185. Building For Climate Resilience With Wyatt Roberts

Welcome to another episode of Professional Builder Secrets. In this episode, I interview Wyatt Roberts from Dandelion Energy. Wyatt is a former builder, a building scientist, and a certified passive house designer who is passionate about reducing the environmental impact of homes. At Dandelion Energy, he helps builders and developers integrate geothermal technology into their new homes for heating and cooling systems. Keep listening to find out how geothermal technology could be the key to creating climate resilient homes at scale. This episode of Professional Builder Secrets is brought to you by Apparatus Contractor Services. Apparatus provides full scope, end to end QuickBooks, Precision Construction accounting and CFO services for residential builders. If you feel like you can't completely trust your weekly and monthly financial reports or you feel like you're flying blind, Apparatus will rebuild and operate your QuickBooks accounting system and give you precision construction accounting capabilities you can trust. Learn more@apparatusteam.com or on the APB Rewards Partner Directory.

We need to let people know right now, geothermal is used in less than 1% of new construction. And when you say heat pump today, most people generally think of an air source heat pump and maybe even more narrowly of the wall cassettes that we see, which certainly have a role to play. But geothermal, there's definitely room to educate the public that's available there, but. And then just the nuts and bolts of the installation. Traditionally, you want home heating and cooling, call your H Vac provider and they come and put it in. But those teams and those companies are not set up to install ground loops which are typically installed with drilling equipment. And so it's, it's another trade that you generally need to bring on site that you haven't previously had to. This is an alternative to those fossil fuel lines that can be used. So as long as that ground loop is provided, once that happens, you can pretty easily adopt geothermal into your homes without really changing your construction process much at all.

Welcome to Professional Builder Secrets, the podcast for building company owners wanting to grow safely and securely. I'm your host, Will Blunt, and today I'm joined by Wyatt Roberts from Dandelion Energy. Wyatt, welcome to the show.

Hi, Will. Thanks for having me.

I think I got that right. Lion. I needed to get the lion at the end of Dandelion.

Got it. You nailed it, Dandelion Energy.

Thankfully, your name was easy to say, so that's not always the case. Anyway, Wyatt, thank you so much for coming on the show today. Really excited to dive into everything that you're doing at Dandelion. But before we get into that, can you give a bit of a background on who you are and what your company does currently?

Yeah, absolutely. As you mentioned, Wyatt Roberts, I'm the SVP of new construction at Dandelion Energy. This is the latest in what has been a lifelong journey in the building industry. My father was a builder. From the early 90s through almost till 2020, I was a residential general contractor myself building custom homes. And for the last 10 years or so of that journey before I transitioned to this company, I focused became obsessed with energy efficiency in the build environment and building building to passive house building and design into passive house standards. So that was my early days in construction. Along about 2015, I began thinking about how I could use the rest of my career to have as big and far reaching an impact on the environment as possible. And I realized that even building some of the most energy efficient homes in the world, the size company I had, the pace I was going at in the rest of my career, I might only build a few hundred and I craved a larger impact. So as I dove into what my options may be, I quickly landed on geothermal. My guiding principle around that was to find a single system in our built environment that had a really big impact. And the way we heat and cool our buildings is one of, if not the most impactful environmental aspects of our homes. And geothermal is the most efficient heating and cooling technology humanity's ever come up with. That does not mean it's without complexity or expense, which I'm sure we'll talk about. But that gave me enough to say, okay, if I focus just on this and I can get involved with the team that can have a far reaching aspect, then we might really have an opportunity. I might have an opportunity to use my career in the way I wanted to. With that I was in a process. I sold my general contracting company at the time, began looking for options and that was when I was introduced to and met our co founder Cathy Hanoun at Dandelion and came on board here to My first role here was to head up our technical design and energy modeling team. Dandelion was founded by Kathy in 2017. They were launched out of Google X, which is Google's moonshot factory, you know, incubating all sorts of different startup ideas. We launched in the northeast, we were based in New York, quickly expanded into Connecticut and Massachusetts. Focused originally on direct to customer retrofit services. So if you called and you had a hot, an oil furnace, say and you wanted to convert to geothermal, we would design and install that solution for you. Over the last several years we've installed over 3,000 systems in the Northeast. And for the last two years, we've shifted our focus to working with custom and production home builders across the country to bring geothermal into the, into that environment. At scale at this point, We've designed over 15,000 geothermal systems and installed well over a million feet of geothermal ground loop. So that's where we are today.

Yeah, perfect. Very good. I want to dive into a little bit more about geothermal a bit later on and we can talk about in more detail what it is, how it fits into the ecosystem of home building and all that kind of stuff. But before we do, let's just address, I guess, the housing sector in general and how you feel that can play into the broader conversation around climate change.

Great question. I mean, I've spent my whole life in it, so it's obviously where I landed. But I think even if I took a step back and said, you know, what are the biggest impacts of humanity on the environment? The built environment is certainly one of them. It's estimated that greater than 30% of all emissions in the United States come from the built environment. And every day, 15 plus percent of the emissions that are released into the environment daily come from our buildings. It's a sector in which the potential to make a change there and to affect climate change is massive. And then for me, I add to that that the buildings we build we tend to keep for a really long time, often upwards of 100 years. So the choices we make today, or don't make as the case may be, not only have a really big immediate impact, but they have a long lasting one. We don't change out our infrastructure very frequently. We use our buildings for a really long time. So if we can make a decision today that reduces the environmental impact of our building that we build today, that will, we will reap those benefits for generations. So I think it's one of the most important places to focus our energy around climate change.

When you say the buildings have 15% impact on climate change or you know, the impact of emissions and things like that. How much of that is commercial construction and things like that though, like big buildings compared to, you know, the everyday house in a, in a suburb?

Yeah, that, that's a good question. And I don't know exactly where it breaks down. So you're right that this is across our building sector, you know, our direct emissions. But our homes, the vast majority of our homes are heated by fossil fuels, cooled by low to mid efficiency air conditioning that's grid tied and, and Largely fossil fuel generated, depending on where you are. While I don't know the exact breakdown, I do know that the residential sector has its fair proportion of impact relative to that. Sorry I can't be more specific than.

No, that's okay. I guess I was trying fingertips.

But I know it's real, you know, and both need the attention and, and in truth, while we're here to talk about homes and I'm sure that's what we'll focus on. The deployment of geothermal is largely the initial early days. And geothermal systems in the United States have been deployed for 60 plus years. And many of the early adopters have been institutional and commercial. Universities, municipalities, things like that. Use that technology because the operational expense reduction and also the environmental impact benefits translate there just as much as they do on the housing sector.

Yeah, it's probably a good opportunity to dive a bit more into geothermal then so we don't go too down far down the path without knowing what we're talking about. What does the technology do? How does it compare to other sustainable energy technologies? What are the benefits of using it? What are the expenses? Yeah, do you want to just dive into a bit more detail on everything to do with geothermal?

Maybe I'll just start by talking a little bit about the type of geothermal we're speaking about. Because geothermal energy is, it's a very popular subject now. You'll hear the terminology a lot of times. There are basically two different applications that are called geothermal energy. One is actually deep Earth, deep heat seeking for power generation. You get, you drill incredibly deep or you have geothermal activity like they have an Iceland near the surface that you can generate steam and create turbines and generate electricity. That's not the type of geothermal that we do. So what we do is install ground source heat exchangers. So we're basically, we use vertical bores, but you can do it horizontally also if you have enough land. And we put a loop into the ground that contains water and glycol and it circulates through a closed loop system, through a heat pump and back into the earth. And effectively what we're doing is we're just using the earth as a giant heat exchanger. If we're in air conditioning season and we're cooling your building, we're removing heat from your building, we're putting it into this ground loop at the heat pump and we're cycling that through the earth and through the contact with the deep earth temperature, that ground loop is cooling down and coming back to the house. At a cooler temperature than it left. That's flipped in reverse in heating season where we're extracting heating energy from the earth and delivering it, converting it into conditions, you know, conditioned hot air in this, in the space and just repeating the cycle over and over again. So it's just a passive heat exchange with the earth. So that's the type of geothermal that we use. In terms of how it compares with other energy solutions in construction, I think it really stands out. You know, I mentioned the single most impactful heat, you know, single component of a home that you can affect climate, your climate impact with is your heating and cooling system. And geothermal is the most efficient that there is. It's 100% electric, which helps future proof and allow us to, you know, as we generate cleaner and cleaner energy, we can make this 100% zero emissions technology. And it's incredibly resilient. The ground loop itself is designed to last the lifetime of the home. It's buried below the ground. There is nothing that is left outside in the elements. It can be under a parking lot under your home. We often build the geothermal ground loop under the building prior to installation of the foundation. There's not much to degrade and that ground loop should last the 100 plus years that your home will. And the technology inside the heat pump and the H vac technology has best in class lifespan also 25 to 30 years. And you know, when it does reach the end of its usable lifecycle, it can be easily replaced and you can tie new equipment into that same ground loop. So that's a big difference. It also eliminates the need for field charge refrigerants. So you're not placing an air conditioner outside and then connecting it to the air handle or the coil on the inside with refrigerant, with a refrigerant line set like you would with an air source heat pump or traditional air conditioner. So therefore you've also eliminate the likelihood of leaks of refrigerant. There is refrigerant gas in the unit, but it's factory contained a very small amount. It's just within the box. So there's, it's not, it's not installed in the, in the field. The other thing that's worth noting is that of the electrified heating and cooling technologies, it is the, it's, it costs about half as much to own as an air source pump does in a cold climate and about a third as much to own in a, in a hot climate. So the, the operating expense long term is much Lower than a lot of the other solutions you can do. And the other thing I would say is it focuses on energy consumption reduction. So it's just highly efficient. It's not generating energy. It's not adding things like solar, which are focused on clean energy production and which pairs really well with geothermal. But it's all about just the point source, how much can we reduce our energy? And it does a great job with that.

So I guess what you're saying is like, compared to a traditional H Vac system, which is working off the grid and using fossil fuels, the upfront cost is probably going to be significantly more to get it installed. But in the long term, you'll reduce energy costs. Is that kind of the general pitch?

Yes, you have. The upfront cost of installing the ground loop is above and beyond a typical conventional H Vac system. Once that ground loop is in, the rest of the system is very much like a traditional system we tend to use. You can do hot water, but we use forced air heating and cooling. So it's a ducted system, centrally ducted throughout the house. To the layperson, when you walk into the mechanical room, it looks and acts like a furnace or a conventional air. Once you overcome that initial ground loop expense, then you have this asset for the home forever that reduces your expenses for life and your emissions.

So I guess for homebuilders out there that are working with consumers that are energy efficient or, you know, focused on the future of the efficiency of their homes, this could be a solution that they would work with them on.

Yeah, you're absolutely right. Our experience has been this is one of the best things that those home builders and and their customers can deploy. It also can take the pressure off a lot of the other systems in the house. So if you're trying to att attain certain energy certifications, be it Energy Star or even all the way up to passive house, once you get the points for the geothermal system and for the use of it, it can give you a much straighter path to attaining those regulatory goals. It is the best choice you can make in terms of reducing your impact relative to the amount of energy your home consumes.

What are some of the challenges you see with sustainable solutions like geothermal getting rolled out at a more scalable level across even just the United States, for example?

Yeah, it's a great. I mean, one is just awareness. You know, I think we need to let people know right now, geothermal is used in less than 1% of new construction. And when you say heat pump, today, most People generally think of an air source heat pump and maybe even more narrowly of the wall cassettes that we see, which certainly have a role to play. But geothermal, there's definitely room to educate the public that's available there. And then just the nuts and bolts of the installation. Traditionally you want home heating and cooling, call your H vac provider and they come and put it in. But those, those teams and those companies are not set up to install ground loops which are typically installed with drilling equipment. And so it's, it's another trade that you generally need to bring on site that you haven't previously had to. When I'm working with builders, I often remind them that they spend a lot of time waiting around for the utility company to come and run natural gas lines and bring underground electric in. But they just think of it as sort of critical path. This is an alternative to those fossil fuel lines that can be used. So as long as that ground loop is provided, once that happens, you can pretty easily adopt geothermal into your homes without really changing your construction process much at all.

What do you feel like does need to change from a political perspective? Standards in the industry, the mindset of people that are building homes as well. What, yeah, what needs to change to make this climate resistant, resilient, sorry, housing more of the norm?

Yeah, I actually think we're closer to it than a lot of us might realize. You know, there have been on every front we are being pushed to build better and more climate resilient homes. And the other thing is that the building science is very mature at this point. So over the last 50, 60 years, as we've tightened up our buildings, we've made some mistakes as an industry and we've learned from them. And we know how to build very highly, highly resilient, durable, energy efficient buildings. So we're at the doorstep in terms of what needs to change. I think that on the policy side, you know, we need to continue to incentivize the adoption of durable climate forward construction technologies, you know, ahead of fossil fuel approaches. We have things Today in the US there's, there's a 30% federal tax credit for geothermal that's locked in for, you know, the better part of the next 10 years. There's a lot of local and national utility incentives, but a lot of people don't know how to get them, how to apply them, how to apply them, how to go for them. So to me we need to build this in at more of a utility scale. So when I'll use the natural gas Industry as an example here, they've been very successful. It's one of the most subsidized industries on the planet. In the United States we the exception of one or two states, your gas main extension is free to you as a homeowner, which means it's ratepayer subsidized. But it actually costs upwards of $40,000 to bring a gas main 100ft from a mainline into an individual home and regulate it. And we don't think about that cost. The builder doesn't have to pay it, the homeowner doesn't think about it, even though they pay for it slowly over time in their energy bills. And so for climate technology such as geothermal and others, just making the incentives baked into the value proposition at a societal take us a long way. I think I could cut you a check if you'd let me put geothermal in your home. Yeah, I mean that makes a lot of sense, right?

Like from, from the homeowner's perspective if they're not incurring that cost up and it's kind of in over 10 years, 20 years or whatever it is that it's. They don't notice it. They don't notice it.

So yeah, they don't notice at all. And, and so I think there is a lot of room there to improve the way we deliver our public subsidy for environmental policy in the built environment. Also on the policy side, or I guess in the industry standard side, which dovetails with policy moving towards all electric high efficiency consumption is really important. And I also think that something that's often overlooked and that maybe we're lagging a little bit behind on as an industry is just educating the buyer and public of the impact of our buildings. Most people don't think about it, you know, and I, and I understand that. But today I don't think we focus on, at least in this country, we're not focused on the cost of ownership or the impact of the building when we sell. We still are selling very much on fit and finish. And I believe in beauty and nice things and good fit. So I'm not suggesting we stop thinking about those, but I would like to see us put a little more impact on, you know, or emphasis on the environmental impact of our buildings. I don't think there's very many consumers who you say, hey, this, if you buy this house instead of this one, it'll reduce your operating expenses by 50% emissions as well. There's no one who really says no to that. But I often don't think that Even comes up in the conversation. So as an industry, I'd like to see us just bring awareness to the buying public and, you know, take credit for the value that these technologies are providing these consumers for, for their lifetime, their ownership. So that's a big one.

Yeah. Playing devil's advocate on that conversation. The big challenge is, especially with the economy as it is and interest rates extremely high at the moment, homeowners that are building, they've got hard decisions to make around budget. And it comes down to the fact that, yeah, you might be able to install this air conditioning system compared to a geothermal and save a bunch of money there. And then all of a sudden you can do, you know, the back deck or a nicer finish on the bathroom and kind of get closer to your dream home. So they're the decisions that consumers are making during the build process. And if they're not fully aware of the operational costs like you mentioned and all that kind of stuff, I can understand why they would make decisions that might be short term focused.

Oh yeah, so can I. And I don't judge anyone for that. I really think it is on us as an industry to just. To bring that awareness to the impact of these systems and also to drive down the costs, whether it is through incentive or just through the advantages of scale. It's not a decision between something that's good for the environment, but out of my budget, or something that's not so great for the environment, but that will allow me to afford, you know, the back deck or some other amenity that would be nice for my lifestyle. So you're, you're right. And I, I don't think it's the consumer's responsibility to just do the right thing every time. But a lot of these technologies, geothermal included, really don't have to come at a cost premium if they're designed carefully and implemented carefully, and if we take advantage of the incentives that are already in the marketplace at that point. I think they just need their. I think the, I think the consumer is sophisticated enough to allow them to at least have the conversation and make that decision for themselves. So, you know, at least here, realtors that I know and have been in contact with very rarely talk about the heating and cooling or the energy demand of the home at all. And it's certainly a subject I think that we should bring into the conversation.

Would it be fair to say that the custom home market is probably the most likely to adopt these kind of things because the homeowner is literally building the house from the ground up. Right. And looking at every decision throughout that. Whereas if you look at production builders, developers, those kind of things, they're in general looking to make the most efficient way to build as possible and reducing costs as much as they can. Right?

I think you're right. And historically that's certainly been the case for geothermal. When I was a custom home builder, I installed a few geothermal systems. I was no expert at the time, you know, working with our subs and they were almost always in sort of high end, you know, custom homes. It has long been considered a technology that's reserved for that marketplace because you have to be able to afford it up front. However, with my time in Dandelion, I've had the good fortune to work with both custom home builders and some very large production home builders. We're working on a 1500 home development right now in Colorado. That builder made the decision for a variety of reasons. One, increasing regulatory pressure to be electrified, get off the natural gas. Two, it's a cold climate so they have performance concerns about using air sources, the single source there. They see it as a downgrade to their customers from a comfort perspective, even though maybe a little more progressive environmentally. So geothermal fit that bill. And then because of their purchasing power and their scale, they've been able to help us drive our supply chain costs down to a point where we could get cost parity with other technologies. So I think we are at a point where it's, it can make sense for both. And I do think it's a little bit market dependent. You know I mentioned Colorado. Colorado has great state level incentives that make geothermal stand out against other options. So that was helpful. Not every state can say that. But I do think that in custom home building it's a no brainer. You're putting amenities in that cost 2, 3, 10x the cost of a geothermal system. This is just a $10,000 swing on a, on an H vac system in a million dollar home is really relatively inconsequentious. It's really these homes that are trying that are being built for first time home builders or in affordable markets where you have to just be really surgical with your application of technologies. And I do think that if you look at lifecycle costs, almost every significant environmentally friendly building technology pencils but we tend to only look at day one costs upfront. And so that can be, that can be challenging in some environments for sure. And I think like you mentioned builders mindsets. I mean I think there's a lot of pressure on builders like we have just keeping up with the demand and trying to keep our costs down and make our products affordable is a full time job and a half. But I also think that most business owners and most builders are always looking around the corner and thinking about how they future proof their business for me. I started asking myself, are the homes I'm building today Energy relevant 10, 20, 30 years from now? Of course, there's no way to know with certainty, but if you just take that mindset to take a minute and think about it, I think that that mindset change can quickly lead to a paradigm shift in the way that you power your buildings and, and you can find ways to do it without negatively impacting your bottom line. For sure.

It's about being innovative and just aware, I think.

Yeah, you know, I mean, we've been, we've been largely building our buildings for the same way for 100 years, maybe longer, but we are at a, we are definitely at a moment in time where things are changing in terms of how we consume energy and just the sheer volume of people we have, the shortage we have in housing and you know, the evolution of the building code and the energy code. The IECC meets every two years and they make 10, 20, 30% increases. So if I'm in upstate New York and I'm building a new home today, code legal home, I'm actually probably already energy irrelevant relevant compared to the next code that's about to come out. So when we have opportunities to make these large impact moves in our construction, I think it's a, it's, it's incumbent upon us to do so, or at least to give it a serious look.

Yeah, builders have a big responsibility. It's probably not spoken about enough because you can get in the nuts and bolts of running your building company trying to understand what your customer needs, fulfilling those needs, you know, looking at costs, looking at profitability and all those things that come into running a building company, which is challenging, but the impact of the homes you're building is, is lasting for 20, 30 years into the future. Right. So there is a big responsibility there.

It's really big. It's, it's a large responsibility. And, and the buying public puts just a tremendous amount of trust in us as builders that the, the typical home buyer, they're trusting us with the biggest thing that most people ever purchase, the biggest, most expensive thing they ever purchase. And they're trusting us to be experts about every aspect of that. Not just, you know, the lighting and how the windows lay out and how the homes are designed but how we consume energy, how we heat and cool ourselves, how we keep ourselves comfortable, it is a large responsibility.

Trust. That's an interesting word because unfortunately a lot of builders don't have the trust of the consumer. And that's a big problem in the, in the industry. Right?

Yeah, yeah, I think that's fair though. People want their home building project to go well and they desperately want to work with a builder they can trust. So I think that the buyer's mindset is to find someone that they trust and then it's incumbent upon us to be professionals and to be, and to change our mindsets, to say, hey, we are leading this industry and the decisions that are made are largely steered by us. So let's become experts in our home systems. Not, not just where to buy the nicest tile, but also what's the best system to put in this home. And let's help our home buyers make those decisions.

Absolutely. And being educated on technology like geothermal and other technology in the sustainable space is going to put you in a very strong position to build trust with a consumer.

I agree with that 100%.

You mentioned that state based, I guess policies can impact whether or not this type of technology is used at scale within those states. Is that a problem in the US.

Definitely is a large range of opportunity. And what I mean by that is there are states where like I said, Colorado, Maryland, New York, Massachusetts, Washington state, all of these have very strong local incentives that are typically administered by the utility companies. And what I mean that by that is anywhere 2 to $4,000 per ton of heating capacity, of direct rebate that goes directly to the builder. And the thing that stands out to me about those, there are other states that have similar, but maybe smaller dollar values. But you know, your typical home may be a 4 ton home. So that could be $15,000 in incentives in the best case. And that more than pays the ground to ground, pays for the ground root for that house. So it makes it a no brainer. The other thing about the local incentives that's incredibly important in our market is that generally they are payable and receivable by the builder. So if you're building speculatively in a market, you can actually use it to reduce your cost. Where a lot of the federal incentives are more tax credit based. So in the US if you put in a geothermal system or you buy a home that just had one put in, you'll receive a 30% federal tax credit on that. So you could get a, you know, eight to $10,000 check when you buy this home, which is a really nice, or tax credit, which can be a refund, is refundable, which can be a really nice carrot, but it doesn't really help the builder endure the cost of building the system. So the local incentives kind of bridge that gap and help that builder with upfront costs and then the consumer gets this. It also helps them differentiate in the market and when they're selling their homes because you have this superior equipment, lower operating costs and this nice carrot of a tax credit in your first year of ownership.

Yeah, that makes sense. Do you see those incentives becoming more consistent across the country or is it more, is it always going to be a little bit disparate depending on the states?

I think it'll be disparate, but I do see it becoming more consistent. Basically everywhere that's adopted significant electrification policies, whether it's been through a moratorium on gas expansion or just straight up, hey, you can no longer build with fossil fuels in single family homes. Shortly thereafter, there have been utility incentives that have been put in place. We also seen much more widespread utility scale adoption of geothermal, where the utility companies themselves are putting in ground loops in communities and allowing people to tie into them, which is just another type of incentive where they're effectively paying for that ground loop up front. In the five years that I've been in Dandelion, we've seen multiple states go from no incentive to incredibly compelling incentives. So I, I think it's following the electrification movement, it has become more durable. In this particular political environment, for incentives to become more durable, not less, is remarkable. And it just speaks to, it's not a political decision, it's just the best technology that's available to people. The other, the one other thing I'll say on this as it relates to the utility is that they face massive pressure also. Right? Not only do they have to make their grid more resilient to support electrification, you know, right now, natural gas as an example, they have aging infrastructure that needs to be replaced. So they're at a moment where they're looking at hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars of replacement costs over the next decade. And it can actually be cheaper to incentivize expansion of technologies, localized micro grid technologies and technologies like geothermal within a new community rather than bring new new infrastructure or upgrade existing infrastructure to support it. So sometimes even these very robust incentives are the least expensive option for the utility companies.

Well, it sounds like you've got a big job at Dandelion. You've got to influence all the way up, up and down the chain.

Hell yes we do. And thankfully I have a strong, I have a bunch of great teammates in multiple roles. So I'm not sitting here doing it by myself, which was my big reason for getting into this business is to work with a team of motivated and intelligent people and it's been great to do so.

I guess just to wrap things up, where do you see things moving in the short to medium term with this technology and everything we've discussed today? And what's Dandelion playing in that ecosystem?

Well, first off, I see us just, I, I think it's going to explode from here. I've, I've spoken to the benefits of it. We're starting to see major, major production builders adopt it at some sort of scale within different markets we have been engaged in and our colleagues in the industry and other companies are driving costs down and, and there's still just so much room for continued cost improvement on the upfront side. And what I mean by that is, is this becomes a durable market, you know, for building a million homes a year in the United States. Even 5% of them were to be geothermal, which would be a 5 to 10x expansion of the technology. Then you know, major equipment producers, H Vac producers, things like that will come to the table with products and that will cut the costs even further. And then for Dandelion specifically like how we seek to bridge that gap as an early adopter and one of the first at scale production geothermal providers is twofold. One, we're complete design build services on the ground loop. So we take that extra component out of it. We will work with your existing MEP designers and we will design a ground loop that will meet 100% of the needs at home, hottest and coldest days of the year and we'll provide turnkey installation of that ground loop. But then when we turn to the inside of the house, we realized very early on we don't want to replace the existing H Vac installers. We want to support their ability to upscale and to adopt this technology also. So we take the pressure off of them by taking care of the ground loop. But then we specify, you know, best in class geothermal heat pumps, we verify their specification and design and then we train your existing H Vac teams how to install it. And then we follow up with qa, QC and, and training on, on service long term service providers. So as a custom home builder, when I was a custom home builder, the last thing I wanted to hear was I had to get rid of a trusted subcontractor and bring in a new one that I didn't know. And so one of our focuses is to not do that, but just work with the team that you know and trust and just give them access to this technology so you can change it over. And then I'd say the last thing relates a lot to what we talked about around policy. We have a policy and regulatory affairs team in house here that will help you identify, apply for, and make sure that you get the money that is there to support this technology and others like it. And until that process becomes more straightforward, I think that's a really fundamental thing that any provider of geothermal will need to do, which is just make sure the builders have access to the money that's there to fund this technology. A lot of times they don't even know or they just don't have the bandwidth or the staff to. To go after it. So that's the approach we're taking to help bring this at scale and make it easier for a custom home builder to adopt this technology.

Awesome. Yeah, I think there's a lot of, probably not lack of education, but just understanding around not just the benefits of the technology, but ways you can make it more cost effective as well through, you know, government rebates and all sorts of things. Right. It sounds like there's a. There's a lot of understanding that needs to be built there to, to make it viable for home builders.

I think that's absolutely right. Education is the thing.

That's why, that's why you're on the show today, to help.

I guess that's why I'm on the show today. Absolutely. You know, hopefully it's a little step in the right direction for someone.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, Wyatt, thanks so much for coming on Professional Builder Secrets. I've had a lot of fun and there's been some really interesting stuff, stuff we've spoken about.

Thanks, Will. I appreciate you taking the time. Have a great day.

Cool. Well, for anyone Interested, check out dandelionenergy.com I'll share that in the show notes. Is that the best place for people to go, Wyatt?

Yeah, that's great. And they're welcome to email me directly if they like. It's just WyattAndElionenEnergy.com so.

Perfect. Well, also a big thank you to our listeners wherever you are in the world. If you like the show today, please subscribe to Professional Builder Secrets on your platform, platform of choice. And if you're feeling generous, leave us a review. But until next time, Have a great day.