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

Jess Kismet (00:01)

Okay. Hello and welcome to the first episode of the building Sciology Poddie Today as my very first guest, I'm joined by Jackson Digney husband, father of four and director of Enduro Builders and Climbershaw. Jackson is South Australia's leading passive house builder and also my boss. So it was only right that he is my first guest. So welcome Jackson and thank you for joining me.

Jackson (00:23)

Thanks for being here. It's very humbling to be the inaugural guest on your podcast.

Jess Kismet (00:31)

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

Jackson (00:46)

grew up in a household definitely where repairing and reusing things was a really central part of my life. Those skills were kind of given to me by my parents across all areas from

fixing clothes, fixing stuff in the shed and repairing and rebuilding things rather than replacing them. And when I got into building, I certainly saw that there was plenty of opportunity in the industry to just build whatever.

But a lot of it was done without a lot of care to the future and that...

I think that combined with another part of my upbringing was always about long-term thinking and considering what you're doing now, how that will pan out over the long haul

And when I saw how things were being done building wise and the longevity of some of that stuff, that really got me interested in sustainable and energy efficient building, which are kind of two slightly different disciplines, but they do intertwine, particularly as it led me into passive house, which led me into high performance building membranes.

and learning about how those sorts of things all pull together to result in you building buildings that are capable of lasting longer and keeping our occupants healthy and comfortable along the way. And then of course, energy efficiency is a byproduct of doing that and lowering your power bills is something that

everyone's interested in and as the cost of power goes up, people get more and more interested in it. And for me, it just kind of turned into this logical, journey of I learned a little bit about energy efficiency and then I told someone about that and they said you should probably learn about passive house. So went and learned about that, which then meant I learned about

building science, which led me into WUFI and led me into thermal bridge calcs and all these things that actually for me turned into this, that kind of a, like a self, self perpetuating machine. I was like, the more you learn, more you worked out you needed to learn. And then the better the buildings got. and, know, I look at some of my older projects and I sort of go,

I can't believe I did that and thought that that was really good. But the thing is that I also have to not be so hard on myself and go, well, I didn't know then what I know now. So I think that's, you know, that's, that's what's got me there. And it's also, you know, I feel really good about what we do. And certainly when I worked in commercial where we were just slapping stuff together and

getting the job done and getting out of there. I enjoyed the people that I worked with, but I wasn't getting much fulfillment out of the actual building product.

Jess Kismet (03:49)

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

Jackson (04:11)

well, ultimately, there's a few things that I've learned as I've got older. I mean, it all started with the rising tide, floats all boats. And, the more people that know about how to actually deliver better buildings, the more people there are educating clients on what a better building is, which helps to drive more clients demanding

better buildings, which then means that more builders are getting asked for better buildings, which then means more builders are trying to find resources to help them actually deliver that.

And the establishment of Climasure really helped to actually provide a place for builders to come and get real world advice from someone that's done it the hard way, I suppose, in that, you know, we, I had people to talk to.

But there was a lot of working things out in terms of trying to find the most economical way to build a better building. the consulting, I think, too, is about helping to make sure that builders don't get themselves into strife by

building something with all the good intentions but because of what they don't know, accidentally doing something that actually makes the building worse and potentially unhealthy.

And so for me, there's actually only, there's only really upsides because like I said at the beginning, the more builders that know about this stuff and know how to do it properly and know where to turn for help, that is only better for the industry, which is ultimately better for consumers. And in the last sort of

for couple of months, you know, we've certainly seen that the government's not going to do it. So we need to as an industry. So if that can be my contribution in however many years I get to circle around on the earth for, well, for me, I'll be happy.

Jess Kismet (06:12)

Yeah, that's awesome. And what you're saying about the clients driving the driving builders to do better. I mean, as you said, the building code is now being paused in South Australia for a decade. And the groundswell of clients and homeowners that I've seen that are requesting more from their builders is forcing builders to to learn and the ones that aren't learning are big are eventually they're going to be left behind. And yeah, so.

I totally get that. what, in terms of executing this work, I've heard that it's really hard to get carpenters at the moment, especially ones that are doing quality work in this space. And if you don't employ them full time and they're off on other jobs and they're doing varying types of work at different levels, how do you get around this problem? How do you get around the workmanship issue?

because you have consistently high quality work and you don't employ full-time carpenters. So how do you do that?

Jackson (07:07)

Yeah, yeah we've always had subcontract carpenters.

I suppose I follow the same advice I give to my kids. It's like, if you say you can't, you can't. And if you say you can, then you can.

That doesn't mean that every carpenter that we've engaged has just been a dream run and they've been perfect from day one and it's all just roses and skittles and whatever else you want to describe it. It's been hard work, but we have just developed really good systems for training the carpentry gangs. We obviously, as you know, we've got one carpentry gang that's been around for...

nearly eight years now. But we have four carpentry gangs. And those those new carpentry gangs, it's really easy when you meet a new trade to suss them out about whether they're willing to to learn. And if they're willing to learn and they're coachable, well, then they stick around and we we coach them. And then the other part is

that we have done just an inordinate amount of work on our plans and our building details to standardize them and make them easy to build so that it's stuff that for a carpenter, they can look at the plans and really quickly pick up the details and how things are meant to go together and plan their work accordingly.

It's not just carpenters, particularly when you're dealing with building membranes and air tightness. All the trades that have got services going through walls need to understand what they're doing as well. And we just apply the same thing with those guys. And the other part is supervision. you know, our supervisors are never running more than five projects.

So, like I say, we have a bunch of questions that we ask at the beginning that really like eke out whether they're going to be on board or say they're on board and then not deliver it or they're just totally not on board at all. And so, yeah, occasionally we've had guys that haven't worked out.

before we've even got to site.

It's one of those things where it just requires a bit more effort.

But on the other side of it, the benefits are worth it. And the thing I'd say to any builder that's thinking about really upping their game on building performance homes is yes, there is a lot of effort, but nowadays, particularly in Adelaide, there's actually a few really good resources around, obviously we have one of them, that has really actionable information that can shorten down that.

that timeframe.

Jess Kismet (09:56)

Yep, yep. As far as your trades and supervisors that you get on board, I remember there was one dude, I was there on site when he was doing his like one of his very initial first building site visits where you were showing him all the ropes and how all the things you expected him of him. And I think he lasted a week. I remember coming to work one day and he would quit, he'd quit and I was like, what?

Jackson (10:16)

Yeah.

Jess Kismet (10:19)

Where did that dude go? So yeah, you you have a high expectation, which means that the supervisors that you've got now, they are all completely bought into the product that you deliver. And they don't, you know, they don't muck around. They don't accept any less. So it's great. I love working in this environment.

Jackson (10:22)

Yeah.

Yeah, and it's not a hard environment. I mean, I always feel like it's the most rewarding environment where everybody goes, this is the level. And I find that everyone that's here now.

actually really appreciates that because when you're just slipping on everything, I don't think there's much motivation in that.

Jess Kismet (11:07)

I've heard people say when you build to a high standard, I think it's actually easier because there's less room for error. There's less confusion. Everyone knows exactly what is what and the systems are in place and

there's less stuff ups.

Jackson (11:26)

Yeah, yeah, there's a lot and the thing about building energy efficient homes that actually perform is you got to design them well from the start from the get go. And designing well means thinking through all the problems before you get to site and talking through all the problems with the people that are going to have to deliver it

And again, I can hear the ringing in my ears from a couple of builders like, you know, you just leave that to your own site It's just easier that way. like, well, no, I feel like getting a phone call at 7am in the morning.

from a trade who's rocked up on site to do the job and needs you to hop in your car and go to site right then and there because they don't understand, they're not sure what to do because it's not on the plans. That to me, that's way more frustrating and annoying and impacts my day heaps more than spending a couple of hours a few months earlier working out, right, where's this gonna go?

And I think in the environment that we do it where, we've created our own little bubble, where our building designers are in the same office as our estimators. And, and when they're here, the site managers, which means that design

or placement ideas for services are able to be discussed with the people that are actually going to have to deliver it straight away. Which is, you know, it's an area where I find there's some architects that I'll really gladly work with because they'll hop on the phone straight away and say, what, you know, how's this, how, do we need to draw this for this to work? Unfortunately, there's still a lot of architects that,

really they talk the talk of yeah we work together and yeah we do this and yeah you know we'll talk that through with you but they don't walk the walk of it They'll sort of mark things on the plan and they'll say well I've put it on the plan and then when we say yeah we can't build it like that for these reasons they're like we'll just work it out when you get to site I'm like well that that's where that's where it falls over

And that's what results in a lot of things. You see a lot of people complain about things not getting built to the plan. And usually the problem with building is sometimes if you've got something that's marked on the plan that can't be built the way it's marked, it usually impacts two or three other things. And then you get this cascading effect. So.

And the thing is nowadays software is so good, pretty well regardless of what design software you use, they all have a 3D feature to them so that you can really plan things out and map everything out properly before you start.

Jess Kismet (14:21)

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

Jackson (15:08)

You see you got it. Well, yeah. Well, the, I mean, you know, most people, most people know my feelings about NatHERS I accept that NatHERS is the system that everybody understands. What I don't accept is that it's got a few too many flaws and

Jackson (15:35)

setting aside all of the in-design and connection with reality side of it. The certificate that gets produced at the end of all of that, that is then given to the builder for specification purposes, is often not read. And if it is read, sometimes it's not followed. And there is nothing protecting consumers from that occurring.

How would you know if they put the correct windows in? And some of them go, well I would I just assume the builder will get it right.

And the reality is that because no one's inspecting the the built product against the energy rating certificate, there's plenty of buildings that don't meet the requirements of their energy ratings certificate. So that, you know, that's a performance gap right there because the client thinks, and in some cases may have even paid a premium for something that they're actually not getting.  I think that, you know, there's education of builders. about how important it is to actually understand the requirements of NatHERS But then there's no education at the back end. It's like builders that maybe miss some things in an Australian standard for timber framing, for instance, they get picked up by a council inspector. And so the builder learns as a result. And but if there's nothing happening with inspection at completion for compliance with with a NatHERS energy rating, well, then no one's learning.

You know, if we, if something gets picked up on one of our jobs where we've missed something in, in the building code that we should have done that we didn't do. And because we have to circle back, we have to fix it. And, and of course I'm annoyed because I've prided myself on being, across all that stuff. And, that I think for, for builders, we need to remember that we are providing a professional. service and we are professionals in our field and we should be doing professional development and I think that at the moment professional development for builders, in South Australia at least, is is is optional and that’s

Jess Kismet (18:16)

travesty. It's not cool. It's not cool.

Jackson (18:18)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and I am not and I think that the part of the problem is that there isn't a lot of good professional development available. So without good professional development being available, it's hard to enforce professional development.

But I think that all of those things impact that performance gap. It's not one thing. Unfortunately, I can't solve. the building industry problems that you and I talk about regularly in the office in one podcast.

Jess Kismet (19:01)

We can do our part. That's all we can do is our part. But we've got a situation where you've got builders who they finished their trade when they're in their early 20s, sometimes younger, and then there is no requirement to do any further development. So this better building journey is a self-driven journey. You have to, each individual tradesman or builder has to decide to go down that path as an individual.

And then you've got on the flip side, you've got a situation where homeowners, for example, they think that double glazing means one level of performance. They don't understand that there are in fact, thousands of different types of double glazing levels of performance. So there's this lack of knowledge on the professional side and there's a lack of knowledge on the consumer side that leads to this huge amount of disparity in what actually gets delivered. And there's a perception out there that all builders are actually the same. I was having a discussion just recently where someone said to me, well, before I really started talking about this with you, I just thought that all builders built to the building code and they all knew what that was and that was that. And that's not the case at all. It's not the case at all.

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Jackson (20:14)

I always get annoyed when people go, it's very complex. Construction is very complex. Because I'm like, well, no, it's not, it's not complex. It's very straightforward. And it's very process driven. There's just a lot of parts to it. And if you're not methodical and make sure that you're across all of the parts, then that's where problems occur. And as a consumer, what I would say is the building industry is a very tight industry in terms of there is a lot of pressure from builders on suppliers and subbies to keep their prices down. And in turn, there's a lot of pressure from consumers on builders to keep their prices down. So if you see a big price difference from one builder to another, either someone's being dishonest or someone is simply not including the same amount of stuff as the other. And as a consumer, the key thing to work out is what is and what isn't included and how exactly are you going to put my home together?

You know, if they're a builder that has testimonials, that speaks volumes of that builder because those clients will have given up a half a day or more of their time to sit down and do do like a video testimonial or put a put a review on Google or any of those things.

And what you're trying to understand is, am I getting good value for money? Because you can get good value for money at $600,000 for a house, or you can get good value for money at $1.5 million. It's about what's gone into it and how big it is and what things are included in the contract and what's not included in the contract. And so if you're a homeowner trying to nut all this out, that's where I always say you want to make sure that the builder that is cheaper has got lots of people saying these guys are great. These are the best people I've ever worked with. They were completely honest about the price and the price stated exactly what it was when they said and all of those things. And if they're doing that, well then maybe they're the right builder for you.

Jess Kismet (22:42)

Yeah. Okay, so.

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

Jackson (22:59)

Yep.

We had a lot of years of trying to work out like how to sort of grade the energy performance of what we were building to suit different budget points.

So the three levels are Certified Passive House, which is obviously the top performer. and the certified passive house obviously comes comes with those guarantees of the full certification process with the Passive House Institute and the gathering of all of the data and photos and purchase orders and receipts and the whole lot to show that everything that was designed was built exactly the same way.

Then we have what we call a High Efficiency house where they are not certified. We keep the Heat Recovery Ventilation pillar of the passive house as part of a high efficiency house.

So you're getting the high quality air outcome that you'd be looking for with a certified passive house. The difference is that we remove the internal airtight membrane strategy out of the build which pulls back on cost. And most of our High Efficiency houses don't have under slab insulation because that's just another cost that if we're not going for certification, then we don't have to have it There's some pros and cons with it. You have slightly, you're to have a slightly colder house but in the scheme of things, you're still going to have a really high performing house.

And then, and then we have an energy efficient house and with an energy efficient house, if we put heat recovery ventilation in, we only do it as a, as a decentralized.

heat recovery system because they are way cheaper and they don't require any special service zones or anything really unique. And we pull back a little more on air tightness strategy, which just again pulls back on the cost of the build.

Through all of those levels, we still use double glazed uPVC windows and doors. We still use R4 insulation in the walls and R6 in the ceilings. And we still build with all thermal bridge free details.

So yeah, they are three levels. With a High Efficiency house we actually still use the Passive House Planning Package and we have some numbers

for heating demand and cooling demand and primary energy and all of that that we use. So we kind of in that scenario, we're using the Passive House Planning Package as an energy modeling tool.

It's one thing that we make ultra all clear to our clients. Like if you're not doing a certified Passive House then you're just building an energy efficient home. But we are using the Passive House Planning Package for our energy modeling just because it's accurate.

And like we can do a pretty quick, slightly rough, but has a fair bit of accuracy assessment using the PHPP in like 45 minutes. Like draw up in Design PH and bang it through with some assumptions. So you know, that's to me that's just a huge amount of value.

Jess Kismet (26:48)

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

Jackson (26:54)

Yeah, that's right.

So one of those ones where I would love to see acceptance of the Passive House Planning Package in South Australia as your energy rating kind of demonstrating that you're meeting the performance provisions. But I respect the fact that NatHERS is the thing that everyone gets. so, and we work with some really great people to make sure that we're getting the gap between the real performance of the house that we get out of PHPP and pretend performance that NatHERS gives you as close as possible on paper.

Jess Kismet (27:45)

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

Jackson (28:02)

Yeah, so a thermal bridge is essentially a pathway for cold or hot to pass through the thermal envelope of the house and make contact with the surface inside. So the thermal envelope of the house is the floor, the walls and the windows and ceiling. A really easy thermal bridge example is aluminium windows.

So aluminium window frames are highly conductive because it's aluminium. And a great example that most people have seen at least once in their life is an aluminium window condensating in a bathroom or in a bedroom during winter.

And thermal bridges also occur in wall junctions, particularly where external corners and internal corners occur, and often where an internal wall meets an external wall, and where walls meet ceilings, for example. So you could sum that up by saying wherever your thermal envelope changes direction, there's likely to be a thermal bridge if it's not built properly. And one of the big ones is with those junctions in walls where the insulation isn't installed correctly or the timber framing's not been set out in a way that you can install insulation correctly, you will get cold air making it through to the back of plasterboard often and you can get mould growth happening on the back of the plasterboard that you don't see inside the house, visibly, but it is there. and mould growth actually has to get reasonably severe if you don't actually see it, which means there's a whole bunch of mould occurring in the air that is on the wall, but it's not visible on the wall to the naked eye.

And that's where the biggest health risk comes from because you don't even know you have a problem. And so that's where you're getting a lot of your problems with health.

Jess Kismet (30:19)

Yeah, mould is a bit like termites. It can happen inside the wall and roof cavities and you don't know about it until it's a massive problem. And you can't see and smell most mould growth, which is a really scary fun fact. And if you can see it, the problem is likely much more extensive than what you're visually able to see.

Jess Kismet (30:41)

So cold spots equals mild spots people. Cold spot is a thermal bridge. So get rid of them. Talk to your builder about thermal bridging and see what they say.

Jackson (30:50)

Absolutely. And if their first words are, what's that?

Call Jess.

Jess Kismet (30:55)

Give us a call. Yeah. That's exactly right. We're to help. So last question. You have built a Certified Passive House display home. It is one of only two currently certified passive houses in South Australia. So where can people find out about that and how can they visit it if they want to?

Jackson (31:02)

So you can, of course, read about the house on the Enduro Builders website. And you can book a tour on the Enduro Builders website. And the tours run on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. And the reason that they run on Tuesdays and Wednesdays is that the house is available to Air BnB from Thursdays to Mondays. And we've done that because we want to give people the opportunity to actually experience the comfort of living in a certified passive house. So the you can find the house on AirBnB

And eventually we will put a link on the website so that you can AirBnB it straight off the Enduro Builders website but for now it's, it's available via Airbnb. Just look for what's available in Mount Barker and it'll, it'll pop up there.

Jess Kismet (32:19)

Excellent. Well, on that note, we shall wrap up. Thank you so much for having a chat with me on the very first episode of The Building Sciology Poddie If you would like to learn more about Enduro Builders head to Endurobuilders.com.au or head to the socials where you can learn much more about them.

We will have a new episode every two weeks and I have got some really, really interesting people lined up for you. So stay tuned and I'll see you then.