#25 - Navigating Building Codes: Lessons from New Zealand and Canada with Pete Raimondo and Shawn McIsaac

Jess Kismet (00:00)
Hello, and welcome The Building Sciology Poddie where we talk about better buildings to live and breathe in. Today on the show, we're joined by two experts who literally know buildings from the inside out. Sean McIsaac and Peter Raimondo are the co-founders of Oculus Limited They are leading specialists in building envelope design, energy efficiency and building science in New Zealand.

though Sean has recently taken Oculus International after a move to Canada with his family. They work with builders, architects, engineers and certifiers to ensure what is designed actually performs the way it's supposed to. From condensation risks and thermal bridging to practical install info and junction detailing for builders, their work focuses on translating building science theory into buildable solutions. So builders who care about better building, you're in the right place today. So let's get into it. Welcome, Sean and Pete.

Peter Raimondo (00:44)
Thank you.

Shawn McIsaac (00:44)
Thanks

for having us.

Jess Kismet (00:48)
So you guys have started your own podcast. Tell us a little bit about it and where we can listen.

Peter Raimondo (00:54)
Yeah, long story short, if you pop on our website, obsf.co, you'll find all kinds of resources and things like that. You'll find the links to our podcasts and whatnot. ⁓ But also on our Instagram account, we have like little clips and things like that. That's obsf underscore engineering. And just search that up. ⁓ YouTube as well. ⁓

Shawn McIsaac (01:19)
YouTube channel as well is up and running. Same handles, think,

OBSF engineering. Really it started because we were, seemed to be answering the same question over and over and over again. And so instead of answering people, we're just gonna direct them to the links. ⁓ And also it, we didn't have, there was, you you've been doing some stuff on.

Jess Kismet (01:26)
awesome.

Peter Raimondo (01:33)
Mm.

Jess Kismet (01:37)
Refer previous email.

Shawn McIsaac (01:47)
Yeah, sort of referred. Yeah, exactly. So we've got some real basic intro ⁓ to building science stuff on there. And also some longer form stuff where we talk back and forth with Peter and myself. So if you like building science, and you're sort of nerdy like that and want to listen to a podcast about it, there's a place for you. Or another place for you, say.

Peter Raimondo (02:06)
Yeah, you can also watch it inside video

and audio so you can see it. But we do have like two different flavors. One is like each one of us individually speaking about a topic. And then the other one is us kind of sitting next to each other and chit chatting back and forth. And we'll probably continue that with other people in the industry, other people in our company, etc etc. We've only done, you know, a basic amount to start uploading and then we'll keep going from there.

If you have any requests, let us know. If there's any topics that anyone's wondering about and you just don't have any local knowledge or local resources to rely on, give us a shout and we'll do a little bit of research for you. If there's something that we don't know about and we'll talk about it.

Jess Kismet (02:47)
Awesome, I will put all of those links in the show notes for anyone who wants to find you so that they can find you nice and easy. yeah, get on it. These guys, they have, they know what they're talking about.

Peter Raimondo (02:52)
Lovely.

Jess Kismet (02:58)
So let's get some background first up so the listener knows who we're talking to. A bit of history on your careers, please. Sean, would you like to go first?

Shawn McIsaac (03:07)
Yeah, certainly. So I started off ⁓ my college career in engineering and didn't really know what I wanted to do. And I did a Google search for summer job and this place called RDH popped up and I sent them an email and ended getting a summer job there.

and ⁓ they kind of specialize and probably lead North America in building science and that was 17-ish years ago and I kind of kept doing it. So I spent about seven years in Vancouver doing that, a couple years in Seattle and then moved to New Zealand and then run up to the Trump election, the first one. 2016 is when we moved from Seattle to New Zealand.

And just recently in 2025, we've moved back to Canada and starting an office up here. So started Oculus seven years ago, it was in New Zealand, 18 people now. And we just focus on building enclosure building envelope, science for medium sized buildings across New Zealand and BC Vancouver area.

Peter Raimondo (04:14)
Yeah. Up next. I started in Toronto, like colder part of Canada. Did a civil engineering degree at U of T, then graduated, worked in construction for a little bit.

didn't know if I wanted to be in engineering anymore because I had like a bad experience with a job. Went to Europe for a while to find myself, came back, did some singing and barista stuff, and then eventually got myself back into the engineering game into forensic engineering. like inspecting burnt down houses, houses with big leaks and remediating them. And then from there, ⁓ started working at another big firm called, that starts with an R, not RDH, it was RJC, which does very similar stuff.

Jess Kismet (04:39)
Wow. ⁓

Peter Raimondo (04:57)
less of a leader in the building science zone, but a leader in doing all the remediation type stuff and lots of contract admin stuff. Then eventually wanted to move somewhere and decided that New Zealand was the place I wanted to go and then came, applied for a job with Sean and he said, if I wasn't a serial killer, I was hired because of, guess, my resume or something. And the rest is history. It kind of went well from there.

Jess Kismet (05:20)
You

Awesome, so you applied for a job with Sean. You both founded the company though or you applied to work with Oculus?

Peter Raimondo (05:36)
Yeah, very soon after Oculus started, was only a company for like a few months. And so like I was there for very much.

Jess Kismet (05:42)
⁓ Okay, so co-founder

is kind of sorta accurate. You kind of been there since the beginning, right? Yeah.

Peter Raimondo (05:48)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've been there

Shawn McIsaac (05:50)
Technically,

Peter Raimondo (05:50)
from the

beginning, but yeah.

Shawn McIsaac (05:50)
technically not, but...

Jess Kismet (05:52)
Yeah,

yeah, yeah. Yeah. Cool. So that work you did in the remediation space and forensic space, that's pretty cool. You learn a lot about how buildings fail and how not to fail in that kind of work. Yeah.

Peter Raimondo (06:05)
Very much so, yeah. Spent

a lot of my building hanging on the outside of building on ropes on little chairs and poking at sealants and spraying water at stuff and trying to figure out when leaks happen and make sure they don't happen again.

Jess Kismet (06:16)
Yeah, yeah, cool. All right. Well, thank you very much for that, guys. So, Sean, you're in Canada right now. Pete, you're still in New Zealand. You're both in the leaky building hubs of the world right now. We've got the leaky building crisis in New Zealand, the leaky condo crisis in Canada. ⁓ What do you see in the existing building stock or still happening in new construction in regards to this multi-billion dollar disaster with both of them?

Peter Raimondo (06:23)
Yes.

Hmm.

Shawn McIsaac (06:42)
Well, actually, you're sort of in the hub of it, too. You guys just don't realise it yet.

Peter Raimondo (06:46)
Yeah.

Jess Kismet (06:46)
my god, I know, I know. Don't worry.

We just haven't had a number put on ours yet, but it's happening.

Peter Raimondo (06:53)
Yeah.

Shawn McIsaac (06:54)
Yeah, so we know that stuff happening in Australia, it's very similar to what's happened in Vancouver and New Zealand and we'll wait our time and the right opportunity will come up, I'm sure. But I mean, we try to talk about disasters and we try to talk about changing building codes and someone once told me that building codes usually change as a result of a disaster. So you have to wait for something catastrophic to happen before a building code will change.

Jess Kismet (07:04)
Mm-hmm.

Shawn McIsaac (07:21)
And so you see things like ⁓ Grenfell being an example and more probably closer to home is the Docklands ⁓ fire in Melbourne. Examples of disasters which caused some sort of change in the industry. ⁓ And so it's hard to see that you're really anything else is changing at the moment.

But I think with some of the increasing insulation values, you're starting to see some problems pop up, which are very similar to what leaky condos and leaky homes were. And we can avoid all of this by using the sciences. What science is supposed to do is you're supposed to be able to predict and use principles and physics and tools we have available to try to avoid these sorts of things.

I don't know if we're seeing that on the mainstream yet. You're seeing people, experts on like cutting edge of things, of raising alarm bells or ⁓ being chicken little and saying the sky is falling and eventually some, one of us will be right. Don't know which side.

Jess Kismet (08:29)
chicken little, I like that analogy.

Peter Raimondo (08:31)
Yeah, I feel

like there's a lot of things that are even being built today and because you know, there's some gaps or discrepancies or lack of coordination between different building code clauses and things like that. We're still seeing things built that eventually probably will have some issues, whether they are actual leaks and water coming in. ⁓

or condensation, interstitial condensation, like Sean was kind of referring to there. ⁓ But I find that there's a lot of situations, at least here in New Zealand, where there's

lack of, I don't want to say oversight because that's not quite the right word, but a lack of maybe construction monitoring. Like the design might be pretty good, but then once it goes into construction, sometimes there's a little bit of guessing going on and not a lot of kind of feedback between the design team and the construction team. And I don't think it's anyone's fault necessarily. Everyone's trying to do their best. Everyone's trying to build things, but I feel like there's just

a lack of knowledge, a lack of kind of acknowledgement of certain things that need to be put in place for redundancy to make sure that even if there are mistakes on site, then it doesn't become a big problem later on. That's really expensive to fix. but basically just redundant systems that allow things to drain without causing damage to things on the inside of that. So, yeah,

Jess Kismet (09:52)
Yep. Yep,

Shawn McIsaac (09:54)
mean

To Peter's point, you don't see a lot of bad designs or bad drawings. It's really hard to see. Even in buildings that fail, like leaky condos, you can look at a set of drawings and say, this looks fine, but it's usually not where the things go wrong. It's usually things that don't show up on paper, especially not in 2D. Especially not in 2D.

Peter Raimondo (10:15)
and

Jess Kismet (10:16)
I've never actually said,

I mean, there's this thing that we refer to called the performance gap, which is what's designed is not what gets built. And so what you're talking about is that right there. And it's why I moved over into the passive house sort of as built verification side of construction, because it's something that you can trust. ⁓ So what you said there is, you don't see things go wrong on paper, generally speaking.

Peter Raimondo (10:34)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, and to kind of flow on from that, it's like the design is in theory pretty good, but sometimes maybe the design doesn't take into account the realities of what actually happened on site and the fact that not everything is built perfectly. And so you have to design with that in mind that it's not going be perfect, perhaps.

Jess Kismet (10:53)
Mm. ⁓

Yeah.

Yeah,

yeah, definitely. And we do lots of, you know, education for builders about this and also architects and sort of building in lines of defense and communicating with builders and all these sorts of little things, little changes in their process to try and yeah.

Peter Raimondo (11:14)
Yeah, there's gotta be feedback back and forth between

everyone so that we're all aware of what our own limitations are and what everyone else's limitations are so that we can, you know, make a building that works.

Shawn McIsaac (11:25)
You brought up that performance testing aspect. I think that's a pretty key one actually, because...

You know, you talk about ⁓ air tightness testing is a great example of something where you could build it exactly as it's drawn and you could get a range in values from 0.5 air changes per hour to 5 air changes per hour depending on ⁓ just, you know, who's paying attention or what they're doing on site. I've don't know if I said on a podcast or not, but the difference between the five air changes and 0.5 air changes is a roll of tape and giving a fuck. You can...

Jess Kismet (11:44)
Yes.

Yeah.

Shawn McIsaac (12:00)
It's not,

there's not a lot different in terms of details or effort or anything. It's just sort of understanding what you're doing and sort of caring about it. ⁓ And sometimes it's just knowing, sometimes just knowing you have a test coming brings you down into those higher performance numbers that you're seeking.

Peter Raimondo (12:09)
Yeah.

Jess Kismet (12:09)
Yeah, a little bit of intention goes a long way.

Hmm.

I have clients even coming to me saying, we want to do this and we want to go for an airtight build, but we don't want to do a blower door test. And I'm like, if there's any intention to do anything airtight, you need to know what the outcome is. You really need to know that.

Peter Raimondo (12:40)
Yeah, and I find that sometimes people are scared of that air tightness test because they feel like they're going to fail or something like that. And sometimes ⁓ we've had certain projects where we haven't had an air tightness rating that we're aiming for, no certification that we're going for, but we'll still suggest, hey, let's do an air tightness test. Maybe it'll get us a couple of points from Homestar, Greenstar, one of those.

Jess Kismet (12:40)
this.

Yeah.

Peter Raimondo (13:03)
Certification schemes where you get a point just for doing the test not for getting to a certain level and what we find is that the contractors learn a lot and

see it as not scary and more of like an wow I feel air coming in from here maybe I can detail that better next time there's air coming in from there maybe that's something that we can put more tape on or figure out a different way to do it's a learning experience and it kind of gets rid of those those unfounded fears because sometimes it seems scary to have a test because you know you're in school I'm gonna fail my test but yeah

Jess Kismet (13:34)
Yeah, pass or fail. Yeah.

Shawn McIsaac (13:38)
the quality.

Jess Kismet (13:38)
Totally. All the trades that I've shown who have been new to blood or testing, they've all loved it. They've all thought it was fascinating.

Peter Raimondo (13:42)
Yeah,

every single time we've actually done one on site, everyone's like, wow, this is really cool, as opposed to being really angry about it something. Yeah.

Jess Kismet (13:48)
Yeah, not scary. Yeah.

Shawn McIsaac (13:50)
the

quality builders are the ones that are interested in it. Sometimes what I tell people too is that a blower door test by itself is not necessarily that useful of ⁓ information about the building, but what it is is a really good proxy for quality. It's very rare that you have a high quality builder build an air leaky home. And the flip side is very true. Like if you have a very air tight home, it's probably well constructed elsewhere.

Peter Raimondo (13:54)
Hmm, sure.

Jess Kismet (13:55)
Yes.

Peter Raimondo (14:04)
Sure.

Hmm.

Jess Kismet (14:14)
Mm.

Peter Raimondo (14:19)
Yep.

Jess Kismet (14:20)
Yes, spot on.

Peter Raimondo (14:22)
Indeed.

Jess Kismet (14:24)
So how can we speed up this learning? How can we take, you you said before that, you know, the sky's falling chicken little. You've got Canada, you've got New Zealand, you've got what's going on in Victoria in Australia and elsewhere in Australia. There's lessons being learned left, and center, but still the industry at large is not really changing. what do you think we can do to speed up this learning and stop us repeating the same mistakes?

Peter Raimondo (14:53)
Good question. It's a very good question. We've kind of tried, at least here in New Zealand, to try to spread knowledge into the industry by, you know, doing podcasts, releasing, you know, different written articles and examples and going out to universities to do lectures or going up to architects offices or going to ⁓ the councils and with their building inspectors, maybe having conversations or doing full presentations. And that

is a good step to try to expose people to things that they might not have been exposed to and try to at least get them asking questions that they might not have been asking before. That's at least the first step. But ⁓ it doesn't really magically change everything all at once. ⁓ But I have seen since I got to New Zealand, what, and a half, almost seven years ago, ⁓ I've seen a gigantic improvement in

people asking the right questions, people not being scared of some testing, air tightness testing, water testing on site, ⁓ councils starting to ask for those sorts of things. The questions, RFIs that we get from council are starting to get towards there. But I think a lot of it, unfortunately, does have to come from the central government or from the state governments changing the building codes. ⁓ And that

is generally the slowest thing to happen because usually like Sean said it's disasters that change the building code and so it's that's not an excuse to say that we have to wait for government to do it for us because that's that's not really a good excuse we all have to try to do it together but to pick up the bottom end of the industry there's not really much else

Jess Kismet (16:21)
Yeah, it's a slow burn.

Peter Raimondo (16:37)
they can do unless they're incentivizing better schemes. And so if people don't just follow base building code, they get some sort of advantage, some sort of financial something for doing a little bit better. Maybe that's the answer. There's been a lot of different ways have been done around the world. And we can just look across the world and see what's worked and what hasn't and try to emulate that in our own industries potentially. not sure if Sean has any additional kind of thoughts about it.

Jess Kismet (16:51)
Money always talks.

Shawn McIsaac (17:04)
Yeah, there's a pretty good ⁓ case study, if you will, or example from Washington state just below British Columbia, the top northwest corner of the U.S. They brought in voluntary air tightness testing.

in mid-2000s, like 2010-ish range. And the first, I think, three or four years, there was a requirement, a voluntary requirement to test the building and tell us what the number was. There was no benchmark to hit. It was just do the test and just tell us what the number is. And by about the third test,

each general contractor was pretty competitive at that point. Because they would tell their buddies like, our building got a three and we got a 2.7 on ours. And once you get that sort of arms race happening, you've got some pretty macho bros. They're all got a lot of pride behind them. And so if you can get that, that's where the competitiveness comes in.

Peter Raimondo (17:49)
you

Jess Kismet (17:49)
That's

what happens.

Mm.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Shawn McIsaac (18:11)
Like I said earlier, that's the measure of quality. So if you are now, if you're at the high end builder, you're gonna start promoting how high quality your builds are by using that as a number. And once the industry's surrounded, the public start to understand what that means and why they want an airtight building, that'll start to drive some of the change.

Jess Kismet (18:14)
Mm-hmm.

Peter Raimondo (18:21)
Mm-hmm.

Jess Kismet (18:22)
Mm-hmm.

Peter Raimondo (18:30)
Yeah.

I'm also wondering if it's worth, because right now there's not necessarily a lot of, ⁓ I guess, interest or desire or like the general public doesn't necessarily know.

what a high quality building is. I'm not sure how it is in Australia, but in New Zealand, a lot of people really prefer older buildings. The old stock that was built in the early 1900s. It's beautiful, good bones, stood the test of time. And I have to understand that and I agree with them. ⁓ But then once you kind of move to more airtight, double glazed windows, there's a lot of news articles that come out saying, my gosh, they're overheating and kind of blaming it on.

Jess Kismet (19:05)
Mm-hmm.

Peter Raimondo (19:16)
the newness of them as opposed to the fact that overheating wasn't considered in design because the building code didn't say that you had to. ⁓ And so kind of educating the public and getting them on board with a asking the right questions to a builder, to a supplier saying, hey, I want this for my house. And, and.

Jess Kismet (19:23)
Mm-hmm.

Peter Raimondo (19:35)
As a North American coming from Canada, I'm used to a house that is generally a temperature, a maintained consistent temperature year round, whether for good or for bad. But in here in New Zealand, it's not like that. And since becoming a Kiwi, like I get it, like I want the windows open during the summer. I want that indoor outdoor flow. I get it. But I also want to be comfortable in the winter. And I'm not sure if everyone's kind of on board with that yet. And so maybe that's also part of it.

Jess Kismet (20:01)
No,

it's a very common experience. This year on the social media, TikToks and things, it's sort of the trending thing is, you come inside an Australian home in the winter and you put your jackets on. It's colder inside than it is outside. That's been a real trend this winter online. ⁓ So on that, there's a big, there's a push for retrofits. There's a push for making existing stock warmer. ⁓

Peter Raimondo (20:16)
Mm-hmm. Really? Same here. Yep.

Jess Kismet (20:31)
you were talking about incentives. in Victoria, I think it was in Victoria, in Australia anyway, there was some recent government incentives, government programs where they were going around insulating roofs. And I think that was in Victoria and some in South Australia as well. have to check. But yeah, so the government was paying for insulation to be put into.

Peter Raimondo (20:51)
like for free, subsidized, what are we talking about?

Jess Kismet (20:57)
there was some requirements that had to be met, but they were paying for insulation to be retrofit into existing homes. And wouldn't you know, it caused mould problems. So good intentions, really bad outcome. Then there was another one happening at the moment that I read about on LinkedIn where they're doing it again, but this time they've taken into consideration the science behind it and being more careful about it.

Peter Raimondo (21:07)
Hmm Sure sure

Okay.

Jess Kismet (21:22)
one

can only hope they've asked the right people in Australia and one can only hope that this scheme is more successful. But one of your social media posts this week was about retrofit. So I'd like to touch on that. Yeah, so insulating old buildings is popular. We want to increase the energy efficiency and comfort of those...

Peter Raimondo (21:29)
Yeah.

Jess Kismet (21:40)
beautiful old homes with the good bones, but what is the biggest area of ⁓ risk when retrofitting an existing building and what can be done to reduce that risk?

Shawn McIsaac (21:51)
Yeah, roof is probably the most risky if you had to choose one. It's by the riskiest spot. And the primary reason of that is night sky radiation. If you're not familiar with that term, it's the fact that when you have a clear night, you lose more heat to space, which sounds insane, but it's true. It's probably like a four or five degree difference, something like that, which is enough to make roofs higher risk than walls.

Now, if you have a completely uninsulated roof with zero insulation, your attic space is gonna be the same temperature as below or very close to your living space. Let's just say it's 20 degrees, probably more like 16 or something in most of Australia, but in your attic space, let's call it like 16 degrees.

And when you add insulation, you're blocking all that heat gain from below, from reaching that attic space. So now we might have a, maybe you got a bit warmer below 18 degrees, but now your attic space is cooler, like 10 degrees Celsius. And so now you've got a problem where dew point in much of Australia, especially the coastal climates.

dew points are going to be above 10 very frequently. So now you've got you just increase the amount of condensation events that occur and reduce potential drying and ⁓ whether that balance gets tipped to the spot that it's a disaster or a problem is like, you you're sort of playing with, yeah, you're playing with fire if you will. ⁓

Peter Raimondo (23:24)
to the whims of the weather.

Yeah.

Shawn McIsaac (23:30)
That would be just an end. Every building science person should know this by now. Now, we'll give some caveat here that probably 20 years ago when insulation started increasing in these roofs, even the best of the best in the Vancouver, Canada didn't get this right.

Peter Raimondo (23:38)
Yeah. Yeah.

Shawn McIsaac (23:55)
So it was a problem that didn't pop up, or at least not in the mainstream where there's probably some nuanced people that sort of saw this coming. ⁓ But this is the opportunity for Australia and New Zealand to learn from those mistakes and maybe put in some mitigating. ⁓

circumstances or some ideas or maybe that's not the best idea to insulate some roofs for the energy payback. So ⁓ some lessons learned from elsewhere could save a lot of problems.

Peter Raimondo (24:25)
Yeah, and I see why people want to insulate a roof because it's easy. You just pop through a hatch, toss a bunch of insulation in there, and you're good to go. There's also people who say, oh, as long as you maintain the amount of ventilation in that attic space through the eaves and through the ridge, you're good to go. But there are studies from like

Jess Kismet (24:31)
cheap.

Peter Raimondo (24:46)
Vancouver especially has lot of ⁓ studies on that, even I'm pretty sure BRANZ in New Zealand also has some studies on that showing that no matter how much airflow you're getting through there because the outside air is so humid and your dew point temperatures are so close to that air temperature, you're probably going to get condensation and mould growth anyway, no matter how much ventilation you go through there. Unless you're heating that air up as it's coming in and then using it for drying, it's not just magically going to fix itself.

Shawn McIsaac (24:54)
Several.

Peter Raimondo (25:16)
⁓ And so in the article, because we had our social media post, but that relates back to like a full on article, ⁓ I think we were saying that the first thing you should think about is heating and ventilation first, because heat kind of cures a lot of things, gets rid of a lot of condensation risk. And then ventilation also gets rid of, you know, all the air we breathe out that has heaps of moisture in it.

showering, cooking, etc. using that ventilation to stop the moisture flow first and then when you're going to insulate there's not really

like an easy, just put this insulation everywhere and it's all good. There's not one good answer. It really depends on the historical use of the home, how it was meant to be heated, ventilated, and insulated, and then making sure that you're not causing dew point issues, intrastitial condensation issues, by adding insulation in there. Because insulation is great at keeping us inside nice and warm.

but it also does the same thing by keeping the external surfaces colder. ⁓ And that's something that is a little bit counterintuitive. Maybe you don't necessarily think of it, but by putting insulation, you're making yourself more comfortable, but you're making your building less comfortable, unless you have air tightness, you have ventilation, you have heating, you have drainage pathways, etc, etc, etc.

Jess Kismet (26:35)
So is there a safe way to insulate an existing roof? And I know this is a it depends question. It depends on, it depends on, you know, how much space is up there. It depends on the behavior of the occupants. But is there, is there a safe way to insulate an existing roof? And how does that differ from a new roof?

Shawn McIsaac (26:57)
So I think when you look at some of the...

Jess Kismet (26:59)
throwing that one at you.

Shawn McIsaac (27:01)
When you look at models of roofs and try and run hygrothermal analysis and woofie models for roofs, somewhere around R4 seems to be the spot where things start to break down. So you can get away with insulating a roof up to about R4, maybe R3.5 climate and sort of thing. So if you wanted to just go to R4, you're going to have more dampness in that roof, but probably up to the point it causes catastrophic moldiness or decay. When you start going like R4,

Peter Raimondo (27:27)
Yeah. Yeah.

Shawn McIsaac (27:31)
6.6 or 7 which is what we're doing in New Zealand the WUFI models go haywire just they look pretty ugly ⁓

Peter Raimondo (27:39)
Yeah.

Shawn McIsaac (27:42)
So what, I mean, we could do a whole podcast just on warm roofs, but yeah, moving insulation above the structure is really the only answer. And it's sort of the best buillding science answer and sort of where a lot of the end game is going in, certainly in Canada, New Zealand is probably pretty close behind.

Jess Kismet (27:48)
Yeah, I know.

Peter Raimondo (27:55)
Yeah.

Jess Kismet (28:00)
Right, yep.

Peter Raimondo (28:09)
Yeah, and it's a little bit complicated if you haven't done it before, but if you know...

kind of some tips and tricks if you know some suppliers that have the right materials and right fixings and things like that, it's pretty easy to externally insulate. So for instance, for a roof, a few of the suppliers, at least here in New Zealand, I'm not sure if they offer it in Australia yet, they have like re-roof type situations where you have your corrugated metal roof, they put some little strips of insulation in the corrugates and then put a flat piece of rigid insulation on the outside of that and then a new

roofing iron on the outside of that and that works pretty well because it gets rid of that night sky radiation, it keeps your attic comfortable. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jess Kismet (28:49)
so you just put it on top. ⁓

Shawn McIsaac (28:52)
It's

such an awesome roof actually. It's really good.

Peter Raimondo (28:54)
Yeah, you have to have capacity structurally

Jess Kismet (28:55)
Wow.

Peter Raimondo (28:57)
to make sure that all works out, but most times it's pretty easy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it's only what? 70mm 80 mm you can an exception pretty easily from council if you ask nicely. It depends, yeah, yeah.

Jess Kismet (28:59)
and like heights and things as well in the cities. Yeah.

Interesting. Yeah, we have

this weird thing in Australia where warm roofs get the definition gets muddled up. So I've called them the Aussie warm roof and the European warm roof because in Australia, we think that a warm roof is where the insulation is at the top, the top of the top of the truss in between the trusses. Yeah, or even even even a flat ceiling with a truss ceiling, truss roof, sorry. They just put the insulation up there.

Peter Raimondo (29:27)
A skill you

⁓ they just pinned it installation up there.

Jess Kismet (29:37)
to keep the ducting warm and things like that. So that's

what a lot of builders in Australia are doing. ⁓ And so I had to differentiate, I did a post about it, I differentiated between the two types because I was like, the terminology is important here, guys, we need to understand what we're all talking about. And what you're talking about is the European warm roof where the structural members are kept warm, where the insulation is on top. Yeah, and I think that's...

Peter Raimondo (29:43)
Sure.

Sure. Yeah.

Mm. Mm.

Yes. Yes, exactly that.

Jess Kismet (30:03)
You can do that safely with a truss roof, can you? Where there's a roof void still?

Peter Raimondo (30:08)
Usually, yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's certain, places where it wouldn't work, but yeah.

Jess Kismet (30:09)
Yeah, yeah, and that doesn't

And then yeah, the roof ventilation thing here has gone crazy as well, because there's all these changes in the building code around ventilating roof spaces and climate zones that needs to happen in. And the builders are like, just tell me what I need to do, because they're all so confused. ⁓ It's complicated.

Peter Raimondo (30:28)
Yeah. And I feel like

part of the issue is trying to oversimplify or trying to give someone an easy answer. And unfortunately, when we're working at this level, there's not really an easy one fits all like answer that works. One size fits all kind of thing. So yeah, it really depends. But external insulation on the outside of walls, on the outside of roofs, on the underside of your slab, that usually works pretty well if you can get it built that way.

Jess Kismet (30:44)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Peter Raimondo (30:58)
Here in New Zealand, there's one of our former colleagues that did a master's program on externally insulating old villas with weatherboards and things like that and trying to find a really quick, easy, simple retrofit that allows people to stay inside, like living in the house, while also putting new insulation on the outside, which is pretty cool. Not sure if it's a thing that ⁓ Australia might be eventually interested in, but could be.

Jess Kismet (31:22)
Yeah, well often external insulation just gets parked because it's too hard. In a retrofit situation, ⁓ there's plumbing and there's windows and there's all this crap that we can't work around. So ⁓ if there was a solution to that then.

Peter Raimondo (31:34)
You can't. They

can. They just don't want it. It's just new. It's all doable. Yeah, just new.

Jess Kismet (31:38)
Yeah, yeah. If

you have some information on that, friends research, that'd be cool. We can put it in the show notes if it's. Oh, Parka Wrap Yeah, yeah. I know the one. Jon Jon in New Zealand. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Awesome. I shall link that in the show notes. Parka Wrap. Yeah. Excuse me. So what is a pet peeve for both of you that comes across your desk?

Peter Raimondo (31:47)
It's, it's Parka Wrap by Jon D. You've heard of it.

Yep. Yeah. Yep, definitely do.

⁓ For me, I'll take it first and I'll let you finish, Ashon. For me, my biggest pet peeve, think, the thing that really grinds my gears is when I have come up with a way to simplify

Shawn McIsaac (32:11)
Just one.

Jess Kismet (32:15)
Shawn's like, where do I start? ⁓

Peter Raimondo (32:30)
and reduce the cost of a building and just like, you have all these extra pieces of concrete and timber and frame and this and that. If you just have a slab and put a sloped insulation on top of that, this is just one example, it'll save you a lot of time, a lot of money.

It'll be a much better building because you have external insulation as opposed to like this void space that's just the middle of nowhere. But I get told no because it's different and therefore it must be too expensive. ⁓ Even though I like I'll cost it out. I'll do all the sizes and the square meterage and stuff like that and say price this please. Yeah that's the biggest thing that is my pet peeve because like I'm trying to do my work. I'm trying to improve. I'm trying to help them. I'm trying to save them money. ⁓

But then I get told no because it's different. That's probably my biggest one. Sean?

Jess Kismet (33:19)
Okay.

Shawn McIsaac (33:21)
It's... I have so many that I've probably become, I don't know what the word is, disillusioned by it. Like, your point there, Peter, about, you know, suggesting an awesome alternative or a cool way of doing things and, you know, nobody wants to entertain it is frustrating, but I think after you've done it enough times, I sort of gave up on caring about that sort of pushback five or six years ago, so...

Peter Raimondo (33:25)
No.

Sure. Sure.

Shawn McIsaac (33:49)
I mean,

when I'm working on projects, ⁓ I'm really just giving people advice and ideas. And if they like them, then great. If they don't, then that's fine too. But usually those ideas get caught on the next project, the project after, or you come back to them. What was that cool thing you were talking about doing? so it's, I don't get too caught up in that.

Jess Kismet (34:09)
Yeah, they won't accept it straight away. That happens to us a lot too. Then they're down the

track, they'll come back to you and go, hmm, what was that again? I need that. Yeah.

Peter Raimondo (34:18)
You mentioned that thing. Yeah.

Shawn McIsaac (34:22)
Yeah, and try not to be too hyperbolic about the risks of ⁓ what's currently drawn or what the way it's always been done. It's just, yeah, you might have some condensation spots or you might have this or whatever the issue may be. And if you want to live with that, then fine. As long as you got the information.

Peter Raimondo (34:39)
Yeah.

Yeah, I try to come into a meeting with that kind of, ⁓ you know, perspective, just like, hey, this is going to be condensation. And someone will be like, it's always been built like that. But what I try to, I guess, reiterate is the fact that if there is condensation, it's the reason when you walk into an older building and it's kind of just like a little bit stinky, just like it of feels musty and stinky. That's because of condensation. And so if you don't want that, do it this way. If you're OK with that, then hey, fill your boots, do whatever you want.

Jess Kismet (35:00)
Mm. Mm. Mm.

Shawn McIsaac (35:09)
Actually, I do have a pet peeve actually. I've come up with one. So when I started on a project, I always feel like I want to be part of a group of people who know a bunch of things, which are now creating this new building. And so you're like, let's assemble a team of experts and design this, try to get to Mars, right?

Jess Kismet (35:10)
Do you ever get any...

Peter Raimondo (35:12)
Sorry? what is it?

Jess Kismet (35:14)
⁓

go.

Peter Raimondo (35:27)
Mm-hmm.

Shawn McIsaac (35:34)
Like no one's ever built this building, this particular building before. So let's all, you've got some expertise there, you've got some expertise, you've got some expertise. And you would think that then you would all like work together to find the best solution or whatever.

And sometimes product teams, get factions or siloed, like I'm building this building. I've already designed it. And this is the HVAC system and you need to deal with it. And this is how we're doing the structure and there's no way to change it. And so then you're like, what are we doing here? Like, I thought we were, I thought we were designing something. thought we were building something. It's yeah. If you just want to check, just want to build the same building from last time, then you should have told me that. So.

Peter Raimondo (36:06)
Why are we even here? Why are we even here? It's easier than email.

Jess Kismet (36:07)
Yeah.

Peter Raimondo (36:16)
Yeah.

Jess Kismet (36:17)
So you guys

start to wonder like, if you get pushed back, Pete, on, you know, your alternative solutions and Sean, you get told like, well, this is the way we've always done it, so this is the way we're going to do it, you end up thinking like, why did you ask me then? Yeah. Yeah. More than one way to skin a cat, but you're like...

Peter Raimondo (36:31)
Why am I here? Just decide a piece of paper at the end. OK, cool. Thanks. You could have told me that.

Shawn McIsaac (36:35)
Yeah.

Does anybody think the last building we built was the perfect building? There's always room to improve on things, right? So yeah, so that's some of that design arrogance or...

Jess Kismet (36:43)
Mm.

Peter Raimondo (36:46)
Yeah.

Jess Kismet (36:47)
Yeah.

And does anyone think that the tick box exercise

of the code is, you know, the only way to go? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Do you have a number one detailing issue that gets often messed up? On site.

Peter Raimondo (36:55)
Yeah, it is what it is.

site. ⁓

Shawn McIsaac (37:10)
So for

energy efficiency, it's where the 2D detail has a rafter or joist coming out over a wall and in the 2D detail you can't pick it up. Or a calm floor like corrugated flooring is the other one where the 2D detail doesn't show it actually got holes in it. So that's one that I started to look for because it's really hard to pick up on paper if you're not looking for it.

Peter Raimondo (37:28)
Mm-hmm.

Jess Kismet (37:29)
Mm-hmm.

Peter Raimondo (37:34)
Yeah. Like, corrugated metal deck with a concrete slab on top.

Jess Kismet (37:34)
Carcaded flooring.

Shawn McIsaac (37:36)
the corrugated steel.

Jess Kismet (37:41)
Okay.

Shawn McIsaac (37:41)
You wouldn't see that in low-rise, but in... not in low-rise,

Peter Raimondo (37:43)
Is that not a thing in... ⁓ Okay, fair.

Jess Kismet (37:45)
No.

Peter Raimondo (37:47)
Yeah. Bigger, mid-rise, high-rise buildings usually happen because it speeds things up. But on site, I find it's usually, like Sean said, just a lack of caring.

Jess Kismet (37:47)
Yeah, I know. Yeah, yeah, fair enough. Yep.

Peter Raimondo (38:01)
Like I'll go on site and go look at, you know, a tanking membrane, a waterproofing membrane. And the guy who installed it is like, yeah, it's perfect. There's nothing wrong with it. And then I go and I shove my whole arm through a hole and he's like, ⁓ there's that. And I'm like, yeah, like it has, it has to be sealed. Like, what are we doing here? Like, you did, you're not checked. Did you not send anyone through here? It's just little bits and bobs like that, ⁓ that are kind of frustrating. ⁓ and then like Sean said, just stuff that doesn't show up on

Jess Kismet (38:01)
Mm.

Hahaha

Yep. ⁓

Peter Raimondo (38:29)
the details on the drawings because it's just a one-off detail in this one random corner. And when it's up to the guys on site, they're doing their best, they're trying their best based on the knowledge that they have on the previous jobs, but sometimes it's not similar to anything. then, you know, it's nice when we catch that, give them a little detail, say, here, do it like this. ⁓ But sometimes it's already done and then we have to go try to find a way to rip things open without, you know, wasting too much money and make it work.

Jess Kismet (38:30)
paper.

Mm-hmm.

Peter Raimondo (38:59)
I'd that's probably the biggest thing.

Shawn McIsaac (38:59)
Something

I found in the Vancouver and BC region, which I didn't necessarily get the same vibes from the New Zealand ⁓ industry was the...

the applicator's understanding of why they're doing something a certain way. So why are we putting peel and sticks on this way? Why are we doing an air seal? The installers in Vancouver, they would tell you what they're doing. Like, we're gonna do it this way because your detail sucks and we wanna do it this way. And you go, yeah, that's a much better idea. Whereas the guys in, not everyone, but a lot of the New Zealand industry was, I'm gonna put this on the wall and I've done my job, and they don't actually understand why they're doing it.

Peter Raimondo (39:16)
Mmm.

Yes. ⁓

Yes. ⁓

Shawn McIsaac (39:42)
And so it.

Jess Kismet (39:42)
See, it gets

even worse when you come to Australia. We have New Zealand trades that pick apart Australian details. So, from Vancouver to New Zealand and then New Zealand to Australia. And then I think even South Australia, was speaking to a building certifier recently who...

Peter Raimondo (39:45)
We've heard.

Shawn McIsaac (39:47)
Yeah.

Peter Raimondo (39:54)
Hmm.

Jess Kismet (40:08)
informed me that the rules in South Australia are even looser than they are in other parts of the country.

Peter Raimondo (40:15)
Yeah,

I find not to put blame on anyone else, but I feel like there is room for improvement from suppliers. ⁓

in Canada from Toronto, not from Vancouver, like in Toronto, you email a supplier and they will give you an overabundance of information. They will solve problems for you. They will write specs for you. They'll do a whole bunch of extra work. And I find that here you have to really poke and really ask the right questions just to get that. It's not just an automatic thing. And I feel like maybe that's also why the guys on site aren't like understanding the reason why they're doing things because no one's telling them like how could they possibly

be expected to know, you know? ⁓ So, I mean, there's room for improvement everywhere in the industry and we'll get there. Yeah!

Jess Kismet (40:54)
I'm wondering if that's a salesperson versus a technical person issue, like these suppliers are employing salespeople as

the industry-facing touchpoint.

Peter Raimondo (41:07)
Yeah,

and there's not like a requirement or an expectation that they're going to do all that extra, all the extra work, all the extra knowledge building and stuff like that. maybe that's another area to make things better.

Jess Kismet (41:16)
⁓ The hardware stores,

we're doing some work at the moment with hardware stores, ⁓ because they sell, for example, wraps, and they have no idea what each the difference between each wrap is and what they do and why they're used. So trades go on by something from the shelf without really understanding the difference. they're not nothing is pointed out. Nothing is explained. And so it just goes on and on like that.

What are the most cost effective changes or wins for builders to improve building performance that don't necessarily require major redesign? Is it a material? Is it a mindset? What do we need to do here?

Peter Raimondo (41:56)
I feel like Sean nailed it on the head. Doing an air tightness test really puts that mindset into place. ⁓ And like he said, just a roll of tape and a little bit of caring. That'll get you way above, you know, re-detailing, redesigning, etc But you put that out. A little bit, a little bit. It made it little bit less nice, didn't it? Yeah.

Jess Kismet (42:00)
Hmm.

Mm-hmm. Hates.

Shawn McIsaac (42:13)
You paraphrase my saying, but yeah.

Jess Kismet (42:16)
hahahaha

Shawn McIsaac (42:19)
the PG version.

One thing that's overlooked a lot is how easy it is to change glass specs and get a lot of boost and performance from glass. So low E coatings on glass and your glass spec, no changes to details. It's usually like the glass company can give you quotes like over the phone. It's really easy to quote.

And you can get like, can improve your energy efficiency by 20, 30, 40 % just by changing glass. Even in existing buildings, changing out glass can be huge benefits for thermal comfort, particularly, but energy efficiency as well. So if you're a builder and you've got a set of plans and your homeowner says, I want to build something better, glass, easy, super easy to improve glass.

Jess Kismet (42:59)
you

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. All right.

Peter Raimondo (43:08)
Yeah, because that low E

coding will improve the R value of that window, like reflecting heat in, but also you can use it as sunscreen in hot ⁓ sun facing elevations to make sure you don't get as much overheating during the summer. You don't to use your face.

Jess Kismet (43:24)
Yeah, and depending on in double glazing,

Shawn McIsaac (43:24)
I'm, I'm su-

Jess Kismet (43:26)
in double glazing as well you've got, you can have as the two panes of glass and there's four surfaces, the outside surface of the external pane, the inside surface of the external pane and so on. One, two, three and four. And those low E coatings on a double glazed pane are on surfaces two or three in the middle. And that will either reflect heat back into the house or it will reflect heat out of the house. Right? Is that how it works?

Peter Raimondo (43:42)
Hmm. Hmm. Hmm.

It does.

It does, yes, but I would say like the material of the low-E coating itself is much more of an influence than just the surface. Yeah, surface two is generally for blocking sun and surface three is generally for reflecting it inside. But if you use the wrong low-E coating because there's hundreds, thousands of different types of low-E coating, ⁓ that is much, much, much more of an influence.

Jess Kismet (44:00)
as to where it is.

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Shawn McIsaac (44:17)
just a

point of order, it's not reflecting the heat. It's actually stopping the radiation from the glass and going inwards or outwards. I'm actually sort of, maybe I'm not surprised ⁓ that most of Australia wouldn't have low E as the standard specification.

Jess Kismet (44:21)
Thank you, pardon.

No, it doesn't. ⁓ I mean, no, single glazed. Yeah. The coatings on windows. ⁓ Yeah, double glazing aluminium frame, not double glazing, single glazed aluminium frame windows are still standard in Adelaide Plains in particular, I think. I think that's still happening. Our building code changed a couple of years ago and their requirements did increase a fair bit.

Shawn McIsaac (44:44)
is air conditioning. Air conditioning is your standard spec. Yeah.

Jess Kismet (45:09)
So I would have to, I would have to make sure of what I'm saying here, but, ⁓ I, yeah, I think there's a massive misunderstanding around what double glazing or low E coatings and all that, what they actually mean. You know, people think that double glazing, there's one step of double glazing and that's all there is to it. You know, I've got double glazed windows. Okay. That doesn't mean much. I need more information to that. They will tell me what that actually is going to do to your building. ⁓

Peter Raimondo (45:36)
Yeah.

Do you also find that people still conflate tinted windows with low-E coated windows? Because I've been in meetings where I suggested low-E coding that is basically clear. There's like a slight tinge of maybe green or blue, but it's not dark like a tinted window that we would be used to from, you know, an office building from the 1980s, let's say. Like, everyone knows what that is. Low-E coating is not that. It is very much not that. And so that's the whole thing in Australia, that fear.

Jess Kismet (45:56)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, often you can't see it.

I think there's a fear, not so much that, there's a fear that low E coatings will scratch and they'll be ugly and those sorts of things. There's like, yeah, there's that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's that.

Peter Raimondo (46:14)
⁓ if it's on a single glaze then sure, guess that's a reasonable fear. But it shouldn't.

Yeah.

Jess Kismet (46:22)
But yeah, I haven't worked in energy efficiency compliance in a few years now. So I'm not actually sure what 100 % what's being specified. you know, the windows that I work with in my part of the industry are all they've all got low e coatings on them and they're all you can see and all that so.

Peter Raimondo (46:38)
had

a few situations where I've suggested a low E coating and the mechanical engineer has said, no, we can't use low E coatings because that causes overheating. And I had to really kind of sit with that and understand that and try to figure out like why that is. And it's because, sorry, go for it.

Jess Kismet (46:49)
Right.

Yeah.

Shawn McIsaac (46:54)
I got

it's worse Peter I've had projects where we switched we were proposed to switch from clear double glazing to single glazing to let the heat out.

Peter Raimondo (47:05)
Yeah, I've had that one too. Yeah. And like, I see what they're getting at because they're looking at it through a very small lens. They're saying sun come in, heat must go back out as opposed to maybe block some of the sun coming in first and have a low E-coating that blocks out a certain percentage because there's like different strengths of low E-coating. And so if you have a very low strength one, it lets lots of heat in. If you have a really high strength one, blocks a lot of that heat and reflects it back out or

Jess Kismet (47:07)
Hahaha!

Yeah.

Peter Raimondo (47:34)
keeps the radiation out, sorry, not reflects it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, but yeah, so it's really just the education aspect. Yeah, and trying to understand why they're understanding it that way and then kind of saying, I see what you mean. This is the other thing that I mean, and that usually kind of goes well.

Shawn McIsaac (47:36)
You can save blocks, it's fine. It's the safe space here.

Jess Kismet (47:36)
Yeah.

It's perception and lack of understanding that's really up.

Yeah.

Yeah,

yeah. Communication.

Shawn McIsaac (48:00)
The other pushback

I get on low E is that they want the solar heat gain in the winter. I hear that one a lot. I have to point out that half of the year is dark and there's no sun. And the other half of the year is winter and it's cloudy a lot. ⁓

Peter Raimondo (48:05)
Yes. Sure.

Jess Kismet (48:05)
Yeah. Yeah.

Peter Raimondo (48:10)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Shawn McIsaac (48:17)
And so you're really trying to design for like 25 % of the year, you're going to not have a good time doing that. So you're best to just block out the sun and use efficient heating systems to make up for it. In, in heating dominated climate, is most of New Zealand for sure. Most of southeastern Australia as well.

Jess Kismet (48:29)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, a lot of the more higher performance builders, that's where they all, that's where they are. They're in that part where it's cold.

Peter Raimondo (48:37)
Yeah.

Yeah.

And we're not trying to say like just use heat pumps to fix everything. Like ideally design a very efficient building. But if you're choosing one or the other, heating is the more effective choice.

Jess Kismet (48:54)
Yeah.

Yeah, for sure.

So relationships between architects and builders. Architects and builders don't always have the greatest relationships. So what are your, what's your experience with that? And how do you think that can be improved?

Peter Raimondo (49:11)
find that we're usually in the middle ⁓ and that's generally where we thrive, honestly. ⁓ So I try to understand it from both sides because I understand what I try to understand what the architect is looking for aesthetically. And sometimes I think it's crazy. Why are we doing that? You're making your life so much harder. But I have to understand the look that they're going for and the reasons why they've gotten there. ⁓

Jess Kismet (49:13)
Yes.

Peter Raimondo (49:36)
And then on site, I have to understand the difficulties of installing certain things. Certain membranes are really thick and tough to deal with. So if you have a tiny little corner, you're going to have a tough time. And trying to explain that from one side to the other is kind of where I try to work. Yeah. Yeah. We're looking at this from two different perspectives. Let's see where there's there's something in the middle and

Jess Kismet (49:52)
Being the mediator. Everybody calm down, use your inside voices.

you

Peter Raimondo (50:02)
Sometimes

it helps making jokes. Like I'll go on site and like, don't know these architects, who knows what they're doing. And then, you know, during a site meeting like that, you know, no one on site is not going to be, is going to be able to build that. And you just have to try to keep it like, keep it fun. ⁓ Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but Sean.

Jess Kismet (50:08)
Yeah.

Yep.

Yep.

Shawn McIsaac (50:20)
⁓ I'm reminded of a great quote which is, everyone's got a plan until they get punched in the nose, or the face, or the mouth, the mouth. It's a Mike Tyson quote.

Peter Raimondo (50:26)
Mm-hmm. Mm. Mm.

Shawn McIsaac (50:31)
And that's how I think about architectural details, right? Those are the plan we have going in. is what's, and hey, builder, you guys are building it. If you've got a better idea, then let's hear it. Let's change it. Let's update the details. There's no dramas about doing that. think, so, ⁓ but builders also need to understand why it's been drawn a certain way. And so sometimes I think, you know, that conflict comes from, ⁓ this is the way we've always built it versus

Jess Kismet (50:44)
Mm-hmm.

Peter Raimondo (50:46)
Yeah.

Jess Kismet (50:54)
Mm.

Shawn McIsaac (51:01)
is this is the way I've drawn it. has to be built exactly like it's drawn. And both those sides need to relax a little bit and say, hey, we're on the same team here. We're trying to see the same outcome. And so if you've got a better way to build it, if you want to change the detail, let's work together to find the best outcome for the project. It's really the only way I've seen it work.

Peter Raimondo (51:08)
Yep. Yep.

Jess Kismet (51:08)
Yeah.

Peter Raimondo (51:17)
Yeah. I find that

using the right vocabulary also helps. Like builders have a certain set of vocabulary and architects have a certain set of vocabulary. Sometimes... Yeah.

Jess Kismet (51:24)
Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ Yeah, everyone has to feel heard and understood and

yeah.

Peter Raimondo (51:31)
And

sometimes on site there has to be a few, you know, swear words and expletives because that kind of works. And then in the architecture world, you have to talk about things like shadow lines and things up with each other on different sides of different things and sharp, crisp lines and this and that. So you have to understand both those things and kind of try get a little bit. Yeah. It's fun though.

Jess Kismet (51:35)
F-bombs. Yep. Yep.

Yeah.

Yeah, so you could be a real chameleon in this role. Yeah.

Shawn McIsaac (51:54)
Have

a-

You can't underestimate ⁓ how important a mock-up is for key detail as well. yeah, if you've got every project, your window install detail is always different, always complicated. There's lots of steps involved. If you're an architect, don't ask the builder to build it and then show up and tell them it's wrong. Block yourself out an afternoon, go and work with them, help them cut tapes and stick stuff on and get your hands dirty.

Jess Kismet (52:01)
Mm-hmm.

Peter Raimondo (52:01)
my god.

Yep. Yep.

⁓

Yeah.

Shawn McIsaac (52:26)
understand how it's actually going to be built.

That afternoon you spend on site, it will help you understand how you're going to draw the next building a lot better. It'll build that relationship with that builder like, time spent there will returned for you tenfold on that project. I think that's where a lot of it goes wrong is the clean clothes guy shows up and said you did it wrong.

Peter Raimondo (52:41)
Street Cred.

Mm, absolutely.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jess Kismet (52:53)
Get out. Yep. Yep.

Shawn McIsaac (52:54)
Go get your hands dirty. Go get your

hands dirty. You will learn so much more by being there and you will be a better architect for doing it.

Peter Raimondo (53:04)
Absolutely.

Shawn McIsaac (53:05)
Builders, same thing, you need to understand the principles behind that detail. Why are we doing it like that? And ask the question, not in a passive aggressive way, but just, hey, help me understand why we're doing it this way, we did it this way last time. So try to understand why the detail is drawn a certain way, and then figure out the right outcome and everyone will get better from doing that.

Peter Raimondo (53:23)
Yeah.

Yeah, like what's the point of this? What is this supposed to look like? And then that contractor can say, I can build it this way. Does that make sense? Does this work for you? And then good conversation back and forth. ⁓

Jess Kismet (53:35)
Mm-hmm.

And do you

find that, ⁓ do you have any architects, like the relationship between though, the architect and the builder is so important, but there are a lot of architects that still, they'll do a design and they'll pass it to a builder and they're not really talking. Do you see that much? And does that work? Nope. That's what I thought you'd say.

Peter Raimondo (53:59)
The worst,

the worst sites, the ones where there's a lot of fighting back and forth, finger pointing back and forth, and just a lot of stuff that needs to be fixed is generally those sites where they're not talking to each other, or if the architect did a design and then they definitely have nothing to do with construction. That's when problems happen, but the ones where everyone's trying to work together, that usually works the best, in my opinion. Not sure if you have a different experience, Sean.

Jess Kismet (54:18)
Mm.

Yep. Yep.

Shawn McIsaac (54:27)
No, I mean, I've got a handful of like, you know, example, I guess where, you know, some of the just the relationship didn't get off to a great start. And in some cases, it's not necessarily a personal thing. It's like contractual thing, like the builder underbid the project by a lot. And so now they're starting to chase, they're starting to chase variations and extras to try and pay their bills and hey, fair enough, but it's

Peter Raimondo (54:48)
Thank you.

Shawn McIsaac (54:56)
You get into that sort of situation where there's something else going on. never about the detail. It's always something else.

Jess Kismet (55:02)
Yeah,

So going back to water in construction, we all know that buildings hate water. ⁓ So where do you think that which is the bigger risk to a building right now? Is it condensation or is it water ingress like bulk water?

Shawn McIsaac (55:21)
I mean, bulk water is always going to be your highest amount of water, for sure. So in terms of like acute risk of decay, that's good. You're to get that from bulk rainwater. ⁓

Peter Raimondo (55:25)
Yeah.

Shawn McIsaac (55:35)
Condensation doesn't tend to result in necessarily decay of elements. It tends to result in mould growth. And so when you're doing forensic investigations, you can sort of differentiate between things which are acute outside water is usually very isolated and very decayed and condensation is very widespread and not heavily decayed, at least in the climates that I've worked in. It may be different in certain climates, but. ⁓

Peter Raimondo (55:58)
Yeah.

Shawn McIsaac (56:01)
Definitely like the in-service risk. Those are the in-service risk. The in-construction risk is an interesting one though.

with especially mass timber. And this is a lesson learned for everyone in Australia that Vancouver is screwing this up really bad to the point that there are consultants that are not working on mass timber buildings anymore because they've had so many legal disputes, construction delays due to not understanding how mass timber is different than stick frame, light gauge steel buildings. They're very different animals and you need to have

Jess Kismet (56:13)
Mm.

Shawn McIsaac (56:40)
really good weather protection strategy in place if you're going to be building mass timber. It's not hard to do beforehand, it's really hard to fix afterwards.

Jess Kismet (56:49)
Yep, so you're talking about CLT. You're talking about getting on, first thing that comes to mind is getting on a peel and stick membrane ASAP once that structure goes up.

Peter Raimondo (57:03)
One option.

Shawn McIsaac (57:03)
⁓

There's a few different things to think about and there's no right answer. Peel and stick can be the right answer for certain projects. ⁓ We're now starting to see a lot of ⁓ uptick in prefabricated facade panels being expedited in sequence with the CLT panels so that those are only exposed for

Jess Kismet (57:04)
Is that what you're talking about?

Mm-hmm. Okay.

Shawn McIsaac (57:25)
a few days at a time. And CLT can handle a few days of wet weather. It's when you get weeks of wet weather that you're gonna have some real problems. So we're...

Jess Kismet (57:36)
Yep. So that's when it like soaks

in and really takes hold. Yeah.

Peter Raimondo (57:40)
Yeah.

Shawn McIsaac (57:40)
Yeah, and the difference

is the drying, how much wood you have to go through to dry out that 200 mil thick piece of CLT is gonna take like five or six years to dry out. If gets wet in the middle versus a standard four by two can dry out in a few weeks, few months kind of thing. just understanding that difference can be huge.

Jess Kismet (57:53)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Peter Raimondo (57:56)
Yeah.

Jess Kismet (58:01)
Mm-hmm.

Peter Raimondo (58:03)
So, let's.

And like you said, peel and stick membranes, that's one way of doing it, but that doesn't magically fix the problem because all the joins between have to be sealed up, any penetrations, you got to sweep off all the water so it's not just going to percolate and absorb through. ⁓ One ⁓ idea that usually works for like smaller footprint sites is just having a tent that grows with the building or just sits on the top of the building to keep the water out. That's a really great way to do it. ⁓

Jess Kismet (58:14)
Yeah.

Yep. Yep.

Peter Raimondo (58:33)
Yeah, it kind of depends on how the building's built. But it's not only CLT and timber structures that are an issue. Like we've had a few buildings where ⁓ concrete structure absorbs a bunch of water and then they put the linings on too quick. That traps a bunch of moisture in. There's no ventilation and heating to dry it out. That starts to cause mould issues and other things in the timbers that are inside and stuff like that. So, yeah.

Construction moisture is a huge thing that a lot of people don't really necessarily think about because if you're going more airtight, it traps in more moisture even though you're trying to trap in the energy. ⁓ But back to the original question, condensation versus ⁓ regular water ⁓ or like water leaks. Water leaks, like Sean said, are much more rot, acute things, big problems.

Jess Kismet (59:04)
Mm-hmm.

Peter Raimondo (59:23)
Whereas condensation risk kind of takes time. It takes five, 10, 15 years in a nice warm climate like here. And it's not like the whole building falls over, but things just start to not feel right. And it's hard to ring the alarm about that if everyone's just used to that and it's all okay. ⁓ So it kind of takes changing people's perspective on the matter and noticing that like mould growth and ⁓

Jess Kismet (59:37)
Mm.

Peter Raimondo (59:52)
different things like that are actually a problem as opposed to just inevitable and how buildings always are, which is what I'm trying to always have that conversation about with friends, colleagues, anyone on the street that will listen to me, etc Condensation risk is a risk. It's a bad thing. It's not just inevitable.

Jess Kismet (1:00:04)
Yep. Yep.

Yeah, think, ⁓ yeah, there's, I mentioned in the question two types of moisture issues, which is condensation and, ⁓ you know, bulk ingress whether that's rain or whether it's a plumbing leak. But the third type, which you both brought up is the construction moisture. And this one, in my experience, is getting the least amount of attention. you know, builders are very blasé about it. it'll dry. ⁓ I've had builders say that to me.

Peter Raimondo (1:00:38)
Sure.

Sure.

Jess Kismet (1:00:41)
And in some cases, yeah, in some cases, no, depending on what happens on site, depending on the season, depending on delays, depending on lots of things. ⁓ But there's a site here in Adelaide. At the moment, was a the Builder Went bust. The the 10 townhouses were left out in the weather for two winters, maybe more. And the frames are black and now it's being finished and people are going to be living in in those townhouses in the not too distant future. ⁓ And

You know that that can happen on a passive house as well. A certified passive house has got zero condensation risk ⁓ and they often detail their WRBs meticulously so that you know drying can happen and water ingress is not a massive problem but they can still get wet during construction. They can still go mouldy and they do go moldy. I've seen them. I've seen it happen ⁓ not locally but in other states and that construction moisture risk.

Peter Raimondo (1:01:19)
service.

Jess Kismet (1:01:39)
⁓ in concrete and in timbers from the rain. That in my experience seems to be largely overlooked, but it's a massive ⁓ source of moisture.

Peter Raimondo (1:01:48)
It also doesn't matter. Like a lot of people say, oh yeah, just leave the windows open and let the air in and that'll dry it out. But if your exterior air is, you know, 14 degrees and 90 % relative humidity, there's not a lot of drying that's going to happen unless you put heating fans, dehumidifiers and things like that to dry out that air so that it can form. Sure. Yeah.

Jess Kismet (1:02:03)
Yeah, depends on...

Yeah. And some builders do that, but most don't.

Yeah.

Peter Raimondo (1:02:13)
Most don't, yeah. Like I've suggested

Shawn McIsaac (1:02:13)
Thank

Peter Raimondo (1:02:15)
that on site and got the craziest looks. Like, what are you

crazy? I'm not gonna bring a heater on site. So you make your suggestion. Yeah.

Jess Kismet (1:02:19)
Yeah. But that's what happens when there's a water leak. The

Shawn McIsaac (1:02:21)
You mentioned it.

Jess Kismet (1:02:23)
remediators will bring in heaters and they'll bring in fans and that's what they do to dry out buildings quickly. ⁓

Peter Raimondo (1:02:28)
Yep.

Shawn McIsaac (1:02:29)
You

mentioned that condensation, that condensation risk and passive house is usually modeled and taken care of by the designing professional, but that assumes the building is occupied, heated and ventilated. if you, yeah, so if you're not,

Peter Raimondo (1:02:29)
Should happen after construction. Sorry.

Jess Kismet (1:02:43)
Yeah. Yeah. And so does all the heating stuff as well.

Shawn McIsaac (1:02:50)
If you have built the enclosure of the building and it gets light or stops or whatever it is and you've got water inside the house and you don't turn on the heating and ventilation for a long time, your model is not going to be the same as we think it is. It's not going to dry out like the model says.

Jess Kismet (1:03:04)
Mm.

Yeah, know, everything's perfect and it relies on... relies on us. It depends.

Peter Raimondo (1:03:14)
the assertion of the key.

Jess Kismet (1:03:19)
⁓ It's a really interesting, it's a really interesting topic, the whole moisture thing. It comes from so many different places and is the one apart from fire, which is heavily regulated and heavily exceptional, massive disasters like Grenfell and like what happened in Melbourne. ⁓ It is heavily regulated, heavily checked and you know, we don't want buildings to burn down or fall down. Those things are important and they are focused on.

energy efficiency less so it's not as important to you know to immediate human health and construction moisture. ⁓ just feel like people just assume stuff is going to dry so this moisture issue is is just yeah it's not easily solved I don't think.

Peter Raimondo (1:04:10)
especially if you're not looking at the realities of how dry and what needs to be done to make things dry and putting in the time, effort, money to make that happen or putting in the time, money and effort to educate people around the industry to understand those things and putting regulations or specific checks in place. Like, it's not, it's us that are, you know, we're discussing it here because we care about it, but not everyone cares or knows or knows what they don't know. So.

Jess Kismet (1:04:13)
Yeah.

Well,

hopefully after listening to this episode, else, somebody extra will care.

Peter Raimondo (1:04:41)
I hope so.

Shawn McIsaac (1:04:44)
was

the thing is like the way people have been building for 10 or 15 or 20 years has been working for them.

And what we need to be careful of though is as insulation values change, as we get new technology, new materials into these buildings, the way it's always been done may not work anymore. And so that's why we have this kind of, you know, a bit of caution going into things that this isn't the way things have always been built. This is a little bit different and you can't just go into it and hope it's going to work out.

Jess Kismet (1:05:10)
why it matters.

Hmm. Yeah.

Yeah, heat, air and moisture is the way it works is changing because of energy efficiency requirements, ⁓ climate, all that stuff. Where do you see the future of high performance building going in New Zealand and in Canada? ⁓ Do you think there will be any of this will become standard practice?

Peter Raimondo (1:05:27)
Okay.

Jess Kismet (1:05:37)
Or do you think we're still and will remain in this early adopter early early adopter phase?

Peter Raimondo (1:05:42)
had a

thought from the last question that kind of relates to this question as well. ⁓ In New Zealand right now, we're kind of in this middle stage of, we had old buildings that worked really well.

Jess Kismet (1:05:46)
Mm-hmm.

Peter Raimondo (1:05:55)
but might not have been super comfortable. You know, like the old villas and stuff like that, gigantic fireplace, you're running the fire all day or all night and that is, you know, making airflow happen, drying things out, etc And those buildings worked. They had like really durable timber, etc, etc. You can't argue that they don't work. They're just not very comfortable or energy efficient. Now, the other side of that is passive house type stuff where you're doing the modeling, you're doing the thermal bridge modeling, you're checking for condensation risk, you're doing the air tightness,

you're doing the ventilation, heating, blah blah blah blah, it's a fully designed system that really works.

Where we are currently is this middle section of trying to piecemeal upgrade some R values here and there, trying to wait for the industry to kind of respond to that by providing products and simple off the shelf things. ⁓ But yeah, we are very much in the early adopter stage and the early adopters are doing the passive house stuff or just doing, you know, all of the things that you would do for passive house, but maybe not meeting a certain energy level, hypothetically.

And so early adopters do that, but I don't want to be too pessimistic about it, but it doesn't feel like we're on that path in New Zealand yet. It doesn't feel like we've gotten all of the building code clauses talking to each other. It doesn't feel like there's requirements to look at all the things like ventilation, heating, and you know, other stuff that you would do for a passive house. It's not required to do. It's just consider, and that's your tick box as long as you thought about it as opposed to doing something. So...

Jess Kismet (1:07:29)
Mm-hmm.

Peter Raimondo (1:07:31)
We're not quite there yet and we're,

Jess Kismet (1:07:32)
Mm-hmm.

Peter Raimondo (1:07:33)
I mean, we're going in the right direction and the industry is learning and people are asking more questions, but there's going to be a lot of people in the industry that are just not ready for that yet because there's not knowledge yet. Yeah.

Jess Kismet (1:07:43)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Shawn McIsaac (1:07:49)
Yeah, when I look at New Zealand housing, we've got a really interesting climate in New Zealand. And it's so mild and so friendly that if you look at average energy consumption in New Zealand houses, probably it's very similar in most of Australia too, like you're already at a very low and total annual heating bill. So like your energy payback of going more than

what we're doing now is very hard to register on a, like an individual, like an individual homeowners and struggle to see the difference between an R4 and R6 roof because it's gonna be, you know, 10 or 20 bucks a year kind of thing. So yeah, the trajectory is always gonna be towards higher performance. I can't see, I can't really see a place where the public would accept going to a lower.

Jess Kismet (1:08:32)
Mm.

Shawn McIsaac (1:08:43)
total performance and we just had a bit of a rollback in thermal, thermal, not rollback, sorry, people are calling it rollback. It's a change in philosophy. It's a change in philosophy, I think. So I think we'll continue on that trend. It's just how fast that trend, how fast that curve's gonna come is not gonna be driven by people like Peter and I.

Peter Raimondo (1:08:50)
Yeah, they're getting rid of it.

Shawn McIsaac (1:09:06)
this could never go fast enough for us, is going to be driven by the group home builders. They were building, you know, three or four or five thousand houses a year. They're the ones that are going to say this is what we can build for an affordable price. Unless, you know, a government gets elected on a mandate to push something faster, it's going to be driven by industry and their appetite to build better.

Peter Raimondo (1:09:07)
Yeah.

Jess Kismet (1:09:19)
Mm-hmm.

Peter Raimondo (1:09:33)
Yeah. And

one way that it's kind of worked is like in Vancouver, the step code where they're kind of future planning the changes in the building code. That's a really great way to do it because everyone can get ready and they can understand what they want to do. They can start doing that early because they know that's eventually going to be the building code and they don't have to worry about, did I accidentally do too much? And then they changed what the trajectory was. You kind of know exactly what's going on.

Jess Kismet (1:09:45)
Mm-hmm.

Shawn McIsaac (1:09:56)
But that

had the builders on board. that was the thing, the builders were on board with that from the start, which is why it got traction and why it's at where it is. Whereas New Zealand, was top down. So BC Step Code was started in 2010, I wanna say. And it was sort of a 20 year plan to get to a net zero by 2030 was the original sorted goal. And Vancouver's pretty...

Jess Kismet (1:09:59)
So what.

to the step code.

Peter Raimondo (1:10:08)
Mm.

Jess Kismet (1:10:10)
So.

Peter Raimondo (1:10:22)
energy efficiency.

Jess Kismet (1:10:23)
and it was plotted out and everybody

knew about it and they could get ready. So we've got stuff like that here. We've got like, well, not really, we've got papers that were written by really smart people with recommendations, but they're buried. No one knows what the recommendations are. And the building code is actually following those recommendations, but nobody knows what they are ahead of time. So no one's on board. Everyone's confused. Everyone's playing catch up.

Peter Raimondo (1:10:27)
End.

Sure. Same. Same feelings.

Sure. Of course.

and it's always a reaction. And so like when the industry yells out and says, we don't know how to do this, I have to sympathise. I have to, because like, means telling you what to expect. How could you possibly expect it?

Jess Kismet (1:10:48)
It's yeah.

Yeah, totally.

Yeah.

Yep.

Shawn McIsaac (1:10:58)
So in New Zealand we have this, it's called the Billiard for Climate Change Roadmap or Plan or River, you want to call it.

This is the thing builders stuff this up because the plan was actually pretty good It was really clearly laid out how we're gonna get from here to net zero in a very reasonable time frame like a 20 years kind of thing and All those could have done is said cool. We know exactly what's coming We're gonna prepare our pipeline ahead of time We're doing exactly how we're build 10 years from now and never have to worry about the government screwing with them Instead they waited till the last minute call all set up

it, know, to the toys of the pram, and now nobody knows what's happening. You have this uncertainty in the plan. Now the thing that was a certainty, you've eroded. Now there's no certainty. See, you shot yourself in the foot. You should have stuck with the plan that was there because it would be really hard to change if you got on board with it.

Peter Raimondo (1:11:39)
that push.

Jess Kismet (1:11:42)
Mm.

Mm.

Peter Raimondo (1:11:52)
Yeah.

Jess Kismet (1:11:57)
Hmm.

Peter Raimondo (1:11:57)
And

if they wanted to engage with it and kind of get on board with it, the best thing that I could recommend is ask the questions.

How do I make these walls this efficient? How do I put a ventilation system in place? We don't have these materials in this country that are cost effective and ready to go. Government, please go find contracts or give incentives to make this work. Like actually, you know, engaging with it and saying, these are the problems, let's solve them, as opposed to waiting till the last minute saying, no, we can't do that. And then it all gets rolled back.

Jess Kismet (1:12:26)
Mm.

That's

just humans.

Shawn McIsaac (1:12:31)
Well, there's also the other thing that

Vancouver did quite well was incentivizing your energy upgrades by giving you development ⁓ waivers. So let's say I had to go to a step three as my energy code. Say, well, I'm gonna go to step five, but I want three more floors in my building.

Peter Raimondo (1:12:53)
you

Shawn McIsaac (1:12:53)
And

the city was able to say, cool. We'll play a game with that, sure. So I don't think there's, I don't think it was quite the latitude to do that in New Zealand, formally. think probably informally you get some negotiations with council on what we're trying to build here. And could you give us a bit more flexibility? Cause we're going to build better than you expect. But yeah, other jurisdictions.

Jess Kismet (1:12:54)
yeah.

Peter Raimondo (1:12:58)
because they can make more money and it makes sense for everybody.

Yeah. Yeah.

Jess Kismet (1:13:20)
See, that's really thinking outside

the box. That's some really forward thinking, really getting creative, really investing, being helpful. I have not seen evidence of that. We do have a roadmap here. ⁓ What's it called? Roadmap. It's like...

Peter Raimondo (1:13:22)
Yeah.

Shawn McIsaac (1:13:22)
Yeah.

Peter Raimondo (1:13:37)
But I think it really comes

down to collaboration and, you know, the government entities and the builders and the designers all working together to get somewhere as opposed to seeing councils as a roadblock or councils seeing designers and contractors as trying to pull the wool over their eyes or something like that. If we all know what the roadmap is and what the actual things are and there's a full process, we can all work together and we don't have to worry about uncertainty because that's really what increases cost.

Jess Kismet (1:13:59)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Shawn McIsaac (1:14:04)
So

as a different development philosophy, if you thought about an area of land having an allocation of resources per year, so whatever your one acre parcel in downtown Adelaide, you would expect a base building code to use this amount of energy, this amount of water.

Peter Raimondo (1:14:09)
Hmm.

Shawn McIsaac (1:14:25)
And if I can find a way to use that same amount of resources, but in a much taller building, then you haven't really done any detriment to anybody else. And so why not have some sort of policy or, know, yeah, a little bit of balance around that. It seems like a great way to go.

Peter Raimondo (1:14:33)
All in there.

Jess Kismet (1:14:33)
Yep.

Well, that would take a massive shift for us to be that. I mean, we do have performance solutions for things in our building code, but yeah, to be that flexible, I think would take a bit of a shift.

Peter Raimondo (1:14:41)
Did you find it?

And there has to be the pathway and there has to be the surety for that because right now, like when we want to try to do something that's a little bit strange, we have to explain to our clients that, hey, we're going to go put this in front of council. They might say yes. We might have to answer a bunch of questions because it's so new and they don't really understand it. And that's a lot of times the worry and the pushback. Yeah, yeah, slowly but surely we get there.

Jess Kismet (1:15:01)
Yeah.

Yeah.

It's kind of drag, drag.

Yeah. All right, guys. Is there, did you want to add anything to that, Sean? No. All right. I think we'll get to our final question now, which is the same question I ask everybody who comes on the show. And that is if there was one thing you want the listener to know from everything that you've learned in your career, what would that be?

Shawn McIsaac (1:15:42)
Alright, so if there's just one thing I tell my young staff now is don't believe anybody. ⁓

Peter Raimondo (1:15:49)
Hahaha

Shawn McIsaac (1:15:54)
So first of all, even the stuff that you say yourself to other people, you need to understand why you think that and that it's, is it your opinion or is it a provable fact? Because most people will give you their opinion on something and you need to understand what's their factual basis for it.

Peter Raimondo (1:15:58)
Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Jess Kismet (1:16:14)
and

their motivation.

Shawn McIsaac (1:16:14)
So

it sounds very pedantic, but even the most basics of things somebody tells me, I want to understand where is that coming from? What do you think that? And where can I go read some independent research to prove that?

Peter Raimondo (1:16:29)
Yes, I was gonna say a very similar thing

Jess Kismet (1:16:30)
very wise.

Peter Raimondo (1:16:34)
to that. was gonna say, always question the things that you know, because sometimes there's things that you don't know that you don't know that you should know. And so that really ties in very much. So yeah, don't trust anyone and don't trust yourself either. I mean, trust yourself to a certain extent, obviously, but you know, refact check yourself and go find actual evidence of.

Jess Kismet (1:16:45)
Hahaha

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Don't assume.

Shawn McIsaac (1:16:54)
a really,

a really helpful thing that we've done at Oculus is when somebody asks you for an opinion or how I'm to do this or whatever it is, instead of giving you the opinion, you want to reference a third party piece of research or something you say. So then it becomes like, I don't know, but here's what a bunch of other people have said about the topic. And they all seem to agree and I sort of tend to trust them. So it's a really interesting way of thinking because it's really hard to argue with or against, guess.

Jess Kismet (1:17:17)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, I like it. I shall take that on board myself too. I think I do do that because I think I have been wrong on a number of occasions or been questioned and I hate that. So I always I think I lean towards, know, referencing codes, referencing standards, referencing research. This is what they think and I think that I agree and I think, yeah.

Shawn McIsaac (1:17:49)
It's like when you put something in chat GPT and it gives you an answer back, they need to go and verify that that answer is actually an answer. I do that with people. I do that with people now. Chances are they put in chat GPT and that's where they got their answer from.

Peter Raimondo (1:17:50)
Thanks.

Yeah. It's not freaking up. Yeah.

Jess Kismet (1:17:56)
Go to the source. Yeah. Yeah.

Peter Raimondo (1:18:03)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jess Kismet (1:18:05)
How quickly did the world change once chatGBT came on board? ⁓ my goodness. All right guys, thank you so much for your time. This is a fantastic, interesting, enjoyable chat and I'm glad you put aside some time in your day to come and hang out with me.

Peter Raimondo (1:18:08)
Right? Yeah.

Yeah, it's been great. Thank you.