SmartTranscript of House General - 2025-02-14 - 11:35AM

[Chair Mark Mihaly]: Kevin, this will introduce ourselves and You're welcome. Thank you very much. Welcome, everybody. Welcome back to the House General and Housing Committee. And it is still Friday, February fourteenth, Valentine's Day. Our witness is at this late this morning. It's Kevin Moyer from Vermont Frames. Kevin, I think I'm gonna ask the committee to introduce itself to you. [Vice Chair Ashley Bartley]: I'm Ashley Bartley. I serve Fairfax in the majority of Georgia. Dodge, Essex Town, and City of Essex Junction. [Member Tom Charlton]: Tom Charlton, Athens, Chester, Grafton, and Wyndham. [Member Mary Howard]: I'm Mary Howard. I resent I represent Rutland City District six. Hi. I'm Elizabeth Burrows, and I represent Windsor one, which is Heartland West Windsor in New York. Hi. Emily Brosno, South Burlington Chittendenine. [Chair Mark Mihaly]: Welcome. I'm Mark Mahali. I represent Kalas, Plainfield, and Marshfield. And take it away. Tell us who you are and what you wanna tell us. Sure. [Witness Kevin Moyer]: Thank you very much for having me. My name is Kevin Moyer. As you said, I own, Vermont Frames and then a second company, Faux Laminate in Vermont. Together, those two companies design, fabricate, and install about fifty to sixty homes a year across Maine to New Jersey. Typically we are designing a timber frame and closing it with our panels and our crew is showing up with our own crane to put it all up. And we work as a subcontractor with builders and architects and general contractors to do mostly residential, some commercial work. So what I was asked to come here today to talk to you about is a concept that we've started to sketch out, and you've got copies of it there in front of you of homes that could be built out of SIPs. What's a SIP? A SIP is think of an ice cream sandwich. You got a foam core and then two structural grade boards, plywood boards, glued to it under heat and pressure. What that creates is your external shell for your building, whether it's a home, a barn, a restaurant, a school, whatever. And the reason those are cool is because they are all built off-site. We've heard from other folks at other my home manufacturers. I I know Jason at Huntington owns. He's awesome, and his process is pretty phenomenal. We got a tool from him. This is a different kind of a system. As that picture kind of there, you can see Our panels, I jokingly refer to them as adult LEGO kits. They go together as eight by four, four by ten, or four by twelve panels. We can build panels up to eight foot by twenty four foot. They can be easily transported on trailers, tractor trailers, trucks, don't require flagging and police escorts to get them over because they're not super wide. So you can get them into lots of places, and then we can typically put a home up. And by that, I mean walls and roof panels. So it looks like what you're seeing here on about a week, sometimes less if it's a small home. Bigger homes can take two. [Chair Mark Mihaly]: Do the panels have connectors? They do. They do. [Witness Kevin Moyer]: So I will show you here under products. I don't know if you all can see this. See, Internet is you go. So this is kind of what we're talk this is what we're talking about here. Yes. So roof panels tend to be thicker than wall panels. You use most of your heat through your roof, so that gets thicker. They do join together with splines on the sides. You're mechanically fascinating those splines every eight inches. And then there's a keyway of the hollow point in the middle of that joint where you are inserting spray foam and sealing that up. And so what that gets you to is a an enclosure that can get if you're familiar with what a blower door test is to measure the air tightness of the home, you're typically getting under two ACH fifty panels, whereas all of us, I think, is below five now. This meeting code, it might be below seven. I have to check the Steve Spats. I'm sure you know efficiency Vermont, pretty people there too. So that's kind of what panels are and and what, you know, one other way we can try to address housing prices in Vermont. Where is your faction? Starchborough, Vermont, Madison Cash. [Member Mary Howard]: And I believe he's offered tours if we have our own. [Witness Kevin Moyer]: I would absolutely love to give you all tours. [Vice Chair Ashley Bartley]: Do you Sorry. [Chair Mark Mihaly]: Please go ahead. [Vice Chair Ashley Bartley]: Do you ever just do, like, like, do you do renovations to winterize homes that aren't already built with this? [Witness Kevin Moyer]: You can certainly A roof or Yeah. A roof. You can take a roof off and replace it with roof ships. You take it a lot of times, it's an addition, really. That's what we're seeing. He's used for more than renovations. Yes. [Vice Chair Ashley Bartley]: And have you worked with affordable housing, like, developers? [Witness Kevin Moyer]: We're talking to some right now about how we can be you know, this is not the, the full scope of the home. Right? There's still one dozen doors and roofing. All the rest of it is kind of, like, Cheerios are part of a complete breakfast. Mhmm. SIPs can be a part of a complete home assembly that gets you a very energy efficient building enclosure that goes up really quickly. Do do you have a question? [Vice Chair Ashley Bartley]: I do. So it sounds like you're kind of all over our region. What state do you build most in? Is it Vermont? For sure. Yeah. What would you say your biggest pain point is in Vermont? [Witness Kevin Moyer]: So, it's hard to pick which one's the biggest. There's trouble. [Chair Mark Mihaly]: I'll hear all of them. [Witness Kevin Moyer]: Thank you for asking. Certainly, workforce and finding good people, retaining good people, and then also working with the state to work through the inherent seasonality. We all love living in Vermont. Big part of that is winters up here, but concrete doesn't cure very well below freezing, which means we run out of foundations to build on often in the wintertime, and I'm in a position where I don't have a lot of work for my folks. And I hate that, but it's reality of winter and construction. So that seasonality, and we certainly we struggle to work with unemployment insurance sometimes, and there's a lack of understanding on that side. These would be us, and I'm trying to take good care of my folks and make sure they have some amount of income stream to pay rent mortgages and put groceries on the table for them. So that that is certainly a challenge. [Chair Mark Mihaly]: When you say seasonality so I just wanna tease that apart. You're talking about where for one reason or another, permit or otherwise, you're unable to to build enough basements or foundations to take you through the winter. Exactly. [Witness Kevin Moyer]: Yeah. And it's usually not a permitting thing, but that does come into play. It's usually just a a wet purely a weather thing. And every month season in the spring can kick our butt because concrete trucks can't get to a job site. In fact, trailers can't get to a job site. So that also posted roads and all that can be a challenge. I don't know if it's in scope for you guys to talk to road commissioners in towns and lean on them. Like, hey. If this is involving residential, maybe you offer some waivers and you eat the pain on rebuilding your dirt roads so we can get more housing in New Vermont. I don't know. [Member Mary Howard]: And you talked about just now about, unemployment insurance just so that I have this clear in my mind. So you have a three season workforce [Witness Kevin Moyer]: and Nine, ten months of year. Yeah. What's that? Nine, ten months of year. Yeah. [Member Mary Howard]: Okay. Just like, you know, we have with the species, you know, the same reverse. Yeah. But, so when you talk about unemployment insurance, you're talking about unemployment insurance to carry those very same employees through to the next season so they'll re up with you when the time comes? Okay. [Witness Kevin Moyer]: And I say this as an employer, I'm willing to pay more into a CTA to help make that viable, but, sixty percent unemployment is not great. That was something back when housing was thirty to forty percent of gross income. Housing is now forty to fifty to sixty percent of gross income. That does not mean to lock up for work, and you're only making sixty percent of your regular paycheck for six to ten weeks. Now it's my job as an employer to line up. They work for them and to keep them fed and and busy as much as possible. But in a battle against physics and nature, I'm gonna lose. So I yeah. Probably, there's there's no foundations to build up. I can't show up at panels and put a house on dirt. [Member Mary Howard]: So so how how does that ultimately affect your your workforce? [Witness Kevin Moyer]: Can you I am very lucky that I've got some really good people who are loyal to us, and I haven't asked anybody yet over this, but I do worry about it. [Member Mary Howard]: Do you pair with us, Steve? That's right. [Witness Kevin Moyer]: I'm working on getting some intros, which is exactly that. And, seriously, yes, let let some folks out. But, again, they gotta they gotta wanna do [Chair Mark Mihaly]: it too. I can't force them. Yeah. [Witness Kevin Moyer]: So Thank you. Yeah. Good question. Okay. Oh. [Member Mary Howard]: The foam that is insulation, is it the same foam that is that they fill, like, acts with? Great. [Witness Kevin Moyer]: Yeah. I did a question. So that is spray foam and usually closed cell spray foam. That is a different kind of foam. This is expanded polystyrene at a structural grade. So it is effectively styrofoam like your Dunkin' Donuts cup used to be, but at a much higher quality. The factory that we get it from makes it to whatever density we require, but we're usually doing one pound foams and one pound per cubic foot. And it is not just insulation. It unlike spray foam, which is just insulation, this actually acts as a structural webbing. So if you've driven under a bridge and you've seen a steel I beam and you got two flanges and then a piece of an I, right, that flange that that connector in the middle that connects the two flanges and that's what makes that member very rigid. Similar concept with the SIP. That foam in the middle is holding those two boards together and makes them extremely strong. So our six and a half inch thick wall is our standard, and that's meant to accept the two by six if you need to insert that to put a window or a door frame. That six and a half inch wall, so if there's a strong in compression, it's a two by ten stud wall. So really, really strong. [Vice Chair Ashley Bartley]: So you can build studless [Witness Kevin Moyer]: Yeah. That and what you're looking at, like, this is your, like, gravity, like, snow load, dead load bearing wall, and and ditto for the roof as well. There is some requirement to put in to catch certain point loads of dimensional lumber in certain key places. But the real advantage here is, yeah, the strength of the continuous installation. A lot of people just compare our values, but, the fact that you're basically wrapping your structure in a continuous blanket of insulation that has almost no thermal bridging dramatically improves the overall performance of the house. [Member Mary Howard]: You know, structure And there's no issue with chemicals? Fully off gassed at the factory. [Witness Kevin Moyer]: You can no clear series. The the glue we use to join them is is very safe. It was old in decades ago. There were other glues that were used. We've moved away from those, and now this is very safe. It's like Gorilla Glue if you buy that at Home Depot. Like, I wouldn't drink it, but you're fine. [Member Mary Howard]: I believe there is a, a house that, was built in the neighborhood across from where I live, and Habitat for Humanity built it. And I believe it was the phone. And I was kinda concerned because I have a trilosec of work. [Member Tom Charlton]: You look at it and [Witness Kevin Moyer]: you're like, how can this stand up? But it's amazing when you when you join two rigid boards together, you know, you get into structural engineering as you hold those two things together. Any forces that compress tension, torque, you know, any kind of racking forces that hit that, it's kinda they're gonna use it. They're gonna lean [Member Mary Howard]: on each other and resist that very, very strong. And and this photo Yeah. Approximately, how much would this house cost? [Witness Kevin Moyer]: The goal and and so I gotta be very careful that we're subcontractor. I don't do Uh-huh. For living floor windows and doors. I don't do cabinetry and plumbing. So our scope for that would be somewhere around sixty thousand dollars including installation. So we show up and there's a slab on grade foundation, and I'm talking to three or four builders that I know to try to get that exact those data points together, but I gotta be careful. I don't step on other people's toes and prod [Chair Mark Mihaly]: them my swim lane. Let's let's so this some of us have been just shown a picture of what's called Irish [Vice Chair Ashley Bartley]: Irish Hills. [Chair Mark Mihaly]: Irish Hills. That's right. [Vice Chair Ashley Bartley]: I love that. I love that Spanish pronunciation in your [Member Mary Howard]: head. Hills, [Chair Mark Mihaly]: which do you have what we have on your PowerPoint? [Witness Kevin Moyer]: I I don't have a PowerPoint for you, but I can absolutely send you that as a people. [Chair Mark Mihaly]: I'm concerned about people who are just watching on this. But but, yeah, I wanna talk to us and [Member Tom Charlton]: share, I guess. [Member Mary Howard]: Joe's got you. Yeah. [Witness Kevin Moyer]: Right. So you know what I'll do? I well, I don't know if I'm gonna be able to get on my server remote here. My laptop's not playing ball here. It's moving a little bit slow. Let's see here. I might be able to pull it up really quick and show you here we go. Let me change my screen share here so the people watching can see if I'll keep it running that out. [Chair Mark Mihaly]: Yeah. And when you're when you get it up, tell us that it's there. [Member Mary Howard]: Oh, yeah. Perfect. [Chair Mark Mihaly]: So you wanna tell us about this and what it is? [Witness Kevin Moyer]: So, yeah, we we we asked ourselves a question, how can we build how could we be part of helping to build energy efficient affordable housing in Vermont that takes advantage of the strengths of panels. So you'll notice that this house is twenty four feet by forty feet. That's because our roof sits can spin up to twelve feet. And so by putting a ridge in here, you're landing two roof sets together and you're just you're minimizing how much work it takes. There's a lot of things in design where people can draw cool stuff and you're like, oh, yeah, that looks awesome. And you don't realize that you just said yes to a twenty five thousand dollars upgrade to your home. So it's a nice, simple box. It's geometrically simple that benefits buildability. It benefits cost. It benefits maintain maintenance. From a weather and from a building science perspective, simple shapes stand up better and don't leak as much energy. [Member Mary Howard]: I noticed it's mostly a flat roof. [Witness Kevin Moyer]: Shed roofs are simpler. Yeah. [Member Mary Howard]: Yeah. No. But flat roofs in Vermont, which is tilted. Tilted. Very. [Vice Chair Ashley Bartley]: Well [Witness Kevin Moyer]: And that and so we put that And [Vice Chair Ashley Bartley]: that it's not like a low pitch. It's a gas. [Member Mary Howard]: I see that up here. [Witness Kevin Moyer]: Yeah. It's a four pitch roof, specifically to shed snow. [Vice Chair Ashley Bartley]: Okay. [Witness Kevin Moyer]: Yeah. Yeah. We did we think about that stuff too. Right? Yeah. You don't want snow building up and processing. [Member Mary Howard]: Right. [Witness Kevin Moyer]: It's a great point. Yeah. You don't there's some minimum And and if you go super shallow, then you've gotta put more structural members into the roof, and now you're just taking cost up. So we again, in a lot of smart point, like, trying as much as possible to design this thing in a manner that it is buildable, that it is not ugly, that it's pretty that's like, I would wanna live in this. You know? Me too. Yeah. It's a nice house. [Member Mary Howard]: And my son's lot. Yes. Oh, yeah. Right. [Chair Mark Mihaly]: So this is three bedroom. [Witness Kevin Moyer]: This is two bedroom. The point that we made to do here was design it with some natural expansion points. So whether that's it taking this hallway down here further and putting a third bedroom on the back, this is you you know, or whether it's putting a deck on the side or a garage out on the side. This is a very expandable home in the future. So ten years down the road, you have another hundred thousand dollars to put into your house. You can go do that addition and make it, you know, more more space for your growing family. Okay. Yeah. Go ahead, Linda. [Chair Mark Mihaly]: Can I [Vice Chair Ashley Bartley]: ask so this to achieve the same goals of an insulated, you know, load bearing construction, your sixty thousand, how does it compare in terms of, like are we are we seeing this as a path to massive savings, or is it just comparable? Is it just more efficient somehow? Is it you're building faster but not necessarily cheaper? [Witness Kevin Moyer]: I think it's the last point you said. It's gonna be about the same on cost, and the difference is the makeup of that cost is gonna be higher on the material and lower on the labor [Vice Chair Ashley Bartley]: Got it. [Witness Kevin Moyer]: Versus on-site labor. It's hard especially when you you talk to builders, it is harder every year to find people who could show up when it's nineteen degrees outside like it is over now and put together a house in the cold with these panels. They're all being made in a heated tractor in Starsboro, and then they're showing up and they're going together in another days very quickly on-site. And it is a skilled job to put these together, which is is great because we want skilled labor. There is some know how. It it matters a lot that you seal these up tightly. So we get better and better about sealing up homes. You hear all these horror stories of mold and all of that. Yep. And Vermont code requires, and then this thing has space for here in the mechanical room, the HRV, the heat recovery ventilation system. That's a that's a must have, not a want in a house because this is gonna seal up really tight. We talked about two ACH fifty two air changes per hour because this is gonna seal up so well. But that means you gotta mechanically validate that so that you're exchanging that air and not building up moisture. [Chair Mark Mihaly]: Do you let's go back to the problem of assembling a house in the winter. Yep. When you've come to let's say there's a foundation and you come to the site. When you're done, the four walls and the wind and the roof are there. Is that correct? Yep. So this is [Witness Kevin Moyer]: a picture. Let me share back to the in the site. So if I go to project gallery. Yeah. Peter's struggling. I apologize. Can you both see this? Yeah. Here we go. So this is an example of the house we did with just wall sips, and then they did conventional trusses and then regular roofing, and they did spray and foam for the roof. But that those those walls for that two story home went up in a few days. So it's really like a LEGO kit. I mean, it it goes together, like, super fast. [Chair Mark Mihaly]: So when you've done that, what there is is that it's not contained in the sense there's no windows. But otherwise, it's an indoor space. Yes. Yeah. It would be a little warmer. A a little the wind is not as strong and but, otherwise, people can go in and do they can do the interior walls. They can do the windows. They can do the electrical plumbing, etcetera, etcetera. [Witness Kevin Moyer]: That's a subtle but important point when you're trying to attract electricians have more work than they know what to do with did over plumbers and everybody else. If you're the homeowner or the builder who's got a shelf that you can eat with a space heater, like, one space heater will eat that whole thing and get it up to forty five degrees. They wanna come to your job in February. You know? It's serious. Like, they're choosing between working outdoors or working in in an indoor space effectively. Yeah. So those those wall and door, rough openings, we cut those in our factory if desired. If it doesn't make sense because it's gonna be your window supplier says, hey. I can't get you in four more weeks. Great. We will not cut those rough openings, and then we'll just build the whole box with one opening so you can get into it. Then the on-site, they can cut those as well. So it's a little bit on the spectrum from fully building from scratch, like conventional stick building all the way through to, like, what Huntington Homes is doing, which is awesome, which is showing up as modules fully painted other things in. We're somewhere in the middle. Right? So still off-site construction, but a little bit more on-site modifiable than a fully built modular home, but still gaining a lot of of the gains there are to get by having made all these panels off-site, and speeding up that on-site assembly. [Chair Mark Mihaly]: Is the Irish Homes concept who who whose concept is this? [Witness Kevin Moyer]: This is ours, and it is still an initial concept. We frankly, this is an opportunity. I'm I'm glad to be here today that you all are catching us at a point where this is still kinda in the oven and still being Right. Developed. Right? [Chair Mark Mihaly]: This But it's it's go it's the middle of This this is the Irish show. [Member Mary Howard]: Built, but this is This [Chair Mark Mihaly]: is yeah. I understand. But this the the Irish Hills concept answers the question from a panel point of view, what is the most efficient way we can build a two bedroom house? Exactly. Is have has this been taken to anybody and or VHCB or VHFA or anybody else to look at? [Witness Kevin Moyer]: Taking it to efficiency Vermont. C SPATS has looked at it over there and several others have taken it to associated general contractors and are showing it to other developers and and builders in in that regard. Yeah. Absolutely. We haven't built it yet because it's been drawn for a month. Right. We hope to build a lot of things like this, and it doesn't have to be this design. It doesn't even have to be us, but this is just I I wanted to put one more tool in in everybody's toolbox for how we get more housing built. And, frankly, this wasn't meant to be a sales pitch on on panels so much. It's just how do we get more stuff built in Vermont in general. [Chair Mark Mihaly]: Is this do you do you think that there are economies of scale that are particularly relevant for you Yes. In the sense that if someone said, I want fifty of these homes and you were manufacturing the panels, would they be less expensive? [Witness Kevin Moyer]: Significantly. Yeah. I would probably take five to ten percent cost down to the to the homeowner on our portion, but I can't speak to the concrete. Right. Because the concrete, there's not I mean, there's some efficiencies to gain in some of those aspects. But, yeah, once you get a crew into the motion and they know they're both stamping out the same thing, I mean, our our company is mostly configured around building custom homes. We've almost never built the same timber frame and SIPs package twice, which is fun for a lot of workers who wanna get creative and enjoy a different challenge every day. But from a operational efficiency perspective, boy, do we get a lot more efficient when we are stamping out the exact same package to the tune of fifty or five hundred houses? Yes. Please. [Vice Chair Ashley Bartley]: I was just wondering whether do you have did you say that you do or you do not really have a limitation in terms of, like, stackability or, you know, like, can you do a multiunit dwelling, like a two story, [Witness Kevin Moyer]: four story? Yep. We can build panels up to twenty four foot tall and eight foot wide. [Chair Mark Mihaly]: Okay. So that's [Witness Kevin Moyer]: And we do for those homes. We have a third party structural engineer right here in Richmond, so much trade, all that great. And we will have a structural engineer evaluate our plans and stamp them or make modifications as required to think about snow loads, all the dead loads, all the the wind shear, all that stuff to make sure that, the structure is gonna stand up. [Chair Mark Mihaly]: It would seem to me that you could theoretically build any size structure as [Witness Kevin Moyer]: sheathing. The structure of sheathing and insulation all in one. Yeah. All of a sudden. Trips around the house to do framing and then sheathing and then insulation. It's like you put all this together and move [Chair Mark Mihaly]: Yeah. [Witness Kevin Moyer]: And it just stands up. [Member Tom Charlton]: Please. So could you comment on on the the accuracy and structural strength of these panels relative to stick framing whether it's on-site or off? [Witness Kevin Moyer]: Yeah. So the the wall tips, the wall panels are stronger than a two by six stud wall equivalent. They are as strong as a two by ten stud wall in compression from a wind or an extreme weather perspective. So we have on our website, you can get it for free. There's an engineering code report. We sent these panels to be destructively tested in a lab. They shoot two by fours at it at seventy five miles an hour to simulate a hurricane strike, and the two by four does not penetrate the wall because you've got all that dense foam in there in the panels. It's it's pretty impressive. We have clients who've sent these kits to in Minnesota, also a pretty cold state, and we got a testimonial back from them. They said it it's eight o'clock in the morning. Our heat is just shut off. It's February. It's four degrees outside, and the heater will not come back on until six PM because the house will be warm enough off of solar being from the windows. Okay. Kinda nice. But you're talking, like, heating something like that for a hundred, maybe two hundred bucks a month compared to six hundred bucks I hear people spend in that person. I mean, it's and so that's another point I wanted to make was it's not just about cost to build. It's cost to maintain and operate. Right? By by going this route, you massively save the homeowner or whoever's gonna live in that the rest of the life of the structure. You're gonna save them a ton of money heating and cooling that space. And especially if you get hotter summers and colder winters, that's gonna make a huge difference for a a family on a budget. I I [Member Tom Charlton]: remember a story about a tornado. There was a [Witness Kevin Moyer]: home there was a SIP home out in the Midwest that got picked up by a tornado and thrown two hundred yards. The entire structure flew and landed intact on the ground. Did not crumble like a house approach, which is like a solid wall. Because you're all those wall I'm not showing my screen again. All those panels that have joined I can get Zoom to come back up. I can try to am I screen sharing? No. I'm not. How do I get there we go. Back to this. So go back to [Chair Mark Mihaly]: here. [Witness Kevin Moyer]: Yeah. Here we go. Are you thinking about going somewhere? Yeah. There we go. So talk about that connection detail. SIPs together. It's not a great diagram on this one. But Yeah. That could be very small. Yeah. You're using dimensional lumber in the corners there. And then to join the sips on the sides, you're using two pieces of seven sixteenths board as splines as basically just rip them, cut them down into four inch wide strips that sit inside the wall on both sides, and you're fastening on both sides of that every eight inches. The point being you've got a ridiculously strong mechanical connection holding all these panels together, so they're very, very rigid. [Vice Chair Ashley Bartley]: And the insulation's on the outside of one. It's it's contained. Yeah. [Chair Mark Mihaly]: It's in the it's in the middle. [Vice Chair Ashley Bartley]: The insulation on the app. Oh. Yeah. The the joint is [Chair Mark Mihaly]: insulation, plywood, the spline is in the middle. [Vice Chair Ashley Bartley]: Oh, I thought the bottom line is in [Witness Kevin Moyer]: the middle. It's It's it's on just on both the inner and outer facing of the of the Both inner. Sheathing. [Chair Mark Mihaly]: So it's a few two splines at every joint. Are you at one of Huntington Homes, for example, told us that they had a big backlog there at capacity. Are you at capacity? I I've got a [Witness Kevin Moyer]: little bit of spare capacity here. My my production teams can out produce what my install team can install, so I could probably ramp up production twenty to thirty percent. [Chair Mark Mihaly]: What is your install team here? It's so the install team is your I mean, I guess I would say bottleneck. Yes. Period constraints. Yeah. Exactly. So you would have to hire try to hire more installers, and that's still work. [Witness Kevin Moyer]: Yes. Yeah. Exactly. But I I could as kids. Like, I'm also we're great at training builders to get comfortable putting these together, so I don't need to build if you're gonna build twenty of them, I can show up and help you build the first two, and then you know how to do it. And we're just sending you panels, and you know how to put these together because you've done it. It's not rocket science, but it does take somebody who gets a darn and [Chair Mark Mihaly]: has attention detail to to spray foam all those seals correctly. What is the largest order largest repeatable I mean, largest number of foams in what order you've done? [Witness Kevin Moyer]: It's interesting question. I'd say, generally, we're doing just one off [Chair Mark Mihaly]: custom [Witness Kevin Moyer]: projects. From a SIS perspective, we've done roof systems. You've been okay. Good example is Shelburne Vineyard right over there in roof seven. That's our panels, that whole structure. [Chair Mark Mihaly]: Oh, okay. [Witness Kevin Moyer]: So if you've ever been inside of there, you've been inside of. [Chair Mark Mihaly]: There you go. [Witness Kevin Moyer]: That's us. So that's a pretty decent that's one. We've done some some other restaurants and barns and wedding venues, things like that that are pretty big. Yeah. I mean, you you can do a five hundred foot long roof in in these panels. There's really no limit. Right? [Chair Mark Mihaly]: Do commercial do you do commercial as well, like a factory? Or Yep. [Witness Kevin Moyer]: Absolutely. Steel steel warehouse and then put panels around it. Absolutely. Yeah. I would think that would be ideal. Yeah. It's it's really energy efficient. Yeah. They they often just go for fiber glass or cellulose insulation because it's fine. But if you're trying to do cold storage, go walk in cooler or a big refrigerator warehouse or something where you have a really big temperature gradient between the inside and the outside, whether you're heating or cooling or the other, it's really hard to beat a SIP. It's just so airtight. And I'd I'd also point out that, our values matter a lot, but airtightness trumps our values on overall building performance, heating and cooling. And the air tightness of how these things are joined together is darn near impossible to be with just about I I would be careful how I couch this, but there are very few other ways to build any kind of structure that are gonna compete with this on air tightness. Save a lot of money. I was gonna try and find you that spline detail really quick. I think I just saw where it was. There it is. Hopefully, this visual helps a little bit. So that's the spline right there. This is a top down view of two wall SIPs coming together. So you can see that right there. There's a spline there and a spline there on a roof sip. Generally, we're only doing a top spline. [Vice Chair Ashley Bartley]: So those are before it's all joined, and then the bottom is the okay. Yeah. So you still have all of the insulation. [Witness Kevin Moyer]: Exactly. Continuous insulation. There's a tiny cavity right there that you're drilling into three inches and then inserting a spray foam gun and you're filled Excessing in [Vice Chair Ashley Bartley]: any cavity. [Witness Kevin Moyer]: Exactly. And that that because you're still gonna have a sixteenth dimension, so that spray foam expands into that and seals that up really tight. Yeah. [Vice Chair Ashley Bartley]: Any pipes and electrical and all that, did you already go over that? [Witness Kevin Moyer]: I didn't good question. We definitely recommend keeping your wet walls to the interior, which would go into just regular partition walls in two by four, two by six. Your electrical, we would say put in your outside wall sips, and we can cut chases for those electrical systems at any height off the floor you want. So if you wanted it forty four inches for your kitchen cabinets to have electric electrical outlets. If you wanted it nineteen inches off the ground for your standard wall, that's great too. We can do two. We can do three, whatever you want. And then that makes it really easy for the electrician to shoot wires through the whole exterior envelope. So, again, going back to speed of construction. Yeah. So you you asked a question earlier, like, is this gonna save you a ton of money on building the home a little bit? Speed of construction is your real advantage here. It's gonna be about the same price, but you're gonna get it built months quicker, and you're gonna spend a lot less for the life of the home to heat and cool it or restaurant or whatever it is. [Vice Chair Ashley Bartley]: Doesn't that hopefully save you on labor, though, so that is the same thing? I mean, maybe more of a conceptual, like Yeah. [Witness Kevin Moyer]: Material. But A a wall panel is gonna cost you more than the equivalent amount of wall made out of two by sixes and sheathing and It's just a it's a more expensive product to manufacture. It takes a lot more to do. But, yes, then you're gonna save. You're gonna cut your labor down keeping it. And I'm not talking here about, like, taking jobs away. We we don't have for plenty of work for [Member Mary Howard]: the people. We have to work [Chair Mark Mihaly]: worry about that. Yeah. Exactly. [Witness Kevin Moyer]: That's not the goal of getting [Vice Chair Ashley Bartley]: the a lot concerned. Yeah. [Witness Kevin Moyer]: People and get them to produce more units of housing more efficiently. So that's this is how you [Chair Mark Mihaly]: do that. K. Any final questions? We [Member Mary Howard]: we it's not important. And perhaps we'll take a a visit. [Chair Mark Mihaly]: Yes. Perhaps. [Member Mary Howard]: You're really keen to go see. [Witness Kevin Moyer]: It's pretty cool. Wow. [Chair Mark Mihaly]: What are [Vice Chair Ashley Bartley]: the the the fully built I think the Shelburne Vineyard. Was that [Member Mary Howard]: I know. I Was that the, like I mean, that [Chair Mark Mihaly]: feels like I think that's one. A good opportunity. Mhmm. Yes. That's not [Vice Chair Ashley Bartley]: as well. This is a good time. [Chair Mark Mihaly]: So much for taking time away from your your job. [Member Tom Charlton]: Yeah. I didn't hear you. [Witness Kevin Moyer]: Thank you for caring about this subject. I really appreciate the time you wanna put into this to try to help more housing built. And if we do do a tour, there's another home we just built in Charlotte that's a timber frame and sits in closer. So I can take you over to Charlotte and show you a home that's still under construction. [Member Mary Howard]: I can give that whole town tour. I guess, Ashley. [Vice Chair Ashley Bartley]: Can I ask a super basic question? Yeah. When you say timber frame but this is not, so how do you do timber frame and this? That. [Member Mary Howard]: Okay. [Witness Kevin Moyer]: At that point, the the structural properties of the SIPs become somewhat redundant. It's still nice to have. [Member Mary Howard]: I was gonna say, so at that [Vice Chair Ashley Bartley]: point, yeah, the structural benefit is is [Witness Kevin Moyer]: So, yeah, when we're having a conversation about how do we build lots of housing quickly and economically, we're over here just built. That's why I'm saying SIPs. Right? If you wanna have a conversation about, like, a beautiful classic looking Vermont home that's gonna have a lot of timber in it, That's beautiful. It is a more premium way to build. [Chair Mark Mihaly]: So are we are we able to close this hearing? It's a center. So thank you so much. Appreciate it. Members of the committee, listen for a moment just very briefly. We do [Member Mary Howard]: need we can try. Yes. [Chair Mark Mihaly]: Well, I know I'm standing between you and lunch. Thank you, Kevin. [Member Mary Howard]: Thank you [Chair Mark Mihaly]: very much. We do not have anything this afternoon. Next week just so you know where we're at. Next week, we're really moving into a period where in addition to hearing any bills that we have to hear, we're beginning we have to begin to assemble our committee bill, which means that we have to have the present any testimonies that's been saying and time for committee discussion. And we'll just go and the committee discussion all next week so that we could take elements of the committee bill and just talk about it and see where we're at. Then late then after that and also the following Wednesday, not next week, but Wednesday, a week from next Wednesday, it's when our letter to the the House Appropriations Committee is due. So if one of the things we're doing next week is making sure that we talk about anything that's financial so that when we draft the letter and then we'll have it, everybody will have it before that Wednesday, like Tuesday, if not at the end of the week. Every we'll have we can get census on what we want to fix out. Yeah. We'll we'll we'll talk about [Member Mary Howard]: bills beside the committee bill that we want to [Chair Mark Mihaly]: Oh, that's what we're we're taking many of the bills and having them a walk through and introduction. [Vice Chair Ashley Bartley]: Just introduction. You have to ask [Chair Mark Mihaly]: no walk. Not just introduction. [Member Mary Howard]: Yeah. But I I I guess what I'm I'm not asking about that. I'm asking when should we decide whether we're gonna take them up? [Chair Mark Mihaly]: Next week. I mean, I think we're getting remember, everyone, crossover is still well, the Fourteenth. In a minute. It's the crossing. The fourteenth. And we Yep. So it's the fourteenth, and we have a week when we're out for town meeting. Yeah. So, really, the next couple of

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