Matt Whitbeck from This Old House and Construction Educator

[: 00:00:00

[00:00:28] Eric Goranson: But we talk everything about high performance homes and working with the guys over there. You're not going to want This one, it's great for more information. Head over to around the house, online. com. You can find out more about the show. Now let's go start a great episode here that you might've missed with Matt Whitbeck and Whitbeck construction.

[: 00:00:47

[00:00:54] Eric Goranson: the house. Welcome to around the house show. This is where we talk everything [00:01:00] about your home every single week. Thanks for joining us today. I don't know why this is the first time he's being on the show, but Matt Whitbeck, Whitbeck construction.

[: 00:01:09

[00:01:27] Matt Whitbeck: yeah. That was a good hookup. Ty's awesome.

[: 00:01:29

[00:01:36] Eric Goranson: Yeah, man. And then sheesh, got to see you, your mug on the TV all this last year with, uh, you being the official contractor for this old house project.

[: 00:01:46

[00:01:59] Matt Whitbeck: And we had [00:02:00] like the funky, crazy giant antenna. So we had like four stations and one of them was PBS and. And that was the jam, man. I loved it.

[: 00:02:08

[00:02:20] Eric Goranson: And, you know, it's honest, which I love. What, what was the experience for you going through that man? We'll just dive into that. Cause that's gotta be some hoops to jump through to begin with.

[: 00:02:30

[00:02:44] Matt Whitbeck: So I had at least a little bit of experience with working on camera. Um, But I didn't know what to expect because I've seen some various things between doing like a, a simple, small YouTube show to doing some commercials. You see various things between audio and video. Um, [00:03:00] I did work with one professional actor doing some commercials, which was really neat to later on, turn on a television and see him on like an actual movie.

[: 00:03:08

[00:03:33] Matt Whitbeck: And, um, so he's giving me some of that stuff, you know, telling me about what happened. So I, I didn't know what to expect. And when I got into it. Like you said, it's real, it's actually happening. We're building the house, they're coming in. It's a lot of, um, you know, the various professional members of their staff coming in to do interviews with all of our trade partners and it's, it was great.

[: 00:03:56

[00:04:03] Eric Goranson: Yeah, it's funny. Growing up, I always thought the show was different, but now that I've, you know, been in the, in this industry for about 30 years now, I start to think of it different as it's not this old house building a house they're coming on, for instance, to whip back construction and almost reporting on the progress.

[: 00:04:22

[00:04:24] Matt Whitbeck: that is pretty accurate. I mean, Tom Silva owns a contracting company with his brother. So they do a lot of contracting for this old house. So there is a bit of it where it's kind of like a lot of the members of this old house are working on a house. So they work on projects kind of exclusively, I shouldn't say exclusively, but.

[: 00:04:44

[00:05:08] Matt Whitbeck: On the professional contractors, what their, their real day to day grind is and the things that they're bringing to the table that are important or interesting. Uh, that most people want to get that kind of behind the scenes of you. If they didn't have that show of seeing how these contractors are putting things together.

[: 00:05:26

[00:05:33] Eric Goranson: you know, that's great. And those guys just, you know, it's, it's interesting because, you know, they come on the show. They, they know the challenges, but for me, even with my experience, your experience, there's always something I get out of that show.

[: 00:05:45

[00:05:53] Matt Whitbeck: Yeah, it is. It's, and it's nice. And those guys, because they do all of those things and, you know, you and I have both worked with, [00:06:00] with guys like Kevin Ireton. So, you know, Kevin being the editor of Fine Home Building for decades, they get to interview so many people.

[: 00:06:07

[00:06:38] Eric Goranson: Absolutely. And Kevin, geez, what a. Just a wealth of knowledge. And that's one of the things looking back and I'm not really doing the stage much anymore. Just because this media thing's kind of been keeping me a hundred percent. But, uh, man, some of the stuff I learned by just watching and listening to everybody from their different perspectives, you know, with all the [00:07:00] different people, whether it's you, whether it's Walt, whether it's Kevin, you know, that whole group and many more.

[: 00:07:05

[00:07:26] Matt Whitbeck: Yeah. Yeah. Things that we're just accustomed to, you know, like, you know, is it a jack or a trimmer? Great question. What are we putting in there? You know, is it worm drive or direct drive? You know, there's certain things guys, just you move around the country. And that's just a staple thing. You know, it's, it's like PBR Budweiser or something.

[: 00:07:47

[00:08:07] Matt Whitbeck: For so long, we're just trying to come up with creative ways to do it and kind of do it economically for people. Um, and that's, that's really what's important, I guess. Right.

[: 00:08:18

[00:08:26] Eric Goranson: It's running down my driveway. They're going to be digging that up here soon, but I 18 inches underground here because of our climate. Yeah. Wouldn't be doing that up in your area.

[: 00:08:35

[00:08:52] Matt Whitbeck: And there's no snow. So yeah, that's kind of the funny part about where we are, you know, not so much different from where you're in Portland, right? You, you drive up the [00:09:00] mountain, snow driving to Portland, you're in the bay and things are different.

[: 00:09:04

[00:09:09] Eric Goranson: Same kind of thing. Same kind of thing. What did you learn? I mean, what was the challenges of the, this whole house? I mean, it's all, I mean, what a great group of people and you had all the filming, but. You're still building a massive remodel on a house with an addition and everything else. What are the challenges of outs?

[: 00:09:26

[00:09:40] Matt Whitbeck: Yeah. I mean, stuff. Really tough. And I mean, to boot we're in COVID. So, I mean, like you deal with supply chain issues and you almost, you know, you make a great schedule, you know, and you try to fluff a whole lot of incidental room in there.

[: 00:09:57

[00:10:20] Matt Whitbeck: It's, uh, it's bad sometimes. So we try to stay out in front of things. Um, I did read something kind of funny recently by the architect who designed that house where he talks about the Saratoga area and it's one of the oldest inhabited, um, cities in the U. S. Anyways, I mean, because it's on that, um, Hudson river chain.

[: 00:10:42

[00:11:00] Matt Whitbeck: Like they just kind of pieced it together. And, um, I spent the beginning of my career as a framer, you know, all we did was high end luxury homes. And I really had a great knack for it. And I loved it. Uh, but then at the end of the day, you know, I take apart some of these old houses and what's funny is I always hear people say they don't build them like they used to, you know, and I say, thank

[: 00:11:22

[00:11:23] Eric Goranson: You know, we'd, we'd all be sitting in

[: 00:11:25

[00:11:44] Eric Goranson: It's funny.

[: 00:11:45

[00:12:05] Eric Goranson: Many times there were not drawings. There was not a load calculation. If they got the concrete right, they got it

[: 00:12:13

[00:12:27] Matt Whitbeck: That was one of the fun issues of that house. We assumed that there was more foundation under it. And we started excavating and they just tapered the foundation from like six feet to nothing over 20 feet. So when we started peeling it back to figure out where our footing base was, we realized it was like four inches in the ground.

[: 00:12:48

[00:13:09] Eric Goranson: Exactly. Um,

[: 00:13:10

[00:13:34] Matt Whitbeck: From right now, so

[: 00:13:36

[00:13:54] Eric Goranson: The homes that were built back prior to 1940 were lake homes traditionally, [00:14:00] so they were just that cabin esque thing had no intention of really heating that thing. It was a summer home and, uh, much like some of the older stuff of, you know, 100 or 200 or plus years before same plan of, there was no intention of today's technology to go into that and remodeling comes up that same way where it was built on piers and things like that.

[: 00:14:24

[00:14:26] Matt Whitbeck: Yeah. That's a lot of how Saratoga was built because originally it was a close destination from New York city, from Boston. You know, you're a couple hours in both directions. So you look at. Um, you know, the Connecticut area, uh, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey. Um, you know, Pittsburgh, where he had a lot of, uh, industry with the steel.

[: 00:14:47

[00:15:12] Matt Whitbeck: Get out on a little bit of the city, grind in the heat and enjoy a different climate and the cleaner water. And, uh, they didn't do that. They didn't put heat in. And then, you know, we get into that heating era. And people just took already modest framing and hacked it apart to, you know, put the coal furnace in and everything else.

[: 00:15:31

[00:15:44] Eric Goranson: Well, again, a hundred years ago, the plumber got in there and just started hacking stuff up too. So when they threw plumbing in or whatever, it was just kind of what it was.

[: 00:15:52

[00:16:04] Eric Goranson: That's awesome. I mean, it's funny, I gotta ask you, what were some of the challenges you had outside of the stuff? Were there anything that you were like, Oh man, this is tough with TV.

[: 00:16:15

[00:16:22] Matt Whitbeck: So those guys are great. I mean, um, we did have to, you know, walk away from a couple ideas that we all had for what was going to be filmed and it had to do with schedule.

[: 00:16:35

[00:16:55] Matt Whitbeck: So if we have a really interesting thing coming up with HVAC or [00:17:00] electrical, they want to put the right people up there so that the Q and A and the interview process really sounds correct over television. So, um, not any real big hurdles of that. It is, uh, it's TV, so it's a little bit slower going to do, um, second shoots and retakes and closeups and things like that to make sure that.

[: 00:17:19

[00:17:36] Matt Whitbeck: About the, this old house crew, as these are primarily, I would say 99 percent of the people on staff have either spent long enough on construction sites. And even if it's the AV guys or whatever, they know what's happening. So they understand and appreciate the effort of work that goes into getting them on site.

[: 00:17:55

[00:18:15] Matt Whitbeck: I hoped Tom silver. He's just, he's such a nice guy. He really is so genuine. Everything you see of him on, on television. On instagram just everything. He's he's such a genuine nice kind person and loves his job He loves his work. He loves the job people out. He loves he just loves carpentry loves building,

[: 00:18:38

[00:18:55] Eric Goranson: Um, IBS kitchen, the bash show, and I'm walking down, heading back to our [00:19:00] stage. And I hear Eric, I look over and he yelled to say hi. And I'm, I was like an eight year old little girl that just saw my favorite, you know, TV star. I was like, He knew who I was as stupid as that is, it was still that, you know, that legend was saying hi.

[: 00:19:18

[00:19:32] Matt Whitbeck: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they're, they're kind of the godfathers of that industry.

[: 00:19:37

[00:19:55] Matt Whitbeck: It's something that you do day in and day out is trying to bring that education to people, [00:20:00] whether they're tradesmen or homeowners. And, um, And it's important, especially when we're, we live in a time and place where there's not people really working in that apprenticeship role, like under their father, you know, their son, you don't really have like, you know, two career choices, what my dad does or what my uncle does, you know, it's, it's, it's different.

[: 00:20:23

[00:20:42] Matt Whitbeck: I find more homeowners that I work for that would like if I break them off a small section of the house and like teach them how to do something. That was another fun part with this old house project. Like the homeowners wanted to be involved. So, um, the owner's mother was there. She wanted to be involved.

[: 00:20:59

[00:21:14] Eric Goranson: Yeah. And they had the best teachers in the planet there to help walk them through it

[: 00:21:18

[00:21:19] Matt Whitbeck: Yeah, absolutely. Which is a great thing, you know? So beyond that being a legacy home for them, you know, they have a whole nother thing now, which is, you know, it was televised and everything was kind of put under the microscope by high grade professionals. And that's a really great thing for them too. And it's a amazing opportunity.

[: 00:21:41

[00:22:00] Eric Goranson: Yeah. And normally say, man, I had to make you nervous, but I know you've been doing top shelf stuff for a long time.

[: 00:22:04

[00:22:12] Matt Whitbeck: Yeah. Yeah. It was, uh, I didn't know. I didn't know how I was going to go, you know, you see these guys and you hear their reputation and you know, we had a few meetings beforehand and you, you know, quickly in conversation with people.

[: 00:22:27

[00:22:45] Eric Goranson: I would have been too, man. And I do a lot of TV stuff, you know, when that camera light comes on and you're standing there with all the years of TV experience I have.

[: 00:22:54

[00:22:59] Matt Whitbeck: [00:23:00] Yeah, it was, it was funny, but it, they're all, they're also great like that. And, um, a comforting sense where they make you feel really comfortable around them. Just the dialect and the dynamic of how they jump in and help out. And then it's such an easy thing when somebody's carrying wood next to you, when somebody's nailing boards next to you, there's just a camaraderie, man.

[: 00:23:22

[00:23:29] Eric Goranson: We were fortunate. They had your best interest in mind the whole time anyway. So, you know, this isn't some weird gotcha thing. It's, you know, you had a good partner there. So, you know, you were, you were in a good spot.

[: 00:23:40

[00:23:45] Eric Goranson: I love him.

[: 00:23:46

[00:24:02] Matt Whitbeck: And it's, it's really just cool to see, you know, the dynamics come together that way. Um, and we're just, I mean, taken back by the whole process really. Cause it was, it was a beautiful thing. I mean, yeah,

[: 00:24:16

[00:24:24] Eric Goranson: That was solid. And you know something, I, uh, here's my bitch about YouTube out there. There's a hundred ways to see how a project's done on YouTube and about 90 percent of them are wrong in some aspect. Yeah.

[: 00:24:38

[00:24:53] Matt Whitbeck: They can watch things that we know are good, you know, um, that's, yeah, it's tough [00:25:00] because you get a lot of guys that just because they, they have a credit card and they can make it to the box store and swipe that thing. I mean, there's no license needed to go buy tools. And I laugh every day about it. I'm like, some of this stuff is really dangerous, the hoops you got to jump through to buy other things.

[: 00:25:17

[00:25:34] Eric Goranson: But even in, even at that, you can walk into a home improvement store and I'll throw home Depot Lowe's under the bus on this and they're good people, but there are things in that store in there that don't meet building code.

[: 00:25:44

[00:25:47] Eric Goranson: I mean, it's just what it is. You know?

[: 00:25:49

[00:25:51] Matt Whitbeck: I mean, you go for the duct tape and the duct dial and you're like, this is the worst thing you should possibly put here. Like, anybody who puts duct tape on their duct work [00:26:00] is just, you know, Yeah, you

[: 00:26:03

[00:26:18] Eric Goranson: And that's where I liked what what Lowe's should have done a lot more of those. I think, I think they were onto something good there because you're right. Uh, it's just so much that can be said out there. I mean, I was on a. She's probably four or five months ago on social media. I think it was on Facebook and there was a dude on there building a high end steam shower for himself.

[: 00:26:39

[00:27:02] Matt Whitbeck: Yeah, that's, it's just, I mean, when you know how long it's going to last, it's hard and oh goodness for me, um, I really keep the sustainability aspect in mind. That's always in the forefront of my mind and how long I can make something last for is so important to me. Um, being in the building industry for a long time.

[: 00:27:22

[00:27:40] Matt Whitbeck: And I'm like, that's the opposite of what you should be

[: 00:27:42

[00:27:45] Matt Whitbeck: longer with less parts, like that's good engineering. And when we see stuff like that go together where, yeah, can you do it? Yeah. There's a lot of the country do stuff like that. Yeah. Is it good for 10 years?

[: 00:27:56

[00:28:11] Matt Whitbeck: Anyways. Right. Like sure. You're not the YMCA locker room here. Like this is going to to go through some serious provisions and considerations, but with, with minor tweaks to the material, uh, you know, you can make something that could have lasted six, seven, eight years and turn it into something that could last 25, 30 years.

[: 00:28:32

[00:28:33] Eric Goranson: like mine, for instance, I did a steam shower in my house. When I did mine, I did the, the, uh, the weedy vapor proof system behind it. And then I put large format slab, porcelain over the top of it. You know, it's not going anywhere. And if any moisture made it through a, a caulked seam, then guess what?

[: 00:28:52

[00:29:09] Matt Whitbeck: Yeah. Yeah. And, and we don't live in a very forgiving climate.

[: 00:29:13

[00:29:37] Matt Whitbeck: And then we got to deal with the freeze on top of that. So when you go into the Southern part of the country and say, all right, great, it's hot and it's humid. And then. It's, you know, not so bad in the winter, but you know, we deal with the freeze up. So if you absorb all that humidity and then we go into the freeze up, like you wouldn't believe it sounds like sometimes guns going off in some of the houses I've been in because we eat that heavy freeze and that moisture starts to [00:30:00] crack and move through wood.

[: 00:30:01

[00:30:07] Eric Goranson: Yeah. It's like splitting a lumber up there. We don't get that. You know what I mean? We have our rainy season, which is that, you know. October, November through June, and then we don't get rain for six months. So we get that dry heat in the summertime.

[: 00:30:22

[00:30:39] Matt Whitbeck: Yeah. So I think about steam showers here and we built quite a few of them and I'm, I'm just as worried about how they're attacked from the backside, from any gap or crack or break from, you know, any of my index or control layers, letting humidity in behind it, and then that.

[: 00:30:54

[00:31:10] Eric Goranson: out of it. No kidding.

[: 00:31:12

[00:31:29] Eric Goranson: And, and, you know, now you're in this remodeling business out there and you've been doing this for a while. You're the new construction remodeling, but, uh, you know, building science just keeps getting. It's it's not that the science changes, but we keep learning more and more. And, you know, what was just a simple house wrap years ago is now gotten into a whole new level of stuff.

[: 00:31:52

[00:31:57] Matt Whitbeck: there. Yeah. Compatible products. I mean, we got. [00:32:00] Six, seven different types of tapes out, you know, different, different basis of how those things are made between like acrylics and, um, you know, butyl bases, I mean, these things don't stick together.

[: 00:32:12

[00:32:35] Matt Whitbeck: You need a chemistry degree almost to be dealing with stuff and at the very least you got to do a lot of due diligence and reading to stay on top of it and it's, it's tough, you know, it is really hard to be, um, a novice user of these products and get it right, you know, so my hats go, my hat goes off to anybody who's a weekend warrior that's making it work because it's, it's not an easy task, you know, I'm doing [00:33:00] it, I'm doing it, you know.

[: 00:33:01

[00:33:07] Eric Goranson: So,

[: 00:33:11

[00:33:15] Eric Goranson: It's tough and my recommendation always to the DIYers is try to stick into a system and go with it. You know. Whether it's, whether it's zip or whether it's the punch or whatever you're using out there, you know, throw a dozen other brands on top of that, but whatever you're using, stick with that system and follow the directions at least on your project.

[: 00:33:36

[00:33:47] Matt Whitbeck: like reading and they're like, Oh, this one's 75 feet. And that one's 70 feet and this one's 45 cents less. So I get an extra.

[: 00:33:54

[00:33:58] Eric Goranson: stop. They don't go [00:34:00] together. Oh, it's like putting people there. I always think of them as like languages, right? It's like, okay, I'm trying to put the German and the French people talking to each other over here. That just doesn't work. Good. You know, it just doesn't work good. So you got to keep that stuff going in.

[: 00:34:14

[00:34:37] Eric Goranson: You know, you guys had to keep it honest to what was on the shelf at the store. And that was before we ran into our, you know, our problems that we had with COVID and our, and our distribution issues that we had of getting materials in, even then it was like, okay, what's on the shelf here and how do we make this look

[: 00:34:56

[00:34:56] Matt Whitbeck: Yeah. Yeah. That's always tough because, [00:35:00] um, right now with the internet, you think about, you know, all you got to do is, is Google something, do a series search, whatever, uh, works for you. But I mean, the world's your oyster. That doesn't necessarily mean it works for where you are. Um. That's been some of the tough things that I've done with a few of the builds.

[: 00:35:19

[00:35:38] Matt Whitbeck: They're awesome at putting those things together on a high end sense, but you know, I don't want that. I want to be able to do something that I can explain to builders who are trying to do this in a nine to five, or maybe building development houses, like, you know, don't throw the baby out with the bath water, make minor upgrades.

[: 00:35:54

[00:36:12] Matt Whitbeck: It's about doing the best you can with the least amount of stuff. So can I get it today? Is it available? What's the lead time on it? Um, cause I think, I think that means a

[: 00:36:21

[00:36:34] Eric Goranson: That's less efficient because now you've got that thermal mass there of that's not insulation in there and that would loves to transfer heat and cool through it. So that's that's not your friend outside of the structure side of

[: 00:36:48

[00:36:52] Matt Whitbeck: Right. So now you're, you know, bulk steel, steel studs. You know, you think about a lot of the, um, South American countries, [00:37:00] everybody's building on a building on a metal studs. Um, you know, metal is a great conductor, so, you know, it has no problem transferring temperature back and forth. Um, you know, that's, you know, like Joseph Kubrick says, it's why we don't make, uh, electrical wires out of wood.

[: 00:37:15

[00:37:26] Eric Goranson: yeah, that's why we cook in metal pans.

[: 00:37:31

[00:37:38] Matt Whitbeck: It's really, it is, it is hard to find stuff at a store. It's hard to find. Um, things that work well together, but I, I'm, man, I'm a, a big, big advocate at telling people stay in the system, just like you said, you know, don't let the chemists, the engineers, all the people that, that worked on that, because believe me, if you do any level of R and D ever for any [00:38:00] group, you'll find out how many people are involved in making sure that these products, selections of saying things are compatible.

[: 00:38:07

[00:38:30] Matt Whitbeck: And I found in my experience, both doing, um, you know, forensic inspections and home inspections, as well as being a builder when I have to write reports out in the sense of a warranty failure, I've never seen a company. Bawk at it every single time. If they, if, if something was wrong, even a percentile wrong with, with their product, they step up and own it.

[: 00:38:53

[00:39:11] Matt Whitbeck: I haven't run across one company yet that hasn't stood by their warranty and treated it well.

[: 00:39:17

[00:39:30] Eric Goranson: I mean, great example. If I'm out on the East coast, I see a fair amount of zip. I see green and red around Pacific Northwest, fairly rare, even though we need it badly in those winter months for framing here and you and I have talked about this in the past, but. You know, with our rainy season, we get out here, I'll drive by some mixed use building.

[: 00:39:50

[00:40:12] Eric Goranson: Not a lot of people have embraced it yet. And you see that, you know, around the country where that would have been really smart to have in those buildings, but now they're going to have a litmus test of serious other issues there of, of, uh, indoor air quality issues and stuff, just because they've wrapped all that nasty mold mildew inside the building.

[: 00:40:33

[00:40:57] Matt Whitbeck: So you seal up both sides of the wall and, [00:41:00] you know, you create, you know, Warm, warm, dark, and damp. That's the breeding ground for mold, you know, that's, that's what you need. So

[: 00:41:08

[00:41:17] Eric Goranson: And they were building these, you know, developments with these nice high end, you know, 4, 000 square foot homes in them. And I go walking in to see how far it is before I can measure for cabinets. Framing's going, I walk in the front entry door doors, not in its frame. There's sheathing on there. They're doing the interior framing wrap up coming off the second floor balcony.

[: 00:41:38

[00:41:57] Eric Goranson: There's air compressors. There's the [00:42:00] guys in there framing. There's a guy out there at the pole out there at the temp, hitting the GFCI. They'll go power click. And I walk in and I'm standing in water and I hear the guy go power and he hit the reset and I'm like, I am out of here. This someone's going to die.

[: 00:42:20

[00:42:23] Eric Goranson: What an amazing experience.

[: 00:42:28

[00:42:45] Matt Whitbeck: Oh, I guarantee, I mean, I've, I've unfortunately had tor some litigation reports on class action suits and developments before from bad flashing details and, um, you know, when you got the same subs doing the same job over and over and over, [00:43:00] believe me when I tell you that if they did it to one house, they probably did it to all of them.

[: 00:43:04

[00:43:30] Matt Whitbeck: When the, when the OSB has gone dead, I mean, it's like the difference of hitting a snare drum in the bass drum. Right. So it snaps up and just nothing's

[: 00:43:40

[00:43:42] Matt Whitbeck: That would. So, you know, we're going to start peeling some of the vinyl off and seeing what's happening, but you know, you know, we're going to look for those spots anyways.

[: 00:43:50

[00:44:15] Matt Whitbeck: They're not stupid. They know it's not that they don't care. It's just, nobody took the time to explain it to them. So they're showing something, they think it's right. And they're just going to keep producing it because nobody's got them in the feedback loop to tell them it's wrong. Um, so it's like, what else is that way that are just junk.

[: 00:44:33

[00:44:48] Eric Goranson: Oh, that's good enough. And that's where the failures

[: 00:44:52

[00:45:14] Matt Whitbeck: And you also have guys that are just really nomadic about their jobs. Like they're changing careers all the time. They're changing the companies they work for. So how do you involve somebody in a feedback loop that's, you know, had 19 different jobs in 25 years, you know?

[: 00:45:29

[00:45:31] Eric Goranson: Eight houses up for me. There's a house right now. That's they tore it down. It's a couple million dollar house up there and they tore the whole, you know, 700, 000 house to put the other one in and I go walking by and I'm like, wow, guys, uh, would have been cool. If you to tape the Tyvek seems on that. Maybe, you know, but then I can walk around the corner and there's a guy doing an addition down there and they're putting the new windows in and his flashing in detailing is just from walking on the sidewalk, walking [00:46:00] my dog, I'm like, that is beautiful, you know, so it's, there's a big difference out there with, with, and I know you do the same thing, man, I know you're driving around and you're sitting at the stop sign of the stoplight looking over going, what the heck are they trying to do over there?

[: 00:46:16

[00:46:34] Eric Goranson: on everything because we'll go for a drive

[: 00:46:36

[00:46:43] Eric Goranson: construct.

[: 00:46:45

[00:47:02] Matt Whitbeck: So he was next door and he was, he's a painting contractor and he started to dabble a little bit more into general contracting. Really nice guy. Um, I want to say he was from Finland, maybe. Um, and he's really trying, you know, so he had a lot of, we had a lot of dialogue, Q's and A's about like, Hey, should I do it this way?

[: 00:47:21

[00:47:45] Matt Whitbeck: Some people don't care, you know, they're not, they're not going to ask anybody. Right. So it takes a lot of humility to ask, um, but you know, the, the information resources are out there, but, you know, you said earlier in the show, you know, some of them are bad [00:48:00] information, so you gotta,

[: 00:48:03

[00:48:09] Eric Goranson: Know their stuff. They care, but you're right. It's the education side of it. You know, um, maybe somebody that's been out there doing windows and sighting learned how to do house wrap 20 years ago and didn't do one minute of CEU. And what was known back then versus what is known now is two different, two different processes.

[: 00:48:30

[00:48:37] Matt Whitbeck: I learned wrong. I learned the absolute wrong way. And I I was, I'll tell you right now, when I started wrapping houses in Tyvek, I was the absolute neatest and a perfectionist at putting Tyvek on wrong. Same. You never

[: 00:48:56

[00:48:58] Eric Goranson: Same, you know, I wrapped [00:49:00] the Tyvek in around the top and around the bottom before I put the window in. There was no tape. It was beautiful. I was tucking that thing in

[: 00:49:08

[00:49:08] Eric Goranson: a military bag. The corners were tight, everything was, you know, wrong fasteners, everything, everything was wrong. Staple, staple, staple.

[: 00:49:21

[00:49:21] Matt Whitbeck: could put a bow on the front of it and it probably leaked like a sift, but that's how I was taught to do it. And I was trying hard to make it better than what everybody else was doing. But with just bad information, you know? So, I mean, that was, that was being 20, you know, I just didn't know.

[: 00:49:38

[00:49:57] Eric Goranson: There's a new way to do this. And, you know, [00:50:00] 10 years ago, people were rarely doing blower door tests and remodels and things like that. And these are all. Things that are changing so much. And especially when you get into home technology and as you know, ERV systems where you're bringing in air and makeup air, there's a lot of new stuff happening out

[: 00:50:16

[00:50:17] Matt Whitbeck: Yeah. Yeah. Smart technology with being able to read that air constantly. I mean, there's some really cool stuff out there. Uh, Panasonic's been working on with being able to actually read the air and trigger back to different mechanisms in the house. Um, you know, that's great. I mean, the fact that we're doing that.

[: 00:50:35

[00:50:59] Matt Whitbeck: From some of [00:51:00] these cleaning products are really horrible for your lungs, you know, and being in the trades, you know, I, I talked to a guy today and he was a amazing mentor of mine. He just had, um, his knees done for, I think the fourth time he's in his, um, early eighties, right? Still in the field working, right?

[: 00:51:19

[00:51:37] Matt Whitbeck: They're going to need to be redone. We said, you know what? I'm really happy that my lungs still work and my heart still works. My liver still works. He's like, I've just treated those things well and I've taken care of them. I've had a job where I've been blessed where I'm an outdoor good air a lot. I'm not stuck inside buildings.

[: 00:51:54

[00:52:12] Matt Whitbeck: Yeah. It's, it's tough. You're breathing in a lot of bad, stagnant, funky air, and then you add other chemicals that are offgassing. It's tough. It's beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. One of the studies, it's, you saw, um, recently I was reading and just a nerd out on you for a second, if I haven't already in the show. Uh, they were sitting there found in, uh, V O C traces from paint seven months later after the paint was done.

[: 00:52:37

[00:52:55] Matt Whitbeck: you know, God forbid, it's an aerosol based, you know, urethane or something like, [00:53:00] oh yeah, that's going to be in the air for a

[: 00:53:01

[00:53:13] Eric Goranson: And so many people don't realize that, you know, not using that, it's so simple, not using that kitchen vent hood when you're cooking, it's not vented to the outside, you know, maybe putting in that, uh, I'm not going to use a brand here, but that plug in air freshener that puts all that oil up. It's like, You realize you're vaping inside your tight house, right?

[: 00:53:35

[00:53:44] Matt Whitbeck: Yeah. Yeah. Bring, bring your baby right over there next to you. No, I don't like the smell of the

[: 00:53:49

[00:53:51] Matt Whitbeck: the old, uh, aerosol funky smells there. But no, I mean, even simple stuff, right?

[: 00:53:57

[00:54:14] Matt Whitbeck: It's designed to vent that one room. And if you keep the door open, I'm now venting your house and not the room. So, you know, if you want it to work, right, you got to shut the door. You're going to paint your nails. You know, this is now a conversation. I got a 14 year old daughter, shut the bathroom door and turn the fan on.

[: 00:54:28

[00:54:31] Eric Goranson: Like that's VOCs you're smelling.

[: 00:54:34

[00:54:41] Eric Goranson: you know, Brown, Brown, new tones got a thing out now too. I don't know if you've caught that Panasonic's got that great system.

[: 00:54:46

[00:55:04] Eric Goranson: Yeah.

[: 00:55:05

[00:55:27] Matt Whitbeck: And I said, the next step beyond that is really getting something like a venerable skylight. So you look at like VLUX has a system or that senses indoor air quality. So that'll crack itself open and let out, you know, it can sense carbon dioxide levels picking up. So you have. You know, Thanksgiving's coming up.

[: 00:55:42

[00:55:57] Matt Whitbeck: And you don't end up with that funky headache later [00:56:00] on, you

[: 00:56:00

[00:56:14] Eric Goranson: And it was so funny because you and I'd be in there in Vegas with that thing and be up on stage and you could watch the. The, the air quality in that building go bad. And all of a sudden it would automatically turn the, start venting the skylights because it's like, even though it's inside, it's trying to be smart and going, Hey, we need better air in here.

[: 00:56:31

[00:56:34] Matt Whitbeck: back into its own

[: 00:56:36

[00:56:50] Matt Whitbeck: Yeah, no, it was a tight, it was a tight building. I remember they did the blower door test and, uh, they turned it on the thing, uh, short circuit and basically gave him back an error [00:57:00] code just because it had decompressed the building in about three and a half seconds.

[: 00:57:06

[00:57:09] Matt Whitbeck: windows so it could get circulation.

[: 00:57:12

[00:57:28] Matt Whitbeck: So people were walking through there constantly and it did get funky. And then God forbid, someone let one rip in there

[: 00:57:35

[00:57:43] Eric Goranson: But, oh yeah, that's good stuff. And you're going to be up here, uh, soon at the, uh, NRLA speaking, aren't you?

[: 00:57:49

[00:58:07] Matt Whitbeck: Cause it is a lot of, uh, lumber dealers that get there and it's really cool to try to get some face time with them and talk to them about things they should get on their shelf. Uh, to kind of help out all the, all the builders and homeowners get better usage of product.

[: 00:58:22

[00:58:23] Eric Goranson: I said hello. Yeah, absolutely . I love those guys. Yeah, they're great. Love those guys. So, Matt, we gotta get out to break here, but, uh, what's the best way for people to find you, especially if they're in your area and they want to talk to you about doing a project?

[: 00:58:38

[00:58:42] Matt Whitbeck: Uh, I think in Instagram we're the same handle. It's, uh, Whitbeck Construction there. Um, other than that, look us up on our website. It's, uh, whipbackconstruction. com. And, um, you know, all of our contact information's on there. You can find us, uh, give us a reach. Our office [00:59:00] manager, Stacey's, uh, really great. Be able to help you out with anything or put you in contact with any of the members in our firm that can get you answers.

[: 00:59:09

[00:59:15] Matt Whitbeck: cool. Yeah, my son thinks it's hilarious. We were in the grocery store the other day and some guy's like, Hey, I saw you on TV. And he's like, he doesn't realize that at 11 years old, he kind of gave me a good rip.

[: 00:59:25

[00:59:29] Eric Goranson: Oh, Snap. Yeah. Kids bringing it. That was a

[: 00:59:39

[01:00:02] Matt Whitbeck: today.

[: 01:00:03

[01:00:06] Eric Goranson: All right, man. Thanks again. Hey, I'm Eric G and you've been listening to Around the House