wittig, about a mature majesty that you guys were building on the island. And explain a little bit more. You said there are a couple of more points, like nine of them that make her a majesty. Yeah, so we started with the tech shield. That's just my favorite I like to talk about all the time. But you know, there's also your roofing, Solaris roofing. It's just an asphalt shingle, extremely easy, readily available. Occupancy sensors that turn on and off as you come in and out of the bathroom leaves your vent fan on for a little bit longer so that it clears the moisture out, which is also good for durability. You don't get mold in your bathrooms. Water sense, going through the bathroom right now. So water sense fixtures are just low flow. We did solar hot water, which is required either solar hot water or PV. But after we're done building and we do the solar hot water, there's almost not a need for PV with it. But if you have a large electric bill, then yeah, but we try to avoid that at all costs. And yeah, James Hardy products, just cement board, extremely durable, readily available. And we went with laminate floorings, not laminate but engineered, rather than solid core wood. And so we try to stay away from the solid three-quarter inch wood. That's a lot of tree going into the house. So we try to stick with engineered. Those are just some of the small, easy factors that don't really, you know, those are just different. Instead of choosing this, you choose that. And your bathrooms, those occupancy sensors do a great deal. They're a little product that I didn't know about before, but they just, when you leave, it stays on for a little bit longer than it turns off. It's nice. And all these goodies made you achieve a rating system, right? You want to talk about that, what you achieved? Yeah, so we achieved Lead Platinum, which is one of, as of right now, one of the highest levels of the certifications. So that means we just did all the extra details. And some of those things you can control, some of them you can't, you know, they're close to a grocery store, so we just do that if the home's in a remote location. But we did, you know, absolutely everything that we could to make this a completely sustainable home without going, not doing all the expensive things that, you know, off the grid or anything that tends to get a little bit more expensive. So we're just, it's a very reasonably priced and great home. And that being said, I really recognize what you guys were doing and what the achievements of the project, that this wouldn't think take a while if we wouldn't be constructively critical about what could we do even better. And this relates to our, the host of the show, Howard, who is out and about there, basically to allow you guys to make things even less strictly regulated and controlled. Maybe we take, we talked before the show about the window being a good example of a certain dilemma and also a potential, so maybe you want to share that with the audience. Yeah, so we were discussing using the trade wins here in Hawaii because, you know, the lead program is geared towards putting a blanket code requirements for everywhere across the country whether it's cold, hot, so to, and that means you have to close out your home in order to do the blower test. So you have to be able to shut the windows, jealousy windows don't allow for that kind of closure. So you have to use dual pane. So there are ways around that, but, you know, you do have to be creative to still qualify, so we used awning windows that get almost 90 degrees of opening so they get plenty of airflow, but they do have to be able to lock and the whole house has to be able to close in as if you were to air condition or if you're to heat, if you're in the mainland. So we still have to qualify for those parts of lead, which here in Hawaii doesn't make the most sense, but there's always a way to still get the airflow and meet the lead requirements. And this is the excuse, I guess, or the justification for how it's sort of title of the show, which I can't even anywhere close to say. It's a lingual and an intellectual problem, I guess, that he's just smarter. But he tried to say, and we talked about that before, that there is I think a point where we have to rethink these standards and recognize what you recognize as a builder and he recognizes as the energy consultant of the state and I recognize as the architect and as the educator in that field that lead is restricting us to do what we actually should do and in my show in the head, Howard, I called him Mr. Breezy Easy. He's the guy who actually has been writing an amendment to the local building code, which until then was the IBC, the International Building Code, to recognize these sort of local factors of biochlametics and natural ventilation being one of them. So I think it's great that we're critical about it here in the show and beyond and address that and get it to the policy makers and just saying, you know, it's just you got to adapt it, it just makes sense. We're that one place in the world where we're blessed with these trades and we got to capitalize that. We simplify things because a single pane jealousy window as we're not supposed to make any promotion for certain products or companies, but I think in a certain way we can talk about products and there's some jealousy companies I actually want to have Sean Moseley from Breezeway in my show and so there are companies who basically have perfected jealousy so they're rain tied and no one breaks in anymore and obviously if you make a large overhang that protects them from, you know, getting pounded by the sun, the jealousy has always been and could continue to be the most perfect fenestration device for the islands that currently gets discriminated, right? So it's really refreshing to hear that you guys are sort of share that criticism and obviously not afraid as you're talking about it openly here to get that out and saying, you know, this could even bring the cost of the home even more down. You don't have to bring in, you know, over-insulated windows, so to speak, you know. So that's really remarkable. I kind of like that. And I share it with you, you know, your German heritage and you said, you know, it's been three generations here so we have lost touch with the motherland way back. But I share it with you that passive files which Howard talks about and many say it might become actually, it might replace LEED, which is even more rigorous as far as energy efficiency. 15 kilowatt hours per square meter per year you either, you know, reach it or not and then you get to do something. But it has the same default. It has the same shortcoming which is pretty much the air tightness. It basically says the house has to be hermetic and it almost means that the house runs the human being and not the human being, being the occupant runs the house and that is not making people happy. So all these rating systems basically seem to reach the limits and needs to be kind of reinvented. But again, without Howard, you know, what can we do? It's code is law. So what can we do? We have to operate within code and law otherwise you're going to, you know, work against your client. You're responsible. You're a shareholder. Yeah, if you're going for a certain, you know, in Hawaii, you're not doing it for local code requirements. You're doing it to meet the kind of like exceed the standard of local code. It'd be great if Howard could, you know, kind of change the current code for Hawaii because it's pretty minimal as far as sustainability goes. There's not any sustainability requirements that you really need to follow for code. So these code requirements are going as for more of the lead requirements. So, I mean, I'd love it to see that actually we're acquiring contractors like myself to build a certain level, a higher level that doesn't burden people with, you know, higher energy costs than are absolutely necessary. Hawaii runs their generators off of oil for the most part. So if we can reduce them, the load off of their generators, and if everyone was building the same way, then you'd save millions of gallons of oil and you'd save clients millions of dollars of electrical bills. It's perfect. I mean, I really appreciate your sort of, you know, environmentally conscious sort of thinking and mission. And so I think because, you know, you guys are at the forefront and you guys talk, you're in the most direct contact with the owner, right? So to really make that mindset which happened in a positive way as constructive criticism, it's kind of you guys basically being on there and make this happen. So I really, really appreciate that. And little did Howard know that we got to charge him in his show with doing that, but he's already doing it. I think it's just going to be encouragement for him to go out and go even further. And basically, you know, at the very end, bring it back when I'm looking again at woodworking, you know, there's a tradition on the island. There's the Hawaiian holly. It's all the easy breezy, you know. There were no fenestrations. And maybe, you know, it sounds, these were the days, then it was then and now is now. But, you know, maybe there is a way to reconnect to that, to really fully embrace what's so important and so special about it. Why? And sort of strip down more the invasive that we had to take on from the ones who contacted us here, right? And to strip it back, literally and figuratively speaking, to the necessary, to the bare bones and embrace that more. And I've been sort of asking you before, you know, how open you guys are, and you're already very open, which you demonstrate with this house, but I just was asking, you know, how far do you think one could get together and go together? And I was, you know, throwing out this sort of crazy idea about my experience here, having been here four years, that it's always this conflict between the wall and not a wall. And there are people who say I need a wall because otherwise I feel watched and, you know, it gets too cold or it gets too warm for whatever reasons. And there are people like me who always said I need no walls. And it seems these two fronts are like clashing into each other. So I was briefing you. The building code will fight you on that one too. They have, you have to follow the, all the walls have to be pretty much closed in. You can't even, you know, if you wanted to have an open walkway between, you had two portions of the house, you'd have to enclose that. Otherwise it's considered two units. There's a lot of little laws that don't allow you full openness. So there's always ways around that too, but I like your idea about the movable wall. You want to share that, please? With the other solutions? Yeah, with the movable wall, the rotatable wall. Well, the rotatable wall, we've never done that before, but usually how we skirt the rules is rather than, you know, having a movable wall will have a large stacking door system so you can open up the whole house. But that also has its limitations because now you have, if you just have glass there, that whole area has to be non-usable basically. You can't furniture there or use it for other things. It's just a doorway. Whereas if you had a movable wall, you could use it when you wanted to, have it for storage. You can still make a living room if you wanted to and open it out into the backyard, which would be a beautiful thing. But yeah, it's... So the vision would be you basically slice the walls and you make sort of vertical jealousies and you can, like, the gills of a fish, you know, very sort of seamlessly open and close. And at some point it's the question of the gaskets and the seam, of course, which you can figure out technically, but either you have the wall closed and you have the wall open. So you've been working on this. I hope you come up with a, you're an architect. You can full design and we're open to building. I mean, we've been in business for 10 years. So people come to us with all kinds of ideas and we're open to everything. We've seen solutions for the homeless problem. People want to call us for information to see what we can add to that and they give us the building that they would like to do. And you know, it's... So we're open to look at any project and we're excited to... When we see new projects, especially with the homeless, I was talking to someone in the room before about the modular homes that they're talking about, bringing in the wire there. I don't know if they actually started to do that, but that's another easy drop ship. Taking care of some homeless issues. We appreciate it. Thank you so much for having been here. Chris, it was a pleasure and keep up that revolutionary work. Fighting for excellence in bio-kinematic design. So thank you so much. Keep on pushing. I appreciate it. Is that 30 minutes already? It was. It was. Oh, wow. So thank you guys for watching us. Thank you, Chris. And see you guys back for Howard on his show called Green every other Monday at 3 o'clock here on Think Take a Why. Thank you.