11 Crafting Your Dream Home: Part 2 - Roofing, Windows, and Doors Unveiled

Continuing our insightful home improvement discussion, this episode delves into the world of roofing, windows, and doors. From shingles to metal roofing options, our expert highlights the pros and cons of each, emphasizing the importance of quality to avoid leaks and other issues.
 
When it comes to windows, the search for energy efficiency often leads to triple-pane solutions, but limitations in elevation and cost must be considered. 

Doors also take center stage, with advice on durable aluminum jambs and the significance of investing in a high-quality front door. 

Tune in to learn more about optimizing your home's exterior for style and functionality.

If you enjoyed this episode check us out on Instagram @firstchoicebuilders_ig
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and our website: www.fcbwyo.com

Transcript

Welcome back. We, On the previous episode, were talking about siding options. We were really talking about selections, but we were in the middle of siding options, and we had discussed LP, smart siding, some other things.

Why not to use vinyl? Talked about metal siding. Let's talk about masonry. You because I'm formerly am a Mason, so now we're going to talk about what I want to talk about.

You bet. I'm sure everyone can appreciate masonry. That's kind of a given.

Everyone can appreciate the looks of masonry. Not everybody can appreciate paying for masonry. That is correct.

Yes. However, if you are a Mason or have been a Mason, you know, we have a Mason. We do have a mason.

Say hi. Mason. Yeah, I'm over here.

Mason is our sound guy. So if you hear this groggly frog tone voice come in every now and again, that's our sound guy, mason. Yeah.

Boulders rolling around over here. Yeah. No.

Mason's awesome. He makes he makes things happen. Now, I'm talking about, 

This actually would not even be happening if it wasn't for yeah, that's that's absolutely right.

Because I tried doing this and doing the podcast at the same time, and it's like rubbing a cheese grater against your forehead. I can't do it. No, the Mason I'm talking about is your masonry workers.

And I'm sure that's you mentioned not paying for masonry. That's true. The Masons out there can certainly appreciate the skill and the hard work that it takes to do masonry.

Yeah. It's a lot of labor. So it is very labor intensive.

It's very rough on your body. And I think I speak for every Mason out there ever, that in the wintertime, masonry sucks. I don't know if you're down south and you have nice weather year round, but if you're in the Midwest or up north somewhere, winter and masonry just suck.

Well, they really do. You know what's interesting is there's a lot of masonry down south. You go to Arizona, and people fence their whole backyards with block, and then they'll stucco over them or whatever, and that just doesn't happen here, because it's so be.

I'm assuming it must be way cheaper down south. I think so. Maybe it's just more that's not the right way to think of it.

The weather is harsher up here. You get away with a lot less. Like, your masonry needs to be like, you need to go do a good job regardless.

I'm not saying people don't do a good job. I'm not saying that at all. Well, there's different requirements, but there's different requirements.

And like up here, there's more to everything. Right. There's just more to everything that you do.

It's just got another layer. Whether it's heat and cover in the winter or keeping your so you got a water tank on site, keeping the stupid thing from freezing. I remember as a hottie, a Mason tender.

For those who don't know, it's essentially the guy who does everything but lay. Right. You're stocking the block, you're making the mud and all that, so you're keeping the Masons going.

And I remember every winter just fighting this water freezing, and you're trying to build this tent thing, and you have a weed burner in there, and you're trying to heat the but you're trying not to burn the tent down either. And it's just a challenge. There's a lot of pain in the butt stuff, but it's also then you got to scaffold everything.

It's an intense job. There's a lot of labor in masonry. But I will say this, it is a very satisfying job, especially when you work your way up, like, from an apprenticeship and you become a Mason and you're able to lay it's very rewarding.

Just out of curiosity, how long does that take? Generally, it depends on what exactly you're getting into. I know for we'll say about four years is pretty good. Fast track.

Okay. I know there's bricklayer unions, and it's different with perhaps with stone versus brick or block and probably union versus nonunion and maybe even the build. I'm kind of taking a rabbit trail here, but is there anything official like, say, a plumbing or an electrical apprenticeship where you go to class and everything? Yeah, you can actually go through a masonry apprenticeship program, and a lot of companies, like bigger outfits, like, say, bricklayers unions, for example, will actually offer these programs.

And you do get I don't know if it's state recognized or what, but you do get a certificate that says you are an apprentice Mason year one, or all the way up to Master Mason, which is you've graduated. And that's actually a good thing to have on a resume or that shows that you've stuck it out and you've gone through all the different training, and you typically will apprentice underneath a Master. Right.

I grew up. My dad was a Mason, and I just sort of inherited a lot of stuff. I don't have any official certificates, but I've done it all.

But anyway, so back to the portion back to the selection portion of it. Well, I had to validate the cost of masonry, is what I was trying to do. No, it is a lot of hard work.

There's a lot of skill involved, particularly when it comes to well, all of it, really. But brick, especially brick is a very you need to know what you're doing to do brick. You can get away with some things with block, and you can darn near get away with murder on stone for basic things.

But you better have your T's dotted and your I's crossed here. Let me ask you this. What are our options for masonry selections? So you have natural stone, like we talked about in the last episode, where we'll be putting that on our office.

I love natural stone. You have a manufactured cultured stone, which is basically just like, sort of like a cement product that's manufactured and then it has like a stain or a paint on it and it looks real. They're getting better and better nowadays.

There's many different options for that. And that's typically the most common because it's easy to install and it's pretty cheap, relatively cheap compared to natural or brick. Then you have brick, then you can get into some, you would say more commercial products like split face block or there's stucco, there's grout rubbing.

There's lots of different options. But the most common ones on a house you'll see is going to be a Wayne Scott or Wayne's Coat. And that is a it's typically 42 inches tall.

And it's sort of like a band that goes around. People know what we're talking about here. You see it on houses all the time.

Yeah, it's super common. Yeah, it's just like a section partway up the wall of masonry and it just adds a whole nother layer of depth and accent to a house. And it's also very good to have that on the lower portion for water and snow and whatever that might pile up against your house.

It's better to have that pile up against a stone or brick rather than siding. Right. Also, when you're shoveling your sidewalk next to your house and you're ramming your shovel into the side of your house, you're not going to wreck your stone, but you might ding up your siding.

As far as durability, that's one of the good things about it. But it just looks nice. It really looks nice.

And it's a good, solid, maintenance free item, provided it's done right. So you said block, cultured stone, real stone and brick. Brick, right.

So here's a question. How is it? I've been to places mostly commercial type stores or whatever, and they salt their sidewalks. Tell me how salt affects any of them concrete or specifically the masonry products.

The masonry products. What I'm wondering is, does cultured stone hold up to salt versus natural stone or does natural stone because you can get a chemical resistant concrete which is actually made to handle salting and stuff, which is common in commercial work. Because in commercial work or commercial stores and all those types of things, it's nice to be able to put salt and chemicals on your sidewalks to keep the ice from building up and people safe.

But then when they do that, it gets on the stone. Right. I'm curious, does one work a lot better? Does natural stone or brick or anything like that hold up a lot better to salt and chemicals? I would say that anything natural, whether it's the natural stone or brick or block, are certainly going to hold up a lot better than cultured stone.

Cultured stone is by far the weakest link. It's a lot softer. It's not real stone.

And there are brands out there that are better. For example, there's a brand that includes almost like fiberglass. It's like, what would you call almost like grass.

I don't know why that comes to mind but it's like a fiber content in the mixture when they manufacture this and it really adds to the strength. It's almost like it's glass fibers. Right, glass fibers.

But it's not glass. It's almost like straw or something. Okay.

But as far as being resistant to chemicals, I don't know of any product out there that is specifically tailored for that. Because you think about it, the lower section might get some salt on it but it's not like the whole thing is going to get coated. She might have a little bit of like white streaking or sort of like a cloudy effect on the bottom portion.

But generally your main concerns would be the concrete like you mentioned. Now in a commercial setting I wouldn't sweat getting salt on say, block or brick. I really wouldn't worry about it.

It might taint the look a little bit, but when you're looking at a large store like Home Depot or something, you're not going to really notice a little streaking on the bottom in the middle of the winter. Well, and I'll tell you the reason I brought up that specifically is because in a commercial application when you're dealing with high traffic flows and lots of, I would say maybe store employees who don't understand the results of what they're doing, they'll do things exaggerated a lot more than they would in residential. Right.

So if you take a commercial example and say, hey, we've seen this happen for example, the bottom row of Coulter stone start to deteriorate because of a lot of salt and heavy use and all that. Then you can say on a residential it's going to be exactly the same, only it's going to take longer to get right? Absolutely. So if you want a fully bulletproof masonry job where you can spread salt, you can bang it with your shovel, you can have a kid climb on it if you want.

Right. Not that I recommend that anyways, but bottom line is bottom line is what's going to be the most durable to all these things? No, that's a great question. So you think about a commercial application, just to reiterate what you said, you get a lot of traffic through one area, there's a lot of abuse.

Right. You mimic that same scenario, say through your front entryway on your front porch of your house, right. It'll take longer because there's not 1000 people in and out a day.

But we want to avoid that. What's going to be the best and I'm a strong advocate for natural stone. Natural stone is just to plainly put it's rock solid.

You can intended that stone is going to outlast you and your daughter and your granddaughter. Right, well, and it's been proven too. You look at these things like these stone walls in Ireland, they're ancient in all kinds of examples.

Well, it really comes down to the installer, and that's where the people have to bite the bullet on. The price tag often is we'll say half of the product is going to be labor as far as the cost is concerned. The other half will be the materials and oftentimes more.

So it depends on what it is. But if you have a heavy abuse area with you plan to do, say, a lot of plowing next to it or whatever, cultured stone isn't the best option. It's just not.

Now, I do know I can think of several projects that I did because I personally have laid a ton of cultured stone. In fact, most of my masonry career has been cultured stone, or I'd say 70% of it has been. Do you think that's because due to affordability.

Due to affordability and availability. Okay. Most of the projects that I've worked on has just been sort of that tier of residential work with cultured stone, and there's certainly learned a lot of things along the way.

One of the things, and this is sort of get delving into the weeds a little bit, but it lends to this topic here of the problem areas of where this stone can fail. Your lower portion of where you install your veneer, your Wayne scut on your house is the most critical. It's going to take the most abuse.

It's going to get kicked. It's going to get the shovel against. It's going to have the snow piled up against it.

And so when you're installing this, and I'll go ahead and speak to the Masons out there, that lower section is critical. You have to make sure that your joints are very well filled and sealed. You got to make sure when you tuck point that you're not leaving your little b holes here.

You got to make sure when you're doing your scratch coat to prep for the installment of the stone, that you cover that laugh really well or whatever your method may be. You don't want to skip the corners. Right.

Typically, the lower section is something that you can kind of get away with murder. And I know that most masons out there won't admit this, but often the eye is drawn from, like, belly button up. When it comes to masonry, they don't really notice you're not staring at the ground down on their hands and knees checking things out.

Right. And so what happens is, I think the corners can often get cut there, particularly with stone. And I've seen a lot of stone, like almost every repair job I've done with a cultured veneer product, stone product, it's always down on the lower sections.

Always. Sometimes what they'll do here's a big one, they'll lay their stone tight or very close to, say, the concrete. Oh, yeah, okay.

Big no no. That concrete is going to move and float when it heaves, which it will, it's going to push up against your stone. And then you're going to bust pop your stone off.

So my sort of rule of thumb personally, and this is just what I prefer, is three quarter inches. And what I'll actually do is I'll take surprise, surprise. I have these scrap pieces of LP smart siding.

And you combine those two pieces, and it's roughly three quarter inches. And I'll use those as spacers, and I'll stick them down underneath. But proper installment, that's really what it comes down to, proper installment.

Making sure that you're not lazy about your joints joining is huge. I was always taught that a good stone job can be ruined by a bad joint job. And a good joint job can make a bad stone job look good.

Interesting. So I think it just comes down to proper installment. And use your common sense, right? If you're going to be whatever, you're going to be targeting some high abuse area, and you're going to put masonry on it, then maybe don't use cultured stone.

So a couple of things here I'm picking up. One is real stone is going to be stronger and probably have more durability than cultured stone. But culture stone is more affordable.

And if it's installed correctly, then it's probably fine. It's probably good. I would say for 95% of the cases out there, it'll be just fine.

You're never going to beat it up. Then we got block and brick, which are like, nearly bulletproof as well. But it's a very specific look that would be dependent on your architecture of your house and styling and stuff like that.

Okay. And nowadays, too, this is something to keep in mind. And I hate even bringing this up because masonry is a dying breed.

But there's a lot of alternative products that are sort of mimicking masonry that people are turning to. One example is like this lick and stick. We'll call it brick.

It's really brick. That's just like real brick, but it's cut, and it's just like an inch thick, just like laying tile. Okay.

And they even have, like, these metal grid systems that you install with screws. You screw into your studs. Let's say you're doing a Wayne's Coat of brick.

So you put this grid up, and then you literally just take these brick faces, and they fit perfectly into the grids. Okay. There's no like what about your grouting then? Well, when you're done installing all these bricks, you literally use, like, liquid nails.

Oh, you do a construction adhesive. Yeah. I think there's a specific product.

It depends on what the company recommends for that product. But anyway, after you install all your bricks, then you squeeze bag, which is essentially for those who don't know what a squeeze bag is, it's essentially like a frosting if you've ever made making a cake. Yes, it's exactly what it is.

In fact, it's the same shape bag and everything. And you mix your mortar and you put it in the bag, and then you squeeze it in between all your joints, okay? And then you tuck point it and you're striking. What do you think about those rock panels that you just nail into a brisetta? That was the other product I was going to mention.

I've done that once before. And very easy. They're actually real stone, aren't they? You can get real stone, but you're really so versatile, is really expensive.

Very expensive product. However, I'm using Verseta as an example. I'm sure there's other companies that do it, but the term that comes to mind is Versetta stone.

It's essentially a panel, we'll call it. They vary in sizes but say like eight inches tall by 2ft long. And it has like a back to it that's super flat.

And the front is your stone look, but the whole thing is adhered to or built in with this metal. It's almost like a metal piece of siding that has stone built on it. And the metal has like a little flange on the top with screw holes.

And you just screw the thing to the wall. And so you put these all right. It's like Legos, essentially.

So the thing is with Versta is if you don't want to hire a Mason and you just want that stone look, then that's a great product to do it. You're skipping all the prep work. You're not having to do a scratch coat on anything and install your laugh, et cetera, et cetera.

And probably any siding guy or whatever could install. Yeah, any Tom, Dick or Harry can go install that stuff. If you can run a screw gun, you can put this stuff on.

What about cutting it? Cutting it? Do you just use a grinder? Do you just stop it wherever a full piece ends? Right? So they do have, like, corner ends. So you'll have regular panels and then you'll have regular looking panels, but they have like a corner on one side. You do need to plan out and figure out how many corners you need and all that, but it's pretty idiot proof, quite frankly.

It sounds interesting. It's a good product, but there's some things about it that I personally hate. I might be a little bit biased as a Mason, but one of them is.

So you install one piece and then on the top of that piece there's like a little channel, like a tongue and groove. Kind of. The next piece goes on top and it has the tongue and it sort of sits in the groove.

Right. So you have this little bit of movement. You can go up and kind of push a little bit on and you can hear like click, click, right? Like this little clanking or clicking rattling around a bit.

So I personally hate that. Masonry, to me, is like, I want to should be solid. It should be solid, right? You could swing a hammer on a brick wall and it should blink.

There's a time and a place for mimics. I guess you could say yes, but if you want an authentic look, sounds like this is not the place to go. No, I would say the curb appeal is there, but as soon as you get up close, anyone who's, even if you're not a Mason, you can pick it out pretty quickly and go, oh, that's certainly not a real yeah, I picture those corners kind of looking.

Yeah. So the one product that I did had those it had a couple of corners. It's hard to blend it.

You really kind of have to pay attention to what you're doing. Now, again, I'm not the professional Versetta installer. I'm sure there's guys out there that could do a better job, and they do it all day.

But I do believe, at least in my experience, when it comes to posts or peers, not an ideal product. There's so much cutting involved people, oh, man, it's so much faster, it's so much easier. Yeah.

But if you have to cut every single piece, you know what I mean? And peers in and of themselves are typically time consuming. There is a time and a place for it just like every other product. What about roofing? Yeah.

Moving on from your siding options, I feel like we've certainly covered that pretty well. Roofing is well, maybe you can tell us a bit. We're the main.

There's asphalt shingles and then there's metal. Those are the most common ones. Yeah.

And then you got cedar, and then you have a couple of composite types of rust. I don't even know the names of them, to be honest with you. I've never used them.

But yeah, the most common that we use are architectural shingles and metal. So standing seam, I don't recommend. You can buy a pull barn style metal, like an exposed fastener type, like a corrugated yeah, like corrugated or like they call it like a pro rib or whatever.

And time, those are okay for certain applications, but there's a major downfall to them, and one is the screws, over time, actually back themselves out. Because the wood and the heat of the screw, the sun shines right on the head of the screw, and it heats up that screw, which is embedded in wood, and it actually will back that screw out over a few years. And so one of the big downfalls, you go up on a ten year old roof with exposed fasteners, and you'll see all those fasteners out about an 8th inch, which causes an area for water to intrude, and it's not a major leak, but you still don't want water dripping in those.

And every time it rains, water falls down in that screw hole. I always recommend a standing seam with a hidden fastener. And you can do mechanically seamed or you can do just a clip on type standing seam.

And that kind of depends on your application and what you're doing. So if you're doing 112 or a 212, a really low pitch roof. You can do a standing seam and a mechanical, which is mechanically seamed.

You actually fold the metal comes folded, and you run a piece of equipment down the joint to actually fold it over and actually seal that together, basically. Like crimping it, sort of, yes. That's probably by far the best metal roof you can get.

It's also more expensive. I don't know why that happens to be that way. Every time you get something good, it's expensive.

Yeah, go figure. But it takes more labor. But then another good alternative is on, say, a 412 or 512.

A steeper roof than that. You can use a clip on it's like a snap lock is what they call it. Snap lock.

Standing seam, where it just clips together and then you run your fasteners down the edge, and then the next piece covers those fasteners so the sun isn't hitting directly on that fastener, which then they don't back out. So that's really good route. The most common roofing, though, I'd say, by far, is architectural shingles.

30 year, 40 or 50 year. We use malarkey shingles a lot. Our standard shingle is a malarkey 40 year architectural shingle, which is the Vista line.

Yeah, and we've had super good luck. We get some high winds out here, and I think they have 120 miles an hour rating, if I remember right. It could actually be higher than that.

But we install with seven nails per shingle, which increases the wind rating on them. And we've never had a problem with those shingles. They've been really good.

And even with our climate, extreme temperatures, ups and downs and all that, those shingles just they're nearly bulletproof. They come a long way, too, just like every other product out there. But I think that 40 year is an incredible product.

I had personally installed it on my own house. And you're right, I have never had to sweat it. And we get a ton of wind where I'm at, too.

That's awesome. And the thing is, you know what I love is on a rainy day, you can't do anything. You can't go outside.

So we're not used to rain out here, right? It hardly ever rains. So every time it does rain, we just stay inside. Yeah, but when you're inside on a rainy day and there's no water coming through your roof, I mean, that sounds like such a tiny thing in life.

But, like, every time it rains and it's just downpouring all day, I think I'm just so thankful I can just be inside my nice, warm and dry house, snug as a bug in a rug. And without high quality roofing and stuff like that, you're going to be worried about here's a point I just thought of. This is sort of more of a broad spectrum, and I'm not going to digress too much here, but there are some things I know this is a common question or thought in people's minds who are not in the industry.

There are some things you just don't cheap out on, right? There's some things that you can get away with murder, right? And then there's some things you just flat out don't cheap out on or you really, really shouldn't. Siding roofing. Let me guess, you're going to say masonry.

Well, certainly no, whatever siding product you want to use. But all of your exterior stuff, right, your siding, your roofing, your dirt work. I know we'd mentioned that on the last podcast.

Having positive workflow or water flow away from the house, your foundation, the framing, those are like the core items of your house, the bones of everything. And those are the items that you just don't cut corners in at all. Right.

Roofing is certainly one of them. And people tend to take this stuff for granted and think that others like this, there are standards in the building industry, but there are builders out there that they can do it for cheap, and they turn out a product and they can buy crappy materials. Yeah, they can buy crappy materials.

Your cheapest shingles ever, or maybe like you talked about using this corrugated type metal for roofing with exposed screws and yeah, it'll be nice after year one. Oh, wow. It looks amazing.

It looks nice. No, no problems. How long is it going to last? Yeah.

How long is it going to last? Yeah. So, you know so, you know, what with the fastener thing? You know, I was just thinking what you end up having to do if the just because you brought this up again, if those fasteners end up coming out a little bit, you know what you have to end up doing is you go back and you take all those fasteners out and you buy a fatter one and you put new fasteners back in, and then you're good for another few years, right? But you can only go up so many times in your screw size, right? So anyways, that was not to mention all the time and effort that you're taking. I mean, wouldn't that money be better spent upfront with a better product? Yeah.

So anyways, high quality, those shingles we talked about metal, there's also cedar, and then there's flat roofing, right? So cedar, cedar shakes are, in my experience, the most expensive because they're so labor intense. Not to mention cedar isn't exactly the cheapest product out there either. Yeah, that's a good point.

And it's expensive just to buy. So you got all these cedar shakes. They're installed unlike any other type of roofing.

You got layers and layers of tar paper, and you're snapping lines all the way across your roof constantly. And it's just really intense. But I've personally never done any sort of cedar or I've never worked with cedar ever on a roof or whatever.

It's just not common out here. But where it's. Really common is on the coast, that salt water and stuff.

The cedar holds up pretty well and it's really wind resistant. It's considered a 50 year roof. It does look really nice.

Is it worth the money, though? I mean, for your average homeowner? It depends on what you're doing and where you're at and that type of stuff. Right. Cedar is just a fun fact for the listeners.

Cedar is a mold resistant, rot resistant wood. So that's why it's so common with exterior use, particularly with fences. Right.

Like the cedar pickets, it's going to hold up way better and last way longer than, say, a Douglas for pine. Another super common roof that we actually don't see here at all and I don't really honestly know much about it, is a terracotta clay tile and super common in hot areas like Arizona and down south. Very rarely do people do it up here and to be honest with you, I don't even want to talk about it because I don't know anything about it.

I don't either. I do know it takes a lot of skilled labor to install. I'm sure there are systems now that have made it more streamlined, but typically it's a pretty skilled thing, right? Yeah, kind of a specialized deal.

I have heard this, that you can't really walk on it because they'll crack and break. So I think it has to be installed very methodically where you're going to be walking the challenge. I see.

And I don't know anything about it either, but like penetrations, you have your plumbing vents coming out or your chimney or like how does that even that seems very challenging to me. So I'm sure done with the right with the right person. It's certainly an excellent product.

But so and then there's flat roofing. Flat roofing is interesting because it has gotten a bad name here's. The funny thing is people ask me all the time, well, what's it like? I mean, don't you get a lot of leaks with a flat roof and questions like that.

But when you actually start looking around, almost all commercial buildings have flat roofs on them. Walmart's targets, all these Home Depots and apartment buildings. I mean, there's millions and millions of flat roofs out there.

And you think of the thousands of penetrations, roof penetrations that are in, say, a Walmart it for example, thousands big HX systems and pipes and vents and those don't leak. Yeah, I think the thing is, because they're using commercial applications, people don't even realize that it's used commonly because they'll drive past a store not ever considering that it's a flat roof. Well, and you don't see it.

Yeah, you don't see it's. Just you go into the store and you leave and whatever. And so then it's interesting to me when as a builder, because I realize that there's flat risks all over the place when that's a question because obviously I think about those things simply because I'm in the industry.

But when somebody says, well, you don't want to do a flat rev, it's going to leak. It's like, well, actually, they're very common and they've been proven for many years if it's done incorrectly. Yeah, you can get a leak, just like you can get a leak in metal or you can get a leak in shingles.

I wouldn't recommend for somebody who's never had any sort of training, doesn't know the industry as far as roofing goes, if you're just going to like, well, I'm going to try doing a flat roof, I wouldn't recommend that. Like a homeowner building, some whatever it for sure requires technique and knowledge. Yeah.

And there's a lot of specialty equipment. I have a friend, also brother in law, who has a roofing company on the West Coast, and he does a ton of flat roofs. And I know there's even like, welding machines that will weld the seams that he'll use.

There's a lot to it and just maybe he'd be an interesting person to bring on here and just kind of discuss some different roofing things. But you're absolutely right. There's so much to it.

There's so much to it. But it's also very common. It's done all the time.

It's not like this big scary thing. But at the end of the day, it's not a very common thing in residential because it is expensive and it is more of a most of the you'll say nine out of ten of the commercial jobs that are done out there have a flat roof. So therefore, nine out of ten of the flat roof people are working commercial.

They're not doing stuff on a house. Right, well, and you can get such a bigger roofing job on a commercial application versus residential. Right.

What else we got? I wonder about you mentioned windows. So windows is an interesting thing because you think about a lot of people who come to me, they say, I want really energy efficient windows, and I do too. Right.

Everybody does. So the challenge with a window is the code for today is R 28 on your exterior wall insulation, but a window has an R Three. So somebody says, I want really high energy efficient windows.

Well, as far as I know, the most energy efficient window you can buy out there is an R Seven. And you're paying for it. Yeah, it's a triple glazed window and there's actually a couple of brands that make them.

And I don't even necessarily want to go into the whole brand aspect of it, but there's a couple of brands that make an R Six or an R Seven window, depending on which brand you buy. And it's a triple pane with Argon and low e and all the add ons. One brand is specifically made out of it's a PVC material, and they have all kinds of different air chambers in there to give it a thermal break.

What would you say it's a complex conversation to have without visuals or anything, but bottom line is, everyone wants a high efficient window when the average efficiency is three. There's no such thing as a high that's really the answer. There's no such thing as a high efficient window.

So then people also want a lot of windows in their house. Yeah. So you get a lot of windows at R Three or R Four, maybe, and then you have massive amounts of heat gain in the sun or heat loss when there's not sun through your windows, because you want the light, right? You want the light and you want the look.

And so that's something that a person just has to give up at this time in our period of time. Right. At some point we hope there will be windows that do meet an R 30 or R 28 or something like that, just like the walls are right now, but that's not currently available.

So you just have to sacrifice that. If you want big windows and you want lots of light, you want the architectural look, you have to give up energy efficiency. That's just the way it is.

So say you buy a vinyl window, which is R Three, say an inexpensive window, but a mid grade, I don't know, maybe it's like one of the windows that we really like is an Anderson. Anderson makes a really high quality window. They're easy to get, they make different varieties or different levels, but their mid grade windows are actually really efficient, easy to install, good warranty that people are good to deal with.

And what I like about Anderson is real quick is even like the lower tier in their line called lower tier being a relative term. But even like, the more budget friendly selections that they have are very good quality windows. The glass quality is still there.

It's just a high quality window. Right. And so you can compare that to a high end I don't even necessarily want to use names, but you can buy a window that costs literally ten times the cost.

But the energy efficient energy efficiency isn't there, right? It might be things like the way the window operates. There's a European casement window, which there's a handle and you twist the handle and it's called a tilt and turn. That's one of the most efficient windows, energy wise, as far as the mechanism and the way it seals.

Real quick, why don't you unpackage for people the slider single hung and the efficiency differences? I know you're kind of getting into this now when we're talking efficiency, people maybe be thinking of that R value, but where there's a lot of loss can be around how the window is sealed and how it's built. Yeah, it's a good call. So when you think about energy efficiency, just like you said, a lot of times, you think of R value and heat loss and heat gain and whatever solar gain is what it's actually called.

But what about air intrusion? If you buy a poorly built window with a weak frame in a bad thermal barrier, thermal break, and the style of window is such like a double hung, a double hung window is notorious to leak a lot of air. You have slides on the upper portion of the window and you have slides on the lower portion of the window and you're able to lift the bottom and open the bottom part of the window vertically up. Or you can close that and pull the top part of the window down.

So with that being said, nothing is actually truly sealed off. They're all movable. And so all the way around the window, plus a bar through the center of the window is actually an area for air leakage.

And so when air is coming through the frame of the window between the sash and the jam, especially out here where it can get windy, that's air just blowing right into your house. And it might be small amounts, but do that through your entire house. And if you have big windows, it's even more.

Yes, people should understand something with windows, efficient or not, right? Even a high quality window, it's the number of windows that really are going to play the main factor. You might as well. So if you have a ton of windows in the house, or even an average amount, that is the equivalent to cutting a 1ft by 1ft hole right into the side of your house and just open to the air, that's essentially what you're doing right there's.

That much air movement combined throughout your entire house. I'm literally making this up. But that's how I envision it.

You compare the window space taken up versus say, a wall with insulation in it. You play those two off of each other and you're essentially cutting a 1ft by 1ft hole into your wall. That's how much air loss or air heat loss you're actually having throughout your house.

So depending on the style of window, the way it operates, you can actually reduce that. So a double hung has the most possibility for air intrusion because it has the most moving parts and unsealed moving parts, a single hung is the same type of window, but you only lift the bottom of the window up and down. So at least one part is sealed off, typically most common too.

And then you have a slider window, which is essentially the same as a single hung window, but it moves from side to side, yet one side is stationary and it's not moving. You have a picture window where the whole thing is sealed off and there should be no air intrusion on that window. But most of the time people want operating windows.

So there's two good options. One is a casement window with a crank. Those have a major downfall and that's the crank themselves.

So they seal really good. They shut you got this seal all the way around and then you grab the lock and you pull it in tight and that seals that window off nearly as good. Not quite as good, but nearly as good as a picture window.

The downfall of those is the crank. And you have gears and you have a mechanism there that can fail over a period of time. That's where a good quality window is recommended.

Right. You don't want to get a cheap typically you don't want to get cheap anything, but you don't want to get a cheap crank, cheap brand with a poor quality crank that's going to fail in two years. Yeah.

And my personal favorite on a window mechanism is the European tilt and turn. And so there's a handle in the middle of the window and you turn it one way and you're able to pivot the window inward, just like a casement window would pivot outward, but you're doing it just with your armpower. There's no mechanism.

Very simple. Yeah. And then if you put that window in the closed position and then turn the handle to the opposite direction, it will actually tilt inwards from the top.

And so that allows for some ventilation without opening the whole window. The reason that's my personal favorite type of window is it's super high energy efficiency due to the air leakage. And then you can get it.

Those are also technically not technically. They're also really commonly a higher grade window because they're actually, once again, because they're nice, high quality, energy efficient window. They're also more expensive.

That's the route I recommend going. But a lot of times it doesn't fit in a person's budget, which is unfortunate. Yeah, glass is expensive.

That's certainly a very high dollar item on a house. Very high dollar item. And it's a huge spectrum.

Right. You can go pretty cheap with windows and get a good window and say, pay whatever, 15, 20,000 for a house package, whatever, depends on your house. You can go all the way up to 80, $90,000 on a set of windows.

I mean, it's incredible. It's incredible how much money you can actually spend. And so you have to determine, obviously your budget.

But what are you really going for? Is it straight up efficiency? Are you just dead set on the aesthetics of it or whatever color of the trim? So another thing with energy efficiency on windows is you can get argon gas in between the panes, but that really only works in a lower elevation. Where we live, we're about 4000 sqft in elevation here, specifically bighorn. Where I live, Sheridan, is just slightly under, but it doesn't make a big difference.

And argon works good closer to sea level. But when you go up in elevation, they have to put a little tube in there so the glass doesn't actually crack due to elevation. And then the argon over the period of just a few years actually leaks out and you lose all that efficiency that you had once when you first bought the window.

Right. So it's actually a real short lived alternative to gain efficiency. Right.

So for the listeners sake, real quick, so most windows have essentially two panes of glass, and you have a thermal break or space of air between those two pieces of glass. So your standard old pitcher window or your old single pane windows didn't have that. So what would happen is, I'm sure everyone's seen this.

You have a winter day come and your whole window just frosts up. There's no thermal barrier. What it is, is this condensation that is the hot and the cold air meet, right.

And it creates that condensation. So you get a frosted up window. With modern windows, you have two panes, and so you have this thermal break in between where that condensation is dissipated and controlled more, thus not allowing for frosting.

Now, with the argon, there's that space in between those two window panes. There's an actual argon gas in there. And I don't know exactly the science behind how that argon gas works better than just standard air, but like Drew mentioned, at a higher elevation, it's not worth the money.

I don't think we would recommend it. Yeah, a lot of times people will put it in, but like I said, it's a short lived thing. Over a few years or not a very long period of time, it actually dissipates and it'll be gone.

I'm sure there's probably some company or service that will actually recharge your windows. Go to a gas station that comes and fills up your windows. Put your blinker fluid in your windows.

I need to go fill up the windows. How about doors? Kind of the same thing. Kind of the same subject as windows.

Typically less glass, but I know you'd mentioned, I don't know if it was this episode or the last, how exterior doors don't typically have a wood door jam well anymore. Yeah, wood door jams are very common. It's just that we choose to not use them anymore because of the fluctuation and the moisture.

Yeah, you can get aluminum jam doors and they're really, honestly way better. You're talking about the aluminum. It doesn't expand and contract or crack or anything like that, like wood does.

Aluminum has it adjusts to the sun, it expands and contracts. But wood opens and closes, I guess you could say, where aluminum doesn't. So it's all expanding, contracting the same where wood, the grain opens and closes and that causes the paint to crack, which then after just a short period of time, your finish is toast.

Yeah, just like you described with the accordion. Okay. For this one.

Wow. But anyway, just once you button this up, then about the doors. Okay, what do you recommend? You're talking about aluminum.

I know there's some other sort of like a plasticky what am I trying to say here. More like a vinyl type material. What's it called? I don't know what you're talking about.

Well, I have one for the jam. Yeah, for the jam. It's like a composite.

Yeah, you can buy a composite jam. And specifically, a lot of jams come with a composite bottom, so any water hitting it doesn't wick up and get to the wood. So that's an option.

And I personally would go with the aluminum jam over, really? Anything else? There are certain people who make steel doors, and those are generally custom made, and they're super expensive. So on a real high end home, you can get custom steel doors just for an idea. You can buy a door wood jam, say, a full light with the steel slab, but the full light in the middle for about $500.

Or you can buy a custom pivot door for $12,000. And so the prices vary a ton, and it really depends on your budget and architecture style and stuff like that. Yeah.

Also consider things like your exterior doors, particularly your front door, are, again, one of those don't cheap out on type of items. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean you need to go get the fanciest Gucci van Gogh front door with all this fancy glass and everything, but get something that's of good quality, whether it's if it happens to be $2,000 front door or $8,000 front door. Yeah, and there's a lot of places that the door isn't as important.

Say, the door that goes from your house into your garage. You need a fire rated door, but you may not really care about the looks. The most common that one we do for a fire rated door is just a flat panel steel door.

So it's your standard it does the job. Yeah, it does the job, but it also fits with what we're doing with the flat panels. It's basic, it's modern, and then it has to be fire rated.

So that's the thing, is you can't do a lot of doors. A lot of doors just aren't an option for that space because of the fire rating. Right.

And you may not care about your door going from the garage to the outside or sure. There's just certain areas that you want to spend a lot of money on. A door, if you have to limit where you're going to spend, you're probably going to choose your front door, your back door, your patio door, patio.

I think of that front door, the amount of use that it gets. Personally, I have kids, and they're in and out, in and out, in and out, in and out. That thing's always getting slammed.

The kids are hanging on the handle, and it just gets a lot of abuse. And I'm glad that I got the front door that I got because it's held up quite well and I really haven't had to worry about it. And there's things like multislide doors there's sliding patio doors, there's even doors with different latching system.

Multipoint latch. So a higher security option is a multipoint. It has like three or five actual latches.

So when you actually operate the door handle, there's mechanisms within the door that operate three. Almost like a safe. Yeah, three different latches at the same time.

Which one is it? Improves efficiency because it's latching it all the way down the door. Multiple points. And also security doors are a huge focal point on houses, whether it's intended to be a mate.

You can build houses with the front door being the major focal point of the house, or you can design your house where your front door is actually not a focal point. But no matter how you do it, it's always the thing that people walk up to when they get there and they look at it, whether they see it from the street or whether they see it when they're standing in front of the house. Sure.

And so, in my opinion, it's super important to have a really nice front door, high quality, and it's worth spending a little money on it. Yeah, well, we'll continue this same topic on the next episode. Maybe next we can get in being as we're on the door subject, maybe we can get into garage doors a little bit, talk about those as well, and some other things too.

So everyone who's listening, stay tuned and we will continue this conversation.