Healthy Spaces Podcast: Season 3, Episode 2: Homes of the Future

[00:00:00] Dominique: at the 1964 World Fair in New York, Walt Disney and his imagineers unveiled the Carousel of Progress, an attraction steeped both in nostalgia and futurism, celebrating how electricity and other technological advances change the way we live and work in our homes.

And almost 80 years after the attraction’s premiere, many of the inventions imagined by Walt Disney's imagineers, such as virtual reality games and voice activated household appliances have actually become a reality. So what's next in this Healthy Spaces episode? We talk to innovators in the manufacturing and construction industry about the future of homes.

[00:00:44] Brandon: what we really wanted to do is produce a healthier and more sustainable, intelligent future by continually advancing the home experience for your family and our planet. So bringing that all together is, really focusing on a great design that people feel great about, and connecting people from indoor outdoors.

[00:00:58] Katie: We wanna try to make this world more sustainable, right? We wanna leave it in a better position than we found it. Sustainability is the backbone of our company and the foundation of who we are, that's what the engineers are working very, very diligently on.

[00:01:14] Joel: when you're talking about 2040, that system that you buy today could be around… so the impacts of the decisions that we make now will impact that future that we have in 2040, and how we experience that future, especially for these durable goods that we interact with, and that we have in our homes for, for a long time.

[00:01:32] Dominique: You just heard from Brandon Weiss, co-founder and chief innovation Officer at Deve, as well as Katie Davis, vice president of Engineering at Trane Technologies, and Joel Gouker, director of Innovation at Trane Technologies.

I'm Dominique Silva, and you're listening to Healthy Spaces, the podcast exploring how technology and innovation are transforming the spaces where we live, work, and play.

In this week's episode, we'll talk with engineers and entrepreneurs who are working relentlessly to develop and advance new technologies, which can make our homes smarter, healthier, and more sustainable.

We'll learn more about the modern approaches home builders are taking to create high quality, durable structures.

We'll find out how architects are designing homes that have a positive impact on people and nature, as well as the technologies enabling that.

We'll also learn the ways homeowners can make changes to their current spaces to improve air quality.

And finally, we'll explore current smart home technology features and the automation transformation happening in the home building industry that's combining art and engineering to create accessible and reliable, healthy spaces.

[00:02:46] Dominique: My first guest is Brandon Weiss. His construction company Dvele specializes in offering modern prefab homes that combine sustainability with health and wellbeing.

Dvele works to build healthy homes through their biophilic designs, a concept used within the building industry to increase the connectivity between occupants and nature.

Good air quality is achieved through the use of safe materials as well as innovative sensory ventilation technology, which uses automation to continuously optimize air quality in an energy efficient way.

Brandon and his team at Dvele have made great strides in assembling healthy home protocols, but how do they tie sustainability into their work, and where did their inspiration come from?

[00:03:34] Brandon: I started as a third-generation builder/developer. So grew up on construction sites, worked my way through all the trades in high school and college summers.

and then after college, ended up playing professional basketball over in the Netherlands and Germany. And when I was there, it was kind of an “aha moment.” I realized that what I had been accustomed to seeing, especially in the single-family residential space, we were like 10 to 15 years behind in the US market with what they were doing over there.

So a lot to do with sustainability. Energy efficiency was huge there. that kind of thing. So when I came back from that stint and started my building career back in, in the Chicagoland area, I really wanted to focus on those areas and bring sustainability, the energy efficiency I saw there and, and then fold in the health elements.

I was always into health being an athlete. So kind of melding these things together was where I found my passion.

As I dove into the energy efficiency side, I started reading things on sick building syndrome and there was a project in Portland, it was like two buildings side by side, and one was built one way and one was built the other way. And they found out some of the building methodologies were causing sickness of the people inside the building.

So that kind of heightened my awareness of that. When I was getting into building my first passive house project, we started doing lab testing on the indoor air quality. In that building, we brought in a third-party lab, tested for VOCs, for multiple counts for radon, particulate matter, all these things before LEAD had that in their protocols.

So it was kind of early on in trying to just gather the data. You know, I felt like people could talk about building quality buildings, but what is that? Unless you quantify it, and then as I was, wanting to market more of the healthy building protocols, I wanted to gather the data necessary to do that.

And so we started doing that third party testing, post-construction, preoccupancy, just to actually test the building that we were producing. And we got to do that over time. We basically have done that ever, ever since with my company in Chicago. And then, as we started deve, we've incorporated those same methodologies into deve,

[00:05:22] Dominique: fascinating story. Thank you for sharing your journey with us. Brandon, you mentioned the desire to create data-driven healthy building protocols, but you've also brought up energy efficiency a few times So from your perspective, how do these two things work together? What is a healthy, high performing, sustainable home?

[00:05:44] Brandon: what we really wanted to do is produce a healthier and more sustainable, intelligent future by continually advancing. The home experience for your family and our planet. So bringing that all together is, really focusing on a great design that people feel great about connecting people from indoor outdoors.

So you have that kind of biophilic design elements brought into the building. and then looking at source control of all the different materials that go into the building. It’s taken a ton of research over a decade to look at best in class materials. When we started that there wasn't a lot of information out there and now through things like declare label and some other transparency labels, you're able to get more data on, what's in these various products that we're putting into a building. And it was interesting when I started that research, you had talked to manufacturers specifically, and they actually didn't know their supply chain enough to know all the various chemicals and components and all the materials that they were producing.

So it kind of raised awareness not only in the building industry. But also getting manufacturers to actually do a little bit more due diligence into what they're putting in their materials that they're selling to people. So that's been great. It's come a long way over the past 10 years for sure.

So that's incorporated into, the materials we specify and then it's about great ventilation, and putting on ventilation systems that tie back to those sensors I was talking about, such that it can, without occupants having to go press buttons and, and make changes themselves once certain elements are reached within the indoor space.

That ventilation system can ramp up and do what it needs to do or, or not do depending on outdoor air quality and indoor air quality in various parts of the house.

[00:07:13] Dominique: So let's talk a little bit more about technologies and innovation. Can you talk to us specifically right about some of the technologies that you're using in Dvele homes today?

[00:07:25] Brandon: So I guess starting with kind of the everyday occupiable spaces, we have sensors that tie back to our software platform, develop iq. That kind of gives the occupants a sense of where they're at in terms of air quality, to be able to see changes and how different behaviors affect that.

But then also make those decisions, for people as well. In terms of ramping up ventilation speeds and that kind of thing. Also dealing with health and healthy spaces. We have sensors built into the walls, throughout the assembly, so different locations have.

Sensors at different, depths of the wall there. so that we can see also in the roof, in the crawl space, such that we can see, temperature, humidity, moisture and like risk of dew point. So we've modeled all this very intricately, all of our assemblies across all different climate zones.

And then we're able to extrapolate that and, and look at, okay, how are these buildings performing in the real world, in that environment?

And it's not waiting years and years until it's this massive mold problem behind a wall or some kind of rot decay type of thing happening behind the wall, but it becomes known kind of instantaneously,

[00:08:26] Dominique: So we've, talked extensively about monitoring and censoring technology. Let's talk a little bit about how these homes are being efficiently and sustainably cooled and heated. So what kind of technologies are you using there?

[00:08:41] Brandon: We're currently using, heat pumps, so we, we went all electric from the very beginning such that our homes could actually be self-powered. So, homes can produce all their own energy, store that energy and use it in the nighttime, and do that, on an elongated basis in case of a power outage or a grid failure.

So we went all electric so that we could actually do true net zero or net positive homes, which you can't do if you have gas. So then using that as a baseline. We have been using heat pumps since the very beginning, so we've done fully ducted heat pumps. We've done ductless mini splits. And we're also right now doing a couple pilot projects where we're using, air to water heat pumps that feed, hydraulic fan coils inside of the home so we can reduce the amount of refrigerant that is needed to operate our homes.

[00:09:23] Dominique: That's interesting to hear that you're, we started using heat pumps from the start. I know later in this episode we'll be hearing from the engineering director from Trane residential Katie Davis, who we'll talk a lot about the innovations that Trane is doing in the heat pump space, especially from an operating map perspective, because early on one of the limitations of the heat pump technology was its inability to perform reliably and efficiently at very low temperatures, right? So that's where today companies like Trane are really pushing the boundaries of the operating map.

[00:09:57] Brandon: Same as what Dvele is building, today with all of our insulation, the outside, so we don't have the thermal bridging, you don't have the conductive heat losses happening.

[00:10:05] Dominique: Let's switch topics a little. So we've talked briefly about net zero homes, but there's also a lot of attention being given as to how we can build resilient homes all over the world. Extreme weather events like heat waves and floods are becoming more frequent and more intense in your view, Brandon, how can we make homes more resilient?

[00:10:29] Brandon: You know, when we started, we, were looking at all these things and like looking at Tesla, the models like they were the best in class, in, in battery technology, safest car produced. And I don't know how many years before that healthiest indoor air quality. I think the list could go on and on.

So it's like, all right, this company started as a startup, was able to produce a car that was best in class in. More than one just thing. A lot of people just focus on one topic, so we want, okay. Yeah. Design, energy efficiency, self-powered, healthy, these are the prerequisites. but then also resiliency, like energy efficiency, solar plus battery, that has a lot of effect on resiliency and being able to be powered and empower your home and live a normal lifestyle in a grid outage scenario, right?

So that's one element of resiliency. And wildfires can cause grid outages or now power companies just cutting power to reduce risk of wildfires and windy times. So just being, having the ability to just island yourself if the grid goes out is great from resiliency perspective, but then also fire resiliency.

So we're building in California, we were looking at that very early on. We wanna make sure we're building a robust envelope that was re more resilient to fire than the codes required. So we were doing that again. Earthquakes, big thing in California, we have a structural engineering team in-house that designs all of our homes for the site specific, seismic activity that could occur.

And so we're building earthquake resiliency that way. All these things that can really make a building last through a powerful storm.

So yeah, we've definitely wanted to be best in class in that too, our goal is to make a home that last over a hundred years. Again, taking some inspiration from the European side. That's kind of the expectation they build there. But the American consumer is like, okay, if they buy a house in the windows leak in two or three years, it's like, oh, just put some caulk on it.

Call the builder, put some caulk on it. You know, caulk is not gonna solve the issue.

[00:12:11] Dominique: So let me ask you If we really wanna make an impact, the ability to scale these types of solutions is critical. And when we think about scale, the next word that comes is affordability. So in your view, how can healthy and high performing homes actually become more accessible?

[00:12:29] Brandon: that's kind of what we were looking at from the very beginning too, is how can we do that? And we had to start with a product that performed really well. We were able to collect the data, make those improvements early on while we were, producing less and be able to tinker with things. But now we've really defined what we're building.

We've detailed it in such a way, with our software that, each individual component like piping, elbows and the length of pipes, all these things can be spit out. So we basically, we call it bim de bomb. We can take our BIM model. And spit out our bill of materials, such as easy to buy and then easy to break down into the different work breakdown cells within the factory.

So as we do that and then we build larger factories, that have more output, we're gonna have more buying power on the materials we're buying. So that'll bring down our price point. And then being able to build things faster, and increase the productivity and right now we have one continuous straight line.

In our kind of pilot factory, but the next one we'll have at least three lines going, in parallel so we can have greater output and, with that we'll come more economy of scale, and bring down our price points such that we can't hit that missing middle. So yeah, that's a lot with, looking at how can we do developments of these homes, make those available so we can actually make a true impact on all the things we want to in terms of the housing crisis, the climate crisis.

We can bring these things together and actually solve, be a solution for this, a big solution for it. So we're looking at, factories being able to produce anywhere between 1200 modules to some of the robotics engineers we're designing with or saying up to 7,000 modules, in a year for each factory.

So that's, that's a significant impact.

 I'm just excited to see where this industry goes in general.

Just looking at like where the wellness real estate, there's a ton of room for growth in this industry, specifically focusing on healthy buildings. so really excited to see where that goes and see the industry improve that and making healthier buildings available to more people. And again, we're feel like we're an awesome solution to make that happen.

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[00:14:18] Dominique: Brandon's work to source cleaner materials and implement biophilic design in home construction has made an impact on how and where homes are built. While this helps us preserve the states of new homes, existing infrastructures can still struggle with maintaining air quality and energy efficiency. So what are some of the innovations happening in the housing market that can help solve these issues for existing homes? To answer these questions, I spoke with Katie Davis, the Vice President of engineering and technology with Trane’s residential business

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[00:14:56] Katie: I would say across our product portfolio in residential, we have really been working on first and foremost improvement in efficiency. So we want all of our products to be as efficient as possible, and how that translates to the homeowner is your energy bill is cheaper, right?

So with energy you put in, you get way more energy out than actually has to go into the system. So that's really what we pride ourselves on. In the residential business is really making sure our units are more efficient. The second piece, I think from a sustainability perspective is we really are very hyper-focused on a change in refrigerant.

So utilizing a next generation refrigerant that has a lower global warming potential than the current refrigerant, that's what most, most HVAC or Heating, Ventilating and Air Conditioning … when we think about refrigerants, in our systems, we want to try to make this world more sustainable, right? We want to leave it in a better position than than we found it. our refrigerants right? Have this, what we, as we mentioned, global warming potential, right? When we utilize refrigerants that have a negative impact on the environment, or a more negative impact than they should or could, then our goal is really to move toward a refrigerant that has a much lower potential of actually causing this global warming, right?

And so it's really important to us, since sustainability is the backbone of our company and the foundation of who we are, it's a big effort, really across our whole business and certainly in residential. that's what the engineers are working very, very diligently on.

If we think about electrification of heating, right? Moving away from fossil fuels as well, we're also working on the cold climate heat pump. and we've got one, actually operating in a place just outside of Boise, Idaho. It's actually running and it's part of the Department of Energy's Cold Climate Heat Pump Challenge.

I’m very excited about the data that's coming into us from this first field trial, um, season in the winter of 22.

[00:16:54] Dominique: Would you be able to explain to our listeners, what are heat pumps exactly? How are they electrifying heat? How are they different from electric heaters?

[00:17:05] Katie: so heat pumps, a lot of people think heat pumps are new technology. They are not, they've been around actually since the 1800s.

The reason they're called a heat pump is because they actually move heat. And you might say, okay, but you’re operating at minus 23 degrees. How in the world can you get heat out of minus 23 degrees? Well, believe it or not, there's heat still in the air.

So at minus 23 degrees, we can still get the refrigerant, right, to boil, So then it turns into a hotter gas. It goes into the indoor unit in the house, runs through a coil, air blows across the coil, the coil's warm, and it sends it into the home.

So you're taking heat from outside, you're magnifying it. And then you're sending it in the home. The opposite happens in the summertime. So you're pulling heat out of the house, you're sending it backwards through the paper compression cycle, and you're sending it out through the outdoor unit.

So that's how they work. They just move heat from one way to the other.

[00:18:06] Dominique: Let's talk a little bit about air quality in our homes, right? How do we make these spaces, um, healthy as well? And maybe just to bridge the gap there with what we've been discussing around heat pumps.

Katie: So I have a very interesting home dynamic, I guess I could say. we are big dog lovers in my family and we are proud owners of nine beautiful Siberian huskies. That's a lot of fur for folks who are listening.

[00:18:32] Katie: and so one of the things that we did, and it's a great example that I use with a lot of folks who ask, actually asked me about indoor air quality if they're gonna upgrade, is, we have a trained clean effect. air filtration device on our system,

So it keeps down on, pet dander. It keeps down on the fur, right? and it, it really helps to keep my home super clean. So that the clean effects plays real, really plays a big role in our home, right?

So not only would I say, Hey, if you wanna upgrade an efficiency, I would definitely move toward a variable speed system. and then I would also maybe add some air filtration, like the train clean effects product, to, to your portfolio in your home, right? Because it cuts down on dust, has really cut down dusting in our home at least 50% of the time, which significant again, considering the fur balls that live in my house.

[00:19:23] Dominique: So Katie, I'd love to hear from you, what you see happening in this space and what has you excited about how we're going to bring sort of data, information and actionable insights together.

[00:19:35] Katie: We find that, you know, our customers, like with everything else, want to be connected, right? they want to see their units, they want to be able to understand, can I adjust my thermostat on my phone?

Do I know what the humidity is in my house? And so we've been working on a number of different programs to really advance that across our portfolio. One of the most recent, innovative, products that we've released is a a product we call Link. And so Link, is pretty fantastic, for our dealers and it's really fantastic for our homeowners as well. So the system actually, it uses Bluetooth for a technician or a dealer to be able to come into a home or even can sit in your driveway.

Obviously you have to allow them to connect, right? They can't just do it, but they can see your systems. You have an indoor system in your attic or under your house, and then you have an outdoor system. And they can actually see these systems, on an app on their phone, and they can read all the appropriate temperatures and pressures.

They can understand what your system is doing. They can understand the airflow. If you have dampers that are open or closed, they can see all of that. So really, one, it helps the technician out, that they can actually see this information without having to go, climb in your attic and go under your house.

But what's really nice about it is our dealers can sit in their office or your, your technician, they can sit in their office, they can see your system online, they can read all the information and from that information they can determine if you have a problem or if you don't.

And then other times they can see what's wrong ahead of time. And so before they even come to your house and you have to pay the $125 fee or whatever it is for the technician to show up, they have your part. So they, you they already know, right? So, those types of connections are really, really important to our customers because, nobody wants their heating or cooling to be down.

[00:21:21] Dominique: So Katie, as Vice President of engineering for an HVAC company, I imagine you spent a lot of time thinking about what homes will look like in the future and how technology can help make our lives just a little bit easier. Can you offer us a glimpse into the future?

[00:21:40] Katie: in the future it'd be great to not have to worry about your H V A C or your unit, your heat pump, furnace, air conditioning. It would be great not to have to worry about it at all. Right? So you could go on vacation if something were happening to it while you were gone, your technician or dealer's gonna know about it, ahead of time.

They're gonna have the part shipped automatically to your home. they're gonna be there unable to fix it either, right? When you get back, if they need to get in the home, that's one thing. they don't and they're able to fix it without you being home, that's an even better thing. Maybe that your thermostat disappears from your wall, right?

You don't really need a thermostat on the wall. You can see everything on your phone or tablet or, what, maybe even your tv. You've got a system that's smart enough to adjust and partnership with a local dealer/installer that, really enables you to, to get what you need out of it. I mean, a lot of people have swimming pools, right? Especially in the south. And a lot of people don't have to worry about them at all because they have a company that takes care of the pool if it needs to be filtered, needs to be changed, or pump needs, whatever the case may be, it just happens.

And so from an H V A C perspective, that's what I see because, most people don't care about their H V A C system until it’s too hot or too cold right inside. And so wouldn't it be great if we had a world where we didn't have to worry about it, the unit was smart enough to do, to do what we needed.

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[00:22:59] Dominique: Katie's work is helping homeowners understand how small changes to their traditional home ventilation methods can be upgraded through modern software and technologies. These technologies also bridge the gap between identifying air quality indoors and outdoors. Not only do these devices help ease the consumer experience, but their accessibility will improve overall sustainability. My next guest is working to improve these smart home devices by developing solutions that incorporate artificial intelligence Joel Gouker tells us how these technologies automate smart homes to manage the indoor/outdoor relationship of heating, cooling, and ventilation. But first I ask Joel to explain to us what it is that he does exactly.

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[00:23:57] Joel: I am a corporate Director of Innovation for Trane Technologies. I know a lot of people are familiar with the term entrepreneur, and I like to think of myself as an intrepreneur. So entrepreneurs start external businesses and come up with unique ideas to help serve customer needs.

I look for various different business opportunities and, different technologies, either, both, externally created or internally created to help meet those customer needs and start new businesses.

[00:24:26] Dominique: I wanted to talk about in your view, are homes getting smarter? I don't know about you guys, but every day I start my morning with saying Good morning to a little machine on my wall.

And this little machine says, good morning, Dominique. Tells me exactly what the weather is, tells me exactly what the traffic is like, It could tell me exactly what the temperature is in, my home, and artificial intelligence in the way is really transforming what we expect in the spaces where we work and we live. So Joel, I know you've been doing a lot of work and research in this area, and I'd love to hear from you how you think technologies like automation and artificial intelligence are changing the way that we build and operate our homes.

[00:25:14] Joel: Historically, right, homeowners are setting a schedule of desired temperature in their home throughout the day, and they're trying to balance both of their comfort and energy costs. In order to do this, the air conditioning and heating systems are basically looking at the difference of the internal actual home temperature and then the schedule temperature, and then the system will react to try to maintain the homeowner comfort while balancing the energy costs.

And by and large, these systems do a good job of making the decisions based on the information that they have about what's going on in the home at that time. I think above and beyond that, like anecdotally, we know what goes on outside of the house changes what happens in the house. everybody intuitively understands if it's a bright sunny day or a cold rainy day, this is going to change, how it feels in the house, as well as what the, heating, ventilation, air conditioning system does and reacts.

But what people less commonly think about is that external air quality factors also impact what goes on in the home. So how does this tie into artificial intelligence?

In order to make better decisions, our systems need more knowledge of both what's going on, outside the home as well as going on inside the home. And this more data comes in the form of, external weather and external air quality predictions and these range from, cloud cover over their house to, ultraviolet, radiation indexes, to particulate matter, to things like wildfire smoke.

And really leveraging this abundance of data is very challenging using traditional methods. And this is where artificial intelligence, comes in. the artificial intelligence is very good at looking at a whole wide range of, different data sources and different data types. And this enables us to really fully leverage all of these data sources: present conditions, historical information.

And then what we predict is going to in happen in the future, to make better decisions about, that balance between, comfort and energy efficiency. I think in the future, the way that we're going to interact with the, the air conditioning and heating systems in order to explain the homeowner's goals is also going to change.

Instead of, having to program something in manually or something using, uh, a computer interface, we can talk more to, the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system in the future, in a conversational style to explain.

Why I don't feel comfortable or how I feel. And then this, the systems will basically be able to self-program themselves to meet your goals that were explained, in, you know, less engineering terms and less rigid format.

[00:27:52] Dominique: So to connect this to what you were saying, Joel, we've got so much data, right? Everything is monitoring everything. It's really how do we help homeowners to become better at making decisions by intelligently interpreting that data and providing them things that they can actionably do that will improve the health and the efficiency of their homes.

[00:28:16] Joel: on the topic of, technology and technology evolution, and especially when it comes to, you know, our discussions about artificial intelligence. You we're already applying this technology in like the commercial space.

When you're thinking about what kind of a system to buy think about what you want it to do in the future sometimes too, because a lot of these capabilities and upgrades, could be software-based upgrades. You wouldn't just get a new feature or technology when you buy a new air conditioning system.

So think about, trying to buy maybe some of the more advanced, technologies because the capabilities are continuing to increase with new software applications.

To stay on top of that and to be able to fully leverage, in the future makes sense to consider that, when making your decisions about what to do and what to expect.

[00:28:59] Dominique: So it's 2040. Right. How do you imagine the home of the future in 2040? How would you like your home to look like?

[00:29:09] Joel: For one, I mean, the first thing that comes to my head is sustainability, right? if we don't have a focus on sustainability, we're not going to be around, very long, or it's not going to be a very pleasant future, So thinking about sustainability, that's in, in terms of, obviously, co2, uh, reductions, but, it’s greater than that. You mentioned circularity. How we think about and plan for technologies, especially things with, durable goods that last for a decade.

When you're talking about 2040, that system that you buy today could be around in 2040, so the impacts of the decisions that we make now will impact that future that we have in 2040, and how we experience that future, especially for these durable goods that we interact with, and that we have in our homes for, for a long time.

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[00:29:56] Dominique: A big thank you to Brandon, Katie, and Joel for joining me on today's episode to discuss homes of the future.

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[00:30:03] Dominique: and thank you for listening. If you want to find out more information on our conversation today, make sure you check out the show notes and remember to rate and review healthy spaces in your favorite podcast app. Join us next time when we'll be taking a look at the technologies helping us grow and move healthy food in a more sustainable way.

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