Episode 2 Transcript: No Pool For You

Molly Wood:

Welcome back to Everybody in the Pool, the podcast that dives deep into the climate crisis and comes up with solutions that work.

Molly Wood:

I'm Molly Wood.

Molly Wood:

Last week … I interviewed someone who wants to pivot *into a career in climate …

Molly Wood:

but you don’t have to get a whole new job in climate … to build sustainability … and solutions … into your work.

Molly Wood:

You can just layer on the eco-friendly stuff like shmear on a bagel and suddenly you’re differentiated … and you’ve future-proofed your job.

Molly Wood:

It’s your *lane …

Molly Wood:

Now … since the San Francisco Bay Area is a land of early adoption on the climate front … especially after the drought … heat … and wild winter we had in 2022 and 2023 …

Molly Wood:

I called up Bay Area real estate agent Ana Forest … who happens to be *my real estate agent … to ask her what clients are asking for … in terms of climate awareness and adaptation.

[MUSIC TRANSITION]

Ana Forest:

It's definitely becoming a bigger part of the conversation every year, every year that we have fires and atmospheric rivers and heat waves, it becomes a bigger part of the conversation.

Ana Forest:

So there, you know, there are some buyers who are looking for a lot of green, quote-unquote green features in their homes or around their homes. Amenities like charging stations or solar, those are still amenities. They're not included yet.

Molly Wood:

Got it. Yep.

Ana Forest:

Um, and then there's a lot of, um, conversation about just how we, how we conduct our business in general and how, how new real estate is happening, new buildings, and um, and just how we work day to day.

Ana Forest:

What kind of cars are we driving? How much paper are we producing? Are we offering throw-away one-use plastic bottles at our open houses? All of these kinds of things are starting to come up.

Molly Wood:

Interesting. All right, well let's take these, let's sort of like take these in order one at a time. Um, I would imagine, and you can tell me before we even get to amenities and the way you do business, how are people thinking about risk? Like, is that a question that they're asking you when they're home buying?

Ana Forest:

You know, it's funny. Um, we've always had a lot of natural hazards in our area. We are rich in geological hazards where we live, so we have all kinds of things like earthquakes and ground movement and mudslides and earth slides, things like that, that we've been talking about for many years because we live on a fault or many faults here.

Ana Forest:

And so that's always been kind of part of the conversation. And there are some people that just do not want to live near an earthquake fault or do not want to live anywhere near where there's ground movement, you know? Um, but now the last five, ten years we're also a bigger part of that conversation is high fire zones, which, which a huge.

Ana Forest:

Huge amount of territory in our Bay Area is in high fire zone. Basically. You know, we, I had a big conversation with an insurance agent recently, and he told me, if you can see the bay, if you have a view, you're in a high fire zone. Even if you don't feel like you're in the middle of trees, you're, yeah, sorry.

Molly Wood:

Well in the insurance thing, let's double click on that. That's huge. And I know this from my own home shopping experience, which is like, it could be a deal killer if you can't insure your house.

Ana Forest:

Right? So if you have a loan, and even if you don't, but if you have a loan, you have to have homeowner's insurance.

Ana Forest:

You cannot get a loan if you don't have it. And it's really difficult sometimes to get insurance. In fact, in California, in some of our areas here, it's almost impossible to get fire insurance without going onto the California Fair Plan, which is not great insurance. It's very expensive, and you have to buy supplemental insurance to cover yourself because, uh, the cost to rebuild is just so incredibly expensive.

Ana Forest:

The insurance policies don't even begin to cover what the real costs are, if, you know, God forbid that there's a big disaster. Um, so yeah, so buying home insurance. All of our buyer clients, as soon as they're interested in any house before we write the offer, I ask them to go ahead and get an insurance quote because, a, you wanna make sure that that house is insurable, and b, you wanna make sure that you can get a policy that you're okay with what it costs.

Ana Forest:

We, we were looking at a house a couple of weeks ago where the insurance quote was over $10,000 a year.

Molly Wood:

Whoa.

Ana Forest:

You're paying your mortgage, you're paying your property tax. Add another nearly a thousand dollars a month to insure your house. It's really something to think about and it's really gonna impact a lot of, uh, potential homeowners.

Molly Wood:

How often would you say that comes up as a, a deal breaker for a house and, and, and is it more than it used to be?

Ana Forest:

Much more than it used to be. Way more than it used to be. Just the last two years I've had, I've definitely had clients that walked away from a potential deal because insurance was just so expensive and not very good coverage. And to get the supplemental insurance, it's even way more expensive. So, um, I don't, you know, in percentage, I don't know.

Ana Forest:

But I definitely won't let anybody write an offer until they know that they can get insurance and, and live with that dollar amount, because that's not a good surprise. And that's not always a contingency to get out of, out of your deal if you want to. So, yeah, getting your, your fire insurance, flood insurance, not as much of a problem here as it is in states like Florida.

Ana Forest:

But you know, I do have some clients who are looking, uh, Tiburon, Sausalito. A lot of the homes that are on the coast or even on the bay, there's a big, uh, a fear of the sea level rising and there's, you know, an insurance impact on that.

VO: 

So as this idea of climate risk becomes more relevant to homebuyers … there’s a website, as it turns out, climate check dot com … that lets you put in your address … and check your exposure to five categories of risk. Those are fire … drought … storm … heat … and flood.

Ana and I talked about how some of those are becoming a bigger deal in some unexpected ways … starting with heat …

Ana Forest:

So heat is they, they define as the number of extreme heat days experienced each year in this location. So I've been in real estate since the nineties. Oh my god. Here. But I also grew up in the Bay Area. And the Bay Area has always been very temperate. You know, we don't get very hot, we don't get very cold.

Ana Forest:

It's super comfortable. Mid seventies all year. Right.

Ana Forest:

Um, but there would be like five or six really hot days a year. And so when we first started in real estate, we would hold an open house and somebody would walk in and say, oh, does this house have air conditioning? And we would all be like, oh, they're not from around here.

Ana Forest:

We'd just be like, all snarky and snidey, you're not from here. We don't need air conditioning. We just open a window, you know, open two windows, get cross ventilation. And we kept saying that and, and being all smug until a few years ago when suddenly those five or six hot days a year turned into a week, two weeks, a couple of weeks, and you know it, it's gonna continue.

Ana Forest:

And so now, yes, we are seeing way more homes that have air conditioning, uh, or split cell or some kind of, um, some kind of, you know, climate control for inside the house.

Molly Wood:

What's interesting to me is the things that people didn't, wouldn't necessarily have thought about, like certainly heat in the Bay Area is one, but I feel like, even drought is an interesting buying consideration.

Ana Forest:

Water has always been a huge issue in California, Southern California, Northern California, the fight for water, agriculture. I mean, it's deep. There's a lot, but drought here, I mean, this is gonna sound super snobby and not very PC, but I had a client who wanted to buy a house in Marin and they wanted to put a pool in. And because of the drought, there is a pool moratorium in Marin County. You cannot put a pool in because there's not enough water. And so they were like, oh, well, I guess we're not going to buy a house there. Or actually, they did buy a house, but they didn't put a pool in.

Molly Wood:

Fascinating.

Ana Forest:

I know. And that's like, that's not very life and death, but that's just like a tiny little...

Molly Wood:

That's, that's like a perfect example actually of the kinds of adaptations that are, that I thought were many, many years out. I didn't know they were saying absolutely not. You're not gonna be allowed to. I, I mean, I will tell you, I had a, I have a pool and I had my pool redone when I moved in, and then had to refill it with the hose.

Ana Forest:

At night. Shh.

Molly Wood:

I thought the cops were gonna come. I mean, I literally was like, you can't just fill up a pool with the, oh horrified...

Ana Forest:

Listen, last summer, I mean, again, it's like, it's so in the big scheme of things, you know, I have to try to always have perspective, but it was super frustrating. We were not allowed to power wash. So when you're getting a house ready for, um, for sale and you want everything to look clean and beautiful and crisp and sharp, you're gonna power wash the front of the house in the driveway and sometimes the house itself, and it uses a lot of water. We were not allowed to do that anymore.

Molly Wood:

Oh, no.

Ana Forest:

Right. Like, it's not a big deal, but. You know, it's a difference. It's a difference.

Ana Forest:

It was an impact and it made a difference and things didn't look as good and sharp and clean. So all we could do is say, hey, we're in a drought. Sorry. You know,

Molly Wood:

Totally.

Ana Forest:

Little just little things like that. But the pool, the power washing, I mean, we,

Ana Forest:

And that brings us to landscaping.

Ana Forest:

So when we get houses ready for market, or if you're a homeowner already, you wanna have a beautiful garden with good, with good curb appeal, make it look good.

Ana Forest:

We get frowned upon if we put a lawn in. Do not put lawns in anymore. You know, some houses really want a lawn, and if you have little kids, you want a lawn that they can roll around on or pets even.

Ana Forest:

But no, it's, it's really not cool anymore to have a lawn, um, do drought-tolerant.

Molly Wood:

Turf. Cool? I have turf. I love turf.

Ana Forest:

A lot of people have it. I mean, I still think it's ugly and awful, but...

Molly Wood:

Yeah. Fair.

Ana Forest:

That's just a lot of, a lot of people really like it. People were painting their grass green last year when we weren't allowed to water.

Molly Wood:

For sale? Like to get the house for sale and just like some people that just wanted their yard to look...

Ana Forest:

Mm-hmm.

Ana Forest:

But a lot of people have made the switch and so now we're seeing these drought-tolerant, I can't say resistant, drought-tolerant, um, gardens with a lot of native plants and succulents and cacti, and it's, I think they're beautiful. I think, I mean, it's not something you wanna roll around on...

Molly Wood:

Right.

Ana Forest:

Like a nice lush grass lawn, but it looks beautiful and it does it. It's much better for the earth, really.

Molly Wood:

Yeah, what I hear it. What I do hear you saying is it's a big, all of these things are considerations in every little part of buying.

Ana Forest:

It's true. And I didn't realize it until you and I started talking about it. Because I thought, oh, well, real estate, you know, we don't, what do we know about green? Well, the more I thought about it and read about it and talked about it, listened to podcasts about it, I thought, oh my gosh, actually every single part of our business touches the climate in some way. 

Um, and so we are, a lot of realtors really are taking that into consideration, changing the way we do business, changing, trying to use less paper, using QR codes a lot more. Um, anything that we can do to, to try and save our company. For example, Red Oak Realty. We are now the only real estate company in the Bay Area that has a green designation.

Molly Wood:

What would you say is the, we'll stay on the seller side for a minute, or on the buyer side, and then I wanna go to the seller side. What would you say is sort of the number one request that you're starting to see more of that is, that is sort of climate-oriented, whether it's air conditioning or EV charging or solar. Is there one that comes up a lot?

Ana Forest:

It's not usually a specific ask until they see it, so they didn't realize they wanted it until they see it. Once they get to a house that has solar panels and they realize how much they can save and how good it is and good for the earth, suddenly solar panels is like, yeah, I do want that. Yes. Even like a Nest thermostat, which is more energy efficiency. 

They like that. Um, an EV charger more and more and more and more of our clients and people in the Bay Area especially, and hopefully eventually the state in the country are, uh, are getting electric cars or hybrid cars and they need chargers.

Ana Forest:

So the homes that already have a charger.

Ana Forest:

Yeah, there's a little bit of a, of a little boost there for, for those properties. Even if a buyer doesn't have an electric car, it's kind of still a status of having a charger, you know? Um, it's a cool, it's a cool factor. I found an article, uh, a report that I, a real estate company that starts with a Z that I don't wanna talk about.

VO: 

She means Zillow …

Ana Forest:

Came out with, but they, they did a report that, that said that, um, listings that highlight eco-friendly features sell faster and higher. Which, you know, I didn't do the report, I haven't studied it.

I don't know the, all the analytics, but they're talking about electric vehicle chargers, homes that are equipped with climate-related, um, features. Like, well, not here, but in other areas like hurricane shelters or stilts, some houses that are being built higher up to avoid floods, uh, dual-pane windows.

Ana Forest:

All of these kinds of features that help with energy efficiency actually make the house sell faster and higher. And they did. They really analyzed it and dug deep, and they have what the price premium is or how much more quickly the house sold.

Ana Forest:

For each one of these little amenities.

Molly Wood:

Yeah, fascinating.

Ana Forest:

Tankless water heaters. It goes on and on. There's a whole list. It's pretty, it was pretty interesting.

Ana Forest:

Drip irrigation.

Molly Wood:

Drip irrigation. Yeah. I feel like the one that I would run sprint for, actually, like it was one thing to have solar, but now if it also has that whole home battery, especially in the Bay Area where our power goes out all the time...

Ana Forest:

Well, that's it. People are asking for that. Uh, you know what, okay, so let's say the power goes out. What's the backup plan? Because not, not, let's say it might go out. It will go out. Yeah. We're used to it now.

Ana Forest:

Planned or not planned. Exactly. Rolling blackouts that we were having planned in advance.

Ana Forest:

Nope.

Ana Forest:

You know, get out of town if you, if you don't wanna be without power, but, um, so it's, I think that it's starting, that people are starting to ask for it. And like I said, many new buyers don't realize that they want it until they see it. So they'll, I think it's gonna, it'll be become more and more in demand for sure.

Molly Wood:

And then on the seller side. So it sounds like when you're prepping a house for sale, it sounds like it's a big consideration. Are there, is there anything that you would advise a seller? For example, I know that you and I ran into this fun solar lease situation, which is, you know, lease solar versus own solar, which I feel like was sort of a, we both were like, oh, this is a thing now.

Molly Wood:

This was three years ago, but.

Ana Forest:

Yeah. But it was three years ago, but so much has happened and so many more homes with solar have come on the market.

Ana Forest:

So much so, and so many snafus and, and complications as we know that we now have CAR, California Association of Realtors has just come out with last month a new form because that's what they love to do.

Ana Forest:

We have a new form about solar systems and it's several pages of legal leads and lots of paragraphs, probably almost assuredly as a result of litigation. That must have happened at some point. But now there are forms saying, what kind of solar system is it? Is it least, is it owned? How, you know, how does that pass from the owner to the buyer?

Ana Forest:

It's very, very detailed now, so that came a little too late for us, but yay for, for the future buyers and sellers.

Ana Forest:

But it is a thing to it. It is. I mean, we should maybe we should just be more explicit. So when you, yeah. If you buy a house and the owners have leased their solar system, which is a very popular way to get solar because it's extremely expensive upfront.

Ana Forest:

If they sell you the house, you have to take over the lease, and that can get a little bit complicated.

Ana Forest:

It can, in our case, it delayed closing.

Ana Forest:

In almost every case it does because you have to. Not only do you have to qualify for the loan to buy your house, now you have to qualify for your lease for your solar system.

Ana Forest:

So it's like pulling your credit again. It's like applying for a loan all over again after you just did. And of course you have dings on your credit because you just applied for a loan. It's complicated. It's when we have sellers that have solar systems, we encourage them to purchase them outright before we go to market so that they're owned. It just, it's part of the property passes right off.

Molly Wood:

Are there any other sort of climate-related adaptations that you would encourage a seller to do? Like...

Ana Forest:

Yeah. Well, you know, double-paned windows. I don't, you know, for a seller, I wouldn't encourage them. That's a huge expense. And I mean, for a buyer, if you're, if you're concerned about your energy bill, then yes, I would. For a seller, I would not tell them to do that because that is not a good return on investment for them.

Ana Forest:

The money that they're gonna spend, they're probably not gonna get that back. Even though people love to see new windows and energy-efficient windows, it's, you're probably not gonna get back what you spent and more what you will is on good lighting. LED, good energy-efficient lighting.

Ana Forest:

Get rid of those incandescents, the light's not good anyway. So, um, landscaping, beautiful, native sustainable, easy to take care of. Drought-tolerant landscaping. It looks great. That is definitely someplace that I would tell my sellers to put money. Yeah. Pull out, pull out the lawn. Unless you really have like a, a kid-friendly yard that's...

Ana Forest:

Um, putting in a Nest thermostat, something like that. Um, yeah. I think because right now our, our market is not very balanced. It's still a seller's market here. Sellers don't really feel like they need to do anything except for putting a for sale sign in front of their house. Um, and everything that they wanna do is cosmetic.

Ana Forest:

That doesn't mean that we're not gonna encourage them to also try and have a few green features, energy efficiencies in their homes, but really, at least until the market changes, it's kind of on the buyer or the long-term homeowner to do those kinds of things for themselves. Yeah. So far that could change.

Molly Wood:

And, have you ever had a buyer ask for anything? I don't know, super unexpected or wild, like an inside sprinkler system or a fire-resistant, you know, building materials or... Certainly does that come up with new construction conversations?

Ana Forest:

Well, new construction. I mean, in Berkeley gas is banned. There are no gas furnaces or gas stoves anymore. So people that want to build an ADU in their backyard and love gas stoves for cooking, I remind them. Get used to electric and induction. 

It's really good too. A lot of chefs really love it. Um, you know, and I remind them that maybe they're gonna have to spend a little bit more to get a, uh, on-demand water heater, water, you know, stuff like that. But we have a lot of local policies that are spreading out, having to do with electrification of homes. So that's all for new build, but people are starting to put it into their homes too.

Ana Forest:

And if they're gonna do any kind of development or serious renovation or add an ADU or another building, yeah, they need to get ready to, to meet those, uh, those political demands because that's, that's gonna be the law, or it is the law in Berkeley and in many other towns as well. So we have to get used to it. 

If you want a fire, you're gonna have to go outside and do your gas cooking on, on your barbecue, on your grill, but you're gonna have electric inside. Yeah. Um, and that's gonna go away.

Molly Wood:

Well, and, and Red Oak is big, but I wonder how much of this conversation is spreading nationally? Like you must attend, you know, national real estate conventions. Is this a conversation that's sort of just in the Bay Area in New York, or are you starting to hear it elsewhere?

Ana Forest:

No, we are, we're hearing it elsewhere. Um, I, it's, it's interesting because I think that the buyers and sellers here in the Bay Area, it's such a big part of our lives. We see so many, you know, Teslas and, and Prius. What's the plural of Prius? Is it Prii?

Molly Wood:

I don't know. I call it Prii. I go, I go all the way to Prii.

Ana Forest:

Yeah. So many of these electric cars on the road, it's, for us, it's really very normal. Um, and so it's not even part of the conversation. You know, it's just normal. But in other areas it's starting to, to pick up more.

Ana Forest:

So I was reading, um, in the, the National Association of Realtors, uh, they did a study on sustainability and what issues in sustainability are, are impacting our industry and I learned, which I didn't even know that, um, 32% of all MLS, that's multiple listing service. That's basically the database that real estate agents use to find houses and sell houses.

Ana Forest:

They are including some kind of field to promote green features. So I just got on the phone and I talked to our MLS guy and I said, do we have green features in our MLS? He's like, yeah, there's a checkbox. If there's solar, there's a checkbox, if there are any energy-saving features in the property. And so, yes, that's, those are new.

Ana Forest:

Those are new in the last couple of years that we as realtors, when we're inputting information about a new listing, we can input that, which means that on the other side, a buyer can search for that. So if that's really important to you, you can filter out all listings that don't have energy-saving features or only look for energy-saving feature homes.

Ana Forest:

So yes, that's becoming more and more important to a lot of buyers.

Ana Forest:

We're promoting it. Yeah, we're promoting it more in our listings as well, those kinds of features in the marketing. So if I have those kinds of features, for sure. I always include that in the description. I'll talk about it in the narrative, but I'll also put it in the bullet points.

Ana Forest:

EV charger or, you know, solar panels. Those are important. Those are extra kind of luxurious features almost because not only does it help to save the earth, save you money, it's a little bit of a status thing too.

Molly Wood:

I like this, that it's a status thing. That is, that is, um, I, I tend to think that when it comes to widespread adoption, you either have to have like price parity or aspiration.

Ana Forest:

Yeah, yeah. And if these, because if these are aspirational features, then they'll be, then they'll be broadly adopted and then that's how they gain that kind of wide appeal.

Ana Forest:

It's true. It doesn't have like the, the luxury thing appeal, uh, of, I don't know, some other features, but aspirational for sure. Yeah. I mean, people wanna say they have solar. People want to, I know not to not just save money and save the world, but they kind of wanna say it too.

Molly Wood:

Yeah. You can't put a price on smug.

Ana Forest:

You can.

Molly Wood:

We can try.

Ana Forest:

We can try.

VO: 

Ana told me it is becoming a point of differentiation for real estate agents to get educated and even *certified … in helping clients with climate-friendly upgrades … on the seller side … and helping buyers understand what to look for. The National Association of Realtors now offers a Green designation … to agents … who take courses online … about energy efficiency and sustainability. They even have an online directory … of GREEN agents … across the country. There’s a link in this week’s newsletter … at mollywood.co.

[MUSIC TRANSITION]

Molly Wood:

After the break, I’ve got friends in all the right places … my interior designer friend joins me to talk about eco-friendly options … for your remodel.

[AD BREAK]

Molly Wood:

Welcome back to Everybody in the Pool. We're talking about eco-friendly features for your home, and now I’m going to talk to my friend … the interior designer.

Cillesa Ullman:

My name is Cillesa Ullman, and I am an interior designer. I specialize in kitchen and bath design in the state of California. I'm a certified interior designer, so I have the, you know, CID after my name.

VO: 

This means she’s a hard hat designer … not the decorating kind … although if you get her going she’ll tell you a lot about sustainable alternatives to the cheap crap you’re tempted to buy to dress things up for a season or two.

Cillesa says for a long time and still today … most of her climate-friendly design choices have come because of state or federal restrictions … there are longstanding energy efficiency rules from the federal government … and in the state of California … there are all kinds of building rules …

You have to have LED lighting, no incandescent bulbs allowed, there are water restrictions that mandate low flow toilets and shower heads, and Cillesa says as these designs get more efficient, they’ll get more common, because no one wants to be selling one kind of shower head in the fifth largest economy in the world … and another shower head everywhere else.

And customers *are … starting to ask about sustainable or recycled building materials … especially if they’re cheaper. Cillesa gave me a couple examples … of places to start …

Cillesa Ullman:

So some really common things and people appreciate this too from a practical perspective when it comes to like countertop materials there's, um, the term that's used is quartz but people get confused. So I coin it as engineered quartz which means it's an engineered man-made product. 

And um for countertops I really like it because it's a recycling type of material. So if you think about um you know these natural stones that are being quarried out of the earth, um, when marble granite and quartzite are being harvested it's generating a lot of quartz dust. And so what these engineered quartz materials do is they harvest all of that dust that otherwise would go into waterways or into landfill. They make it into something new.

Cillesa Ullman:

It's recycled and it's wonderfully easy to use in terms of, uh, from a client perspective because this is a man-made product that requires no maintenance.

Cillesa Ullman:

And then other things when it comes to things like tile. So there's recycled glass, there's tiles like Fireclay, you know, as a brand, uh, based here in San Francisco. They do a lot of recycled content in their materials which is great.

Molly Wood:

Give me just give me more. Give me like the rundown of cool stuff that we do not know exists that we could be using.

Cillesa Ullman:

Yeah … when it comes to other ways of thinking about heating you know, uh, we don't use this kind of heat here a lot just because it hasn't been prevalent but a lot I'm seeing it a lot of new builds are, you know, hydro, um, electric heat you know so thermal heat in their floors. 

So electric radiant heat thermal radiant heat, um, cuz it's not heating the air but it's heating harder surfaces in your home which radiates the heat in a more efficient way. Right. And it touches your body rather than just heating the air.

Molly Wood:

Nice.

Cillesa Ullman:

Which I think is fabulous.

Molly Wood:

Lovely. And how hard is it to do that as a remodel?

Cillesa Ullman:

Yeah the, the thermal, uh, the, um hydro option not so readily available but you can do electric radiant heat which is, you know, easy to consider. So, um, you can put it underneath, um, engineered hardwood flooring. You can put it underneath tile. 

So, um, that's a wonderful thing that I incorporate a lot when it comes to, um, bathroom remodels is to put the electric radiant heat down cuz you know you don't need to have forced air in your bathroom. You just want you know the, the nice touch of a warm floor on your feet.

Molly Wood:

Exactly. You just want toasty tootsies. It is like the most luxurious way to live.

Cillesa Ullman:

That's right. That's right.

Molly Wood:

We talked a little bit about bamboo. I think there is like sort of a growing awareness of bamboo. Do you mostly use it in floors? Can it be countertops or not countertops?

Cillesa Ullman:

Cabinets, yeah cabinets. Uh, bamboo cabinets. Fabulous. Um, furniture materials, accessory materials. Um, but I like it a lot as flooring. Um, I think you can, uh, achieve some really interesting design, uh, characteristics with it too. Cuz it can how it is cut can be, um, different. Um, you can dye it, you can stain it. It's, it's quite versatile.

VO: So you know in the climate world … we talk about mitigation … that’s lessening the overall impact and carbon emissions …

And then there’s adaptation … the part where you have to do stuff to your house to deal with extreme weather and other changes … that result from global warming …

Which can range from full-on prepper … slash clever irrigation techniques …

Cillesa Ullman:

Some other things that I'm seeing that people are interested in are, um, you know, capturing gray water. So, especially here in the state of California where we mostly live in drought situations, um, capturing, uh, rainwater, using it in landscaping applications. Um, you know, home cisterns, you know, those are things that I'm seeing.

VO: Then there are slightly more obvious upgrades … like windows … or … something I’ve been looking into lately … window *film … basically stickers that can reduce the UV and heat that comes in or leaves through your windows … or even reflect back sunlight so it doesn’t get so hot … in homes that don’t have air conditioning.

Then there’s even simpler stuff … says Cillesa …

Cillesa Ullman:

Window coverings. So things that, um, can offer some thermal qualities like if you think of those cellular shades those, um, help with insulation quite a bit. So, um, there are the honeycomb shades. And some honeycomb shades have multiple layers inside. And so the many, the more layers the more insular the, the, the properties are for that particular window covering. 

There's solar shades so, um, you know, if you have a western exposure you can put, um, your, uh, window coverings on a timer so that they come down and keep the heat from coming into your home which is fantastic.

Molly Wood:

Yeah, I want that. Who wants to do a climate makeover show at my house? Ok … less sexy and visible things …

Cillesa Ullman:

Insulation has become a huge thing. So it's kind of like if you, if, sure, I get it like, you know, we put in AC in our home too but you know, hand and glove to that process was like we gotta insulate this thing. And we lived in a home where there was no attic. 

And so what we did is we did rigid insulation. When we planned for our new roof, you know, so it's a four-inch, you know, core that, um, is a solid type of insulation as opposed to the bats or the blown-in type of insulation. And so, um, that I think is another thing that's huge when it comes to, um, you know, maintaining your heat, heating and cooling right is insulation. 

And there's all sorts of cool, um, like recycled type, um, insulation products too. Like, um, there's people out there that are collecting, um, clothing and so it's like you can have like your, you know, insulation in your attic be like shredded denim and it's really, really efficient.

Molly Wood:

Oh my gosh.

Cillesa Ullman:

Yeah. So it's not a, yeah. So it's recycling both, you know, cuz you know textiles like that's the worst polluter. Right. And so it's like you're taking that out of the environment and putting it to better use which I think is fantastic.

Molly Wood:

Side note … Cillesa and her husband also put a metal roof … on their house … because we live in fire country now … you remember what Ana was saying about insurance.

VO: 

Ultimately Cillesa says no matter what you’re doing … or what you’re using … try to build it … to last.

Cillesa Ullman:

I often think in terms of like durability cuz again in this industry it's really the sad thing I see is like what ends up in landfills. So when I'm making, um, finished choices it's about longevity, timelessness, durability cuz you know we are trying to keep stuff out of the landfills and how it is right now. 

You know the life cycle of your average kitchen is about 15 years. And so if we can choose something that will last longer like maybe you really do want those marble floors and if you love 'em if you wanna, you know, change something in the future but maybe you can keep your floors.

Molly Wood:

Mm-hmm.

Cillesa Ullman:

So being mindful for things like that. Recycled content when it comes to, um, tile, um, even with furniture and oh and building materials too when it comes to, you had a lot of reclaimed wood. You know a lot of that stuff I think is visually super attractive. 

But you can use it in ways like, um, you know, uh, ceiling details. You can turn it into, uh, furniture. You can use it as, you know, making interesting barn doors. So there's a lot of ways that we can kind of recycle what's already exists.

VO: 

And if you’re out there thinking … ok, I’m a designer and I want to build this into my practice … get ready for some research.

Cillesa Ullman:

I mean there really is no handbook you know in terms of like if you, if we were designing like a LEED certified building. Right. Wouldn't it be great to have a list that'd be like oh I'm gonna select this brand X of windows and this brand X of flooring this brand X of paint. That list doesn't really exist so...

VO: 

Actually … as it happens … I know of a startup that’s building something like this list … that’s coming up in a future episode …

[MUSIC TRANSITION]

Molly Wood:

But that's it for this episode of Everybody in the Pool. Thanks for listening, please like … subscribe … and leave a rating on Apple Podcasts if that’s what you’re using …

Molly Wood:

Email your thoughts and ideas to IN at everybody in the pool dot com …

Molly Wood:

And for an even *deeper dive … sign up for my newsletter … at mollywood … dot co!

Molly Wood:

And remember, together we can get this done. 

See you next week.