 Good afternoon and welcome to Code Green here on Think Tech Hawaii. I'm Ethan Allen, guest hosting in here for Howard Wigg. Code Green is all about building codes, new novel solutions for building, new ideas, great thoughts on how to make building better. I have with me Mary Jo Masters. Welcome Mary Jo. Thank you. She's with 808 Building Supplies and Solutions, if I recall the name. We're going to be talking about some new technologies that are for sort of insulating or a combination, I guess, of insulating and promoting air flow at the same time. That's right, yeah. So that's an interesting issue with buildings, right? You can't, you don't want to seal them airtight. No. And yet you do want to have a building that holds heat or cool in depending upon. Right. Yeah, so how do you balance those? Well, good question. The really exciting news is, as far as insulation goes, Panasonic have come out with something that's almost, it's revolutionized the type of insulation that we currently have. It's about one inch thickness, as you can see here. And that it has an R60 value, which is like a regular insulation bat takes 15 times the thickness to create that same size. You have to have 15 of the standard fiberglass insulation bat stacked on top of another good R60. To make our 60. And you've got that here. That equals an inch. In one inch. Yeah. Wow. And the little half inch one there shows that's about an R30. And so what that is is it's fiberglass inside a package. It's 70% recycled material, non-toxic. And it's got a little layer inside of an absorbent material in case there's any molecules of wetness. But the essential thing about it is that it has a vacuum. And vacuums will not allow thermal transmission. So in that sense, you get a really great thermal insulation. Like a classical coffee thermos, which was basically a two within or two, basically a vacuum between your coffee and the outside. That's right. That's right. And somehow they've put a vacuum inside this, basically. So you have some sort of thin supporting material with some sort of matrix from being squashed flat by the air pressure. That's right. And it comes in different sizes so that you can use it for roof decks. You can use it in walls. You can use it in floors for refrigeration. You can use it in a variety of ways with this thinness. And some people approach it different ways in terms of the same image on the screen showing some of the different ways it can be used. Right on. And so like if you wanted to put it into poly iso or in EPS panels, SIP panels, you could do that. And that protects it because the one caveat about this is that you must not puncture that vacuum. Right, that ruins the whole thing. Ruins the whole thing. You can't cut these. These panels have to stay intact when you use them. That's right. But that's great. I mean, you can envision that you can make coolers for things much lighter, smaller, with a lot less wasted space. That'd be much more effective, less your stuff cooler or hotter along your periods, as well as using it in much larger scale building technologies. Well, that's pretty incredible that really they've actually figured out how to use a whole the vacuum with a very thin material like that. There must be a rigid matrix of some sort inside keeping it from being collapsing. Well, what it is is fiberglass that's been arranged in a very specific pattern versus a random pattern that normal bats would be. So that arrangement, as well as the vacuum, is what the vacuum is 90% of the thermal insulating is the vacuum itself. But yeah, so everything from tiny homes that are being built, projects and different everything in Alaska and Antarctica, I mean, you name it. It's really starting to get its own legs, because, well, it deserves consideration. Yeah, no, as you say, this is really, I mean, that's an incredible difference if you think about that. Those bats are two or three inches thick usually, right? And that's just for, yeah, like R5 or something. Yeah, so you're talking a huge stack of information versus this one inch. And so, yeah, that's incredibly powerful. So, and obviously, they figured out somehow to make it, although I guess it costs maybe a little more per square foot than standard insulation, but nonetheless, you're going to get great savings over the long term with them. That's right, because, as we know, heat and cold can be detrimental to our building envelope. They really can. And so, in terms of saving the construction materials in terms of less water buildup, things like that, it really does help having that insulation, that insulation. Right, right. Because both, yeah, here in Hawaii, of course, the issue often is keeping things cool rather than keeping things flat. Right. But with this material like this, if you can get some decent airflow through a building, odds are you'll probably stay reasonably cool. Right, yeah. The other, some of these other products I'm wanting to show you today are to do with ventilating, because this is insulating, but there are some other products that are pretty great that have ventilation as their premise. Right, so this is what we were talking about at the very start of the show, is you've got to somehow balance those two, right? Yeah, yeah. It helps to have insulation, but also you need ventilation. Right, classic sick building syndrome, so-called, of buildings that have been too tightly sealed and don't get enough air turnover and begin people, in them again, having those problems. That's right, yeah. I think there might be another slide, perhaps, that we could bring up. I'm not sure. Yep, that's more of the, that's a cross-section of the Panasonic VIP. Right, cross-layer fibers. Yeah, that shows the fibers and the graph at the top showing that tremendous R60 value of that stuff. It's an incredible, it's a game changer. And then the next slide, perhaps, is gonna be showing about ventilating a home, or, yeah. And so what you've got on the sides is some ventilation for, it's called, they're furring strips that they show vertically that give you a layer in between the siding and the house itself. And so, and then on the edges, you see the blue arrows are an indicator of the eave intakes and then the red arrows show where it comes out along the ridge, if you have, right, if you have a ridge vent and you need the eaves to, maybe they could even be greater than the amount of air coming into the ridge, but you, and that's okay, but to have a balance is really where you want it. Right, right. And you don't wanna add a filled with stagnant, hot air, basically. That's right, or in the winter time, you want it to be able to breathe because condensation can fill up inside and it can create mold and rot issues. Right, absolutely. Which, it's no bueno. Right, right, right. Yeah, that's not what we want or need. Absolutely, absolutely. So, this is amazing. So, maybe we could walk through these other products then. Yeah, this is a product made by Sharkskin. It's their ultra-radiant roof underlayment and this is working in conjunction with their ventilated Sharkmat, Sharkskin ventilated roofmat is what it is. And the way it works is, pedestals go up, they're non-crushable and you would cover this over your roof and you would then apply this over the top with the radiant side facing down towards the roof. And as long as you have this air gap, it, and you tie this in conjunction with ridge vent and e-vents, it allows air to circulate in a way that's gonna keep your home in a great stasis of coolant and I guess, warm too. The air flowing sort of horizontally in this case through there. That's right. And it's driven by the differential in hot versus cold. Right, and because of the way these, the baffles work on the ridge, this is kind of a half of a baffle but it doesn't allow water to go inside but it works the same way that an airplane wing works and it draws the heat up. And so what you're doing is creating quite a bit of thermal isolation from, while it's not insulating, it's isolating you from a lot of heat and allowing the building envelope to breathe. Intriguing, intriguing. There's so much very neat stuff happening these days with this kind of technology, other technologies that I had on my likeable science show. I had a guest a while ago talking about radiative photonic materials, these materials that are nanostructured to actually reflect back more heat than they take in, almost seeming to violate laws of physics. Isn't that great. And then they dump heat out of a narrow envelope which our atmosphere is transparent. The material sitting in the sunlight is actually cooler than the surrounding air. Wow. Yeah, incredible stuff is going on and you can just think about it in combination with these things and you can see that we're on the verge of some very, very intriguing ways, new ways of putting buildings together. Yeah, and its time has come because the older way, well, it's a degradation of our materials and its cost to heat and cool these places and this is gonna help humanity in many ways, I think. Right, I mean there are the estimates of the percentage of energy being used currently for air conditioning is already fairly substantial and is predicted to go up rather substantially more as our climate gets warmer and warmer and more and more of the world develops into sort of first world conditions and wants air conditioning basically. We want to delay and defer air conditioning by building correctly, right? That's right, that's right, yeah. Yeah, and I was just going to mention a statistic that we had the hottest record for the world in terms of heat this last month, July 2019. Europe was just breaking record after record after record. I was seeing temperatures of 44, 46 degrees centigrade in like, around, I mean that's phenomenal. Yeah. Off the charts. Pretty warm. Yeah, yeah, I mean there were people who were suffering and dying from that, so yeah. We want to be building using the best available materials now to really take that into account. Yeah, and green materials that are good for our environment that are good for us to use and these represent really the cream of the crop. Yeah, you were saying that these things are largely created through recycled materials? Yeah, 70% recycled, that's right. And they're 100% recyclable. Wow, that's incredible. They are. Because I don't think fiberglass insulation cannot make anything like that claim, right? Right, right, I'm not certain but I assume that that's what it is, yeah. That's truly awesome. So, let's talk a little more about this balance between insulation and airflow. I think maybe the next image, a little more about that. Yes. Yeah, so what you've got is, you've got air that's coming in through events and the way it goes through the, because heat rises, the attic of course is going to be the collector of this heat. And as a result of the ridge vent that you see, well it's hard to see because they make them almost imperceptible to the eye. But this does allow that collection of hot air or vapor in the winter time to escape. And it creates, well I guess quite a big percentage of a savings in temperature. Yeah, excellent. We're gonna dig more deeply into this when we come back. I'm being told we need to take a quick break right now. Mary Jo Masters from 808 Building Supplies and Solutions is with me here today on Code Green. I'm your guest host for today and I'll be right back in one minute. Hi guys, I'm your host Lillian Cumick from Lillian's Vegan World. I come to you live every second Friday from 3 p.m. And this is the show where I talk about the plant-based lifestyle and veganism. So we go through recipes, some upcoming events, information about health, regarding your health and just some ideas on how you can have a better lifestyle, eat healthier and have fun at the same time. So do join me, I look forward to seeing you and Aloha. Aloha, my name is Wendy Lowe and I want you to join me as we take our health back. On my show, all we do is talk about things in everyday life, in Hawaii or abroad. I have guests on board that would just talk about different aspects of health in every way. Whether it's medical health, nutritional health, diabetic health, you name it, we'll talk about it. Even financial health, we'll even have some of the Miss Hawaii's on board and all the different topics that I feel will make your health and your lifestyle a lot better. So come join me, I welcome you to take your health back. Mahalo. And welcome back to Code Green here on Think Tech Hawaii. I'm your guest host, Ethan Allen, filling in for Howard Wigg. And I have Mary Jo Masters from 808 Building Supplies and Solutions here with me today. We're talking about the latest and greatest advances in passive design technologies, green technology, ways to keep houses warm in the winter or cool in the summer and materials that can actually be used in a lot of different situations too. But we were getting in right before the break through this issue of moving air or through and around your house. And I wanted to maybe dig a little more deep in that. I think the next slide sort of gets into this. So why do you want more airflow here? I don't quite necessarily understand that. Airflow is going to do a lot of good things for a home. What it's going to provide is dampness leaving so that it's not going to rot your roof. And when you have wetness inside, it creates an unsafe envelope inside the home with mold and mildew buildup. Also, it's a way to just reduce the heat dramatically within the home in during the summer months. And so your cooling costs are going to go down dramatically. And what that means is it's an incredible cost savings for the home itself, for the materials, and for the homeowner not having to pay higher electric bills or cooling bills to fuel the property. Yeah, excellent. That makes a lot of sense. So yeah, because you don't want a big bolus of hot air just sitting there on your ceiling basically on your walls, picking on and heating up the air inside the house, right? That's right. You want to actually keep that moving away. And I think we have one more slide that shows some more of the airflow idea, right? So you've got this material now. They're showing a horizontal flow, so what's that? Now that is for the walls of the outside walls of the home. And what that does is it also is the same thing as a roof ventilation. This is for ventilation of the sides of the home. And it also creates less moisture buildup. It creates a bit of an insulation from the heat directly to the home. So it gives you the same benefits as the roofing ventilation. In this case, this would be on the outside of the insulation, right? Yes. OK, so this would be the siding, then this airflow, and then an insulating layer. You've got the outside air, then you've got this airflow that is presumably sort of neutralized partially. And then this insulation, and then your inside, which is now staying nice to the ambient temperature. That's exactly correct. Excellent, excellent. No, I mean, there's a lot of interesting, sophisticated science, but a lot of common sense in this too, right? Yeah, it is. Excellent, excellent. So I think we have another image here that, right. So all these materials need to be installed. And we talked earlier a little bit, there are some differences in installation techniques, right? Yes. You can't cut these to fit, right? You've got to get them in the right size. Right, or for the Panasonic panels, you need to order the correct sizes, or you could sandwich them into other Holley ISO or other SIP panels. And that way, you're better insured not to puncture the shell on it. Yeah, yeah, right, the vacuum. You don't want to puncture that vacuum by any means possible. These other roofing materials are not so constrained, right? That's right. And so the shark skin is, I guess, works in conjunction with the event and the ridge vent in creating an air gap with, this is a ultra radiant material that helps bounce back the ultraviolet rays from the sun. And as a result of that, you gain a ton of thermal isolation. Excellent. And what you save so much in the long run for not having your home degraded and also for the cost of the energy. Right, because if you're treating your home's constructed materials well, they are going to last longer if you're not being constantly exposed to high levels of moisture. And they're going to last longer, save money in that way. That's right. They're going to lower repair costs to your home. Yeah, exactly. That's incredible. So all these materials now are presumably getting into a realm where they're getting competitively priced, too, where it's not outrageously expensive to eat. Well, they have to be. They have to be. Or else the consideration is, it makes it less attainable for people. So we have to be in a competitive type of a situation. Sure. I mean, some materials you look at and it's a slightly higher investment and maybe a slightly longer payoff in terms of, but then your payoff after that is really great. Again, you're preserving your home materials better. You're continuing to get the energy savings out of them. So it may be a little higher upfront costs, but if you pull them after five or 10 years, you begin to put money in your pocket for them. That's correct. Yeah. Excellent. Well, that's something all of us want to use that. Amortizing those costs because just like the home purchase, I mean, it's worthy of your assets, retaining your assets to do that. And then the sort of incredible nature of going back to this Panasonic material allows you presumably to make shelters in very extreme environments much more rapidly, simply, and easily than was attainable before. All I would imagine groups who are doing Antarctic research and all are probably very excited to see this stuff because your building has a lot more space, it's not devoted to having thick walls filled with insulation. Right, right, which can be very cumbersome to deal with. And huge shipping costs there and moving costs to get it. That's right. And this is much later, simpler, smaller. I can see that. And it can be applied with adhesive or tape, or you can make frames with it to install with frames. So there's a variety of ways. And it's really, people are just now beginning to wake up to these concepts because we're learning more about things as time goes on. And I'm really happy to be in the know of some of these fun products that are really worthwhile. Yeah, it's great. I think we live in an amazing age when in so many different areas now we're seeing these breakthroughs. Things happen now that couldn't have happened five or 10 years ago. We can do things with our communications now that we couldn't do in five or 10 weeks. We can do things in medicine. But here's a real down to the ground, on the ground kind of practical thing with building materials. We're seeing that same kind of revolutionary breakthrough. And we're able to build better than we were. Absolutely. That's amazing. I mean, where is this? Where is this going? Yeah, it's a fascinating thing. I think a lot of the fact that we use reflective materials comes a lot from space and how we've had to learn to re-enter our atmosphere and things like that. And so that has, I don't know, that's just a guess. But I really don't know if we can throw a dart on the map and think about where we're going to go next. Yeah, it's truly incredible. I mean, when you think of the uses of these kinds of materials and potentially uses beyond just the standard home building industry, they do it. You can envision, does this have an application for air travel or wrapping planes in this kind of installation? Will that make for a later, more energy efficient air travel? It's limitless possibilities. And that's why we leave it to the architects to come up with all these ideas about how to do. That's amazing. I think it's a great example of why I'll make my little plug here of why we need science education for people to keep coming up with better and better ways of doing things, taking materials that we have already of novel, innovative ways of putting them together into new products that will answer human needs in a better way, allow us to be more efficient with the material use, energy use, all of these good things, right? That's right. That's exactly right. Yeah, and it sounds like this group, 8.8 Building Supplies and Solutions, is deeply involved with trying to move a lot of these out into the marketplace, basically. Yeah, we enjoy making the world a better place in a greener way, as green as possible, because it's our world. We live in it. We might as well try to decontaminate our building envelope and live in a cleaner kind of way. And these offer that, just in terms of temperature control. Right, and far less material use here, far less material waste then, far less material getting out into the environment and washing into our oceans. So on sort of every level, these products all seem like winners. Yeah, right. Well, that's super. It's great to know that this kind of stuff is around. I hope you see even more of it in the future, and that you keep pushing people to think more creatively and more innovatively about their homes and how to build them. Yeah, that's the goal. That's why not. It's a passion close to our hearts, and we enjoy being at the forefront of what is out there, what is the best that we can possibly have in this world that is going to be better and more efficient. So great. Let's pop the logo up there for the last slide, and then we'll thank you very much, Mary Jo. It was great having you on here. I certainly learned a ton, as I always do on my guest host. So I thank you for being here. Thank you for having me on your show. I really appreciate it. Great having you, and I wish you the best of luck. Then until next week, I suspect Howard will be back, and until then.