#730: Septic Fix, Insulating a Cape, and Ducts in Plenum Trusses

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1:06This is Senior Editor Patrick McCown. Today, I'm joined by a Green Building Advisor Editor, Randy Williams. Hey! Fine Home Building Contributing Editor and Production Manager, or TDS Custom Construction, Ian Schwant. Howdy. And producer, Carrie Delahante. Hey! Please email your questions to FHB Podcast at FineHomeBuilding.com. You can find previous podcasts and check out the show notes at FineHomeBuilding.com slash podcast. Well, it's good to see you all this morning. We were off to a little rocky start, but I think things have really turned to corner. How are you guys feeling about the show this morning, Randy? You were talking about how your dad would yell at you for touching things. We all found very entertaining. Are we expecting that or are we just leaving at that? My dad accused me of always messing with things I shouldn't be messing with, including, like, you know, grease on the garage door tracks or wet paint that he had just put on a window or whatever.

2:06And this came up because Carrie was telling me not to fidget during the podcast, because my hand gestures and feet kicking, you know, are picked up on the microphone. So I had a bad habit growing up on the farm of, like, doing the exact same thing, but always into, like, moving gears or overhead doors that were shutting. So I smashed up my hands a lot of doing dumb stuff like that. I was saying to you guys, they call it an experiential learner now is how they characterize folks like myself. Yeah, Randy, you have some pretty cool news. Green Building Advisor has started a podcast that you're hosting. Can you talk about that? Sure. Yeah, it's just a once a month. It's going to be only on the Green Building site. For now, that's the only place you're going to be able to find it. So you'll have to come the Green Building Advisor. Listen, we recorded the first one. I think it's going to be the first Friday of April. I'm not sure when this episode's going to appear.

3:08That's when our first episode of the Green Building, it's called a conversation. It's going to happen. And it's an interview I had with my brother. His company called William Sceptic and Electric and how he deals with being a subcontractor pulling multiple trades on jobs for a regular contractor. You know, all that works. So there's a fun conversation. Interesting. We should add that your brother does a lot more than electrical and Sceptic, right? Virtually all building tasks. Am I right? Mechanical. Yeah, he's plumbing electric. Each back, yeah, he's doing doing most of that work. Well, that sounds really cool. I look forward to that. And then you told me you're going to record shortly with Martin Holiday. Yeah, we're the second podcast. I'm recording coming up here soon. We'll be with Martin Holiday. Martin has decided to call it a career.

4:11He's closing down the using of an energy nerd. We had him once a month. He was publishing a new blog on Green Building Advisor. He did retire from being the editor back in 2018, I believe. But he's been hanging around helping us out and he said, I think I've said my piece now and he's going to retire. I did bring up though that if he wanted to come and join us once in a while, a couple of times a year, write something for us. He's more than welcome. So we'll see if he continues a little bit. But for his regular column, he's all done. Yes, step outside and shake his fist at the sky and tell those kids to get off his lawn that that kind of, but right now it's off his beach. Because I think he's on an island in the Caribbean someplace. Yes, I am sad to hear of Martin's departure for good or for real. Let's say, a luminary in the business, a huge inspiration to my career, Martin. He was working at JLC when I started there.

5:13He had been there for about three years. That Martin's broad experience and during interest in the subjects that we talk about at Fine Home Building in GBA makes him, I think, perhaps one of the, or the finest editor, journalist who's covered this industry, who's ever done the work. So Martin, thank you. Yeah, he's great. And entertaining as well, I got through the whole shake fist at Sky Park. Martin, I can say, with great confidence walks the walk, living off the grid in a Vermont homestead, he built himself a long time advocate for environmental and justice issues. So what a great person to have worked with. Well, so what do you got, Ian? You were talking about a gate and an email that your company has been tasked with doing. And it brought up a gate that you had built previously.

6:13You want to talk about that? Yeah, so we occasionally get calls for some historic restoration type stuff. And we got a call over winter from someone with a house on the historic register and in the city of Madison, who had the series of garden gates around there, kind of semi-walled backyard garden. And one of them was in very bad shape. And then the other ones were in various stages of disrepair. So it peaked my interest because I built this other garden gate for an estate that I worked for in New York before we moved back to Wisconsin. And so I have kind of an interest in how these things are built because of that. I went there and took a look at the project and they were all from various stages of the house's life. But the one that was in the worst disrepair looks to be from the original part of the garden

7:14of the house. And it has all half-lapped joinery on the lattice. And it has some very nice arch top doors. It's just kind of a cool piece. So we are going to restore that and kind of fix up some of these other newer gates that I believe were just made out of home center PT to kind of look like the other gate. But it did bring up the photo that I sent you guys of the one that I did back when I had my shop and was working for this estate. And I believe Kerry corrected both mine and Patrick's bad French of it is trumploy and style where it kind of confuses the eye and makes it fee, makes you perceive it as having depth even though it is a flat surface. That's mind-blowing, dude. It is a really cool and you said this is the height of your mill work coolest thing I've ever done. Yeah, period. Coolest thing my hands have ever built. So look forward to seeing what other people

8:19think of it. The design is off of an old, I believe an old photo of the gate when it existed before, you know, it rotted as the estate aged. But I believe this estate dates back to the early 1800s upstate New York. So it was really cool to be involved in building that. And I look forward to walking out into the shop at work when the team is working on this new gate to just kind of see how they're what kind of methods they're using to do the same work that I did. How are they going to feel about you scrutinizing their work after building the amazing game? I don't know, I think they'll welcome it as long as it's in the process and not coming out at the end and being like, oh, that's wrong. I should have done that this way. So I catching this meant to be, you know, a focal point in the garden. What do you mean? Something like this out of to have it last and be the, you know, centerpiece it's meant to be.

9:23Well, money wasn't really an object on the one that I built. So it's a lot of wonder in the Mahogany, which I sourced from a couple of different places in the state of Connecticut. And then the one that I built, because it has all of those arches, I did those as bent wood laminates. And then I soaked them in. Blue was a product from Jamestown distributors from the wooden boat building industry. I called total boat penetrating epoxy. So I would build the build the bent laminate, connect it all together, and then soak the whole thing. And basically, it turned it into stone in a way. My good friend, Mike DeBlazi, who is a painting company, also works on that estate. He does a maintenance paint to it. I think every couple of years. I bet it's an amazing place is where I'm going to leave that. Yeah. Yeah, it's a it's a cool focal point. You see it as you drive in on the main driveway that separates all of the different

10:24buildings. And then when you stand in the center of the, I don't know, how many acre lawn garden this is, but it is, it's all the way down at the end. So you get a chance to take in the depth of it. Cool. I've been doing something that fine home building has been talking about for decades. And that's revisiting a project that we covered first in 1997. And Gail Marsland originally wrote about how she and her husband, Richard, built an off-grid house near the Ciguaro National Park. And we're going back to that house to learn what she learned about living off the grid and creating a super resource efficient house both in terms of energy production. And perhaps even more interesting, we talk about this a little bit on the podcast, is the well. Yeah. So after drilling to 850 feet and still not finding water, they made a decision

11:27that they were just going to have to try to make a decision that there was no water there. As one does when you pass 800 feet. Oh my gosh. And I'm thinking about this, right? It's not just that, you know, the well is that deep, but then you have to get the water out of it without having any grid electricity, right? So at a point, it just becomes undue-able. I'm sure. It's hard to find 875 feet of rope that you can bring your body out of it. So what do they do? Are they carrying water? Yeah, they're carrying water. Yeah, I've asked Gail to elaborate further on what that's like because I think a lot of folks would be interested to learn what it's like to not have any water and have to bring it in. I'm sure it great expense, right? Yeah. We have some areas north of us that are a lot of rock up in the international falls area where there's a lot of cisterns and, you know, just big tanks inside the house and someone comes around with a tanker and fills them up.

12:29But that's really the only area that I'm, you know, around us that has that condition. Most of me else says the well or city water. So it's unique when I had to go up there to do an energy auditor to inspect the house that to see the big tanks and then somebody's basement and then wondering how the heck did they get down down there, dropped in before they built it, but still it's amazing. So I would expect this near Tucson where Gail is to not have any water, but it really surprises me, Randy, that in the, you know, upper Midwest that is notorious for rain and weather, that that could be a problem. It's interesting. Yeah. Well, isn't it more that drilling through all of that rock to get down to where the water is? Is the issue? Yeah, one of the houses I had, we actually, we went 200 feet and had well, we went to the bedrock and then they brought in their big machine and decided to go through the bedrock and other 200 feet. And then hydrofract it to make sure we had enough water. That's a big process. That's

13:34very expensive. They were there for three weeks drilling our well. You need like a counter for the money that that's costing you. Yeah, it wasn't cheap. You need a big bonfire for it and you just just keep throwing it in the bonfire. It's actually diesel going into those pieces of equipment, right? I also want to tell folks that we have committed the redoing or doing the 2026 fine home building summit. So save the date folks August 20th and 21st, Endicott College and Beverly, Massachusetts, where it was this past year. So I hope to see you there. We'd love to talk to you and God is it fun. It is a super awesome time. Yeah, looking forward to being there again. Am I picking you guys up the airport again? I hope so. Brian's got to tell me when I need to be there if I'm going to speak. He told me you're presenting. Yeah, yeah, so I don't know if I have to be there earlier than you picking me up at the airport or not. Oh, I'll get you whenever

14:35then. I could wait some time. You're picking us up at the airport again. I'll try and come out the right door this time at Logan. I would say I hopefully won't be under construction, but that seems impossible. That's never going to happen. Yeah, I got really distracted by seeing a Starbucks inside of a Boston area institution like Logan Airport and God drawn to it like I'm off to a flame. Well, you got to remember that folks are traveling from all over who are in Logan Airport, right? And they might not be fans of the Duncan. How did the Duncan mafia allow that to happen in that back corner of Logan, but maybe it's a trick to get dumbbells like me to walk out the wrong door. I was thinking maybe Starbucks has bigger views than the Boston mafia. I want to thank the listeners who wrote in this show. As always, you guys are awesome with your

15:36correspondence. So this comes from Paul Hey Patrick and podcast. You recall that I wrote in some time ago asking for help on my septic system, which the pump guys had recently declared as clogged. I'm happy to report that the situation is resolved. It was easy and cheap too. When do you ever hear that? This is fake news, especially with regard to septic systems. The visit from the pump guys was the first one since 2006. I know I'm supposed to pump the tank every four years, but in my defense, I had been seeking for it since I moved in around late 2011. I just couldn't find the blooming thing, but I'll admit I wasn't looking very hard at any rate. I called the local septic specialist who came by for an assessment before bringing his tractors. We talked for a bit. I showed him the exposed tank covers my leech field, which snakes through a 15 foot gap between two big trees, and I waited quietly for his assessment. I held my breath, braced for big disruption and big dollars when he spoke again. However, he began with, well, if I were you, as he continued to

16:39dawn on me, that I wouldn't have to spend thousands, and I was filled with jubilation. That shortly turned a whore, however, when I understood that he was going to make me fix this mess myself. Yes, you can't have everything. The septic specialist saw the trees flanking the leech field and diagnosed root incursion as my issue. Since I wasn't experiencing any backups, he recommended I install a clean out on a discharge pipe from the tank to the leech field. With that one change, I could dump root killer down the clean out, get rid of the roots while preserving the tank bacteria. The tank was empty at that point, but filling up quickly, I cleared my calendar and went to work digging with might and Maine, knowing that the job would have come indescribably awful once the tank resumed flowing to the leech field. Everything went quickly, cheaply and successfully. The clean out provides many additional benefits as well. One, it helps me find the tank in the yard. Two, it allows me to see how full the tank is, engage the flow of the field. Three, it reveals how well the waste is being digested in the tank. Four, it lets me insert an inspection camera to assess root growth and other problems without

17:42digging or cutting. For 50 bucks in materials, these clean out should be a code requirement on every septic install if you're asking me. This one change has a verse my opinion about septic systems. They're simple, robust and resilient. If you know what to do, my system is working well at 40 years old. It's working well despite being neglected for the last half of its life. One of my neighbors has a 65 year old system that he's only pumped twice. It's amazing technology. Hope this helps someone else. Thanks to you and the crew, Paul. Paul, you are very welcome. That is a wonderful story. What a great outcome. What do you guys think? Randy, what would your brothers say about septic systems that last a long time like this? Does it come down to using the the right type of tank, using a concrete tank instead of a plastic one, using better lines? Does it just come down to that? Yeah, between design and maintenance, right? Like he said, pumping it regularly, which obviously some places get by without.

18:45I don't know how that works. Usually the tank usually fills up with that solid at the bottom, and then you have less water. If it's decomposing at a rate that is coming in, I've seen tanks, so that are pretty cool. That's not good. You don't want that stuff getting out into the leach field. That plugs it up. Of course, where that's at, he talked about the clean out. We've learned to extend pipes up out of the ground. A lot of homeowners probably cut it off to get a mole around it or whatever, but we'd like to have them up out of the ground a little bit just so we could find them. There was a problem that we had to tank or something. It would happen in January, where all they're trying to bust with ice picks, trying to bust through the earth, get to the tank, and then you find the tank is frozen or something happened that isn't good, but just finding where that stuff is sometimes can be tough. Having those stand pipes up is not only inspections, but to indicate where things are in the middle of winter. It's a good idea.

19:49Maybe it prevents Nuckelhead from driving on it. That's not what you see. What you want is the front wheel, you're trucking in your septic tank, right? Park a trailer on it. A podcast listener, Matt Puntan, I hope I'm saying this name correctly. An engineer in Western Mass is currently working on a feature for fine home building on the subjects of a typical design and the process of designing, permitting, and installing a system. I think that's really pretty interesting. Given the dollars involved, it seems like something we should be talking about to find home building. Definitely. Our second letter comes from someone you guys will recognize. My curtain writes in. He says, Hi Patrick, as usual, I'm enjoying listening to the podcast with Randy and Ian doing such a good job. I haven't heard any corrections to send in. Have you ever been listening to that person? What I would like to hear more about impact drivers in episode 723, Ian tried to light up

20:52the internet again with the comment. I absolutely hate the impact gun. His comment was a tangent from the main nail versus screw discussions, so you didn't go very deep into the issue. I'd like to hear you guys discuss what impact drivers are good for and where you've seen others use them inappropriately. I wholeheartedly agree with Ian's comment and his follow-up. They have almost no place on a lot of jobs. There's stuff they're being used for. Ian noted a couple of poor uses and installing door knobs and screwing on electrical wall plates. I think a deeper die would be educational and hopefully controversial. Mike, well, Mike, thanks for listening and writing in. Ian, completely admit that I bruised over your comments about impact drivers. I didn't want to anger a big impact. Can you remind me? I got a text from our good friend Andy Steele as soon as he heard that. He's like, man, you're taking on big impact now. That's bold.

21:53I think your previous examples of screwing on door hardware and wall plates are not the right applications for an impact driver. Some of the electricians that I've talked to, they have to hide them from their apprentices because they want to use them for everything, and it's just there are things that you really need a chuck governed drill to do. Or a hand screwdriver. Or a hand screwdriver, even better. I want to make the Yankee screwdriver great again. That's what I did. You've really gone too far now. Things are awful. Oh, man. Yeah, so I'm guessing electricians. Yeah, you ratchet down a breaker terminal or something or a device terminal. Yeah, that's a pain. That's a good point, though, Randy. You need hand tools for a lot of that type of work, and I would extend that to putting on nearly all types of hardware.

22:56Even putting up a ceiling fan, I would do that all by hand just because I could feel how tight it was getting. You do an impact or even a drill sometimes you can't tell how tight it is. I grew up with the drill. I mean, when I first started, impacts were around. They weren't. At least not how we have them today. Right. They were for the automotive industry. So back in the mid to late 90s, the only thing you knew was a drill, right? That's what you knew. And the first time I used an impact, that was, oh, wow. No more torquing on my wrist, the things light. It's like seeing a God. That's the old Kevin Irton. I don't know about the first time you used a framing gun. But you learn quickly that they do have limitations. And exactly what you said, the first or not, I put on with one. Yep. We stripped it out and I never did that again. So you always do it because it's right at hand. And the thing you really need is not, right?

24:00Well, plates, I'd love to see that. That's hilarious. Do they have to blow? They just fly out of it. If you all have heard of wacky things people have done with impact drivers, love to hear it. I think that's it. I think we should make that a regular segment. They're great for putting the screws into metal connectors and a lot of framing tasks and the different large framing screws. I think they're great for deck building. But I wouldn't then use it to put the clips on for, you know, grooved decking. I would use a drill for that, not an impact. I don't know. I think you're getting into questionable territory there. The problem with PT is that the torque settings don't work because it is so naughty and terrible and invariable, right? Some trees are, you know, growing on a hillside and have, oh, yeah. So what are your opinion of using the drill bits that they now make for impacts? Oh, I love those things.

25:01I hardly ever use my, you know, straight twist bits in a drill because it's so convenient. I mean, you can drill a hole and swap through the driver bit in a second, right? And they don't slip. And they don't get burrs on them from the chalk when they spin. I'm going to go off on a tangent. You guys have to be careful. You don't get your bitten brace out. Your hand cranked drill that you have to lean your chest onto to drill a hole. I love impact drivers. I think they aren't probably one of the most amazing things ever invented. I think I'm, I think I'm going to adopt just like a Luddite personality to hold all fancy tools that people like and just just offer them and be like, no, you should be using a bit in brace and you need to screw driver. They are good quieter, too. You know, to set their, they're not, the first ones that we had, they were so loud. Of course, we were up on our metal roughens, you know, installing screws in a,

26:04in a post and frame structure. Great application for it. Yeah, but it was loud. You almost had a year plugs in the, to run it. They were so loud, those early ones. Are they getting quieter? Or are we all using that? Yeah, we're getting that, but probably, probably. Sit a little both. We're testing hydraulic drivers in fine home building. That's, that's coming up. So if, in case you're unfamiliar, this is an impact driver that uses what amounts to a viscous coupling to generate the, you know, impact work and much quieter is the big selling point. I highly recommend that you never take one apart to try and fix it yourself. I speak from experience. We should get you to do the sidebar. I had one of the first ones of those that Milwaukee came out with for their cordless kit. And I've swapped out parts on various cordless drills over the years. And I thought, well, I'll just do the same thing for this one.

27:05And I opened it up and it was just like goo everywhere. And there was, there was no going back after that. I brought, had one right broke the, the quick connect off. And of course, I tried to put it back. I could not get it back together. I just about got a, just a bit extension. Blink one, did you put anything on the end of it? Had it welded into the end of the end of the, just bought a new one. I have very little experience with the thing. Of course, I've tried them when they came into the fine home building office. Just out of curiosity. But, you know, at the time I used it, it was way bigger than an impact driver. So I saw a little appeal, you know, you can wear hearing protection. Anyway, back to the show here. So John wrote in, hey, FHB podcast. Thanks for all the effort you put into the show. I love listening. I know you keep covering this in episodes. But I'm still lost in the confusion of the great spray foam debate. For reference, we're four years into living in a 1950s Cape Cod House.

28:06And Cincinnati's own six. The second floor has the usual unconditioned attic space, running the length of the house behind the knee walls. And the usual Cape Cod slash heating cooling challenges apply to us. After beating the ice dams to death with my hammer each winter, replacing our old blown in fiberglass insulation with closed cell spray foam, it starts to look mighty appealing. Unfortunately, I'm new to the DIY game. So the project is beyond my skill level. I get equally smart sounding yet completely opposite advice on if this is a good idea. Spray foam contractors in my area say it's great. And my more experienced DIY friends tell me, death by mold is assured if I go that route. We mostly emptied the war chest on a completely new roof two years ago, due to the leaks through the three layers of shingles, each one probably older than me. We thought we were right to tackle the most on fire or wet thing first and didn't know about adding outside insulation to the roof deck before reshingling. Full energy retrofit of the house is outside the budget.

29:09Haven't found a contractor yet who would volunteer to infill about making rafter-based deeper et cetera to maintain the vented roof assembly yet add enough insulation to meet code. I'm unsure if that's because our project is too small for that work to be appealing. There are lots of new builds in the area that I would guess are bigger and easier jobs. Do you have any expert advice? Thanks for your time, John. Okay, so John has a typical scenario, a story and a half house, you have upstairs living space, but it doesn't go the full width of the building. There's this knee wall that stops it through two, three, maybe four feet. And behind it is kind of this in-between space. We talk about it a lot. It's not a living space and conditioned and it's not unconditioned outdoor space. It's kind of this nebulous in-between area creates lots of comfort problems. An even bigger challenge or problem related to this is that these spaces often connect to the floor system unless they've blocked off the joists.

30:12So these thermal bypasses are exacerbated because that air is moving throughout the entire house and the stack effect makes it worse. So Ian, how do you like to see knee walls insulated and air sealed? I think you've got to channel your inner Steve basic and get out big red and then do your line all the way up around your cross section of your house. And that tells you exactly what you need to do. You either need to make that red line of the insulated sealed exterior of the house, run behind that knee wall and bring that knee wall entirely into your interior living space or you have to come up with some way to detail your red perimeter line through that knee wall, which I think is the more difficult way to do it. So in many of our projects, we end up removing these knee walls, doing the insulation work,

31:14sealing off that area, the nebulous area that you mentioned, Patrick. And then either replacing the wall with a new wall as part of a new layout for the space or sometimes adding different types of built-in furniture, built-in closets in that area. It's paraphrase. You'd like to see the knee walls taken out and the thermal boundary brought up the eve to the roof line. Yeah, make the simplest connection with your big red Steve basic marker. You know, I think you'd agree, man, people don't like to pay a lot of money for things. They don't think are a problem. Is it possible to convince folks that this is something worth doing? Is it worth ripping apart their upstairs to adequately air seal and re-insulate the space? I think we've hit on why John can't find a contractor to do it because he's not looking to do the complete job. He's looking to do something that is marginal or partially complete in the realm of

32:19what we're talking about. It's not going to tick all the boxes. And I think that goes to some of the concerns that he's hearing from other people with mold. Well, I mean, I think spray foam is overused. It's a very expensive way to insulate in a minimum. And you know, there of course environmental costs with spray foam that are worth talking about too. But in some cases, it seems like the right thing. And in John's situation, Addigny Wells are one of the instances where, you know, weatherization folks and the training I've had indicated that this is a good use for spray foam. It's like motor problems inevitable doing that. I know not if you're ventilating properly and actually taking into account the fact that you are air sealing an area. I think you've got to have a ventilation strategy that goes along with any new air sealing that you would do to an existing home, right, Randy? Yeah. The issue with some of the spray foam contractors, what they don't like to do is

33:23not have that spray foam continuous from the trust framing across that rough deck and down, where it's all bonded together. That airspace sometimes gives them a spot where things can disconnect. It's easier for it to pull off the side of that trust or whatever. So some spray foam contractors don't like that ventilation back there. They want to continue this. Some will do that method. I know some of the shingle manufacturers want to see that ventilation space back there to, you know, to provide complete warranty. Some of them limit, some of the warranty stuff with that was at IBS. I found a product. Last day, walking by a booth, just, matter of fact, the company is from Maine. It's called Advanced Building Products. They make a lot of different products. They make a product that's going to be released soon. It's called Insulair. It's made of fit between trust. It's a 16 or 24-inch width.

34:2950-foot-long roll. It's got that matrix, you know, that, what's that called? Cedar breather. It's like that. It's like a big, big burlopad, basically. That won't allow it compressed. And then it's got a membrane that's bonded to it. And you start at the eve and you run that all the way up and over. And then you can spray foam to that. It allows the ventilation. So, one-inch gaps, we have the required gap for the, for code. Now, this is a new product. We probably should have some testing. I mean, I'm sure Advanced Building Products has testing, you know, had some of these projects done. We don't have the experience yet of whether this is... Maybe they'll send it to John. Yeah, that would be perfect. Well, I know he knows where to look for it, too. Yeah. Interesting product, guys. Brandy, you must see this a lot in your weatherization audits, right? These kind of spaces are notorious energy wasteers. Like, folks who have insane energy bills and you say to yourself, how can they be spending that much

35:33money on gas or oil or whatever, electricity? This is often the end of your walls. Yeah. What do folks in the weatherization biz do about this? Because those projects typically don't have huge budgets. They have to do this inexpensively. Yeah. And they're, they're basing it based on the rest of the project, what they're doing. You know, the weatherization community, like you said, there's a limited budget. So, depending on what the conditions are, they may keep the space, trying to make it a condition space, or they may turn it all into an unconditioned space, you know, improve the the air sealing at the knee wall and then at the attic floor. So, it varies, I guess. It depends on the situation. Personally, what I did at my house, I get the same problem at my house. We were going to just talk about it. Yeah, go for it. Yep. Yep. And I, but I ripped things apart, right? I tore my living room ceiling out, the level below to gain access to that area where I could improve the air sealing and

36:34insulation level. And I didn't get it crazy. You know, I went from an R7 to an R23 or something like that. So, I'm not even close to code, but I made a huge difference. I don't know if I understand this. The air sealing is the issue, right? Yeah. The insulation is not the the big problem. And I would say the same thing to John. You need to air seal this. And like, getting to code levels of insulation is probably ridiculous, if, you know, more appropriately described as unrealistic. Yeah. Yeah. And the air sealing and depending on where you're trying to air seal, that can be tough. You know, if you're trying to air seal from the bottom side, you got light fixtures or whatever else inside there, you have to get all that stuff sealed up tight. And it can be tough if you're not taking everything apart. Randy, what do you think about the vent versus unvented argument? You know, a lot of insulation contractors, I know, at least they used to, would spray directly on the underside of the roof sheathing to solve places like this and make it a hot roof. It, it can work. But you got to make sure that's done right. I mean,

37:40it was with close-elf spray film. There's a lot of things that have to be right with it. There's been a big tolerance for air. So you have to, you have to have the right mix, if the right temperatures, right, humidity is right, moisture content in the woods, there's, there's all kinds of things. If those all happen, it works great, you know. But if there's a problem, and that's the ones that I get called to us, once that I see, that separation. And all of a sudden, it's dripping in the first warm day in March. They got water coming out of their ceiling. I've got one right now. It's a 15-year-old host. You know, it's got beautiful ceilings. We got to take the ceilings apart to be able to figure out where leak is and repair it. And the homeowners aren't willing to do that typically. So it's, what do you think Ian has got any parting words here about this? I think Randy just hit it with his beautiful ceilings and the way to do it is they got to come down or you live with the problem. Those are unfortunately your two choices. These houses, you know, if you're looking at buying one, we'll be back there because what you see,

38:41you probably won't like unless someone is doing the work that John is, what sounds like he's going to be doing. John, you can handle this. I mean, what's cool about this work is it's not technical, but it is labor-intensive. The perfect kind of DIY project, if you know, if you have a plan and know what to do. I know green building advisors got all kinds of resources. Several articles on this. Yeah, how to get it ready. And they both, I'm sure they all talk about the, you know, two scenarios either bringing their conditioned space to the knee wall or bringing it down the roof line to the E. Yeah. Oh boy, we got to keep it moving here. So question two, Jim has several good questions about using plenum trusses for running HVAC docs, one of my favorite things ever. Let's first quickly explain how these trusses work and then we'll read his question, we'll take his questions one at a time. So plenum trusses are a lot like a parallel cord floor truss, except there's a big opening in the center. You know, you may need

39:46bearing walls to kind of deal with this structural gap or you can beef up the upper part of the truss to accommodate the loads there in the missing section. But what they're used for is for housing trunk lines and big return air ducts for hiding HVAC systems in slab on grade or houses where you can't put the ductwork somewhere else. And I think they're really cool. I have never seen one in the wild, unfortunately, but the idea makes a lot of sense to me. Depending on what the equipment is, you may need access panels to get to it. Like if you have a ducted mini split, for example, or the air handler could be somewhere else, you know, using ductwork going vertically, you know, in a closet or whatever. And so if I've not completely confused you, that's what Jim is talking about. He says, hey, their podcasters love the show. We've hired a builder in zone six for a ranch

40:47house slab on grade due to the high water table. Two questions about the ceiling. We don't want to condition the attic or have drop down bulkheads for ducting. So I've suggested we use plenum trusses. The builder has never used them and swears they are only for commercial applications. I think we can get past that and have them designed by a trust builder. We plan to use a smart vapor, Seagum Madrex, etc. on the ceiling as an air barrier. Zip our wall will be our primary air barrier for the walls. Question, what are the details we need to address upfront on the plans for a GC who has never worked with either a smart barrier or plenum trusses. Randy, you sent me photos of this very situation we're talking about. Can you talk about this as a project you were involved in? We've actually done three or four of these now. Cool. Yeah, they're not complicated. The biggest thing is to have the conversation with your HVAC contractor, the rest of the trades, your contractor, and then try to get your whivers doing the trust design. Get those all on board

41:53early so that number one, they know where to place that notch. Yeah. Where does it go? How big does it need to be? Remember, you have to fill that notch in and when you do that, you lose some of the depths that you would normally have. For instance, if you make an 18 inch deep cavity for all the stuff to run through, and by the time you get it filled in, you have to use a two by six because of a span. It's a real big one, big chase. You're losing a lot of that space. If you have things that have to cross each other, if you have a ductwork that has to get from across another duct, you have to make sure that it'll all work. They'll all fit in there. That's one consideration. The other consideration is, again, how do you get your air barrier worked up and through that? Whatever your air barrier is going to be in this case, he's looking at using this kind of a smart membrane. It just takes time. It's a detail. You're making 90 degree bends in the product. You're trying to keep it neat. Make sure you're not taping right in a corner. Try to drop the membrane down

42:59so it's on a flat. We have a place to tape rather than trying to be right on a 90 degree bend. Other than that, it's simple. Is this a spot where you've got to really get thoughtful about the kind of flaps of your, in this case, SEGA material that you're leaving to connect to future layers of air barrier that you're adding at a different point in the project? You're going to want to plan everything out. It all fits correct. It's not something that you start off and all of a sudden you're running at an angle across the ceiling. You've got a two-inch wide strip to nothing that has to get filled at some point. Keep it all straight. Keep it all neat. Just take your time. I love drywall in this installation. The problem is that it's out of sequence, right? That means your drywall is on the come twice. But if you're even mediocre at drywall, this drywall doesn't matter. It just needs to be airtight. I bet it's cheaper. I'm guessing it's

44:05as at least as fussy. We usually line those the inside of those with something anyway. So if you wanted to use ZIP or a piece of supply wood or OSB or whatever, tape those scenes. If you get everything taped up, you're doing just the same job, basically. All right. You're point about leaving room for the filling in the ceiling cord of this trust later is a good one because five and a half inches is a lot in the depth of that cavity. He also asks, we want to use can lights in several places, but not when it appears the smart vapor barrier if we can avoid it. Distrapping the ceiling with two by fours allow enough space for the electrician to install certain types of can lights without ceiling penetrations. I guarantee they've never done this. Does that make it risky? Should we be thinking about ceiling mounted fixers like track lighting, et cetera? What do you guys think? That's plenty of room. Way for lights. Yeah. Yeah. Way for light. Go with the can that doesn't have the penetration level into your ceiling cavity.

45:10I like the strapping. That's my go-to. Again, we're using usually a membrane under ceiling. So we put the membrane up and then we strap the whole thing. The houses that we've done this with have designed it so that we didn't have the interior walls that needed to be up. The trusses were sitting on the exterior. So the whole air barrier of the ceiling was done on. It was put on. We strapped it and then we built our interior walls on the interior. That's what a Jake Bruton signature moves with his builds, right? Yep. That's right. The whole thing is one gigantic open area that doesn't require any bearing walls. That's what we did in your house of stove, too, for that same reason, because of the air ceiling. So one conversation I would have is with the electrical contractor to make sure that they're comfortable with that inch and a half. That's what you have to run the wiring. Code says you need an inch and a quarter of clearance. That's your standoff, away from penetration. So you're not piercing the wire without a fastener or anything.

46:10That gets in that gray area. You're right there. If your electrical contractor hasn't seen it, you may have to go to the electrical inspector to make sure that they're okay with it. I don't know our mark that we have no problems with it. They're allowing it. They're, you know, we've done four houses this way and add absolutely no problems with the electricians or electrical inspectors. It seems like you could even go two inches with another layer of sheathing strips on the two visor, whatever if your inspector didn't like the idea. Jim concludes, I don't mind stretching the contractor's comfort zone a little, but taking him too far afield if his normal approach seems like trouble. I don't think I have a good way of accessing what constitutes a stretch too far and therefore an execution and performance risk. Thanks for all the great content, Jim. Final advice on the last point you made, Jim, is that just talk to this person about it and Randy said it best. This is not hard, right, Randy?

47:11No, it's not. And Ian, how would you, let's say I came up to as a homeowner. I had this weird idea that made sense, but it's not something that you'd ever done before. Would you, you would probably consider it, right? Yeah, yeah, explain it to me. I try to approach stuff like that with enough curiosity that, you know, I'm interested in it. Yeah, you just have to sit down and explain your thought process. And if you are listening to different podcasts, if you're regularly reading GBA, share that stuff with your contractor. I have asked the experts that fine-hung building did with Allison Bale on this very subject. He reported on a building America program. I believe they're building houses in Pittsburgh that uses this as that one of their go-toes. And gosh, it makes so much sense to me. It really is, solves all the problems that gets the duck work out of the unconditioned attic. You don't have to, you know, resort to spray foam, you know, the roof sheathing or the duck or the duck work or whatever. And just requires planning. That's it. And

48:15not like a whole bunch, like you're able to run, you know, insulated ducks outside of the plenum space to get to diffusers or wall registers. And then you bury those in insulation. So it's not like you're limited only to supplier or return air to this, you know, plenum area. You can go across the ceiling, but you just have to detail it. And then just get that box here sealed back up, because you're going to cut a hole through to get that, yeah, it's not hard. Yeah. I'll put the link to this. It has an excellent illustration that should answer all of your builder's questions, I would say, with an elegant drawing like fine-hung building does. I think I learned about this in fine-home building. I think more in holiday-related articles, no matter if I got just found it in 2013. And that's where I originally saw it kind of stuck in the back of my head someplace and found a place, you know, six years later that I used it at. So I think most people don't realize, too, that a good trust designer, they come up with almost

49:18anything that you ask for. The world really is your oyster if you're working with a good trust designer. I was at a project at Jake Routens where they had to run that chase at a 20 degree angle. For every trust was manufactured a little bit different. Oh cool. That is so cool. Can you imagine how long that would take to frame? You know what I'm saying? Yeah, what an awesome thing. You got to have the builder of the trust stack them just right and then you have to make sure that you offload it from the truck just right. You're getting the backwards, do you mean? Yeah. Why is the trunk line jumping into the powder room? Oops, we started with Trust 54 instead of Trust 1. Yeah, what was I going to say about this? Now I can't forget. It's too bad. Anyway, you're too excited about thinking of all the cool trusses that you can design. Trusses are pretty awesome. I mean, I like framing roofs. You know, there's a few things as cool as framing a roof on a hot, a nice day, right? On a beautiful day.

50:22But trusses are awesome with what you can do structurally. Oh, I was going to say if you have worries about shipping these things with the big knots cut in them, they can leave the bottom cord in there and you can cut it out in the field and you might not even have to cut all of them out, you know? Right. I want to thank our listeners. You guys had great questions this week. Good feedback. It really makes the show so much better. Thank you very much for your input. Really, really is cool. And I also want to remind you folks to please sign up for a fine home building all access membership. We have great e-learning modules. Sign up for the magazine. I've been looking at the old magazines lately in researching Gail Marsland's original piece and, God, it's really cool to freaking look at a magazine and sometimes you forget what an awesome thing it is. Something tangible that you hold in your hand and interact with. And there's no stupid pop-ups and other things like, oh, my God, it drives me crazy. Get your bit and brace out.

51:30Well, unfortunately, that is all the time we have for today. Thanks to Ian Randi and Kerry for joining me and thanks to all of you for listening. Please remember to send us your comments, questions and suggestions to FHV podcast at findhomebuilding.com and please like comment or review us however listening. It helps other folks to find the podcast. Stay safe, everybody. Keep craft alive. Happy building.