Hey everyone me kevin here: okay, i have made videos on this guy named matt risinger, who bought this house and said he was going to turn it into a rental, and i think i made like five videos telling everything that was going wrong about it being a Renter hood, here's the front door coming in and then to our right is going to be a powder bath. Oh my they're, going to move the front door shut the front door. We've got that power bath over there move that over here now we've got a much more normal, much more inviting entryway i've had it. I can't watch this anymore.

I came into this thinking. I was going to see matt rising, you do a basic remodel and i've literally just seen him say, he's going to move the front door and then he's gon na move the bathroom on a house. That's on slab, which means now you're digging through the concrete slab and if it's post tension, you're spending, even more money x-rays. I can't i can't do this anymore.

I'm done i'm ending the video here well today, we're here we have found matt risinger's house, so we're gon na go up and knock on the door and see what he's done looks like he's still working on spending money here, but look at it we're here at The racinger truck and the build show we're going to see what they've done now. I believe matt has moved into this home, which is different than obviously what you would do for a rental, but i'm curious to see how much money was spent. Because you all know, i hate spending money and i already see a metal roof and a lot of spending going on here, so we're gon na have to confront matt to see where all this money went and why? Oh there he is hey there curious. What's all the way from california come on, give me a hug.

Thank you. Thank you miller, i'm so glad you made it i'm here to confront you about all this spending. I got ta see where it went so. The way that we met was.

I was gon na, do a thousand dollar remodel and you gigged me on it and you were one hundred thousand percent right. I spent more than forty thousand dollars on this house. Well, i'm excited to see piece by piece where your uh more than 40k went more than 40. I think you spent at least 40 on that beautiful metal roof.

I saw walking yeah yeah yeah. I really did so matt. Tell me what was what was the goal here? It was passive home uh. You've talked about this on your channel matt, by the way, talks about amazing, home remodeling and just straight up building everything on your channel yeah and how to do it with the highest quality possible.

So tell me about that all right, so this started as a remodel project that i was going to use, maybe as a rental. In fact, i'd watched a bunch of your videos learning about that, but i'm a little bit of an over-the-top guy, and so my i was thinking oh i'll, spend like 40 to 50 on this remodel, as i got into it, was worse and worse, the budget kept Going up and then at some point you know i lived across the street at some point i was like. I would really love to build a house for my for myself. I've never built one before for my family, and so then, when i got into it i was like well, if i'm gon na build a house, i should build a bomber house yeah of course, and so i built it to passive house standards, and so now this Is my family home? I have four kids.

I have a labrador we moved in about six months ago. This is so cool, so the first thing yeah when i walk in here i mean this. First of all, everything looks amazing. So, whoever designed this, it's phenomenal tell me about this, i mean obviously you've got a hardwood here.

You've got uh even on the ceiling to match. Tell me about some of the choices that you made here. Yeah i mean i had great design help right, i'm terrible at design. That is not my thing.

It's not my thing, i'm an executor. You know you give me a plan. I can do it yeah yeah, so i worked with a great interior designer great architect. They helped me figure this out, but honestly, i also had a lot of help from manufacturer friends and partners sure had a lot of people either giving me crazy discounts or even some free materials wow.

I didn't vary the quality that i was expecting because the last house i lived in 16 years this house, i expect to be in a long time as well, so it's almost like that forever home is a little bit. Okay, and - and you know, i hate it when people say what's the payback on x, y and z yeah, because there really isn't a good payback for building a good house. Okay, right, you're, not gon na sell this in three years, unless you're in a stupid market. Like austin, which has gone ridiculously crazy right, but if you're in middle america or a normal town, you know, you generally don't sell your new house after three years of money on it.

So, in other words, it's sort of like this is an investment into your comfort and the way that you want to live versus. Let's calculate the perfect roi of insulating your floor. Even tell us about that. You raised the floor here so this slab on grade construction and where your feet are kevin on these hardwoods.

Underneath these hardwoods is two layers of subfloor and then an inch and a half of rigid foam so that your feet are not on concrete. How does that help you out? I mean like what difference in comfort? Am i going to feel the big difference is winter time, because your slab sucks that heat out like if, if you're in texas and it's 30 degrees out slab on grade you're in your bare feet, you can feel that that heat, sucking out of your body and My mom always told me i was going to get kidney stones if i walked around with cold. You know on cold surfaces, yeah yeah, so i mean first of all, what i see is beautiful. I mean, like you mentioned: beautiful design.

You've got uh the different colored cabinets here, which is super in right. Now, uh i mean beautiful hardware, all melee appliances. You went all the way to the ceiling. You finished it off with this gorgeous contemporary crown.

You've got here it it's beautiful, but i know there's so much more, that you've put behind the walls. That's what i care about, and so what i'm curious about is how much did this kitchen cost you uh and and how much of that is visible versus, not visible yeah. You can break that option. So here's what i always tell my clients is that when you think price per square foot, you can't think like the real estate market.

Okay, because when you buy a house as an investment or even your personal house, that price per square foot is usually just the hvac footage and when you build a house, you have to build everything you have to build a garage. You have to build a shed. You have to build a landscape whatever it is so price per square foot is a weird and not very good number to to compare to what what if i just bought the house down the street sure yeah. So what we talk about is covered foot, meaning if the garage is covered and of course it is it's not a carport, yeah or even carports are covered.

You have to think of the full covered square footage, so this house covered including my front porch uh is just shy of three thousand square feet, so you're thinking you're in to the project for about 900k wow, that's with the value of everything landscape, not land, wow! That includes the landscape cause. I also have a really nice landscape. Going on. I really my poor wife put up with my crappy landscape of my old house for years.

I wanted this house to be nice. I've got an outdoor fireplace going. I got patios. I've got a bunch of steel planters, it's kind of transitional.

I, like the traditional, you know, insect cabinets and white and wood ceilings, but also like a little bit of the modern touch. Yeah so like the guys are welding right now in the front. We're getting some really cool landscapes, see that going on. That's amazing.

I've always been the guy who says look. We should spend what's appropriate for your family yeah and for what you want and not think about neighborhood or resale, and also i just don't. I don't like moving, i don't want to change. I hate change in my life been married.

22 years i lived in the last house what 15 16 years, i like constant things in my life, and so i built this house to be here a long time. I built it really well, it's probably one of the more expensive houses in my neighborhood and i'm fine with that sure. Thankfully austin has also gone up so that in today's market i probably could sell this and make money on. If i wanted to, if something horrible happened to me, so you bought it for like 450 can, can i offer you a six for it right now? 600K, you know, that's good uh probably wouldn't take that.

How much are the houses going for now on the market? Well: here's a crazy stat, so i paid like 450 for this two and a half years ago, this house back here sold for 1-1 recently and it's not even updated. It still has a lot of its 70s cabinetry from what what just in real estate appreciation yeah in the austin market. Here, that's crazy incredible, so i i mean so, if you're into this for 900k. How much would you have spent on this? If you were going to go through with the rental aspect - oh meaning, if i would have rented this yeah, i definitely would have backed off on everything.

Had this been a rental, but i could have made more videos, then man, sorry about that. There was just some study about how uh regular gas cooktops leak, uh methane and uh gas, even when they're set off, they still leak a little bit and now they're associating that with like cancer and things and here's the thing that no one does is you absolutely Need to run your vent fan and especially when you cook with gas, because you've got a flame. You've got a very hot surface and there's really microscopic park, particles of both oil and water on any surface in your entire house, including those those you know, cast iron burners yeah. So you need to turn on your exhaust fan, no matter what you're cooking, especially with gas, you want to see that you want to see a couple of cool things.

Yeah, let's see it, how much did you spend on light fixtures? Can you break it out yeah, like just shy of 10k on light fixtures that doesn't include my um? I mean that's, that's a whole rental remodel for me. I i got ta hear your opinion on uh, on on this kitchen, this high-end kitchen manufacturer, and how they compare to yours. Oh wow, it's electronic um uh, the uh ikea kitchens. Oh i'm always railed against ikea.

I hate particle board. I just feel like they're disposable. You know if, but they work, if there's the smallest leak, everything blows up and needs replaced. Oh water leak can turn yeah right.

Yeah we uh, i get it. I know whatever we uh. This is insane, it even extends down. I thought it was just gon na you know open for you, but no.

The whole ladder came down. Full staircase come on up y'all, so we got to put a picture up of our first kitchen. Ever my first home, we put an ikea kitchen in all in countertops, and everything was like 12k and i'm like yes, dang yeah we kept getting quotes for like 40 or 50.. We're like we don't have that's the budget for the whole house.

Where am i going here? This is, this: is insane come on up? This is my conditioned attic wait, but it's not hot in here. This is the same temperature. The same air space as as as the rest of the house is not a sealed attic. You made your uh attic uh inside an inside space for for the folks who don't know the condition versus unconditioned.

This is basically like the inside of your home. The insulation's at the roof line, rather than at the ceiling plane and 99.9 of the house, is in texas. The insulation would be at our feet at the ceiling line, and all these ducks would be running into a space here that in texas in the summer could be 140 150 degrees and the air that's in these ducts is, you know, 55 degrees, so there could be A hundred degree difference between the temperature in the attic and the temperature inside your ducks, and this little r8 uh required insulation is nothing at that point well. This is why you need asbestos ducts, because it's higher insulation, that's right so because the house is so efficient.

I need a tiny little system wow. This is basically it's tiny. It's like a one ton air conditioner for the whole upstairs of my house. This is it, that's all.

That's all i need, and then i have a separate dehumidifier which i'm a big believer in. So we have a separate dehumidifier, a separate switch that does it and then the crown of my attic, my crown jewel. This is my zender erv. This is swiss made.

This is the world's most efficient fresh air system, fresh air, so so this is bringing in air from the outside yep. So what you're seeing here is this? Actually, this pipe on your left? That's insulated! Yeah is bringing in air from the cool side of the house. That's the north side; it brings it into this unit. This is the exhaust going out.

This is the exhaust, because it's exhausting right right and in this core, the air streams go near each other, but don't actually touch and the core moves. Moisture and heat between the air streams. Okay, so that even though it's let's say going to be 90 degrees out of 90 humidity, yeah, we're exhausting a lot of that heat and humidity out, and it never makes it into mine, so you're just trying. This is basically just bringing, as it says, fresh air in, without sucking in all the humidity and heat.

Exactly look at all these, these hoses each one of these little tubes. You got you got 50 hoses here. Each one of them moves about 15 cfm, just a tiny puff of air, and so now you know we spend if we average americans live to 78 years old yeah. We spend 50 percent of our life or we spend pardon me.

We spend 50 years of our 78 years on earth inside our house 77 out of 78 for me. So why wouldn't we pay attention to fresh air? And so now each one of these hoses drops fresh air into each one of my kids bedrooms into my bedroom and my daughter's bedroom, see. That was a good sales pitch right there, because you went from how much time we spend inside to our kids. You got you got my heart right away, i mean you have two people.

I have two kids. Wouldn't you want them to have a puff of fresh air all night long rather than living in their stale bedrooms with their stinkiness, but we got windows matt. But how often do you open your windows? Do you leave your windows open all night for your kids? No, so now you're, depending on the wind to blow to bring fresh air into your house. That's true, and i don't i don't do that in this house.

I build it tight as a drum. This is a super tight house so and how much more rent am i going to get with this 0.0 percent and how much did this cost? This is expensive. This is about a ten thousand dollar system. Oh no, but that, but that doesn't include an install.

I was gon na say i was gon na say because i'm like not with all these hoses, but you know what i'm going to be here a lot of years and this house is the healthiest freshest house. Here's here's a crude comment, but but one that i get a lot of them. We talk about tight houses, oh you're, going to kill people. If you fart in the house you're going to smell it for a week.

The exact opposite is true. This house is so tight and so efficient. It's the freshest air of any house. I've ever lived in now.

Another thing i'm noticing here is i'm used to like, like really like crooked studs and like splinters and like these studs look really nice yeah. I know this is all i framed the whole house with lvls. This is like plywood studs. Basically so so you have engineered studs everywhere.

It looks beautiful, wait, wait! What's this matt that looks original. What is this a dirty lvl? Yeah? It's true! It's not original! Okay! It just got weathered a little bit. I don't know matt i'm well, because this is beautiful, is on top of these studs on the outside. I have two inch foil faced, poly iso, oh my gosh, so i actually have enough insulation on the outside of this house.

To meet code, where i wouldn't have had to put insulation on the inside, if i would do so, you've almost now sound rated this with how much insulation you have double the code requirement for installation, which is always a goal of mine, how much more rent for This lineup um, i think, that's a dollar more, because you could point that out to a renter, all right, absolutely get more for that. This is incredible. I think there's a market, though, for health kevin, even on rentals right, because when you start talking about your family, your kids, living in a healthy environment, i think um. You know i lived through the mold crisis of 2001 2002, where i lived through chinese drywall as well.

The mold crisis was in some respects, worse than chinese drywall, because people were suing builders and landlords for mold issues in their house and insurance companies were covering it back then, and in 2002 i was in portland oregon super rainy climate, oh yeah, and we at one In one week we got five lawsuits handed out, and then we also had the aephis crisis, which is a a type of exterior insulation that has fake stucco over it. Where you all of your joints and then call it good and the caulking would fail. Water would get back there and there was no way for the water to get out, and so, in the course of a couple months, we probably had a dozen lawsuits that i had to handle as a young builder and that's where i learned that look. It's all about water management, oh yeah, so you'll see.

My house has two foot overhangs everywhere. I have a big golf umbrella out over this house to make sure that it doesn't get wet. I've also installed all my windows with really good flashings. To make sure i did that properly, all the waterproofing details are correct, and once you get the waterproofing right, then we insulate it really.

Well, we air seal it really well, and then i have tiny equipment is all i need for a little uh heating and cooling. That's incredible: let's go back downstairs, but it was good meantime. How do you convince somebody that the air in their home is unhealthy uh? You know, because i i understand what you're saying with the value of that. But how do people know how to value that? If i think hey my air is healthy, you know i have the best air because i'm there yeah there are some monitors that you could buy and kind of check on the quality of your your air.

Almost all the consumer grade monitors are not great, but you know i think your best monitors your nose. Okay, you know you you can tell when it's not when it doesn't smell right in your house when things aren't quite right and people are more sensitive than others. What if i get like a bunch of hepa filters and just throw them into my leaky, you know builder grade 2008 home that can help, but uh this famous guy joe stiebrick says dilution is not the solution to indoor pollution wow. You know if i'm living in a in a house, that's continuing to pollute yeah hepa filters can help, but that doesn't solve the problem.

Fresh air can help open your windows that can help, but we can't live with open windows all the time. We'd never be comfortable. Unless you live in santa barbara, maybe right it's gorgeous all year round. Texas is not it's 90 degrees and 80 humidity a lot of the year sure if this was going to be a rental, how do you prevent mold without spending a fortune? So the biggest thing that i'd recommend is really good air sealing air sealing, because when air leaks into a house around an outlet around whatever, when it comes in, it's very likely going to find a cold condensing surface and that surface tends to be the back of Our drywall, our drywall, has a paper face and paper is the perfect food for mold to grow on a perfect surface who wakes up the paper, okay and and because it's hot and humid outside that air that's leaking in has humidity that humidity could be deposited on The back of the drywall, but i mean like let's maybe look at the front of your house - i mean, isn't it true, then that essentially every home would just have mold in that case, and there is probably in every house some amount of mold.

You just got ta hit it ah, a little harder. My man, oh my gosh, your splits, your minis, so that's a double stack, it's a uh! So that's a city, multi and there's more than one unit that comes in there. This is just for my upstairs. This has three units attached to it and that's my japanese heat pump water heater.

I have more air conditioners than you yeah five nice well done, but three of them are from my office and one's for my garage and then that's my makeup air. For my kitchen exhaust, what do you mean makeup air? So remember, my house is super tight. If i was just trying to suck air out, i wouldn't be able to because it's so tight, there's no air coming back in well. Let's talk in the front here so that vent brings air in with a powered fan.

Just probably this is fancy. I see push oh wow, that's nice and the powered fan turns on when my exhaust fan turns on at the same time. So if you, your hair, is so tight is what you're saying that if you turned on the exhaust for your stove it? Wouldn't it wouldn't work because it can't suck it? Wouldn't it would exhaust a little bit, but there's so little ability for air to suck in that it would have a hard time. It'd be like you know you, you closing the end of pvc piping, trying to suck air out of it without making a hole in that pipe.

You couldn't suck air out of it, but now it sucks now it sucks we're good to suck now. Okay, good so you're you've been talking about trying to keep moisture away from the house, but now you're, building a planter bed next to your house, but you'll notice that planter bed is six or eight inches down on the foundation and we always want a brick ledge Showing okay, so my floor of my house is a couple inches above that copper flashing, because a lot of people will actually build these planters just like right up to under their water. That is a horrible horrible idea. That's what i was thinking usually when i see that i see massive problems, yeah and then i've got a gutter which i had to change the downspout, because my fence is in the way.

But i've got a gutter to catch that water. So there's no splash back too splash back is really bad for houses. So if you see areas, let's say stone is a great facade because when it splashes back, you get this little green line. Growing on your stone, which says: hey, there's a problem back there interesting.

If you see a green line, you need to fix it and not just power wash it off, but like stop that water from splashing on there gutters are great for houses, it's probably the cheapest thing. You can do to benefit your house's adding gutters yeah. It seems like a lot of folks will will take this mindset of like oh well. I want to put a planter there, so i'll just put some waterproofing membranes or whatever, which always fail uh, but what what you're really doing is beyond just the idea of trying to seal it perfectly you're, also using common sense right, like let's not put a planter Right next to the house, let's put gutters, which i mean these are not cheap gutters, but you could put cheap gutters.

You could put super cheap, gutters, okay, matt top top five or ten things. Something like that that that you would say your average rental property owner. Doesn't do that should do that's not that expensive, but maybe they just don't know that they don't even know, don't buy modern, wait, sorry, don't buy modern, don't buy modern, okay, don't buy modern houses, especially as a rental like all the square, concrete styles with flat roofs And no overhangs, now again, maybe if you're in, like some climate that gets 10 inches a year, sure go for it, no problem or there's other parts of the the southwest that are very few. Maybe santa barbara gets pretty santa barbara's, pretty low rain, sure sure, but everywhere else in the country, where you get 20 inches or more of rain, don't build modern, don't do no overhangs and flat roofs.

Okay, gutters are excellent. Do good gutters everywhere put the cheapest k style and you want? Yes, you said cheap put the cheap ones. Yes, i'm fine! I only did these because they were stylish all right, but kay's thought would work just as well perfect, okay, um and then the next thing you could do check out my video i made kevin called installation 2.0. Okay on on a resale like my 70s house, when i remodeled that house, we went up to the attic which was a traditional venomatic.

We raked around the insulation to see where the walls came up through and anything that had a hole in it. We sealed up. That sounds like a lot of work. It's not that expensive and it's not that much work now you could do it yourself.

Someone could do it themselves, there's also companies that will do that, for you uh and man, it's not very expensive and you could double or triple the efficiency and probably double or triple the air quality of an older house by just air sealing and then re-insulating. So, in other words, this would be if, if we're in our attic, where all the um the top plates are so the top of the walls, people drill holes through them for lighting or even just around cam lights or or uh cables, or whatever uh you're saying Just foam seal those that's right, air seal, all those is that going to prevent mold and my walls and other things it can't. Okay, i can for sure, because when that air leaks through it's bringing moisture with it, and then your house is air, conditioned and so oftentimes on a remodel i find wherever there is an air leak. I find mold in those areas so that can help greatly and remember mold, that's not actively growing or that's trapped in a wall cavity without airflow it doesn't matter.

I could have mold in this house. You have mold in your shower right now and there's mold in the outside air. What we're trying to do is not have active mold growth in your air stream, so by sealing it you're, actually also inhibiting fresh air from getting to those wall. Cavities and now you're able to limit mold growth, even if the other conditions would be there for mold growth, that's right, and if it's trapped in a wall and there's no airflow out of that wall, it's not going to be a problem.

So because that's the thing i think landlords want to hear is what can they do to prevent that longer-term damage, especially more human climates? I love the idea of more efficiency because i think that's great for our climate, but i know landlords don't care if their tenant's electricity bills higher or lower that's right, but they want healthy. They want healthy, tenants, right, yeah and i think builders and landlords um could be liable to people that say: hey i've got health problems from this house that you rented me or bought me and the sensors to detect those things are getting cheaper and cheaper. That's a good point such that i think we're going to start hearing from both land or both from tenants and from people that i build houses for air quality, about the air quality of their houses and it's even more in the forefront now that covets happen. Everyone knows what merv ratings on filters are nowadays right, whereas three years ago, no one knew what the heck that meant, nobody even knew.

An n95 was sometimes like the construction industry, okay, so uh what else? What else can can? I think the last thing would be seal. Your ductwork put the asbestos back on tape. It back up. Well, not necessarily tape.

Mastic is better and okay. Of course, the asbestos is a joke, but if you have asbestos, you want to keep it out of your air stream. If it's locked in there and it's not getting out you're fine asbestos is not a problem because that's another fear people have is that, like? Oh, the asbestos is blowing around your home, but that's just the insulation around the duct all right. It's not there's not that much asbestos in american homes on ductwork, it's mainly on vinyl flooring and some other places.

So you know if you're ripping up your your old flooring if it's pre 1960, there is a good chance that it's got asbestos. Oh, the old nine inch tiles with the black adhesive under it. A lot of that asbestos you're better off, encapsulating that just put a new floor over it and uh buying new construction homes if you're a new home buyer. What are the the most ridiculous violations of a new home buyer you're, seeing these days well, the biggest thing that i say the litmus test for a good builder is how do they manage water in their houses, and you can really tell that driving by a neighborhood Under construction, you can see, are there holes in the outside envelope? Are their windows properly installed? Is there a sill pan underneath their windows, you know, did they take care when they penetrated for uh electrical or plumbing? They use a hammer to make those holes and i'm a huge just.

I hate seeing cardboard sheathing on houses, it's prominent among production builders. I would not buy a house that has cardboard sheathing personally, wow and and if you could find out that it had it, i would frankly stay away from it. What do you do when the homes don't even have insulation in the walls yeah? I hear people are spending money on dual pane windows and i'm like cool, but you don't even have insulation on the walls right. So what do you? Even just? Do you just stay away from these, or no, i think, actually, those 50s built houses usually are built with solid lumber or real plywood they're, usually pretty good houses.

I like 50s construction. I would totally buy a 50s built house and those are easy. A lot of times to retrofit because they weren't complicated houses, you can get up an air seal. You can insulate those houses, big attic spaces, easy to move around in exactly you could add gutters.

They usually always have overhangs they're built with more traditional architecture. Typically, i think 50s would be a great house to have as a rental and to own in general, matt any any other fun exciting things you can share us with the house. Man, we hit a bunch of stuff kevin, yeah, uh, i've absolutely loved it, and i appreciate you coming by to take the tour with me today, totally awesome. So how can people learn more about you? Uh? The build show is what i shoot, and i've also got thebuildshow.com with eight other builders, a remodeler and now some tradesmen and women.

I have a female drywall contractor in bozeman. Shooting videos too. All about best practices go check out. Thebuildshow.Com.

That's awesome, awesome cool dude! Thank you man. I really appreciate it kevin. Thank you brother. Thank you.