119 | A Natural Alternative to Fiberglass Insulation

119 a Natural Alternative to Fiberglass Insulation

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[00:00:00] Narrator: How would you like to improve your health and keep your family safe? You are listening to the Healthy Home Hacks podcast where we firmly believe enjoying optimal health shouldn't be a luxury. Healthy home. Authorities and husband and wife team, Ron and Lisa. We'll help you create a home environment that will level up your health.

It's time to hear from the expert, listen in on honest conversations, and gain the best tips and advice. If you are ready to dive in and improve your wellbeing and increase your energy, you are in the right place. Alright, here are your hosts, B biologists, authors, media darlings, vicarious vegans, and avocado aficionados, Ron and Lisa Beres.

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[00:01:49] Ron Beres: Welcome to the Healthy Home Hack Show where we are revolutionizing healthy living one space at a time. I'm

[00:01:56] Lisa Beres: Ron Baris. And I'm Elisa Baris. Today we're talking about something toxic.

Hiding right under our noses inside the walls in your home. In fact, let me

[00:02:08] Ron Beres: guess that nasty pink fiberglass insulation. That stuff contains formaldehyde and binding agents and releases harmful VOCs in your home for years. Those tiny glass fibers that become airborne causing respiratory issues, skin rashes.

In eye irritation. Heck, some studies even link long-term exposure of fiberglass to serious health conditions.

[00:02:33] Lisa Beres: Yep. But what if there's a better alternative that's been around for thousands of years, something that won't harm you, your family, or the planet. A material that naturally regulates moisture, reduces noise, resists fire, and actually helps clean your indoor air.

Can you guess what it is? Unlike synthetic options, this material works with nature instead of against it. It's perfect for creating truly healthy living spaces.

[00:03:04] Ron Beres: Today we are going to explore why Wool Installation is becoming this superior choice for homes and commercial buildings. And if you guess that Bravo to you.

'cause Joining us today is Andrew w Legge. Founder of Havelock Wall, who's passionate about New Zealand wool and creating positive change in the building industry.

[00:03:28] Lisa Beres: Andrew brings a global perspective to sustainable building practices and is pioneering a biophilic approach to construction. He can explain what that means in just a few seconds, so hold tight.

Friends.

[00:03:41] Ron Beres: Without further ado. Welcome to the show, Andrew? Yes.

[00:03:47] Lisa Beres: Hey, welcome.

[00:03:49] Andrew W. Legge: Hi guys. How we doing? Thanks for having me.

[00:03:52] Lisa Beres: Thank you for being with us. We are thrilled to have you with us today. We love what you're doing. This topic needs to reach more people. People need to be educated about the importance of what installation they're using, and I know we have a lot to get through, so I just wanna dive right in.

Okay. What do homeowners have to consider when choosing healthier insulation? Can you just share with our listeners what the main differences in installation products are?

[00:04:18] Andrew W. Legge: Yes, I certainly can. And just for a little bit of context, I don't want to go too far down the history lesson here, but essentially the built environment I think has led us on this kind of manufacturer led race to the bottom.

And let's not blame the manufacturers. Let's kind of blame the trade, which is telling us that insulation doesn't really matter and therefore. We should measure it against kind of one unit, which is cost. So if that's your measurable unit and you're trying to drive cost down, you're very likely to drive product integrity down.

Oh yeah. And so we're coming at this from a totally different perspective, which is we think it's really important for what goes into that wall. We build that wall to protect us from the elements. It doesn't make any sense to us that we would take some of the lowest grade fibrous options out there and put them in that wall, in that protective layer.

But instead, why wouldn't we take something that is wildly capable and high integrity and high performing and put it in that protective layer? And that's what wool is. Wool has literally evolved in nature's RD department for thousands of years to protect animals from the elements, all elements. Hot, cold, wet, dry.

And these are things that happen in our walls throughout the year in almost any climate zone. So it just made sense to us to say, let's put some healthier materials into those walls. And so now to your question, there are other groups out there that are kind of saying the same thing. Let's step away from this sort of low grade, low integrity.

Toxic material and start thinking about other ways that we can insulate our walls. Something no

[00:06:03] Ron Beres: to the Pink Panther.

[00:06:04] Lisa Beres: Goodbye pink pan. And I'm wearing pink today, but I am saying goodbye Pink Panther.

[00:06:09] Andrew W. Legge: I don't wanna agitate any single manufacturer. I can comfortably say that fiberglass is a pretty low grade option.

It's the one that people choose when they're trying to focus on not spending a lot of money on insulation. And it's for sure a, a fiber that no one likes. I've never met one single person that's been around fiberglass that says, boy, I love that stuff, or I can't wait to work with that again tomorrow.

[00:06:32] Lisa Beres: Yeah, right. It's

[00:06:33] Andrew W. Legge: nasty, it's itchy. And I think that, you know, if you do some research, you can find that there are some concerns about what happens when that particular enters your respiratory tract, irrespective of whether it's bio persistent or bio soluble. And that's kind of the science when you go looking at it.

It's still shards of glass in your respiratory tract on some level. Right.

[00:06:52] Lisa Beres: Very similar to asbestos. Correct. In structure.

[00:06:56] Andrew W. Legge: Yes, yes. And clearly problematic when it enters our body. And so we take this view of like, Hey, why don't we just keep that outta the equation altogether?

[00:07:05] Lisa Beres: Yeah.

[00:07:06] Andrew W. Legge: And why s it? The good thing is as the long run demand curve shifts, there is a demand amongst consumers for better, healthier products.

And then. Where this gets really fun is sometimes we feel like when we go healthier, we have to give up performance, and in a lot of instances that's not the case here. If I'm patting myself on the back, wool is incredibly high performance. But let's leave that aside. We can start it at the other end of the equation, which is synthetic fibers are pretty low performing, so like a fiberglass fiber is not gonna really do what it's supposed to do for very long because it's so low integrity and because it's so cheap.

So as we work our way along the spectrum, we can start to get to natural fibers that are likely to perform a little bit better. Cotton is okay. It's a nice idea, but it's also a pretty low performing fiber. And when it gets wet, it's a real problem. And moisture and vapor drive in your walls and ceilings and attic is a real issue in building.

And so probably wanna avoid something that is highly adapt to molding like

[00:08:09] Lisa Beres: denim, recycled denim insulation. Yeah, so it's a nice

[00:08:12] Andrew W. Legge: idea, but like there are better fibrous options out there. You know, straw bale is a method of building that you know is highly insul. And creates for a really nice living space.

[00:08:22] Ron Beres: Well, you can't always have that in the, depends on the environment that you're in, right? So you have to be in a hot climate for that.

[00:08:27] Andrew W. Legge: Yes. And the climate can vary by seasonality. You have to be really dedicated to the building process if you're gonna go down that route. So you know, one sort of step backwards or one deviation from straw bill might be considering something like hemp, which I think is certainly better than fiberglass.

It's better than cotton. And I'm talking science here, not competition. It's not as good as wool. And again, it's because wool has evolved to do what it does and has these very unique characteristics. But if you're just talking about natural insulation and options that are out there, there's a number that exist.

And frankly, it's great that we have options to things like fiberglass and cellulose. Cellulose is sort of recycled newspaper again, like. Pretty low integrity. Fiber, so there to provide a cheaper option, but probably not your best for longevity.

[00:09:18] Lisa Beres: And I've heard it's very toxic because of the inks, right?

The ink on the paper. So if there's like a fire or a. Something that can release a lot of toxic chemicals. Is that correct?

[00:09:28] Andrew W. Legge: Not only that, it's paper. What does paper do well? Burn. Burn. Yeah, right. There you go.

[00:09:34] Ron Beres: It has a lot of chemicals on it.

[00:09:35] Lisa Beres: Paper houses. Right,

[00:09:37] Ron Beres: right. Well, you did a really good job of talking about some great materials that are healthy and actually more efficient, but what are some other like common toxic materials found in conventional insulation and how do they affect indoor air quality?

Especially when it regards our health.

[00:09:52] Andrew W. Legge: Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, the days of formaldehyde as the bonding agent, we've stepped back away from that. There's a lot of talk, and I don't know that Rockwell still uses formaldehyde and then suggests that it will burn off in the manufacturing process, which may be true that I know they have a formaldehyde free.

Option.

[00:10:12] Lisa Beres: Well, that's what I was gonna say. If they offer a formaldehyde free product, then obviously the regular one has formaldehyde. Correct?

[00:10:18] Andrew W. Legge: I would assume. But like, don't quote me on that. I'm not like fully versed on what their manufacturing processes are. I would be very wary that anything burns off fully and I certainly wouldn't want that stuff in my house.

So I would be concerned there. The other things to be concerned about are what are the chemicals used in Flame Retardancy? So we all have to pla the A-S-T-M-E 84. Flame test flame and smoke development test. And in a lot of instances there needs to be a whole bunch of additive to the product to keep it from burning so that it can pass this test and there enter the building code.

This is again where, you know, I hate to keep touting our product, but of course we're biased, but we also do this for a reason and. This is again, a win for wool because it has a high nitrogen content of around 14%, and so what that means is it's naturally self extinguishing and won't support a flame to 1100 degrees Fahrenheit.

Oh,

[00:11:14] Lisa Beres: so

[00:11:15] Andrew W. Legge: all of us insulation manufacturers will likely use something to help with some element of flame suppression. It has historically been boric acid, which is natural. It comes from the earth. There are some skeptics out there, but it's found an awful lot of products. And then it gets down to, if you're putting this on a fiber, what is that fiber's propensity to burn?

And that sort of dictates how much boric acid is on there, because cotton's gonna burn faster than wool is. You're gonna find when you pick up those two. Installation mediums a cotton bat. You're gonna kind of feel that boric acid, you're gonna feel it on your hands. You can kind of spell it wool on the other hand, because it's naturally self extinguishing, we use almost a non-detectable amount.

[00:12:09] Lisa Beres: Oh, you still have to put some, yeah, I, because I know for listeners who aren't familiar, wool is like the creme do creme when it comes to mattresses because it is a natural flame retardant. Mattresses and mattresses have to pass a test, the flame test as well. And instead of loading it with all kinds of very toxic chemicals, the healthy manufacturers use wool, just the thin layer of wool.

And that's enough to meet the standards. And I know from bedding that wool is naturally dust mite resistant in addition to being naturally flame retardant. Correct. So. This is like so good for your walls. I mean, it's just like they say, don't put anything on your skin you can't pronounce. It's kind of like our house is like, why are we putting this?

Yeah. Cancer causing chemicals in our walls and thinking we're gonna be healthy. You know

[00:12:56] Andrew W. Legge: You are right Lisa. And the same thing goes for well carpet. And hopefully this is relevant for your listeners as it is for the people who call us all day every day. We love to use these anecdotal tidbits to help people understand.

By saying, you know, insulation's not something people are used to talking about. Frankly, they don't even like to think about it.

[00:13:14] Lisa Beres: Yeah. 'cause they don't see it right outta sight either. Yeah.

[00:13:16] Andrew W. Legge: Well, and they're also often equating it to fiberglass, which is, you know, pretty gnarly. So it's fun to draw these correlations.

The one that we use a lot because of where we are in, in the greater Lake Tahoe area is. You know, we're outside recreating all the time, just coming outta winter. We're doing a lot of backcountry skiing and you know, we're told often that when we're in the backcountry cotton kills because it gets wet and stays wet.

So that's super dangerous to wear as a base layer. Wool is the absolute best you can wear because it's gonna regulate. Your body temperature and moisture, and it's still gonna perform when it does get wet, inevitable. And then synthetics are kind of in the middle. They do a pretty decent job, but it only lasts for so long.

Your synthetic capline layer. In year two, probably doesn't smell very good. Probably doesn't work as well as it used to. Still better than cotton. But conversely, like I've been wearing the same wool base layer for 15 years. Oh. And it's just cranking away, still doing its thing. And that's what wool does.

You know, I've got wool over shirts that were my father's. They're 50-year-old.

[00:14:19] Lisa Beres: Wow. Wow. And

[00:14:20] Andrew W. Legge: they're still doing what they're supposed to do.

[00:14:22] Lisa Beres: No moth holes.

[00:14:23] Andrew W. Legge: No. And do moths like. You know, some of those older garments, sure, you gotta keep 'em away, but like if you do, then they're gonna keep performing the way they're supposed to.

[00:14:33] Lisa Beres: Yeah. Yeah. And there's a lot of incredible natural remedies to prevent moths, by the way. Yes. Listeners, essential oils. There's some really good essential oils that work for that. So what would you say. Is the percentage of home builders today that are using the pink fiberglass insulation?

[00:14:50] Andrew W. Legge: Oh, I don't know.

95. Yeah, that's what I thought. You know, it is still incredibly pervasive in the industry. We see a very real shift happening and there's some geographic normalities based on climate and sort of local practice. And what I mean by that is in certain parts of the east coast. You'll see spray foam being used pretty regularly, and what happens is,

[00:15:17] Lisa Beres: can you tell us what that is?

What's spray foam compared to?

[00:15:20] Andrew W. Legge: Well, there's open and closed cell foam. It's typically closed cell foam is the highest installation value in the industry. It's like 6.7 per inch. There's nothing that touches that. It's often used in the lid or the roof. And the conventional wisdom is that if you spray enough foam, now we're getting into the science, you'll push the dew point to the outside.

Oh. Oh, okay. So basically when you have condensation happening, if you've got three inches, then it's not going to happen.

[00:15:48] Lisa Beres: Oh, okay. On

[00:15:49] Andrew W. Legge: the inside. Now the problem is that stuff settles and cracks, and then you've got a huge problem. So.

[00:15:55] Lisa Beres: When we talk about spraying, are we talking about fiberglass?

[00:15:58] Andrew W. Legge: It varies, right?

So there's spray foam, but then there's also, you know, we call it blown in blankets or blown in, and that could be fiberglass, cellulose, wool. There's lots of options in terms of the application spray foam is unique to this closed cell version, and then an open cell, which doesn't carry the same R value, but it expands more.

So essentially you're using less, so it costs less, and that you might typically find in the walls. There's a very important thing to note with spray foam is the failure rates can be quite high because you're trying to create a seal here. What happens in new construction? It settles. When it settles, it creates cracks.

Now you have a crack in your phone. You've got a big problem because. Vapor drive can go anywhere. So there was some recent news in the last few months where in the UK it's proving almost impossible to get a mortgage on a house that has spray foam in the roof.

[00:16:56] Lisa Beres: Oh, interesting.

[00:16:57] Andrew W. Legge: Wow. Okay. That's crossed the pond, so to speak, and it's being talked about here.

I haven't heard that it's actually happening here and I don't know that it will, you know, in our conversations within the industry. It's definitely being talked about as something that we should all be paying very close attention to and ideally not using foam in our houses and right. For me, there's always been a very simple logic there, right?

You see these spray foam trucks driving around town. It's some person in a moon suit with a spray gun in their hand and you're gonna invite this person into your living space for a couple days.

[00:17:31] Lisa Beres: Yeah. Right. You gonna

[00:17:32] Andrew W. Legge: spray stuff around and then they're gonna tell you like, oh, 48 hours is fine. That all it needs, that's all it needs to cure and you're good to go.

[00:17:39] Lisa Beres: Right, right. Kinda like the pest control guy, you know, he's, he is all suited up in his hazmat suit and then he is like spraying right outside your house and you're like, Hmm, that can't be good for nature, that can't be good for, right. The air,

[00:17:51] Andrew W. Legge: one thing I can say is like. One, that stuff has some real challenges from performance perspective.

You know, when it cracks inevitably, when it moves away from whatever it's attached to. The other thing is like, this stuff's probably gonna be floating around in the ocean for thousands of years, right?

[00:18:08] Lisa Beres: Uh, that's horrible.

[00:18:10] Andrew W. Legge: We have a couple mantras here. The first one is to help people make informed decisions because this is your house and it's really important.

And then, you know, further down the list is like, we don't really care if you use wool, but please don't use foam.

[00:18:21] Lisa Beres: Please don't foam. Okay, that's good. Never use bum listeners if you take anything away. And also like if you are working with a builder, say like in a development, like we live in a planned community.

Do you even get a say in that? Or are they like, Hey, this is how we build it, you know, 'cause California's a lot of developments.

[00:18:39] Andrew W. Legge: Yeah. Great question Lisa and I would say this with all of my architect buddies sitting in the room. Architects need to do a better job. The contribution to greenhouse gases, the built environment is responsible for some 40% of that on an annual basis.

11% of that 40% is material selection. Architects have the option to choose better every single day. For 11 years, I've been watching them stick to their playbook, not make changes. And it's incredibly frustrating. And again, this has nothing to do with using wool, like

[00:19:19] Lisa Beres: Yeah, right. You're just saying let's get rid of it.

We're

[00:19:22] Andrew W. Legge: trying to be like maybe a quarter percent of the market, right? Like we're not here to change the market. We're here to give an option to people who actually wanna buy what we think is the best fiber out there based on science, right? And at least give

[00:19:33] Lisa Beres: people an option. 'cause Ron, when we went to the design center, we, for our first Oh yeah.

It was picked out all your flooring and your tile and your window coverings and all. It wouldn't, they don't mention insulation. That wasn't an option for us,

[00:19:45] Andrew W. Legge: for sure. Yeah. So back to your question, ideally, architects are gonna start thinking about insulation more and it's going to creep its way into conversations and there are lots of architects out there that are really focused on materials.

And there are industry bodies driving that conversation, but it needs to get all the way to the occupant of the space.

[00:20:04] Lisa Beres: Yeah. Juan and I are bowel biologists building that from Germany. The study of building affect health, and I was just going to say with lead and all of the environmental focus on building, there was such an emphasis on, you know, airtight and energy conservation.

And not enough on the health. Right. So you could get a lead qualified structure without hitting a lot of these healthy marks if you were making up for it in these other areas. Correct. I

[00:20:36] Andrew W. Legge: mean, that's a hundred percent. That's still like a real conversation in passive house where you're building to a standard and a number.

So you're building a great efficient structure. Right. But what are you using to do it? And then you've now got. Evolution of like another industry body called the Embodied Carbon Network, where it's all about. Building efficiently and building well. But it's more kind of a sum of all the parts, right? So let's use all of the best products we can use and allow that to drive the result that we're really excited about, versus let's strive for an efficiency number and not think as much about how we're getting there.

And so, in passive house, you see a lot of foam being used. You also see a lot of cellulose being used. And cellulose is it tick a lot of embodied carbon boxes. I personally question its capability over time, right? Because it's newspaper. What happens when newspaper gets wet? It's sad. We're gonna

[00:21:35] Lisa Beres: run outta newspaper, right?

'cause no one's really we

[00:21:37] Andrew W. Legge: are, but like there's other groups out there that are, you know, trying to rebrand themselves as something other than cellulose. They're using like wood chips.

[00:21:46] Lisa Beres: Okay.

[00:21:46] Andrew W. Legge: Oh, okay. Okay. It's all the same thing. It's just wood chips would be less refined than newspaper.

[00:21:51] Lisa Beres: Yeah. Well it's like, um, it's all the same.

You made me think of, you know, everything's so digital now and we see they're recycling electronics. And putting it into home goods. So all the black plastics that we see, even in our kitchenware, the black spatulas, the takeout containers now they've found are loaded with flame retardants and a lot of these toxic chemicals, because these were actually generated from recycled electronics.

[00:22:16] Andrew W. Legge: Right now they're in your frying pan and they're heating out in your Yeah,

[00:22:19] Lisa Beres: and we just, we just did an episode on microplastics. You probably really enjoy it. I

[00:22:24] Andrew W. Legge: saw that and sadly, I haven't had a chance to listen to it, but I will for sure. Yeah, listen

[00:22:28] Lisa Beres: to it. Listen to it on your commute. Right,

[00:22:30] Ron Beres: right, right.

Now you have a long commute. We just talked about that before. 'cause

[00:22:33] Lisa Beres: there's that detox kit, that person we interviewed, the company that they sell to detox your body for microplastics. And there's also a blood test that's now available where you can test your blood. And the levels of microplastics they're finding in people now is like wild.

We're ingesting, what is it? 12 shopping bags. Worth of plastic a year, the average American. That's disgusting. So yeah, it's a real problem. Yeah. Not just for wildlife, but like us too.

[00:23:00] Ron Beres: I had an odd question. My, the question is this, I was always curious is like, for example, I. The sheep and the wool that you're getting from these sheep, right?

Are these goats, whatever it might be, how many sheep does it take to like basically fill a 10 by 10 room? I'm probably curious because my last name is really pronounced better. It's Hungarian and that means sheep, herger goat her.

[00:23:21] Lisa Beres: You should know the answer,

[00:23:22] Ron Beres: but yeah, I should know the answer. But like, how much does it take?

Is it like a hundred sheep to do a 10 by 10 room? What's the answer?

[00:23:28] Andrew W. Legge: I'd feel better with a piece of paper, and I don't wanna slow things down, but essentially a sheep will get a haircut. It will yield about five kg or 10 pounds every five months. Oh, wow. Okay. So let's just say that that's twice a year.

You're getting 20 pounds

[00:23:47] Lisa Beres: from

[00:23:47] Andrew W. Legge: one.

[00:23:48] Lisa Beres: Wow.

[00:23:49] Andrew W. Legge: One of our bats, which covers five square feet, weighs about a pound.

[00:23:54] Lisa Beres: Oh wow.

[00:23:55] Andrew W. Legge: Oh, so you are covering 10 by 10 is a hundred square feet, but like that's not a direct representation because that's the foot plate and you gotta go around four walls. So let's say the wall is 10 by eight.

That's 80 square feet, times four is 320 square feet, and you've got two bats going up at 320 square feet at a pound each. 320 pounds. We're talking 16 sheep. Yeah, 20 pounds a year. Right. I'm

[00:24:26] Ron Beres: still stuck on doing the room, but yeah, that is very sustainable. That reminds me of bamboo almost. 'cause the bamboo grows back so fast, right?

Yeah. 'cause

[00:24:33] Lisa Beres: the sheep have to be, they have to be shaved, right? Like you can't not shave a sheep. Is that correct? Yeah, exactly. They'll get, I've seen these like wild sheep that they find out in the woods and they're like falling over.

[00:24:45] Andrew W. Legge: Every once in a while. One gets lost for like a couple years literally.

The last one I think was called Shrek and came back and had like 60 kg of Wol.

[00:24:54] Lisa Beres: Yeah. They'll just run on body. They can like naturally get rid of it. Can't see.

[00:24:57] Andrew W. Legge: They can literally, barely stand up.

[00:24:59] Lisa Beres: Yeah.

[00:24:59] Andrew W. Legge: Can you imagine what that haircut feels like? Oh, right.

[00:25:02] Lisa Beres: He's like, I,

[00:25:03] Andrew W. Legge: he's finally together.

[00:25:06] Lisa Beres: I can

[00:25:07] Andrew W. Legge: wrap and look guys, people may want to know this.

It's like, okay. Fantastic. Way to go guys. Why do you source your wool in New Zealand? There's 30 million sheep in New Zealand. Oh, there's a very sophisticated trade there. And you know, those numbers are way down. They used like not that long ago, 70 million sheep.

[00:25:22] Lisa Beres: Oh, wow.

[00:25:24] Andrew W. Legge: And so, you know, these animals need a haircut.

And the wool, sadly, this is coarse wool. So most of it's been used in textiles, largely carpets. You know, more and more people are buying synthetics and why are they doing that? Because they're cheaper, but they're crappier in every aspect. And so we, and the

[00:25:47] Lisa Beres: frequency, I don't know if you're into this, but we're really into frequencies, the vibration.

You know, Nicola Tesla, he's like, everything is energy, frequency and vibration. Yeah. And the frequency, you know, they've measured the frequencies of fabric where wool and linen and cotton have very high frequencies. And these synthetics are really low. Really low. Sure. Yeah. In addition to being incredibly uncomfortable, we were talking about bra, which we went shopping at Nordstrom's to find you some shirts and every shirt we picked out, like a men's dress shirt was recycled Polyester.

Recycled plastic. Recycled. Recycled. Yeah. So gross. It's so gross. You sweat and there's no breathability, so you can't perspire in a shirt like that. You're gonna just build up that sweat. It's just so nasty. And honestly, they don't look good. I can't stand the way they feel.

[00:26:34] Andrew W. Legge: Yeah. And it's also more of this design obsolescence in fast fashion, right?

Like, Hey, it's recycled here. It is great. You can wear it four times and it's gotta be recycled again.

[00:26:43] Lisa Beres: Yeah,

[00:26:44] Andrew W. Legge: right, right. Versus that wool shirt we talked about that you can wear for 50 years. But on that point, something that we're starting to do that we're really excited about is we're making a sound panel.

And this is something that can go on the wall and it can do a couple things, right? First, it's attenuating sound, which reduces frequency and creates a more comfortable, healthy living space. But then what we're able to do is not only refer to our panels as. Sound panels, but sound and indoor air quality panels because the amino acids in wool will irreversibly bond with harmful VOCs, aldehyde and nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide, which are found in our everyday environment.

And so we're really excited about what this does for the space and frankly, we for sure it makes sense in homes. We're really getting excited about the application for it in academia where ideally we could be creating a more comfortable, safer, healthier, cognitively friendly environment for young minds.

[00:27:47] Lisa Beres: Right.

[00:27:48] Andrew W. Legge: Uh, that's excellent. Schools

[00:27:49] Lisa Beres: need an overhaul. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:27:51] Ron Beres: They really do. Andrew, what are some of the differences in the installation process with wool? We can guess the alternative, right? What's the process for wool?

[00:28:01] Andrew W. Legge: So I'm really happy to give you a very short answer that I'll back into, but none is the short one.

Okay. It's taken us 11 years, frankly to get to that. So there is a more important answer there. And this industry is quite fickle, which is to say that. If you show up on a job site and there's a builder there or an installation installer or both, and you say, Hey guys, check this out. I've got this new product.

It's really cool and it's really high performing, and it installs almost like what you are used to. They're going to point you in the direction of where you came from and invite you to go back there very quickly. This is an industry that does not do well with change. And so we did okay in building our business with a product that really did not conform to industry norms and in total fairness, it's a business, right?

And these guys need to understand how long it takes them to install something. Uncertainty is worse than duration. So if fiberglass takes an hour and wool takes two, they can kind of manage for that problem. But if fiberglass takes an hour and they have no idea how long wool takes, they can't even touch it.

And we spent years trapped in that space. And essentially what we were able to do as we did find a little bit of a toehold in the market. We got comfortable and got to a place where we could go invest fairly heavily for us in a state-of-the-art piece of manufacturing equipment, which allows us to make a bat that installs just like all the other ones.

[00:29:34] Lisa Beres: Oh wow. Excellent. And

[00:29:36] Andrew W. Legge: so now you have predictability. Now you have understanding and timing. So now I can go back to, my short answer is. There really is no big difference. But just to really get into the minutiae, because this is important. Fiberglass, you can slash it on the wall with a box cutter. Nothing cuts like that.

But if you're using rock wool insulation, you're using hemp insulation, I'm told there's gonna be some cellulose bats out there that's typically been all blown in. None of them will cut as fast as fiberglass. So what we tell people now is like, if you're installing rock wool, you can use that as a barometer for installing wool.

You can count on the fact that is

[00:30:14] Lisa Beres: rock wool another kind of wool?

[00:30:16] Andrew W. Legge: No, I'll tell you about that in one second. What you can count on is that we will be a little bit faster than rock wool. And to answer your question, rock wool has no wool in it. They rip off the use of the word, which is a little bit of a bummer.

Rock Wool is is the leading company that makes mineral wool insulation. There are other companies that make mineral wool as well. And it is basalt, rock and slag and basalt Rock is obviously natural and comes from the earth. Slag is a byproduct of steel smelting, and so when you put these things together, it takes up an incredible amount of energy to make their fibers that then they make into insulation bets.

[00:30:55] Lisa Beres: Right, right. Oh my gosh.

[00:30:57] Andrew W. Legge: Wow.

[00:30:58] Lisa Beres: Okay, so something, the million dollar question here. Give us some of the short term and long term benefits of using healthier building materials, in this case. Insulation. Or you can just tell us what the negative health effects of the other ones, the fiberglass and all that.

'cause people don't know. People just think it's healthy. That's what everyone uses.

[00:31:16] Andrew W. Legge: I mean, I think honestly, like this can be easily answered without sort of nitpicking on individual manufacturers, incumbent or otherwise, is to just start talking about fiber dynamics. Look under a microscope and see what you see there.

If you see a synthetic fiber, it's gonna be sort of tubular, like a piece of spaghetti cotton falls into. Place and you can just see literally on a microscope very easily that like there's not a lot of integrity there. So when you force natural elements, you know, like water and time and gravity on these fibers, they're not gonna stand up very well.

And then go look at a coarse wool fiber and you won't find one. Really anywhere on the planet that's more dynamic. It's got five follicles, like there's a lot going on on the inside of that fiber. You take a full fiber and bend it back on itself 20,000 times and it won't break. It literally is the sort of wonder fiber.

There's nothing else like it, and I can only attribute it to the fact that it's evolved across literally thousands of years. Back of an animal. And so think about the lead that it has over any one company's r and d department. And cotton is natural, so that's not an our r and d department, and it's been out there for a long time, but cotton fibers aren't found on the back of an animal protecting it from whatever it's trying to deal with, right?

Mm-hmm. That's true. Yeah. And so I don't think there's anything like a wool fiber, which is why we do what we do. And then, you know, in this evolution into more natural ones, can they be higher integrity than synthetic ones on some scale? For sure. And I think that that's great for us to be considering, because this goes back to the earlier comments of if you're using price as your only measure for this part of the building process, then for sure you're gonna come up with a pretty crappy product.

Mm-hmm. Right. People say to us all the time, like, oh, wool insulation, that must be really expensive. Well, how expensive are we? We are in a box of insulation costs where fiberglass and cellulose would be on the low end wool and closed cell foam would be on the high end, neck and neck. Right. And a lot of that is because we haven't changed our pricing over the years, and everyone else has been increasing their pricing as demand for their products goes up, which is totally natural.

It's closed the gap for us. And so now it's like, okay, what's the delta? Well, it used to be probably three times more expensive than the cheap stuff. I'd say we're down to two times, and in the last 10 years, we've really seen rock wool come into the market in the US in a major way. And a lot of instances we're priced the same.

Were cheaper than rock wolf.

[00:34:01] Lisa Beres: Oh, wow.

[00:34:02] Andrew W. Legge: And we're way outperforming. We are crushing in the sustainability conversation.

[00:34:08] Lisa Beres: Nice. Wow. Way to go. Bravo. How often would fiberglass get loose and travel through the HVAC system? I've heard stories. We've had clients call in and say, I've got fiberglass coming outta my vents.

Or is that the insulation in the attic that's getting

[00:34:25] Andrew W. Legge: the roof that's getting well? So it depends upon where that stuff is loose. Where air is moving and how it's moving. And obviously in older homes it's probably loose everywhere and there's probably air everywhere, right? So that somebody would do well to give that some attention.

There's another really scary little known fact here, and this is more commercial construction, but more and more we see that exposed ducting. You know, we've gone away from these drop ceilings and we go all the way up now and we see exposed ducting. Guess what? That stuff's insulated on the inside with fiberglass.

[00:34:59] Lisa Beres: Right. Okay. You know, I wondered that when I look at it, because Yeah, yeah. You don't really have a lot of protection. Right. What is the material on the outside? Is it just like an aluminum?

[00:35:09] Andrew W. Legge: Yeah, it's just metal. And so it's getting insulated for sound and efficiency, but it's getting insulated with fiberglass and a lot of people don't know that.

And so where's that particulate going? It's in the air. In the

[00:35:19] Lisa Beres: air, right. So

[00:35:21] Andrew W. Legge: I'm not gonna name the firm for long as we'd like to be, but we are. Talking to a global a and e firm about using wool to replace fiberglass in, oh,

[00:35:31] Lisa Beres: well I, that seems like a no brainer.

[00:35:33] Andrew W. Legge: Yeah, that really is exactly, feels like a no brainer.

[00:35:36] Lisa Beres: That's a no brainer. Yeah.

[00:35:37] Ron Beres: Another question, going back to natural wool. Are there different grades of wool, like for example. New Zealand sheep are the best or different types of sheep that produce a higher quality wool?

[00:35:47] Andrew W. Legge: Really good question. There are different sheep that produce different types of wool.

You guys will be familiar with merino wool. That's the stuff that we wear. Oh, that comes from a merino sheep. The big difference here is micron level, and that's ultimately what that means is like how coarse or how soft is the fiber, and so Marino, which you're comfortable with that on your skin. Kinda 16 to 19 micron.

We're up in the course world, world of like 34 to 36 micron. So like I can take our stuff. Nobody will see this, but I'll show it to you guys.

[00:36:24] Lisa Beres: You're missing Andrew's artwork in the back. Very incredible. I can take

[00:36:27] Andrew W. Legge: our stuff and rub it on my face. I can leave it here. You know, it's totally fine. But this is kind of like when we were kids and like we a

[00:36:36] Lisa Beres: pillow.

[00:36:37] Andrew W. Legge: We thought we were allergic to wool. Right? It's because we were wearing coarse wool. We weren't allergic to wool.

[00:36:43] Lisa Beres: Oh, is that it? Fibers were just stickiness,

[00:36:45] Andrew W. Legge: right?

[00:36:46] Lisa Beres: Oh, I have a sweater. Yeah, I have a white sweater.

[00:36:48] Andrew W. Legge: We weren't wearing wool in those days, but now we deal with this a lot. People think that they're allergic to wool and they're not most of the time.

So we'll send 'em a sample and they can tolerate it, and we'll also ask them about Marino. We will. Ah, I always wonder what that was, which is much softer and therefore, you know, it doesn't bother

[00:37:06] Lisa Beres: ah learning. Oh, thank you for that. Yeah, that was great. Yeah. Okay, so when homeowners or renovators are looking for healthier materials, are there certifications or labels they should be looking for?

[00:37:19] Andrew W. Legge: That's a really tough question. I'm sorry. I've got a bit of a bias here. I think a lot of certifications start for the right reasons, and I think they end up in the wrong places a lot of times.

[00:37:33] Lisa Beres: Oh yeah. We see it all the time in home goods. Consumer goods. Yeah. Yeah. So like

[00:37:38] Andrew W. Legge: the Living Future Institute in Seattle, I.

Came out with, you know, a really cool standard to build against. And then they got into sort of the living product challenge and they gave the first award to Owens Corning. And like that's a perfect example of what happened. Like that organization started for all the right reasons. And then these huge organizations that frankly have a lot to lose.

Like what happens, they hijack the standard. So look, I mean, are there lots of groups out there like trying to do better and do great things? I mean, the environmental product declaration is important. Lifecycle analysis is important, but again, it gets hijacked and people get confused by marketing departments.

You can go into certain databases and you can find that some fiberglass ins, installations that have a better environmental product declaration than wool insulation.

[00:38:34] Lisa Beres: Oh, right. Yeah. That's

[00:38:35] Andrew W. Legge: absurd, right? Like it just shouldn't be that way. And so a lot of what we do is ask people to use their brain, like take a common sense approach to things.

You know, rock wool will say, Hey, we save more energy than we use. Well, that's great if you're comparing yourself to yourself. Right. But like, right. What if you didn't use rock wool? What if you used or cellulose? Right.

[00:39:02] Lisa Beres: Or

[00:39:03] Andrew W. Legge: real wool. Right. A huge difference. You know, one of the big things that was a challenge for us when we went through our EPD process is you get credit for the biogenic carbon capture that.

Is party two, like we, we'll sequester 525,000 tons of atmosphere derived carbon every year. Do you get credit for that or not? Right. And we went through our EPD process and the people who took us through us didn't tell us until the end when it was all over that they didn't give us any credit for biogenic carbon capture.

That seems like an easy thing should have been discussed, not missed. But again, it's sort of that industry like let's drive these guys. So it's really hard not to be skeptical. Like I don't like sounding defensive, but it is hard to be the little guy when you're playing with multi-billion dollar organizations that have a lot to lose.

Like they don't make it easy for the natural alternative. Probably better product.

[00:39:59] Lisa Beres: Yeah. Ron and I were just having this conversation yesterday because there's something we were purchasing, which just like a million things. That they start off and you love this product and you're like, oh my God, this is the most amazing dot, dot, dot fill in the blank.

And then over time you start noticing, God this, you know, this material, let's say it's a pair of clothing, which I think we were talking about, this material doesn't feel as good as it used to. Are they chinsing out on the material itself or the construction of it or whatever? And then little by little, it's not what it started as, and it's not what people fell in love with.

But I even said this to you, Ryan, yesterday. At the end of the day, they're corporations and they answer to their shareholders. And they have to keep making profit and at some point, right, to start cutting, cutting, cutting. Or they don't have to, but they do. This is what they do. And then the consumer gets chipped in that process because I don't know, I've, you've exper I've experienced that a lot.

[00:40:49] Andrew W. Legge: A hundred percent. And that's where again, we're like, look, make informed decisions. Do your homework, take time. He's quip like, don't put your installation installer in charge of your health. Same thing goes for your builder, right? Like it's amazing the way that trade work. People call us all the time, they're like, I really wanna use your stuff.

And they learn and you know, we give them education and talking points and like. Let me go ask my builder if it's okay, and you know

[00:41:13] Lisa Beres: if it's okay. You're paying them. Yeah.

[00:41:16] Andrew W. Legge: Like you're writing a check and you're living here for a long time. Like, what do you mean? You're gonna ask if it's okay, like how can be respectful of the process, but like get what you want in your house.

[00:41:27] Lisa Beres: Yeah. Do you guys offer training to builders?

[00:41:30] Andrew W. Legge: We offer. Training to installers if anybody wants to come here. Oh, okay. We try to do a ton of work on YouTube for instructional videos for anyone. Oh, that, that's

[00:41:40] Lisa Beres: very helpful. Yeah. For

[00:41:41] Andrew W. Legge: anybody that wants to use our stuff. It really gets down to how do you cut your installation?

Right. And we try to push those videos out all over the place. So people, that's great.

[00:41:51] Lisa Beres: Yeah.

[00:41:51] Andrew W. Legge: And ours is, frankly, easy to cut, and that's always the issue for any installer, whether it's a DIY or a pro is like. How hard is it to cut this stuff? And you have to make it something that they're willing to work with,

[00:42:05] Lisa Beres: that they're willing to do.

That's great. And you brought up a good point about the installers, Andrew, because I'm thinking, are these people properly suited up with their masks, you know, or do you see a lot of people out? No. No installing fiberglass insulation with no masks, no protective gear. You have

[00:42:22] Andrew W. Legge: to be with foam. I've heard stories, I forget.

They called it, forget what they called it in the early days of foam, where guys would literally go blind.

[00:42:29] Lisa Beres: Oh,

[00:42:30] Andrew W. Legge: that's from spraying. There's a couple of insulation installers we used to deal with in the Bay Area, and they would talk about that as so sad as early adopters. Wow. That stuff you can't mess around with, like you have to be suited up.

Yeah. Fiberglass, you should be. But if you go to most job sites where people are installing it. Ah, the guys they're just used. Yeah, because

[00:42:47] Lisa Beres: this, we watch H-G-H-G-T-V-A lot. I notice like they'll demo these houses and they're not wearing anything. I mean, lot I know they don't even have a mat, like a simple N95, you know?

Gotcha. It's so sad and like these people are working hard to make your home beautiful. In that case. Toxic, right? But they need to be protecting themselves. If you're a contractor and you're listening, please like. Don't mess around with this. Yeah. This is the health of you, your employees, you know? Yeah.

Usually hard working people.

[00:43:19] Ron Beres: Yeah.

[00:43:19] Lisa Beres: It's a pet peeve,

[00:43:21] Ron Beres: please. A pet peeve. One final question. Can you share any project examples or healthy insulation made a noticeable difference in the family's wellbeing?

[00:43:32] Andrew W. Legge: I mean, I would point you to the refrigerator in the back of my office where we have handwritten notes from people that say, thank you for doing what you do.

Wow. And you know, that's a real badge of honor for us, but that's not the question you asked. We do a lot of work in the chemically sensitive space. The first thing that came to mind when you asked that question is there was a family in, I think they were in Idaho. And frankly, like we've done thousands of jobs.

I'm happy to say at this point. So like I. I don't know them all, but this is one where literally the chemical sensitivity had gotten so high with one of the kids that they had to move outta their house, build a new house, and you know, this is not a wealthy family, but they didn't have a choice. They had to put in the garage, like basically a full bathroom, clean room area.

So. Anybody going into the house had to stop there and shower first. Ah whoa. Before they could go into the house and they had ordered 11 pallets of cotton insulation thinking that it would be okay. It arrived on the job site. Everything had to walk past the daughter that had these challenges and see if there was a sensitivity to it, and for sure it couldn't be tolerated.

They called us in a panic. We overnighted a sample. Our stuff was tolerated. And so a few days later, 11 pallets showed up to replace the cotton insulation and we're in that house and there's never been a problem since. Oh, that's fantastic. Great story. That happens a lot in that chemically sensitive group, which is a very real thing.

[00:45:05] Lisa Beres: A growing group. Yeah.

[00:45:07] Andrew W. Legge: Yeah. And like we're really proud to be able to be helpful to those people 'cause they've got a lot to deal with. And if we're one part of a solution, that obviously makes us feel great.

[00:45:18] Lisa Beres: Well, kudos, kudos. Kudos to you and for the work that you do. It's so important. It is so important.

I was thinking when we were talking how like disposable clothing, disposable housing, you know, things have become so like low quality that everything's just feels disposable in society. Disposable containers, everything's disposable. We just really need to get back to living, you know, in harmony with the land and the animals and using products that are gonna sustain and last, like they used to build way back in the day.

You know, they built the beautiful structures that we all traveled to Europe to see, well, they weren't built cheap, they took time and they were built with artistry and care and love and you know, we need to get back to that and have these houses stay around, you know, and be passed down from generation to generation.

So.

[00:46:09] Andrew W. Legge: Couldn't agree more.

[00:46:10] Lisa Beres: Yeah. Alright. All right. Anything else you'd like to leave listeners with?

[00:46:13] Andrew W. Legge: No, I think that I'll reiterate something which is this is your home and you know, whether you're building it from the ground up or you're remodeling it, take your time, do your homework. Realize that the trade is unfortunately not really there to help you.

It wants to go fast, it wants to get the job done. It wants you to be happy, but it really wants to get you off the list and onto the next job because that's kind of the way the industry works. There's a lot of gaps around quality. Around material selection and so we just always try to encourage people, take your time, make informed decisions, and get what you want, irrespective of what that looks like.

It's your house and you have the opportunity to make those decisions, so make 'em

[00:47:03] Lisa Beres: and compromise. You can build, like we interviewed someone about. Smaller houses, smaller houses, healthier living. You know, we don't all need to be living in McMansions. And there's where areas you could trade for healthier materials, you know, and work within your budget still and make healthier decisions.

So I'd say

[00:47:21] Andrew W. Legge: a thousand percent we're usually not in the conversation early enough. And so this can go out to your architect listeners, like rather than. 3000 square feet, build 2,500 or 2,400 or 2200, use the savings and spend it on better materials.

[00:47:36] Lisa Beres: Yeah, better materials. Right. I agree with that. Well said.

Andrew, thank you so much. Thank you for being here today. Thank you guys. Yeah, this was fun. Friends. To learn more about the incredible benefits of wool insulation, head over to havelock wool.com and that's H-A-V-E-L-O-C-K-W-O-O-L. Dot com.

[00:47:59] Ron Beres: Also be sure to head over to healthy home hacks.com for all the links and show notes.

And as always, we appreciate you subscribing to the Healthy Home Hacks podcast and leaving a review. Five stars are always appreciated. If you find our show useful or just plain entertaining, make sure to give us five stars. Until next time, stay healthy. Thank you, Andrew. Stay healthy. Thank you guys. See you.

Thanks, Andrew.

[00:48:24] Andrew W. Legge: Cheers. Bye.

[00:48:26] Narrator: This episode of the Healthy Home Hacks podcast has ended. But be sure to subscribe for more healthy living strategies and tactics to help you create the healthy home you've always dreamed of. And don't forget to rate and review so we can continue to bring you the best content.

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