 Green Sink Tech Hawaii November 23, 2020 gives me great pleasure today to talk about or have as my guess one of the easily one of the greenest realtors in the entire state of Hawaii, this Christina Langley Mitre. Is that how you pronounce your name? I've probably messed it up Christina. Lainey Mitre. Okay and she has been she's received all kinds of awards and I know from a lot of other seminars a lot of other activities that whenever there's a green event related to especially housing Christina is right there front and center leading the pack so I'm very very honored to have you with us this morning Christina before I let you launch let me set the table a little bit all of us are stuck at home thanks to the COVID and as with anything there's silver linings one is that we don't get to spend money in fancy restaurants we don't get to spend money on travel therefore our bank accounts are just full full full full up to overflowing maybe so one trend that is happening as a result especially since people are looking around their own homes and the condos more is they're saying wow this place could really use a fix up let's renovate and sure enough one reason why the economy is pruning along at fairly good levels is that renovation has become very very very very popular and Christina among other talents is a great decorator has a great artistic sense and what I would like us to focus on Christina is if people want to renovate and this comes right on the heels of your having founded your new business smart living Hawaii where you can combine renovations with not just energy efficiency which as a member of the Hawaii state energy office is near and dear to my heart we're in the leading state shooting for 100% clean energy and as we reduce energy use in homes and buildings we get closer and closer to that goal so not only are we reducing people's utility bills but we're improving health and comfort and lord knows that these days we are very very health conscious and part of that I have no need to remind you Christina is good air circulation what really really breeds the COVID is if you have several people there are many people in a confined space and the air circulation is pretty stagnant that is the magnet or the COVID so with that why don't you talk begin by talking about your new business oh let's see I should congratulate her Christina recently got promoted to being a Hawaii energy ally Hawaii energy is the outfit that gives rebates away for your purchasing energy efficient appliances and it's a rare breed that gets promoted to be a Hawaii energy ally and gets on their their recommended list so congratulations Christina and why don't you start by talking a bit about what smart living Hawaii does okay well smart living Hawaii foundation is originally started because I started podcasts on different sustainable initiatives across the state and I interviewed different sustainable leaders across the state and most most of them are here on Oahu and like you Howard and what I end up doing is posting them on all the different platforms for podcasts but we also have and hope to be an area where you can go online and learn more about the sustainable initiatives that are that Hawaii is doing so that's kind of the goal and while I was doing this and learning so much through all these different nonprofits and government agencies and things on sustainability I realized how much this connects to real estate and real estate by trade is my forte and I've been in the industry for around 16 years and just recently has this become a movement for I would say across the country so there are some states like California some other states that are maybe about 10 years ahead of us when it comes to a green home or building in that capacity and I know you guys Howard are doing so much to bring our building code up to standard so that's kind of where I'm making a little bit of a niche in that area in addition to residential real estate and helping Hawaii in general you know if they have any questions about how to make their home more green or if there's things that they're doing currently and how to save on electricity bills I kind of just want to be the resource and that's what our team is focused on it you know we can point you to any direction so if you are you know we walk into your home and see what you have you know I can at least give you you know a guide to where you should go you know when it comes to the home that you have or maybe a future home that you're wanting to purchase so that's kind of what we try to offer our services thank you you answered one question you actually do go into homes in person rather than remotely and yes personally very very much a favor that young people are born with a computer in their hands and I think maybe they feel more at home with electronics than they do one-on-one but I think most of us will much prefer the in-person type interview and then you can really really get specific so let's say it's a client of yours is an 1800 square foot home maybe 30 years old ready for renovation husband wife two kids you walk in what type of things do you begin to discuss and what type of things do you look at when you walk into this home I think it really depends on what their goals are so I mean how long are they wanting to spend in the home is this a home they're looking to sell and you know to take into consideration what other people might look at some homes are very specific to the owner and if they're looking at possibly selling in the next five years then when you do renovations you want to take into consideration what the most amount of people would be interested in so when it comes to energy efficiency that's definitely an area where you can spend a lot of money right to save money but there's also a lot of smaller things that you can do to your home that will help you know early you know just right now right away and if you want to be more specific on little items that you can do for entire home I usually then and it's they're really interested in doing that I introduced them to Pono home I don't know if you're familiar with that company but Pono home will actually come into your house and do an energy audit on your home and it's like an over a hundred point check on your home and then you know from there they'll tell you about how much you would save and the things that you can do that won't cost too much and you know a lot of it is handyman kind of work where you would be able to either do by yourself or you could even hire them I mean they'll even you know give your proposal as well and then there's also to the extent of oh you want to do you need you know maybe solar or you're wanting to do solar water heaters like there's a whole like wide range of things that you can do and it really comes down to your budget for one and where you use the most of your energy costs go to you know and that's that's kind of a big thing AC is a big thing right now it's been hot up until I would say what two weeks ago so split AC's I think a lot of people have been putting them in and I think a lot of people do not realize how much just a regular window AC unit runs your electricity bill super high so that's one thing too if all you're doing is looking for AC and you know a more cost-effective route you know it does cost a little bit more for them but your return on investment over you know quick quick time it's worth it for sure and let me interject a little bit I happen to know a teeny teeny teeny little bit about that the window unit AC units that most of us grew up with number one as Christina said they're very very inefficient number two a lot of most of them are noisy and you take that out and you put in a split system which looks a whole lot better it's just this big plastic thing that's on the wall you're usually high up on a wall and it's very very quiet and it's easily twice as efficient what do we mean by efficient easiest to gauge there is miles per gallon the split system I would say we'll get easily twice as many miles per gallon measured in the cold air out versus the water gym and one beautiful part of split systems is they're small or they're available in small so say you have two bedrooms upstairs you can have one split system per bedroom and that's used only when the occupant of that bedroom wants it as when they go to bed they want the nice cool environment boom they go in turn it on boom they've got a cool environment to sleep in they leave in the morning turn it off again that is really efficient and a ditto with say the living room dining room so forth you can have one split system per and just use it when when you want to and they they consume really a small amount of energy and friends with the distributor of the largest residential AC distributor and he says that 90 percent of his sales are now split systems rather than the old fashioned window units yeah that's definitely I would say one of the things that people are looking for too because there's a lot of homes that are still you know on the market and go for sale and then they don't have AC when they have a split system it's such a bonus I know for just you know incoming buyers and whatnot that is one of those things where it's on their checklist these days like AC you know at least split because the wall I mean the window units don't work the same as we all know and then if you wanted to jump into some other things that are more we typically do I think the next is solar and we need Christina we need to take a break so we will take a one minute break and then we will come back and boom solar is on top of our list think tech Hawaii cold green back in one minute afternoon again Howard wig cold green sink tech Hawaii with Christina Lanny Mitre distinguished realtor and Hawaii energy partner that she recently got promoted to that there's an energy efficiency type person I'm very very proud of her for that Christina we left off by talking about the possibility of putting solar water heating on a roof or putting PV photovoltaics on a roof and let me point out a little side benefit to that and put anything like that up on your roof and guess what that's what the sun strikes and underneath you have zero heat gain zero sun solar gain coming through the roof there so that's just a teeny little added benefit you want to talk about the water heating and PV Christina yeah sure I did recently do a blog on it so it has a lot more detailed information so we'll give you that information towards the end but the nice thing about it is I did get some quotes just I guess a scenario of somebody who were to do solar and solar PV so it kind of puts into perspective the return on your investment if you're doing solar water heating or if you're doing PV and you can see how quickly you would retain your money so this is definitely something you would consider for your own home and especially solar solar water heater if that's the only thing you're going to do because it's about 40% of your electricity bill when you're looking at things and if that's the only thing you do you can that's a huge amount of your electricity bill that you would save right off the top and you know between two and four years you'll just recoup that and the one thing we haven't really mentioned yet is all the rebates that you can get and tax credits that you can get for both of these which is money back in your pocket at the end of the day and Hawaii Energy has a really long list of great benefits that you can take advantage of as a homeowner and if you're buying any type of like energy start appliances or you're looking at having split ACs they actually have rebates for split ACs and then also solar options as well so you know just look on there and see what they have and you'll be able to you know take advantage of those which often you know offset your final cost so absolutely and just with regard to solar water heating you get a federal tax credit you get a state tax credit and Hawaii Energy throws even more money at you it's just like you're almost walking away for free not not quite but especially if you have a family about a teenage daughter who likes to take half hour showers and whose main hobby is washing clothes washing clothes you have a tremendous hot water load and the solar guys the installers the ones who get up on the roof there they are all experienced we have the most sophisticated solar water heating industry in the nation and they know how to size they'll ask how many people in there and they'll look at your sun regime and so forth and they size it for just taking care of 90 percent of the hot water load in fact they take care of 100 percent and as Christina said that the old resistance heaters could be 40 percent of your entire bill it goes down to virtually zero that's a tremendous tremendous investment there and Christina you mentioned the energy star appliances those are the appliances with the little blue logos in them tell us something about what energy star is all about well those are designated for more efficient type of appliances so if you are looking and comparing um pricing or even like you know starting to get a new something broke down and you need to get a new one um I would definitely look for the energy star options um and then you can also there's also places like restore Honolulu and you know a lot of times they will get in products that come in because it's um maybe they're no longer making the model but it's a brand new product and sometimes they have energy star as well so I mean it's not always something that's like the high end price point that you're worried about getting so if you do see it it does help and then you can also check and see if you can get that rebate from Hawaii Energy because that's important and that's what Hawaii Energy specializes in is encouraging you to buy the most efficient possible appliances and then they'll give you a nice have the rebate for that just with regard to refrigerators first comes water heating then in terms of the big energy users it's a refrigerator if you have a 20 year old refrigerator 25 years old that might be costing you in energy one oh let's see using 1400 kilowatt hours a year trade that in for the same size energy star refrigerator with all the new bells and whistles 400 kilowatt hours a year you're reducing by 1000 kilowatt hours and as you well know kilowatt hour costs about 29 cents you're saving right off the bat $290 reduced energy bill just from that that's the best of all possible worlds but is that a good example of what energy star is all about Christina yeah I mean and you can also feel good about contributing to your planet I guess too right I mean it's not just money sometimes and more and more it is becoming something that you're doing from the heart for the planet so take that into consideration too and something I would point out is that you and I Christina both believe very heavily in daylighting I'm sitting in a beautifully daylit space at the moment and if you have solar heat radiating on a window so you feel compelled to close the curtains all the time you might consider having a professional install window film on the out on the inside of the window that walks out as much as 70% of the sun's heat and takes away all the UV ultraviolet rays so you're not destroying any of the furniture or rugs and you can open up the curtains and get daylighting and daylighting is good speaking of which health and comfort to me when you're shooting for energy efficiency Christina don't health and comfort come into the equation also yes um actually we just partnered with a wellness magazine for our group because it's they kind of cater to the green rotors and it's something that we're pushing out just now to and we're gonna have a magazine every month that's a digital magazine that you can look at but it's just on wellness for your home and it's actually really cool because when it comes to wellness in your home with COVID obviously it's a big thing now I mean you want to be as clean as possible and find ways to you know how do you make your your home more healthy less toxic so there's a lot of things involved and it's not just um you know the toxic chemicals that you might have in your house or you know the materials that you use it's also the air quality as well so I know if you're a home that has central AC and everything like that you know there is some filtration involved but when you don't and you have airflow maybe Howard do you want to talk more about that because I know you you have a passion for ventilation oh yeah yeah I've uh I'm putting on I'm working with a white energy as a matter of fact to put on webinars about UVC lighting ultraviolet C lighting and as I studied the topic the more I see that the worst possible conditions for the spread of the COVID is when you have a lot of people clustered together without masks with poor airflow so whatever you can do to promote airflow as in homes that are open to the trade winds and we're having beautiful trade winds these days the healthier is the environment less is the accumulation of the COVID possible accumulation so the more you can do to promote airflow the better and that's one reason why we in Hawaii are so healthy is we spend a lot of time outdoors or we spend time in spaces that have really really good airflow going through them so we've got just a few minutes Christina why don't we bring up the slides if we could okay give me oh here's the first slide what is all this about so this is what you have been mentioning in regards to the clean energy allies with Hawaii energy and Hawaii energy is a great partner and they are really pushing very hard to help Hawaii homeowners and residents in a home to be more energy efficient and with that list that you see there there's a whole bunch of different distributors or you know architects or anything in this these different categories where you can go onto their website and go to that link and look up a contractor that fits you know their specific niches and then they just recently added the NER green realtor category so if you have your green designation with the National Association of Realtors and you know you apply through their program and get on their well that's basically what I did so you know and I am a you know certified green designee and so that's why you know you're a little bit more active and know a little bit more about green homes and building and how we can service our clients in that manner and that's what that designation is for so you can check there for other things besides realtors so when we're talking about solar or you're talking about you know ACs and all these different types of installations that you might do you know you can just jump on there and they're all certified so you'll be sure to get your rebates as well tagged on to you know if you're going to do the AC then they make sure that you get that rebate as well with your but with your full total beautiful and all of these this show will be archived with the ThinkTech Hawaii and you'll have you can just look it up shortly after the program closes and have this all this information on hand why don't we go to the next slide okay resources smart living Hawaii what is smart living Hawaii didn't we discuss that earlier what's that all about Christina um this is just a blog I I have been doing this year so these are some of the blogs that might be beneficial or current right now especially involving COVID so you know the solar talk which is what I was talking about that blog you might want to check it out because it has a little bit more details as to how much it would cost for these systems and then you know going down the list you can there's energy costs that go up so things that you can do and then buyer preferences have changed dramatically during COVID and this is across the country so these are some actual things that are here currently in Hawaii that may be relevant for you as a buyer or maybe a homeowner looking to sell and then the last one is on condos because we've we're we're seeing a little bit more of a hold up on condos for various reasons and kind of explain a little bit more there that might give interest to anybody so yeah and on a one who here I believe that something like 43% of us live in condos we're a pretty densely populated bunch of people here so that I think that's very very relevant yeah that's about it okay and why don't we go to the last slide then or maybe it's not the last slide yep this is just your information and we have a couple more minutes just tell us a little well tell us why you're so green Christina um such a broad question in a weird way um I guess I would say that the focus that I would love to see our team in in the next maybe five ten years would be a green realtor and where we focus on green homes and sustainability building you know sustainably but in addition to that it's also led into agriculture as well so I know farming is a big thing and having and being able to have a community garden if you're in a condo or whether you're you know wanting your own garden to grow food is an option as well we want to help and service Hawaii in that manner and last but not least affordable housing so that's a huge one that tugs in my heart when you start working with affordable housing in the state and federal side those have to be and meet the standards of you know what you work on Howard with building codes and everything so a lot that comes on the pike are almost or pretty much lead certified you know projects that come down so I always like to help in whatever capacity I can whether it's from the homelessness all the way to maybe purchasing you know a work first housing or reserved housing units for first time buyers so that's kind of just one area that I like to focus on and a lot of those new products are actually a more greener home too yeah and that leads to something near and dear to my heart namely yeah tiny homes homes that are 1000 square feet or smaller and they're becoming very much more popular for one thing we don't have many of the big families that we had in the old days and now we have fewer and fewer people per residents or condo one or two people is very typical and you can if you really get along together you can fit into 450 square feet very easily the furniture and everything is totally accommodative of that and we know part of my job is permitting you you are now permitted to have an ad u accessory dwelling unit in your backyard and we're working with permitting for homeless shelters also well I I would love to learn more about the homeless shelters that you're working on so I'll have to talk to you about that later yeah yeah but I am not seeing a notification that we are supposed to be done but I think I'm going to take the initiative and say Christina it has been a great pleasure being with you today and again your information is posted the program will be archived just as early as this afternoon so people can get your information and contact you so with that I will build bid fond of you to you Christina and the sink tech Hawaii cold green see you next time thank you