Why Most Australian Homes Are Built Wrong: Expert Tips for Building Healthier Homes

All right guys, welcome back to another episode of Level Up. We are back online today for another cracking episode. Uh, I don't— I haven't really spent a lot of time with the guest we've got coming on today, but I've definitely seen a lot of his stuff online and heard a lot of really good things about him. Um, and one thing, or one of the reasons I wanted to get him on is I'm really passionate about people that are passionate about what they do. And also, I really like it when people start other businesses or follow their passions so that they can get better results. And the guest I've got for you today has done exactly that. So massive warm welcome to Jackson Digney. How are you, mate? Good.

Thanks for having me.

All good, mate. So to give people a little bit of an idea, you are, you're a builder. You, you have Enduro Builders.

Yep.

But you also have Climashore.

So that's right. We, um, we— I mean, I started Enduro 10 years ago. Um, we actually last month tipped over 10 years. And, uh, Climashore, I started, uh, 5 years ago. Um, I started Climashore because The journey with Enduro, I started Enduro always wanting to do sustainable and energy-efficient homes. And I quickly started to learn that there's a big difference between those 2 things. They do overlap with each other, but they are 2 very different kind of methods, 2 different approaches. And the energy-efficient side of that approach led to airtightness, which very quickly led to dealing with moisture. And that introduced me to Proclima. And then we became— well, we became Proclima's biggest South Australian client, because we were the only South Australian client. And the, yeah, the guys at Proclima got in touch and said, do you want to stop buying from Justin in Victoria and, you know, become a, become a distributor, which also means selling it to other people. And I was like, oh, that for me, that is perfectly in alignment with the reason that, the reason that Enduro exists, which is to improve the quality, health, and comfort of the housing stock in South Australia. So But I'm also aware that some, some builders are really open and happy to, like I am, tell everything that they know, and some of it will be helpful and some of it won't. Other builders are a bit funny about that. So we started Climashore so that there was just a little bit of, I suppose, branding separation. And employed Jess, who you know. to run that business, which also just gave a little bit of personal separation. And yeah, Jess has done a fantastic job really growing, growing that business to where it is and, and doing a lot of learning on the practical side and spending, spending a lot of time in site meetings with builders with me, sort of soaking up the the sort of hands-on building part that goes, comes after all of the building science part. So yeah.

Yeah, this, I think this podcast could go on for hours, mate. I've definitely got a lot of questions.

That's why I'm trying to stop myself rather than just going.

Yeah, I've got a big list here.

You'd be left there going, all I got was 2 hours of Jackson talking.

And mate, that's fine because I'm sure it would be quality information, but I've put together some notes because there's a few things I wanted to make sure we definitely cover today. Because I do feel like in a, like, I'm not sure if it's just because I'm aware of it now, but like a lot of people in the building industry, like just, they get into it because they like being hands-on. They do an apprenticeship. They might move on and become a builder, but they tend to just stay in that lane. They follow very old-fashioned practices and ways that they were taught. And they don't necessarily keep up with how, well, I don't know if I'd want to keep up with how the industry is progressing, but they don't really put themselves out there to better their knowledge so that they can deliver better products to their client. I guess that's why I'm a big fan of yours and what you've done. And like I said, because you've actually created another business alongside your building business to help more builders understand, which I think is fantastic. I think we'll, if we can dive into Enduro Builders a little bit first, because I guess that'll give us a bit more of an insight and background into why you do what you do with Climashore. But yeah, tell us, I guess, how you got into building. Like, is building something you've always wanted to do? Or give us a little bit of your background first.

Yeah. So when I was, so my old man, right up until just before I was born, was, uh, in hardware. So he, he owned a couple of Mitre 10 stores. I think at one point he owned 5. Um, and that— this was back in the— because I was born in '83, so this was like late '70s into the early '80s. Um, and at one point he was the managing director of Mitre 10 Australia, and he He kind of kept a lot of contact with the hardware side of things, even though he sort of finished up with Mitre 10 when I was born, because he— that role involved a lot of traveling and a lot of time away, which wasn't congruent with his goals for being around for his kids.

Yeah.

It meant that I grew up in a household where I was really exposed to small business and small business problems because my old man became a business consultant and very much ran an at-home business. There was— people would come for meetings at our house and often be sitting around the dining table. as we were all hurtling around after school and things like that.

Yeah.

And I kind of, as I grew up, I wanted to be lots of different things, one of which was a property developer. And that kind of never, never happened because when I finished school, by I did really well in accounting at school, and when I finished school, I applied for university positions in construction management at one uni and commerce specializing in accounting, finance, and marketing at another university. And the university that both spots got offered to me, but to do construction management meant going to a university that was an hour's drive away from home and, um, and not near the yacht club, which at that point in my life was central to not only my income but also, um, to where I thought I wanted to go at that point in my life, which was sailing for a living. And basically sailing for a living can, can go down a couple of different routes, but the one that I was focused on was the America's Cup. And, um, I, I did that for a couple of years while also kind of applying myself at uni. Um, and in the end, we, we worked out that sailing was not going to be the, um, honeypot that we thought it was going to be.

Uh, good, good experience, but great experience.

And, you know, I got to see a lot of the world Um, on other people's checkbooks, which is great because we were, we were professional sailors. So, you know, we were being, being paid, or on the times where we weren't being paid, we were at least, you know, flown to where we had to be and clothed and housed and fed.

Yeah.

So, um, I, I then moved back to Perth, um, and was really serious about being in business for myself. And I, I worked for a company in Perth that made yacht sails and yacht masts and did shade sails and structural steel and a whole bunch of other bits and pieces. And, um, I bought that business and ran it for a few years and, um, had a lot of— learned a lot of hard lessons. Because I was 21 when I bought that business. And I learned a lot about not sticking with bad people. And the old slow to hire, quick to fire was something that I did in reverse to my detriment. Basically, I got to a point where we exposed ourselves to some some really big mining projects in WA doing shade sails. And I had worked out the cash flow of these 2 huge projects, which for where the business was at, doing a million-dollar shade sail project was, you know, represented like a 25% growth in our revenue in a 6-month period. And the problem was that I cash flowed doing those projects based on one happening at the beginning of the year and one at the end. And what happened was one got delayed and one got brought forward, and they both kind of went ahead at the same time. And that was in 2008 as the GFC was starting to bite. And so we had a big, a big problem with cash flow combined with kind of a dying marine market because everyone, everyone in the, you know, the marine market generally, the bit I was in was all discretionary spending and there was not much of that going on.

Yeah.

And the solution for me at the time was to sell the business, which luckily someone came along and bought it. And that resulted in me moving to South Australia because At the time I sold the business, my now wife finished her chiropractic degree in Perth, and she's from South Australia, and her mum had teed her up with a job over here straight out of uni. I'd sold the business, so I was kind of full loose and fancy free and probably needed a bit of a break from the pressure cooker of Perth. And I moved over here not really sure what I was going to do, um, but I had, from all of the years of traveling around the world and working in various different things, I, I had a whole bunch of trade skills, from, um, carpentry skills related to building boats to working with composites, welding a whole bunch of different materials together, um, rigging, like dealing with loads and weights and all of— all had all these skills. And I was like, where do I want to direct them? And I kind of, um, managed to fall on my feet because my wife's father, my father-in-law, is a builder. He's retired now, but he was a hands-on builder who did everything. And he of course said, well, you know, what are you going to do? And I said, oh, I might buy a business, I don't know, I'm going to hang around. He said, why don't you come work work for me while you work it out. And I started working for him and very quickly was like, ah, I'm going to retrain in the building industry and become a builder. And that kind of set in motion the process of getting, getting the training and skills, doing the courses, and then getting my builder's license. And I didn't initially do much other than go and work for a commercial builder as a project manager, which was a job that I only got because of my prior business experience. And obviously, I've, I've like condensed, condensed a lot of the business experience into a short explanation. They basically said like, you don't, you don't, yes, you've been working on the tools, doing additions and renos and one new house. But where, so your building experience for this role is probably not as good as the other candidates, but your business experience is clear. And this role involves As they put it, catching and killing your own. So finding your own work, learning it. And so I then went on a really vertical learning curve on lots of areas, getting things right the first time, because in commercial it's very cutthroat. And the type of work that that company did, There's very little room for making errors and letting people down, and the consequences of doing so are really unpleasant. So, I also worked out that the construction industry can be a soulless, lifeless, wasteful space.

Yeah, definitely.

I met a carpenter during, during that, who his business had kind of morphed from having a bunch of carpenters and doing decks and pergolas to additions and renos, new homes. And he did everything as cost plus. And he was in a world of pain. He was behind with the ATO, hadn't paid super for ages. Was fine with his suppliers and was just sort of just shoestringing things along. And I really admire my wife for accepting that I was unhappy at the commercial builder and wanted to go and save somebody else's business because I knew that I could do it. But there was a risk that, you know, we could end up— I could end up with no income and even worse, have a, you know, a black mark against my reputation for having not done what I thought I could do.

Yeah.

The good news is that I did. I took over that business. My deal with him was that I said, look, you got to hand over the reins entirely, financial control, the whole lot. You got to give it up. If you want me to come in, but I'm supremely confident I can save it. And I just did the basics.

So did you become business partners or you worked for him?

God, no, no. I just went in as an employee. So part of my exit strategy was always that like anyone can get a job anywhere. So I didn't want to be I definitely did not want to be in partnership with him, but I was happy to take on the personal challenge of fixing his business.

Yeah.

And I just did the basics. The first thing was he was doing all cost plus and had no system for collating the wages for the hours for the week and on which jobs and collecting like who had bought what materials or hired equipment for which job. So back then there was a system called WorkflowMax. So I just implemented that. So straight away, we had a very tight connection between money being spent on jobs and it being allocated to the job and same, same deal for hours. And, and then also went and met all the clients and gave them contracts to sign, which was interesting because— You know, partway through, for some of them, they were partway through a job and they'd been doing this ad hoc where they sometimes get bills and sometimes they don't. And I kind of rocked in wearing a button-up shirt and looking official and said, oh, by the way, like, I'm the general manager and you're like, we need to like formalize this arrangement. And here's the cost-plus contract and here's how they work. And we're going to bill you every Friday. Payments have to be in. by the close of business on Monday, otherwise we won't be back on Tuesday. And they were like, a few, a few of them were like, oh, it's good to see someone's like pulling stuff together. And a few, and a few of the other ones were very put out about it. Um, but the turnaround was really rapid, um, and it took about, took about 8 months to get on top of everything and get, um, back up to date with the ATO Yep. Super up to date. And so, you know, all of the profit that was generated went into catching back up. And then some of the behaviors that got the guy into trouble in the first place came back, which was, you know, seeing a big bill come in. And because I also introduced fixed price contracts, seeing a big bill come in and think that that was all his money. And so we wound up parting ways, probably not all that amicably, because I take integrity really seriously. So like, if you say you're going to do something, do it. And if you don't do it, that's really, for me, that is a very, very serious thing. And that's what had happened. And so we parted ways and sat down with Carly and was like— Carly's my wife— and I said, I think I'm going to start a building company. And sometimes I wonder how she does it, how she sits So, Carla's a chiropractor. She runs 2 clinics, a very successful business on her own, but she's certainly probably taken some leaps of faith with me. This one's worked out really well.

Yeah.

And yeah, we argued for about 3 weeks over business names while I started, you know, reaching out to architects. And at that point in time, I decided that I was going to set up a business that specialized in building energy-efficient homes and sustainable homes. And bear in mind, at that point in time, I didn't— I knew that that was what I wanted to do, and I didn't fully understand what that actually meant yet.

What was the driver? What was the driver for that? Like, what was the driver for going into that space?

A few different things. So my old man has always been big on self-sufficiency, and that's across the board— financial self-sufficiency, finding ways to be food self-sufficient where you can, or having a good network of people that you can you know, you can work together. He's always been really strong on that and skills. And that's, you know, that's the thing that I always find really interesting. Like, I'm just as comfortable pulling an engine apart as I am roofing a house or like pick your thing. And that's all because of Dad just going, have a go at doing everything and, you know, and go and hang out with people that specialize in the things and learn about it. So that, yeah, like there's heaps of those things where nowadays I'm really grateful when something goes wrong and we're a long way from help. I'm like, thank God I'm really self-sufficient because I can, I'll fix this and make that work and we can, yeah. And, you know, as an aside, Dad travels around the world now building earthships, which is the hardcore sustainable end.

That's awesome.

Energy efficiency and sustainability.

I'm gonna have to catch up with your old boy. I watch so many YouTubes on earthships and that. I think they're amazing.

Yeah. So he's just always drilled that into me. And then the carpenter that morphed into a builder whose business I ran for a bit, he was really interested in sustainability. And so there was a bit more of an introduction there as well. And it just, to me, made a lot of sense because I'd also done In the, in the time that I spent doing commercial projects, um, a lot of time in just the slap it up, get it done cheap as you can, and it just didn't feel— it didn't feel right. Um, and it's difficult to describe. Like, I, I, like, I enjoyed the relationship part of commercial, but I, I, yeah, I just never felt like— I was leaving a positive impact behind with some of the building practices. So that's probably the best summation I can give you as to why I wanted to go down that road.

I think it's awesome.

Yeah, I started the business.

It says, I think it says a lot like that, like knowing that background and where you've come from and all the stuff you've been through and then your reasoning why. I think that says a lot and that's I don't know, so there's a lot of marketing in that for your building company.

Um, and, and I— the other thing too is that I, um, you know, coming up with the why for Enduro Builders of we're here to improve the quality, health, and comfort of houses in South Australia, that was really easy for me to come up with as like our mission statement. And, and it's stuck, it hasn't changed. The only, the only tweak to it is that we, we included comfort and health in it about 2 years ago. Because I was like, well, we're doing— yeah, we are doing more than just quality. And it was important to recognize that for new staff coming in so that they grasped it straight away. So, like I was saying, I started off with this focus on, I'm going to focus on working with architects and building architect-designed houses. That, for me anyway, didn't gel very well with expanding my business. The way it played out for me was that I started off with, with a few architect-designed projects, and then started getting— I was driving a lot of marketing, which meant that a lot of leads were coming directly to me. And then I was, I had a really good system for taking them to one of the 3 architects that I was working with and kind of teeing them up and then leaving them to do the design. And the deal was to, you know, do a concept, show it to me so I can check it for pricing, then we'll show it to the client and then we'll, you know, from there we'll work backwards and forwards to close up the gap. So not that dissimilar to what I understand your process to be.

Yeah.

Just slightly different, slightly differently. But we, we got a way into that where there were a few misses where the architects showed the plans to the client before they'd spoken to me, and they were way over budget. And then that architect blamed me for it being over budget, which makes no sense at all. But that's, that's how— and I'm sure lots of builders just heard that sentence and they're like, yeah, that's happened to me before too. So, and then, then it started to become clear that the volume of work I had coming through, just the architects just couldn't keep— let me rephrase that. They didn't want to keep up with it. Because I was really strict about, I need to see the plans before you show them to the client. We need to have this level of communication about cost. And, and I understand from their point of view, I was probably throwing sand and gravel into the well-oiled, their well-oiled machine. And, and so then I started, then I had a project where I was like, you know what, I'll design it. Because all of the work that Carly and I do on the side, I was designing anyway. So, we did one job with me designing, and I was like, this was a well-oiled machine. Everything worked really well. And so, then I hired a building designer, and we just tapered out our architectural projects. And we do still work with architects, but we have a really clearly defined set of guardrails that we, that we work within. And we, we've, we've learned to make it work, but our primary thing is design and build. And, and every time we do an architect-designed project where they come to us with the concept already done, We haven't had any that we've costed up and they've, you know, just landed on the budget and it's all been sweet. There's always been a lot of work to close the gap, either by the client raising their budget or by changing the plans. And we found that that's unpleasant for everyone. Like, it's unpleasant having to ring the client and say, hey, like, I know that You've had a QS say this, and you've had an architect say this, and you've had someone else say this. And, you know, maybe even other builders give lower prices, but we really think this is going to cost this much money. And then, of course, we follow through and actually prove that.

It's a shame.

For our projects.

It's a really shame that that whole process is so broken because a lot of great projects don't go ahead. Because that process—

and there's a lot of great architects.

Yeah.

And there's a lot of great architects. Like, I don't want to be misconstrued as bashing the architects because there are a couple that we do work with who are ones that we used to send work to. And we've just worked out that it works better if they come to us and say, hey, we've got this job that's a perfect fit for you guys. And they are like one of them. We go and resolve building details because we use Revit and they use Revit, which is the design software. I go and sit in their office and sometimes I drive, sometimes they drive, and we develop. We've worked out that that's the quickest way to get all of the things, like one of us drafts and the rest of us talk. And so, for me, that is real collaboration. 'Cause I'm literally there doing some of the drawing work. So, they work really well, but my experience has been that they're few and far between. And alongside of that, I've really focused on, like, I want to build more homes so that there are more high-quality, comfortable, healthy homes in South Australia. And to do that, I need to grow. And part of that is making it more economical to build homes that actually perform and are actually safe to live in. Which means that, you know, they're not— they're thermal bridge-free, so they're not going to have mold growth, that air quality has been considered in the design and the specification. And we have really worked hard to systemize how we build to bring the cost down of doing it. Now, yes, it costs more to build a house with us than go to a volume builder. But quite often, we will be the same or a lower price than a custom Home quote comparison. Yeah, we've had a couple of instances.

Well, on that subject, because that was one of my questions, because I noticed like in a lot of your stuff on Instagram and stuff that you talk about, like you're always selling your standard and that's sort of what you're talking about now. But a lot of builders and even tradies always use the cost barrier. Oh, I can't do that because I won't get another job or people won't pay for it. But My building business is very much the same as yours. Like, we set our standards and if people don't want to build to our standards, then they don't build with us. So can you give us like just a little bit of insight into, I guess, how your brain feels or works when it comes to that? Because I think if every builder set their own standard and just concentrate on selling that to their clients, straight away we're going to get better homes in Australia.

Yeah, well, and, and, uh, an easier way for clients to compare. So the, um, where do I start? I mean, it, it's an awful lot of work, um, and it has taken— I would say this year is the first year that we really had everything like pulled together nicely with all our like standard details. standard drawings, um, and, and a lot of our written, like, systems and processes for how the houses actually go together. Um, and part of that's been because those details get shared with ClimateSure clients as well. And, like, we— our detail pages include a little methodology of, like, you would do this bit, then this bit, then this bit, then this bit, then this bit. And, um, We've had to do that to support the growth of the business because as I bring in a new site manager, they, you know, they come from the regular paradigm. And they come, you know, we find nowadays that when we put out a job ad, the people that are applying by and large, they're applying because they're like, we've been usually in that cover letter. It's like, I've been watching you guys for years. I mean, waiting for the opportunity to come up. So that— and that's really flattering. I'm always like, I can't believe people like, you know, I mean, it's hard because it's always been one of my goals to not only do the housing bit, but to be an employer of choice. And it means that they come in wanting to be here, that we then have the obligation to train them correctly and put them through a very much like vertical learning curve on this is how the houses go together, which meant documenting it. And I think I would say that it's really clear to me now why lots of builders don't do that because the amount of work is colossal. And we've really only done it because I've got an awesome team who are all invested in what we do and have been invested in the, you know, me saying, blocked part of your weekly diary needs to have time blocked in it for this development work that that we're doing, building out the documentation assets of the business. And people have been really holding that time as sacred as we hold planning time in everyone's diaries.

Yeah.

But it's been, yeah, and it's one that I'll admit I chose not to keep track of what it's costing because I'm like, this is setting us up for the next 30 years. Or beyond.

Yeah, it definitely has to be done.

You've got the detail.

Yeah, it's got to be done.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, and, and look, you know, we share that stuff with Climashore clients, so, you know, there's, um, there's value. The value that we've put into it, we're gonna, um, we're sharing with anyone that is interested.

Yeah, but it's— I think it's important for builders to realize that, and like You don't, they don't have to go as far as like you and I have with developing documents and specifications and things. But you can, you can make it as simple as I want to, like Proclima is a standard on all my jobs, or we do cavity batten systems on all our jobs, or we use like whatever it is. Every, every builder can build better. But I just hear too often it's all based on price. Like so many builders think, oh, I can't do that because I can't charge more because I won't get more work. But yeah, I think it's—

Education. That's what I see. Yeah, I just realized I didn't really answer your question about that, but I put it down to education. And I've always found that when we've taken the time to to explain why something is costing more and what goes into it to cause the cost increase and then what the benefit is, you get a much more positive response from the client. And the thing I'd say to builders is have a think about all the times you've talked them into an idea that you had about— finish or how something was going to look that cost more that they did and the client agreed to it. You just got to apply the exact same logic to— have you thought about like, why don't we do under slab insulation because you're building a house in the bottom of a valley in the hills, you know, like it's going to be cold. So let's do under slab. Yeah, it's going to cost you $15,000. But the benefit is that during winter, Your feet will be warm, your house will stay warmer, etc., etc. And I find I've just never found a situation where clients haven't found a way to make it, make it work for them. And underpinning that, though, is that we have some minimums. You know, we won't do single glazing, for instance, we won't do aluminium frames unless they have a high-quality thermal break. So things like that too, I find you get them out of the way early on in the conversation with the client, and they choose to either go with you or not. And it's the scariest thing, like I'm sure you've done it where you turn a client away because, because you're— they might, they might tick 25 of the 30 boxes, um, or 29 of the 30 boxes, and then that last box you're like, well, no, that's, that's our minimum. Um, and you always go, oh, what have I done? You know, are we broke next week? I don't know, that's, that's kind of the pit that I go in every time. Um, in spite of 10, 10 years of it never going wrong. Um, I think, uh, every time there's always someone else.

Exactly, mate. Exactly. Like the one door shuts, 3 doors open. So I'm gonna start asking you a few more questions because otherwise we're gonna be here all night.

Sorry, just cut me off.

No, no, that's good.

Cut me off.

You're gonna upset me. You're really, you're sharing good quality information. So I really appreciate it. But one of the videos you've got on your Instagram, which I like, is you talk about 4 myths that builders are stuck. Like if you, if you, If you're choosing a builder that's got these 4 myths, don't build with them. That's the way I sort of take it. Like, and you talk about builders being stuck in like still building homes the way they were in the '80s. Can you just talk us through that a little bit?

Yep. I'm trying to remember what the 4 myths were because when I— some of those articles I write, they take a year or so to come out into the Into the thing, by which time we've, we've completely— I'm like, yes, I remember that. Just remind me of the detail again. The 4 myths. So airtight construction creates mold. So that's, that's a, it's a myth because if you just make a house airtight, and you still put aluminium frames and single glazing, and you don't think about thermal bridge in your wall frames, particularly junctions on corners and where internal walls meet external walls, then all that happens in an airtight house is obviously that the moisture load inside the house goes up, Because it's not, it's not finding its way out through all of the gaps and holes. And it can increase the likelihood of mold occurring. But that doesn't mean that an airtight home creates mold. It's an airtight home with lots of thermal bridges increases your chance of having mold. And, and so there's like a, there's a stepped understanding that you, to go through, which, which, if you're, if you haven't taken the time to learn about it, then it's very quick and easy to go, no, no, airtight homes, they're all horrible. They're called, you know, mold problems. And you don't want to have an airtight home. You want to, you want to let the house breathe. And that, I could go on for hours about airtight, but I'll leave it there. Timber isn't as durable as concrete or brick. So timber, if it is allowed to get wet all the time, is not a very durable product because it can— often it'll grow mold, but it'll also rot. And, and also, you know, wet timber for things like lintels over doorways, it'll sag. So a lot of people, a lot of homeowners go, I want, you know, brick and concrete, because they're solid materials that aren't going anywhere. And while that, while that has some truth to it, you can have Situations, you know, if brick gets wet, there's plenty of, plenty of homes, plenty of examples of brick that has been wet without being able to dry. And eventually it's like the brick starts to break down and frets away. And a similar thing can happen with concrete.

Mm-hmm.

You can also have concrete in corrosion zones where they've poured too 20 MPa instead of following the engineers and pouring 32 if you're in the corrosion zone, or even 40 in some cases. And, and that does happen. And then the salt gets into the concrete, blows out the reo, blows out concrete. So the, the other thing is with timber, if you keep timber structures dry, then you will not have a problem with timber over the long haul. And the issue is, there's been like these step changes. So hundreds of years ago, all the timber buildings, they were completely breathable, there was very little airtightness to anything. Then we started kind of improving building materials, and clients started asking for, you know, or you know, architects would come up with different building materials. I'm talking about architects that are employed by manufacturers that would come up with different building materials and finishes and looks. And that then resulted in, you know, lots of materials that were tight-fitting and led to more, slightly more airtight homes, and so on and so forth, until we got to a point where we are right now where There's a lot of accidental airtightness occurring with thermal bridging without consideration to how the timber is going to keep drying out. And then the timber gets wet, and then you have problems, and then timber gets blamed.

Okay.

But it's not actually the timber, it's how you're using it.

I think like that, um, I think that covers a lot of problems in our industry, mate, because a lot of problems I see aren't the product or the material, it's just simply the installation. Like, people haven't taken the time to understand the material and execute it and install it correctly, which leads to problems.

Or read the manual.

Yeah. Yeah.

I'm one of those boring guys, you know, when you get something new and you open it up and the manual falls out and lots of people will just keep like trying to cobble it together or make it work or whatever it is. I'm one of those boring guys that puts whatever it is to one side and reads the manual, which I got from my mother. But I'm— I am often amazed just with Proclima stuff when we send the manual when someone orders for the first time. And we always offer to go and meet on site and go through it. And sometimes those manuals go to the builder. And then we rock up on site and meet the carpenter and we say, have you read the manual? And most times they've been sent it, but occasionally they haven't. And that always makes me go, I wonder what would've happened if we had not offered to come and do the onsite in-person training. And then, and then of course, I extrapolate that straight away to wonder what happens when you get presented with another new product that's just sold through a hardware store where there isn't as much vested interest necessarily from the, from the supplier.

Hmm.

And it's, it's why one of our core things in our, in our process when we're building is if we're using a product that we've not used before, it's like the manual has to be printed and put on site, and 2 copies, one that lives on site, one that gets given to the trade. And, and there's like a toolbox talk at the beginning of installing this, like, what do we need? You know, we've got everything we need. How's it meant to go on? All of that stuff. And that's, that's preceded at design stage as well, to make sure that that any design details, try to cover as much of the manual as possible. We do the same.

We do the exact same, mate.

Big hole in the market.

Yeah, and like, again, it comes back to, I guess, people not understanding their numbers and always rushing to try and make a dollar and stuff. But like taking that time out to print those documents, run through it with your team, have a site toolbox talk, everyone get on the same page about it. Like, Yes, it's a little bit of time.

It's the cheapest time.

Yeah.

It is the cheapest time.

It's a lot cheaper than doing things twice.

Absolutely. Like, I have this saying that it goes— it's in our manual about like the cheapest time to fix a problem in construction is the moment you discover it. And the bigger time difference between you discovering it and fixing it, the more expensive it gets.

Yeah.

Because I've just never found it to be the case where you can just leave something that you notice till later.

Yeah.

And it not be significantly more expensive.

Well, that's a good segue because it ties into another question I had for you, which was, you talk a lot about building more durable and more sustainably is actually more financially is a better financial decision for clients than trying to choose the cheapest build. Like, talk to us about that.

Yeah. We'll talk about from the construction side first, and then we'll talk about longevity and just build experience. Construction-wise, you have to, you have to, all of this is underpinned by Making sure you're working with a builder who either really knows their stuff about all of the materials or has a good robust system for going and learning about the materials if you— if they're using something they've not touched before. Um, but if you get the right choice and mix of materials installed correctly and the right amount of time gets put into working out how they'll go together on site and making sure that all of the various things that manufacturers require for their products actually can gel together. Because there's a lot of cases where to comply with one manufacturer's requirements, you almost can't, can't, you know, comply with the others. And then what needs to happen then is a discussion between the two. suppliers, and all of that takes time. And I, I like, I get it. And it's why, it's why we developed a lot of our standard details, because it makes us a lot easier. It makes it a lot easier to go, can we make this work in our standard detail? And then if, if it almost works but not quite, we just amend the standard detail and then send it to the supplier and say like, would you support this on a warranty case? Like, or are there any major problems or whatever it is? And it's also about picking materials that, you know, have really good track records for lastability. And, and I know that there are some really new materials that have come out that we've had clients that really wanted to use them. And we've provided alternatives That, uh, that have a track record as opposed to something that doesn't. So I'm not saying the material might be totally fine, it might last, might outlast what we're using, but my degree of confidence is really high. So we'll talk that through with the client and sort of say, you know, if you go with this type of cladding, I can really stamp my name on it and know that in 80 or 90 years' time it should still be there. looking just as good. But the product you want to use, like, you know, it's only been, it's only been around for 10 or so years in Australia. It's not quite long enough to really be confident.

These days, mate, and there's plenty of products that you get put on, put in front of you that are only just hot off the press, like. It's hard to—

Exactly. So yeah, and like the, um, the, the interesting one for me at the moment is the aluminium cladding with, um, you know, all the wood textures put onto them. Um, I'm, I'm— yeah, and look, I admit to clients like, look, there are some areas where I can actually be a bit old school about, about my approach. And the, you know, aluminium has a lot of embodied energy. And those, whatever it is, like a vinyl coating, I think, that they put on there to give the wood grain look. There's obviously question marks about what happens at end of life and what happens when you essentially melt it down. What happens to the vinyl? Like, how do you separate it and all that? So, Then, then of course, there's, there's the flow-on of when you're building really high-performance homes where you have to do ventilated cavities and you are doing a whole bunch of building details properly from the get-go. It, it requires more time and thought on your methodology before you start building. Which then flows through to your schedule because obviously your methodology very quickly lines up which trades come in at what times. And you need to plan all of that out, particularly for trades who, you know, need to know how many times they're going to be coming to site so that they can get their quotes right. For a homeowner, what that means is, is that you are more likely to be dealing with a builder who has a solid plan for starting on a date and finishing on a date. And what we do at Enduro is we, we don't give our clients the building contract until we've finalized all the specs and provided them with the schedule, which we share through an online project management system. And we say to them, you know, if you, if you look through the schedule, you'll see where we put slack times in. And obviously, like jobs in winter, we'll chuck a big slack time in the center of the winter period. That covers us for rain. And we, and we say to clients, like, this is showing all the steps and our planned timelines. For them. And you will notice that things will move around as we go, but what won't move is that handover date. And you'll notice that there are those slack times, and you'll probably watch them get reduced if something gets delayed. But it'll never— we're never going to hand over late.

Right.

And we managed to get through COVID. We only had 2 projects that handed over late. And both of them were caused by weather, not by material stuff.

Yeah. And I think that's the thing when you go to— when you— I think people really don't understand when they go to a builder that's put a lot of time and effort into their business and their systems, their structure, it is cheaper in the long run. Like everything's more efficient, it's a better process, it's a better experience, you get a better product, your product's gonna last longer. Rather than a builder that's—

And you move in on time. You're not left renting a house for longer than you expected or having to move around. And we had a project that we— sometimes I feel like we didn't even really get a look in. We priced it, but the homeowners wanted to go with the builder that their real estate agent recommended. And it was a high-performance home. With, with Proclima membranes inside and out. So it's almost like we would build a certified Passive House, but it wasn't a certified Passive House. And it was on a really difficult site. And because of the house including heat recovery ventilation, that there's only one guy in Adelaide putting heat recovery ventilation in. So, um, I've heard about how that project's going and it's still not done. And that was back in 2021.

Holy dooley.

And yeah, and, and I'm like, what? That should be like living in those, those people, uh, you know, they're elderly, so that they— things happening fast really matters. And yet it's still not done. And that's got 4 years now.

Yeah.

For what should have been about a 14-month build.

Yeah. At the time, it's hard to tell people, but maybe we'll cross over into a little few questions that will definitely do with building, but also the Climashore part of your Climashore business as well. But yeah, the notes I've written down that I want to ask you questions about, it's probably more to get other builders thinking? Because I know just from the questions I get on my socials and the stories that I do on from my building sites, these questions come up all the time. And so I talk a lot now about all cladding leaks. I know you've got some blog posts on your page about it as well.

Yeah.

And look, I definitely was, I guess, taught through my apprenticeship and my early years as a contractor, like, My bosses would always drive into me like, get that tight. Like, this is what seals the building up. And reality is it's not. Like, water gets in in all sorts of places. So just run us through your thoughts on that a little bit, because I think it's an eye-opener for a lot of builders. They don't understand how important that building wrap is.

Yeah, yeah. The Where to start? So we start at the end. So putting on a high-quality building membrane, we're— and I obviously have a strong bias towards Proclima membranes because I'm a distributor— Is the number one way to protect your building from getting moisture inside it. And most critically, protecting the timber and the insulation from getting wet. All, like you said, like all claddings wind up leaking somewhere. And even brick is porous. And you can— and there's plenty of, plenty of examples, and you don't have to Google too hard to find um, you know, pictures of the back of brick walls that are really wet, that have been facing the weather. Um, and that's, um, you know, brick is regarded as like, certainly to a public that, um, hasn't had any education in other options. And I grew up in WA where everything is double brick.

No, mate, while you're on the brick, like there is so many houses getting built here in Brisbane, more so by volume builders that are just smashing out the brick facades and then they're painting it. And like that, that to me is even worse. Like then, then when the water, when the water does get through, it's trapped. And then people wonder why they're living in 2-year-old houses and you look at it in certain elevations of the house, it's just all black and moldy.

And yeah. Yeah. And you have the problem in the tropics of the mold forms on the outside more often than not, because you're more humid on the outside than on the inside. And a building with a high-quality building membrane that's actually waterproof, and then putting a ventilated cavity and then your cladding on is— like, for me, it started off about building performance and airtightness. And then as soon as I started learning about how Proclima membranes worked and how building science works, I suddenly went, putting these membranes on, is an insurance policy against, uh, claims for leakage and, and buildings getting wet on the inside. Um, and it's— and it is a— it's a layer of defense against any failings in your, in your cladding install.

Yeah.

Which, you know, they— things, things can happen Yeah. Years down the track. Very unusual. But like you say, and I've also had the opposite argument from a couple of builders. They're like, yeah, but you're creating this thing with ventilated cavities and you're putting a vent at the top and a vent at the bottom. And what stops rain hitting the ground and bouncing up into the bottom of your cavity? Or when it's really rainy, having water go in? I'm like, but the whole thing drains. I said, even if you high-pressure hose the side of the house and all water goes up into that, that vent strip that we've put in where the— thinking about a particular case where the WeatherTech's cladding and an eave coming in and then a little vent strip in between.

Yeah.

Now, like, if I'm high-pressure hosing that, the water goes up. And I said, yeah, it goes up, lands on what is almost a completely waterproof building membrane that is actively pushing moisture to the outside. And it's in a ventilated cavity, and any excess water is going to run down that membrane and drop out the bottom onto the ground. I said, you're far better off. I said, what if you're high-pressure hosing that house and there is no vent strip and there's a gap in the cladding somewhere and that water is going straight into your insulation? You tell me what's worse.

Well, it's more than likely going onto a shitty old foil-backed paper and there's no sealing around windows and it's It's eventually rotting out your studs around your windows and those types of things. But I think, and that's where I feel there needs to be more education. Like, I feel like a lot of builders, they're not understanding how the house performs. And that's why they don't maybe put so much time into understanding why they need to be doing claddings better and vented cavities and using better building wraps.

Yeah.

That's, um, yeah, like, how does that—

And that's, and that's why I look at it from the insurance perspective. Um, because it, you know, if you're using a building membrane and putting a ventilated cavity in, you're, you're, you're providing yourself as a builder with insurance from potential problems, and at the same time giving your owner your homeowner a better outcome and insulation that's protected from wind washing.

Yeah.

Which is, you know, we've talked about water a lot, but there's also the making the insulation work.

Yeah. And I don't know, you would know a lot more than I do with the building science stuff. But I feel like it's very different up here to down there. Like your condensation that you're dealing with 90% of the time cold outside and warmer inside, whereas up here we're dealing with quite warm outside and then everyone running the air conditioning inside. So like, yeah, you need to understand how all that's affecting how your house is running. Sorry?

Yeah, yeah, well, how it's different. And, and it, um, yeah, like in, in a lot of the tropical areas we use A membrane that has a higher SD value, which essentially means that it lets moisture pass through slower, because the moisture load in the tropics, because it's more humid, is higher. So you need to have more resistance to moisture passing through. And you also have to be aware of like a thermal bridge. causes the same amount of drama in a cooler climate as it does in a hot climate. It's just that the direction is often reversed.

Yeah, yeah, there's so much, there's, there's, mate, there is so much to know. Like I said, we could go on for hours. The, um, one, one more I'd really like to— like, building science is, I think, something that people really need to educate themselves more on. Like, I know I've spent hours online, I've done a few online courses and stuff, um, And I'd like you and I, or you guys more, are working on something at the moment next year, which I think is pretty exciting. If anyone's on the Level Up email list, you've all been sent an email this or last week, I think, with opportunity to register for the event that Climbershore is putting on. So make sure you check that out. Do you want to give that a plug, mate, while we're on here?

Yeah, yeah, I'd love to. That's— so we— it all started with Just being really keen about doing it and, and getting one particular building scientist over here. And yeah, Joe, I'm gonna butcher his surname, Lutzbrick, I think it is. He, he is basically regarded as the godfather of building science in the world. And we're setting up to run a 2-day event where we will have guys like him talking about the building science and the— with it, with a half of a link to the practical side. And then Jess is really twisting my arm to talk about the practical side and, and how you know, how you actually go about delivering this stuff on-site and how we go about training our trades and bringing new trades up to speed, as well as bringing new incoming staff up to speed with the knowledge that they need to make sure that the standards that we have don't slip.

Yeah, no, it's—

Yeah, it'd be a great event.

Yeah, I'm really excited. I'm looking forward to it. So yeah, look, if you're not on the Level Up mailing list yet, make sure you go to the website and register on there and we can always flick you that email again. Otherwise, reach out to the guys at Climasure and they'll flick you all the details so you can register. It's a bit of an invite only. So unless you've got an email or you know about it, you won't be able to be there. But just another one I'd really like to touch on quickly if we can before we get out of here. Is, and I know you've got some blog posts on your website about this as well, but everyone bags out like Anticon and roof blanket. Like, so how do you know what to use, like Anticon or vapor permeable membrane?

So, that's why I was like, oh, here we go. Anticon. We've got plenty of examples of Anticon doing exactly the opposite to that. The problem with the Anticon blanket is that it gets squished at every purlin when it's used in a roof. And it's at those points, it condensates. The only— and I did a trial of this on, on The house that I used to live in, when we did a massive reno on it, I was like, I want to see just how bad it gets. So I didn't put any of the roof ventilation in. And we did it with Anticon blanket, because at the time with where I was at and what we were doing, changing it all to Mento just wasn't, wasn't in the budget. So I thought, well, this is a great opportunity to learn something and carry that knowledge forward. And it took 3 days for the condensation to start generating some mold, at which point I ran around and put all of the— we finished the job in the middle of winter. So like, that's your worst case as well. So we were heating the house, R6 insulation, truss roof, Anticon blanket. And yeah, on the 3rd day, I started to notice, like, the first day it condensated. And I was like, well, that's no surprise. Now let's see how long it takes. And yeah, on the 3rd day, I noticed some, some mold getting going. So all of the roof vents were very hastily cut out and installed. And the problem, the problem went away because we had so much ventilation in there that the condensation that was forming was being picked up by the moving air and vented out. So, and in places like Tasmania, anticon blanket's outlawed, has been for, has been for a while. And it's for that, for that reason. So if, if you, and if you put that into like a really flat roof, so sort of once you get below 10 degrees, that, that condensation load, it's probably the right term, increases dramatically. Because there's less air running along the bottom of the Anticon to try to vent out. So my, my advice is that Anticon is not, not a great thing to do on a roof. You're better off to put a membrane on there and have a ventilated cavity above that membrane. One of the— there's a really good video that Jesse Clark has done. It's like 25 minutes long, but you only have to watch about 5 minutes of it, where he steps through the calculations involved in R-values. And in a nutshell, if you think about the radiant heat, so like you boil the kettle, and if you hold your hand And I'm going to go American, an inch away from the kettle, you can feel some heat. And if you go half an inch, you feel a lot of heat. And obviously that increases really rapidly as you get your hands closer. So the same thing applies with insulation. If you have the roofing iron hard down on your Anticon blanket, which is standard installation, then the Iron temperature is hard against that insulation. So the heat, there's more heat radiating down into the insulation. And if you separate it with a ventilated cavity, then the radiant heat from the iron is not getting— it's nowhere near as high when it gets to the membrane. And because that's ventilated, You're bringing in ambient air temperature. So regardless of whether it's a 40-degree day or a 25-degree day, the roofing iron is going to be hotter than the air temperature. And because it's in the sun, and, and that air running up is going to be cooler. So the heat load that's on the membrane is lower, which means the heat load on anything below that, whether it's a A truss roof or, or a skillion roof where the insulation's hard up against the membrane, the heat load on it is way less. And there's, there's a— the way that R-values are calculated includes the K-value, which is Kelvin for the temperature difference. And there's some assumptions in the Australian standard for how that's calculated. And in that scenario I just described, you go way outside the assumptions because roofing iron can get up to 80 degrees in the, in the darker colors. It's obviously color dependent. Like anything with building science, the answer always starts with it depends. Like what's the climate? What's the orientation? What's the material? What color is the material? Like it goes, it goes on and on and on. So that's why I always try to talk in— I try to keep it as general as I can because there's like specific answers are not possible without knowing specific details.

No, but I think I'm hoping the general principle is the same. Yeah, and look, I'm hoping by having these conversations, it's going to spark the interest of more builders and they're going to dig deeper on this stuff. But I think as a general rule of thumb, like we still use anticon on our roofs. We're really well ventilating them. But that's next on our list.

Which is the easy thing. Like if you're a builder listening to this and you're like, oh God, like far out, all my jobs have got anticon. Just make sure your roof is really well vented. And you'll minimize your risk.

Yeah, we've gone back old school. Like we're using vented soffit sheets. We've got vented ridge caps on. Like we're putting solar-powered— Yeah, that's awesome. Solar-powered vents in the roof. Like we're really getting that air movement, which I think is a very important thing. But mate, we'll have to wrap it up because I haven't even got through half my questions. We might have to get you back for round 2. But the very last thing—

Sorry.

Just 2 things before we go. The first one is, like, just quickly tell us about Climasure. Like, what does Climasure offer builders or clients?

Yeah, so Climasure does a couple of different things. We're obviously the distributor in South Australia for Proclima membranes. We also make And sell a bunch of standard-sized cavity closers that are made out of stainless steel mesh that complies with all the bushfire requirements. And because it's stainless steel, it also complies with the corrosion zone requirements. And then in addition to the products, we provide consulting. So the consulting covers a pretty wide variety of things. We do Passive House consulting. So obviously all of the Enduro certified Passive Houses, Climasure does those. And we work for a few builders and one architect at the moment. And we provide WOOFI analysis and thermal bridge calculations, as well as doing plan reviews and just providing early feedback on Any sort of major areas of concern, primarily from a thermal bridge point of view, and also from getting a complete thermal envelope point of view. So they're, they're like applying, applying the pillars of a Passive House. But the consultancy is, is about casting our eyes over the plans and saying, hey, like, there's a bit of a problem with that detail. And things like, things like cantilever overhangs are always a tricky one where They're often supported by steel, which means you can generate a situation where you've got steel going from inside the thermal envelope to outside. And there's ways to sort all of that out. But the best, like, so with all building problems, the best time to fix them is the moment you identify them. And the earlier you can identify them, the better. So that in a nutshell is what we do, which is all on our website. Oh, and blower door testing. Always forget about that.

Yeah, yeah.

That's what testing is, yeah.

And I guess for anyone listening anywhere in Australia, like, I don't know, maybe New Zealand too, but we've got a couple of clients at the moment dealing with Jackson's team at Climasure. Like they do, they offer reports and things which I know are helping a couple of our clients at the moment make some key decisions in the design stage. And like we're still working away pricing through the job. So it's really good to have that information, be able to make adjustments now. Before we get too far down the track or like we're not even at building contract yet. We're just working through our pre-construction pack process. So yeah, reach out to Climasure if you're unsure of any of these things we've spoken about today, I guess, and see if they can help you out. But mate, last one was like for any builders that are listening that want to build better but aren't quite sure, what's like one or two just simple things that they can start doing on their projects?

This, the first one would be adopting ventilated cavities that will, it will protect you from problems down the line. And it will really help improve the performance of the houses that you're building. And the second one is, do at least do the very minimum with Preventing the most obvious thermal bridge in houses, which is the windows.

Yeah.

Do double glazing and use either a good quality thermally broken aluminium or UPVC frame. Or if you've got a client that really wants to do timber, timber. The only reason I'd— timber's always on the end because it costs so much more and has a lot of maintenance Hangups. So yes, you sequester a lot of carbon in using the, using timber, but then you've got to paint it every year or oil it, or, and then there's, you know, those flow-on.

Yeah.

You know, those flow-ons have to be considered.

Mate, correct me if I'm wrong, but with the cavity or the drained cavity system, they're calling it in the NCC, the, if you're in climate zones 6, 7, 8, like that's in by the end of 2025, like you have to do that, don't you?

That, that is my understanding. The tricky part for me is I'm in South Australia where, and this is constant, and I was saying to a consulting client this morning that, so I wish that I had one of those brains where you can like read stuff and just remember it because in South Australia we have a very complex delay in the building code implementation. And the reason I say complex is some bits are in, some bits are excluded, some bits are excluded if you're building a townhouse. There's all these weird things that make it pretty much every time Jess and I get a question, we have to just double-check that we're giving the right answer. Particularly, yeah, with interstate clients, it's pretty straightforward, but South Australian ones, it's tricky. But yeah, that is my understanding that that's a requirement.

Yeah, like apart from all the other maybe bits and pieces and rules and I guess type of property you're building or type of dwelling you're building or the class of building and stuff. But yes, Zone 6, 7, 8, pretty much by the end of 2025, like you have to be doing this on your projects and then all other zones.

And underslab.

Yeah, under slab insulation.

Yeah.

And then all other climate zones like 1 to 5 will be in, like, I think they've been delayed until late '28 or something. But even like the reality is this stuff is coming into code. And if you're not talking about it, you're not becoming more aware of it, you really should be. So I hope today's podcast has sparked some interest and you start reaching out to People like Jackson and his team at Climashore. We're going to try and get this podcast out pretty quickly because Climashore is actually sponsoring a, we call them a fuel session. Live Life Build does fuel sessions. We've got one coming up on the 14th, Friday the 14th of November. It's in Adelaide and it is completely focused on educating builders on drain cavities, ventilated cavities, the Proclima product, and the health, like the benefits it brings to using it on your homes. And I'm going to be talking how I sell it to my clients because that seems to be a very big hurdle for most builders is getting over those cost conversations with clients because this stuff does cost more. So we're managing to do it with every single one of our building clients. And in fact, we, the more we talk, it seems like the more we talk about it on socials, the more and more people want it. So I think it's a no-brainer. But Jackson, really appreciate your time this afternoon, mate, for coming on. You're a wealth of knowledge. Honestly, I'd—

Thanks, mate.

I didn't even get through half my questions. I'd love to chew your ear off for hours.

Sorry.

No, it's good. It's good. I really appreciate you sharing your knowledge and your experience, and I think the industry needs more of it. So, mate, look forward to catching up with you soon. Like I said, appreciate your time. And yeah, look, before we go out, is there anything else you wanted to say, or where can the listeners just go to websites, Instagram?

Yeah, the websites for Climashore and Enduro Builders Yeah, I get told that there's lots of useful information there. And yeah, and our Instagram, you're on Instagram, you'll always be able to cop Jess or I talking about something to do with this stuff. And the only other thing that I just thought of for builders is, is have a bit of faith in your trades. Our trades have all come on the journey. None of my trades started off with any interest in energy efficiency. And I really just said that this is what I'm doing, this is the path that we're on. And, and there hasn't been that many that have stuck their nose up at it and walked. And I think, I think you'd be amazed how well they'll support you. Because, you know, everyone wants to do better. Sometimes you just need To have the right, the right push in the right direction at the right time and then you're away.

Yeah, definitely. No, I agree 100%, mate. Well, look, like I said, thanks for coming on this afternoon and everybody, thanks for listening. Continue to make this Australia's number one construction podcast. As always, go to the duanepierce.com website, make sure you get your merch. And look, as always, if there's anything you want to know, any questions you have, make sure you reach out. We're happy to help you out. Look forward to seeing you on the next one.

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