#1 - Quality Control in Energy Efficient Construction with Jackson Digney

Hello and welcome to the first episode of the Building Psychology Potty. Today, as my very first guest, I'm joined by Jackson Digney, husband, father of 4, and director of Enduro Builders and Climbersure. Jackson is South Australia's leading Passive House builder and also my boss, so it was only right that he is my first guest. So welcome, Jackson, and thank you for joining me.

Thanks, thanks for being here. I'm very, very, uh, It's very humbling to be the inaugural guest on your podcast.

You're welcome. So I wanted to chat with you because you are the leader in South Australia in energy efficient building. So let's go back to where you started and why you chose this better building route in your building company. Take us on a bit of a journey of where you've come from.

I grew up, I grew up in a household definitely where repairing and reusing things was A really central part of my life. Those skills were kind of given to me by my parents across all areas, from fixing clothes to fixing stuff in the shed and, you know, repairing and rebuilding things rather than replacing them. And when I got into building, I certainly saw that there was plenty of opportunity in industry to just build whatever. But a lot of it was done without a lot of care to the future. And I think that combined with, you know, another part of my upbringing was, was always about long-term thinking and considering what you're doing now, how that will pan out over the long haul. And when I saw how things were being done building-wise and the longevity of some of that stuff, that really got me interested in sustainable And energy efficient building, which are kind of 2 slightly different disciplines, but they do intertwine, particularly as it led me into Passive House, which led me into high performance building membranes and learning about how those sorts of things all pull together to result in you building buildings that are capable of lasting longer and keeping their occupants healthy and comfortable along the way. And then of course, energy efficiency is, is a byproduct of doing that. And lowering your power bills is something that everyone, everyone's interested in. And as the cost of power goes up, people get more and more interested in it. And for me, it just kind of turned into this logical journey of I learned a little bit about energy efficiency. And then I told someone about that. And they said you should probably learn about Passive House. So I went and learned about that, which then meant I learned about building science, which led me into Woofy and led me into thermal bridge cap and all these things that actually for me turned into this, that kind of a, like a self-perpetuating machine. It was like the more you learn, the more you have worked out you needed to learn, and then the better the buildings got. And, you know, I look at some of my older projects and I sort of go, oh, I can't believe I did that and thought that that was really good. But the thing is that I also have to not be so hard on myself and go, well, I didn't know then what I know now. So I think that's, you know, that's what's got me there. And it's also, you know, I feel really good about what we do. And certainly when I worked in commercial where we were just slapping stuff together and getting the job done and getting out of there, I enjoyed the people that I worked with, but I wasn't getting much fulfillment out of the actual building product.

Yeah. So I guess you just did what most of us do, is you start learning and then realize the more you learn, the more you don't know, and it just keeps going and going and building and building. It never stops. It never stops. So, well, you didn't stop there. You didn't stop with your building company. You decided to start a consulting company as well. You went down the whole, like, I'm going to help other people do the same thing route. So why did you do that?

Well, ultimately, there's a few things that I've learned as I've got older. I mean, it all started with a rising tide floats all boats. And the more people that know about how to actually deliver better buildings, the more people there are educating clients on what a better building is, which helps to drive more clients demanding better buildings, which then means that more builders are getting asked for better buildings. Which then means more builders are trying to find resources to help them actually deliver that. And the establishment of Climashore really helped to actually provide a place for builders to come and get real-world advice from someone that's done it the hard way, I suppose, in that, you know, we didn't— I had people to talk to, but, you know, there was a lot of working things out in terms of trying to find the most economical way to build a better building.

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Um, And the consulting, I think, too, is about helping to make sure that builders don't get themselves into strife by building something with all the good intentions, but because of what they don't know, accidentally doing something that actually makes the building worse and potentially unhealthy. And so, for me, there's actually only There's only really upsides because like I said at the beginning, the more builders that know about this stuff and know how to do it properly and know where to turn for help, that is only better for the industry, which is ultimately better for consumers. And in the last sort of couple of months, you know, we've certainly seen that the government's not going to do it. So we need to as an industry. So, and if that can be my contribution in however many years I get to circle around on the earth for, well, that for me, I'll be happy.

Yeah, that's awesome. And what you're saying about the clients driving the— driving builders to do better, I mean, as you said, the building code is now being paused in South Australia for a decade, and the groundswell of clients and homeowners that I've seen that are requesting more from their builders is forcing builders to, to learn. And the ones that aren't learning Are eventually— they're going to be left behind. Um, and yeah, so I totally get that. But what, in terms of executing this work, I've heard that it's really hard to get carpenters at the moment, especially ones that are doing quality work in this space. And if you don't employ them full-time and they're off on other jobs and they're doing varying, varying types of work at different levels, how do you get around this problem? How do you get around the the workmanship issue because you have consistently high quality work. So, and you don't employ full-time carpenters. So how do you, how do you do that?

Yeah. Yeah, we've always had subcontract carpenters. I suppose I follow the same advice I give to my kids. It's like, if you say you can't, you can't. And if you say you can, then you can. That doesn't mean that every carpenter that we've engaged has just been a dream run and they've been perfect from day one and it's all just roses and Skittles and whatever else you want to describe it. It's been hard work, but we have just developed really good systems for training the carpentry gangs. We obviously, as you know, we've got one carpentry gang that's been around for nearly 8 years now, but we have 4 carpentry gangs. And those new carpentry gangs, It's really easy when you meet a new trade to suss them out about whether they're willing to learn. And if they're willing to learn and they're coachable, well then they stick around and we coach them. And then the other part is that we have done just an inordinate amount of work on our plans and our building details. To standardize them and make them easy to build so that it's stuff that for a carpenter, they can look at the plans and really quickly pick up the details and how things are meant to go together and plan their work accordingly. It's not just carpenters, particularly when you're dealing with building membranes and airtightness. All the trades that have got services going through walls need to understand what they're doing as well. And we just apply the same thing with those guys. And the other part is supervision. So, you know, our supervisors are never running more than 5 projects. So like I say, we have a bunch of questions that we ask at the beginning that really like eke out whether they're going to be on board or say they're on board and then not deliver it, or they're just totally not on board at all. And so yeah, occasionally we've had guys that that haven't worked out before we've even got to site. It's one of those things where it just requires a bit more effort, but on the other side of it, the benefits are worth it. And the thing I'd say to any builder that's thinking about really upping their game on building performance homes is, yes, there is a lot of effort, but nowadays, particularly in Adelaide, there's actually a few really good resources around. Obviously, we're one of them. That has really actionable information that can shorten down that timeframe.

Yeah, yeah. As far as your trades and supervisors that you get on board, I remember there was one dude, I was there on site when he was doing his, like, one of his very initial first building site visits where you were showing him all the ropes and how all the things you expected of him. And I think he lasted a week. I remember, I remember coming to work one day and he would quit. He'd quit and I was like, what? Where did, where did that dude go? So yeah, um, you know, you have a high expectation, which means that the supervisors that you've got now, they are all completely bought into the product that you deliver. And, um, they don't, you know, they don't muck around. They don't accept any less. So it's great. I love working in this environment.

Yeah, and it's not a hard environment. Like, I mean, I always feel like it's the most rewarding environment where everybody goes, this is the level. And I find that, yeah, everyone that's here now actually really appreciates that because when you're just slipping on everything, I don't think there's much motivation in that.

You know, I've heard people say, When you build to a higher standard, I think it's actually easier because there's less, there's less room for error, there's less, um, there's less confusion, you know, everyone knows exactly what is what, uh, and the systems are in place and there's less stuff-ups.

Yeah, yeah, there's a lot. And the thing about building energy-efficient homes that actually perform is you've got to design them well from the start, from the get-go. And designing well means thinking through all of the problems before you get to site and talking through all the problems with the people that are going to have to deliver it. And again, I can hear the ringing in my ears from a couple of builders like, oh, that's, you know, you just leave that till you're on site. It's just easier that way. I'm like, well, no, I feel like getting a phone call at 7 AM in the morning from a trade who's rocked up on site to do the job and needs you to hop in your car and go to site right then and there because they don't understand, they're not sure what to do because it's not on the plans. That to me, that's way more frustrating and annoying and impacts my day heaps more than spending a couple of hours a few months earlier working out, right, where's this going to go? And I think in the environment that we do it, where we've created our own little bubble where our building designers are in the same office as our estimators, and when they're here, the site managers, which means that design or placement ideas for services are able to be discussed with the people that are actually going to have to deliver it straight away. Which is, you know, it's an area where I find there's some architects that I'll really gladly work with because they'll hop on the phone straight away and say, what, you know, how's this, how do we need to draw this for this to work? Unfortunately, there's still a lot of architects that really, they talk the talk of, yeah, we work together and yeah, we do this and yeah, you know, we'll talk that through with you. But they don't walk the walk of it. They'll sort of mark things on the plan and they'll say, well, I've put it on the plan. And then when we say, yeah, we can't build it like that for these reasons, they're like, oh, we'll just work it out when you get to site. I'm like, well, that's where it falls over. And that's what results in a lot of like things, you know, you see a lot of people complain about things not getting built to the plan. And usually the problem with building is sometimes if you have to, if you've got something that's marked on the plan that can't be built the way it's marked, it usually impacts 2 or 3 other things. And then you get this cascading effect. And the thing is nowadays software is so good, pretty well regardless of what design software you use, they all have a 3D feature to them so that you can, you can really plan things out and map everything out properly before you start.

So you mentioned things not being built to the plan. There's a term for this, it's called the performance gap. And what, what it means is, for people listening, is what gets designed by an architect or by a building designer, what then gets assessed by the energy assessor, and then what gets actually built on site can sometimes be 3 different things. So how do we go about closing that gap, Jackson? And, you know, how do you think the industry at large should go about fixing that? Because the communication between all the parties on a building project, you know, let alone knowing about all the standards and building codes that change and all that sort of thing, what's the best way? What's your take on how that can be improved on a broader industry scale? I know that's a really big question. Fix the building industry, Jackson.

Well, then the— I mean, you know, most people, most people know my feelings about NATHAS. I accept that NATHAS is the system that everybody understands. What I don't accept is that it's, it's got a few too many flaws. And setting aside all of the in-design and connection with reality side of it, the certificate that gets produced at the end of all of that, that is then given to the builder for specification purposes, is not— is often not read. And if it is read, sometimes it's not followed. And there is nothing protecting consumers from that occurring. How would you know if they put the correct windows in? And someone would go, oh, I wouldn't, I just assume the builder will get it right. And the reality is that because no one's inspecting, uh, the, the built product against, um, the energy rating certificate, There's plenty of buildings that don't meet the requirements of their energy rating certificate. So that, you know, that's a performance gap right there because the client thinks, and in some cases may have even paid a premium for something that they're actually not getting.

Yeah.

I think that, you know, There's education of builders about how important it is to actually understand the requirements of NATA's, but then there's no education at the back end. It's like builders, builders that maybe miss some things in an Australian standard for timber framing, for instance, they get picked up by a council inspector. And so the builder learns as a result. And but if there's nothing happening with inspection at completion for compliance with, with a NATA's energy rating, well then no one's learning. You know, if we, if something gets picked up on one of our jobs where we've missed something in, in the building code that we should have done that we didn't do, and because we have to circle back, we have to fix it. And of course I'm annoyed because I pride myself on being, being across all that stuff. And that, I think, for builders, we need to remember that we are providing a professional service and we are professionals in our field and we should be doing professional development. And I think that at the moment, professional development for builders in South Australia at least is optional. And that's—

A travesty.

Yeah.

It's not cool. Yeah.

It's not cool.

No.

And I think that part of the problem is that there isn't a lot of good professional development available. So, without good professional development being available, it's hard to Um, you know, it's hard to enforce professional development. So, but I think that that's the, that's, you know, all of those things impact that, um, performance gap. And it's, yeah, it's not, it's not one thing. Unfortunately, I can't solve the building industry problems that you and I talk about regularly in the office in one podcast.

We can do our part. That's all we can do is our part. But we've got a situation where You've got builders who, they finish their trade when they're, you know, in their, in their early 20s, sometimes younger, and then there is no requirement to do any further development. So this Better Building journey is a self-driven journey, and you have to— each individual tradesman or builder has to decide to go down that path as an individual. And then you've got, on the flip side, you've got a situation where homeowners, for example, they think that double glazing means one level of performance. They don't understand that there are in fact thousands of different types of double glazing levels of performance. So there's this lack of knowledge on the professional side, and there's a lack of knowledge on the consumer side that leads to this huge amount of disparity in what actually gets delivered. And there's a perception out there that all builders are actually the same. I was having a discussion just recently where someone said to me, well, before I really started talking about this with you, I just thought that all builders built to the building code and they all knew what that was and that was that. And that's not the case at all. It's not the case at all.

I always get annoyed when people go, oh, it's very complex, construction's very complex. Because I'm like, well, no, it's not complex. It's very straightforward and it's very process-driven. There's just a lot of parts to it. And if you're not methodical and make sure that you're across all of the parts, then that's where problems occur. And as a consumer, what I would say is the building industry is very tight. It's a very tight industry in terms of that there is a lot of pressure from builders on suppliers and subbies to keep their prices down. And in turn, there's a lot of pressure from consumers on builders to keep their prices down. So if you see a big price difference from one builder to another, either someone's being dishonest or someone is simply not including the same amount of stuff as the other. And as a consumer, the key thing to work out is what is and what isn't included. And how exactly are you going to put my home together? You know, if they're a builder that has testimonials, that speaks volumes of that builder because those clients will have given up half a day or more of their time to sit down and do like a video testimonial or put a review on Google or any of those things. And what you're trying to understand is, am I getting good value for money? Because you can get good value for money at $600,000 for a house, or you can get good value for money at $1.5 million. It's about what's gone into it and how big it is and what things are included in the contract and what's not included in the contract. And so if you're a homeowner trying to nut all this out, that's where I always say, You, you want to make sure that the builder that is cheaper has got lots of people saying these guys are great, these are the best people I've ever worked with, they're completely honest about the price and the price stayed exactly what it was when they said and all of those things. And if they're doing that, well then maybe, maybe they're the right builder for you.

Yep. Okay, so Enduro Builders, you, to give your clients a certain level of certainty around what they are actually going to get, what gets designed actually gets built. You've got 3 levels of, 3 levels of performance. So could you please explain a little bit about how you came to these 3 levels and what, what, what are clients going to get out of those 3 levels of construction energy efficiency?

We had a lot of years of trying to work out like how to sort of grade the energy performance of what we were building to suit different budget points. So the 3 levels are Certified Passive House, which is obviously the top performer. And the Certified Passive House obviously comes, comes with those guarantees of the full certification process with the Passive House Institute and the gathering of all of the data and photos and purchase orders and receipts and the whole lot to show that Everything that was designed was built exactly the same way. Then we have what we call a high efficiency house where they, they are not certified. We keep the heat recovery ventilation pillar of the Passive House as part of a high efficiency house. So you're getting the high quality air outcome that, that you'd, you'd be looking for with a certified Passive House. The difference is that we, we remove the internal airtight membrane strategy out of the build, which pulls back on cost. And most of our high efficiency houses don't have underslab insulation because that's just another cost that if we're not going for certification, then we don't have to have it. There's some pros and cons with it. You have slightly You're going to have a slightly colder house, but in the scheme of things, you're still going to have a really high-performing house. And then, and then we have an energy-efficient house. And with an energy-efficient house, if we put heat recovery ventilation in, we only do it as a, as a decentralized heat recovery system because they are way cheaper and they don't require any special service zones or anything. Anything really unique. And we pull back a little more on airtightness strategy, which just again pulls back on the cost of the build. But through all of those levels, we still use double-glazed UPVC windows and doors. We still use R4 insulation in the walls and R6 in the ceilings, and we still build with all thermal bridge-free details. So, so yeah, they're the 3 levels. With a high efficiency house, we actually still use the Passive House planning package. And we have some numbers for heating demand and cooling demand and primary energy and all of that that we, we use. So we kind of, in that scenario, we're using the Passive House planning package as a, as an energy modeling tool. It's one thing that we make ultra clear to our clients, like, if you're not doing a certified Passive House, then you're just building an energy efficient home. But we are using the Passive House Planning Package for our energy modeling just because it's accurate. And like, we can do a, we can do a pretty quick, slightly rough, but has a fair bit of accuracy assessment using the PHPP in like 45 minutes. Like draw up, draw up in Design PH and bang it through with some assumptions. So, you know, that's to me, that, that's just a huge amount of value in that.

Yeah. And you still get your star ratings done. You can't use that planning package for energy certification, can you? So you have your own internal energy model and you also have your energy efficiency compliance done by someone external.

Yeah, that's right. It's one of those ones where, you know, I would love, I'd love to see acceptance of the Passive House planning package in South Australia as your, you know, your energy rating kind of, um, you know, demonstrating that you're meeting the performance provisions. But, uh, I respect the fact that Nathers is the thing that everyone gets. And so, yeah, and, and we work with some really great people to, you know, make sure that we're, um, getting the gap between the real performance of the house that we get out of PHPP and the pretend performance that Nathers gives you as close as possible on paper.

And I just want to go back to the thermal bridging comment that you made earlier. So talking about how thermal bridging is the least understood concept in construction, can we just have a brief rundown for anyone listening who doesn't know what thermal bridging is, what it is and what the impact it has on a building?

Yeah. So a thermal bridge is essentially a pathway for cold or hot to pass through the thermal envelope of the house and make contact with a surface inside. So the thermal envelope of the house is the floor, the walls, and the windows and ceiling. A really easy thermal bridge example is aluminium windows. So aluminium window frames are highly conductive because it's aluminium. And, and a great example that most people have seen at least once in their life is an aluminium window condensating in a bathroom or in a bedroom during winter. And, and thermal bridges also occur in wall junctions, particularly where like external corners and internal corners occur. And, and often where an internal wall meets an external wall and where walls meet ceilings, for example. So you could sum that up by saying wherever your thermal envelope changes direction, there's likely to be a thermal bridge if it's not built properly. And, and one of the, one of the big ones is with those junctions in walls where the insulation isn't installed correctly or the timber framing has not been set out in a way that you can install insulation correctly. Correctly, you will get, um, cold air making it through to the back of plasterboard often. And, and you can get mold growth happening on the back of the plasterboard that you don't see inside the house visibly, but it is, it is there. And mold growth actually has to get reasonably severe for you to actually see it, which means there's a whole bunch of mold occurring in the air that is on the wall, but it's not visible on the wall to the naked eye. And that's where, that's where the biggest health risk comes from, because you don't even know you have a problem. And so that's where, that's where you're, you know, you're getting a lot of your problems with health.

Yeah, mold, mold is a bit like termites. It can happen inside the wall and roof cavities and you don't know about it until it's a massive problem. And you can't see and smell most mold growth.

Yeah.

Which is a, which is a really scary fun fact. And if you can see it, the problem is likely much more extensive than what you're visually able to see. So cold spots equals mold spots, people. Cold spot is a thermal bridge. So get rid of them. Talk to your builder about thermal bridging and see what they say.

I think our first words are, what's that? Call Jess.

Give us a call. Yeah, that's exactly right, we're here to help. So, uh, last question. You have built a certified Passive House display home. Um, yes, it is one of only 2 currently certified Passive Houses in South Australia. So where can people find out about that, and how can they visit it if they want to?

So, uh, you can of course read about the house on the Enduro Builders website. And you can book a tour on the Enduro Builders website, and the tours run on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. And the reason that they run on Tuesdays and Wednesdays is that the house is available to Airbnb from Thursdays to Mondays. And we've done that because we want to give people the opportunity to actually experience the comfort of living in a certified Passive House. So the— you can find the house on Airbnb, and eventually we will put a link on the website so that you can Airbnb it straight off the Enduro Builders website. But for now, it's available via Airbnb. You just look for what's available in Mount Barker and it'll, it'll pop up there.

Excellent. Well, on that note, we shall wrap up. Thank you so much for having a chat with me on the very first episode of the Building Psychology Potty. If you would like to learn more about Enduro Builders, head to endurobuilders.com.au or head to the socials where you can learn much more about them. That is all for today. Thanks so much for tuning in. There'll be another episode in a fortnight, so if you would like to listen into the types of conversations that I have all the time, please subscribe on your chosen platform. Rate the show, leave a comment, whatever you like. Share with your friends and family. I'd love for you to spread the word about the Building Psychology Potty. There's a link in the episode description where you can head to a landing page, and there are some show notes there with relevant links and a full transcript of the show as well, and also links to my socials. So, if you're not already, I'd love for you to follow along there too, as I share lots of building science and building biology tips. There's also a contact page where you can send me an email or even a voice message, so if you've got questions or suggestions or guest ideas, I'd love to hear from you. I want to know what you want to know, so please get in touch with me. Thanks again, I'll be back in 2 weeks, so until then, happy healthy building!