If you’re an inspector who’s ever had questions (or strong opinions) about PEX plumbing, press fittings, or heat pump water heaters, this is the episode for you.
In Episode 55 of The Ride Along, Brad Lowery and Matt Brading sit down with Eric Aune, master plumber, mechanical contractor, and co-founder of Mechanical Hub. He’s also a regular on the Build Show Network and host of the Make Trades Great Again podcast. In short, he knows his stuff, and he’s not afraid to share it.
In this episode, Eric dives into:
- Why PEX isn’t the next polybutylene – and when it is the wrong fit
- The pros and cons of push-to-connect fittings like Clearlock
- Press vs. copper vs. PEX and how hybrid systems can work
- What inspectors should actually be looking for when evaluating modern plumbing installs
- Heat pump water heaters: how they work, when they’re a good fit, and what to watch out for
Plus, Eric drops some advice on field relationships between trades and inspectors – and how a little communication can go a long way.
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Transcript
Brad Lowery
All right, Matt, remember that time that we went to a really cool house in the middle of Austin with some really cool people and then did a really cool podcast there while we were at it.
Matt Brading
Yeah, what was that guy was praying? It was a person’s name. I feel like it was like recent what? Riesling? Rising or rising or? was it. What was his first name? Matt? That was his name.
Brad Lowery
Riesling. Yeah. Ringling. Risinger. Yeah, that was it. Right. Risinger build. Man. Yeah. With
the build show, dude, we got somebody else from the build show network on here today, dude. I’m excited. You ready jump into it?
Matt Brading
Yep, heck yeah I am.
Brad Lowery
All right, everybody, guys, this is going to be a really fun episode here on the show because the last time that we did a show with somebody from the Build Show Network, we were in the Build Podcast Studio and we’re doing this on good old good old Riverside here today. But but seriously, this is going to be a excellent show, Matt, you want to tell them a little bit about the guests we’re going to have on here?
Matt Brading
Yes, yes. My friend Eric Aune from a plumbing and heating guy from up in the Minnesota area, which is usually way different weather-wise. We were talking about the weather a few minutes ago. Usually way different weather-wise than what I’m dealing with down here, but right now it’s pretty much the same. But as far as I’m concerned, pretty much an expert in plumbing and heating. Mostly.
Brad Lowery
He’s a Minnesotan.
I love it.
Matt Brading
Mostly, mostly plumbing. mean, I feel like I want to talk about that a little bit later, but I feel like a lot of people look at you and say, you know, is, is how is this supposed to be done? Or they look to you to tell them how it’s supposed to be done. So yeah, I’m looking forward to getting your take on some stuff today, Eric.
Eric Aune
Alright, I’m glad to be here. Thanks for having me, guys.
Brad Lowery
Yeah, and just to kind of give your bona fides here a little bit to everybody listening, you are a master plumber. Honestly, there’s nothing you’re not doing right now. I mean, you’ve got a podcast, the Make Trades Great Again podcast, you’ve built up the Mechanical Hub social media, almost a million followers on all platforms, and you’re on the Build Show Network. So we’re excited to get down and talk with you here today. Definitely,
Eric Aune
Yeah, thanks so much. Yeah, no, we do a lot of podcasting, a lot of videos, putting stuff out all the time. It’s just kind of the way it is in 2025 , right?
Brad Lowery
you
have to man. Absolutely. So that’s now how long have you been doing doing your all of your content lines, man?
Matt Brading
I’m gonna go get you.
Eric Aune
I think I started on social media with my own plumbing, the Aune Plumbing and Heating business probably 2009, 2008, somewhere around there, back when you couldn’t post videos on any kind of format because they just didn’t support them, except for YouTube, of course, right? Well, and I actually totally missed the boat early on YouTube. I thought, oh, no, I’m not going to be any good at that.
Brad Lowery
Yeah, yeah, that was early YouTube days.
Eric Aune
Boy, I do, wish I would have stuck with it. Started and stuck with it at the beginning. But yeah, we just put it out everywhere and it’s just a lot of fun.
Matt Brading
Same.
Brad Lowery
That’s fantastic, man. Now you guys do a great job with it. so for all of y’all listening, go follow them at Mechanical Hub. Go follow the whole Mechanical Hub series there. Eric, you guys are doing great work. But I love that you guys are so engaging with the audience too. And for everybody that’s been following Matt, that’s been following the ride along, that’s been following everything we’ve been putting out lately, we want to engage with you guys too. before we jump into the main discussion, we do want to encourage you guys. First of all, go check out the show notes down below.
you can sign up for the newsletter, is going to be the easiest and best way to get every single new episode right in your inbox. We don’t want to spam you up.
We just dropped you guys a quick email with the newest episode whenever it comes out. So the link’s going to be down there for that. And you can actually, we got a website to it. It’s called PodPage and you can go to podpage.com slash the ride along home inspection podcast. And you can leave us a voicemail there. So you don’t got to call a number. You don’t got to send an email. If you want to drop us a line, you guys are more than welcome to do that. But, while you’re at it, go follow at mechanical hub, go follow the build show network. And cause there’s all kinds of just absolute
for this industry and all related industries right there. But Eric, yeah, we want to talk all things plumbing with you today, just because you’ve gotten to work with the Risinger build. You’ve on deck there.
And so we’re excited to talk with you about everything from that to Pex plumbing, because we’ve gotten comments before about, we had one episode where an inspector was, he’s kind of from the old guard and he was pushing back a little bit on Pex plumbing, finding it to be a little bit troublesome, but we want to get your take because we had some hot takes in the comments on that episode. And another thing we, gosh, we ran into the water heater, the heat pump water heater at the Rysinger build.
We honestly didn’t even feature it just because we’re like, I don’t think we know enough about this thing to even talk about it. So we want to get your take on that too, man. That’s news to us.
Matt Brading
Ha!
Matt Brading
We’re certainly gaining popularity
and the pecs thing, man, I mean, like, think to, kind of like kick this thing off, like it’s been compared to, and I’d really like to hear what you had to say about this to the next poly butylene. Okay. So like, like, mean, you know, what are your thoughts there when people say something like that? What is, what does that do? Does it make the hair on the back of your neck stand up? Do you agree with that? Do you not agree with it? What’s going on?
Eric Aune
I don’t want to hear that. don’t want to hear that.
Brad Lowery
Yeah.
Eric Aune
I don’t know if you can agree with it. I think if you just look at it pragmatically and you look like we’re not having failures with PEX like they had with Polybutylene. The industry, the manufacturing industry, learned a lot from that whole debacle. And it was terrible. It was terrible, terrible, terrible. But I wouldn’t say PEX is the next Polybutylene yet. Now, I want to say a couple of things. Let’s just qualify. So everybody listening.
I don’t want you to be skeptical. Who’s this guy? he like pushing pecs? Is he pushing copper? I install both all the time. I do a lot of hydronic heating systems. What that means, I do a lot of boiler systems. We heat houses, buildings all the time with hot water and we cool them with chilled water. We do that with combinations of different piping systems. We do a ton of potable water or for my Canadian friends, potable water with both copper and pecs tubing.
And let’s face it, the nation right now, the entire North America and pretty much every other country as well is plumbing most systems, the majority, as in pretty much all of them, in PEX tubing. And the reason why is because we’ve got a huge labor shortage. And so if you can do jobs faster, you can get more jobs done or you can keep up with the work you have and the demand. And also it’s more profitable because you’re doing you can install a lot more pipe in.
same amount of time versus, let’s say, copper. So there you go. My background is I have for over 25 years installed both types of piping systems. guess packs really didn’t become popular until, let’s say, 2005, kind of beyond. So yeah, so about 20 years of that. But I’ve been a plumber since I started my apprenticeship in 1998 . So there you go. It’s a long time. I use both systems currently.
Matt Brading
Yeah, I going say about 20 years ago.
Brad Lowery
Yeah.
Eric Aune
Um, Matt, you and I were talking the other day, you’re like, well, what would you have in your house or what? If you built a house tomorrow, what would you put in it? I’ll be honest with you, the house that’s a hundred feet away from me, from my shop that I’m sitting in right now, it’s got copper in it. And I built that house in 2002. Um, but at the time we were really in our market. What we saw a lot of was CPVC, not pecs at that little snapshot in time. And I certainly wasn’t going to go with that CPVC product. That’s, have a bias against it. Uh, so I went with copper.
Matt Brading
Yeah.
Eric Aune
Am I glad I did? Probably. I mean, we know that copper’s going to last forever. So I don’t know if it’s the next polybutylene that still remains to be seen. We don’t have any class action lawsuits over current products, at least in the last decade. Are there problems with it? I think there’s problems with different applications. And when I say applications, we know that there can be issues with PEX tubing in attic spaces. They get that super high temperature environment.
we that can cause problems with all types of packs, not just one in particular, any kind of it. So we maybe got to rethink how we’re plumbing houses that don’t have basements, right? Or unless you’re going to go, yeah, or subslab, right? You could go subslab and be with packs and be just fine here and not in that degree environment, things like that. The other thing too, is we know that copper can handle those temperatures. But if you don’t install copper,
Matt Brading
Pretty much everything I have.
Eric Aune
Let’s just face it and be true here. If you install copper wrong, you don’t install it correctly, it can have failures too.
Matt Brading
I mean, the problem is happening at the connections, right? I mean, that’s what’s happening with with PECS too, right? I mean, like even with this heat driven problems, I’m not really seeing that here, believe it or not. I mean, at least not that I know of, but I mean, that’s usually the problems happen at the connection points. Am I right about that?
Eric Aune
I think connections, like some of the fitting systems for a little while years ago, we had this problem with our brass that was being brought in and imported into the US. And they had a problem with what was called de-zincification. So the zinc inside of the brass is a, what’s the alloy, right? So it’s multiple different types of metals blended together. It’s copper, it’s tin antimony and zinc. And there’s a few different things that are in it, right?
The problem was water quality was pulling that zinc out, and the fittings were failing. OK, that’s a problem. So that’s a fitting problem. Then the joints and stuff. So there’s different types of pecs. There’s pecs that you crimp, which probably most people are familiar with. There’s pecs that you actually expand in diameter to fit over. You fit over a fitting that’s a little bit larger than the tubing itself, that kind of stuff. And so if you’re not using the right tooling or you’re not installing it in the right conditions, that can cause problems.
Matt Brading
Yeah, I’m sorry with that,
Eric Aune
just like anything, just like if you don’t ream the cut end of your copper, it causes turbulence and it can actually wear a hole through the side of the pipe. So.
Matt Brading
That’s kind what I was getting at. you know, the problems were the connections. if the connections are bad, like depending on how you install this stuff can be, you know, lot of the factors to whether or not they fail. I mean, like in talking about that, like you do a lot of press fittings too, right? Like, how do you, how do you feel about that stuff as compared to, I mean, I’m, these events, right.
Eric Aune
Yeah.
man.
is a hill I will die on. I’ll tell you what. I’m very much a I love the science behind everything that we do in the trades. think if it’s something I’m going to be involved in, I want to learn as much as I can about it. And so you learn about things like flow velocity and turbulence and the proper prep and prepare and put together of any type of system is super important.
Matt Brading
Hahaha!
Eric Aune
You have to know what your system’s going to be used for. But if we’re just talking like residential plumbing, there’s some very basics that anybody can follow. And I can teach you everything you need to know within a couple days of being on the job. And you can repeat those tasks over and over, and they don’t take any real special tools. Now, pressing, some people don’t like it because they look like early on, plumbers hated it. They’re like, my gosh, anybody could do that. You could teach a monkey to pull a trigger. And I’m like, well, that is a
That is an accurate statement. would imagine I’m not into training monkeys, but I think you could teach a monkey how to pull trigger on a power tool. And I wouldn’t want them to do it. And here’s why. Because I, as a master plumber, license, and anybody that works under me and I’ve worked alongside, have to know exactly how to install that pipe exactly the right way. It has to be sized properly, supported properly. It has to be the right piping for what you’re using it for, right? And I don’t think monkeys are going to do that. So we got some qualifications in order to get to the point where we’re pulling triggers.
But the fact of the matter is I can do it. I’ve been doing this a long time. And I’m not inhaling fumes. I’m not starting places on fire or nearly starting them on fire. Because I’ve actually seen buildings burn down from plumber’s torches. And honestly, right here in Minnesota, it’s happened. my career, I’ve seen it. But I mean, that’s rare. That’s rare. But you’re not going to burn a building down by pulling a trigger on a hydraulic tool, right? So like,
Matt Brading
Wow.
Brad Lowery
Wow, man.
Matt Brading
Yeah.
Eric Aune
I love press stuff because it’s efficient, it’s fast, it’s clean. I’m not putting anybody’s property at risk. And I’m not also cutting down on the wear and tear of my body. And by the way, it lasts forever. It lasts as long as we need it to last. I don’t know how long we need copper piping systems to last. I’ll be honest with you. I think that if they last years, that’s probably long enough. need a job to replace. I need plumbers to paid to replace this stuff in the future.
Matt Brading
You
Eric Aune
So that’s like the big argument against it you kind of see where I’m going with that there. But I love pressing stuff, but back to the pecs real quick. There are some, I don’t think years is planned obsolescence. Let’s be honest. Like, are you buying a car thinking it’s going to last years? You know what I mean?
Brad Lowery
You saying there’s planned obsolescence
Yeah, yeah.
Those
Toyota guys do that though. Yeah, yeah, I’m gonna get 500,000 miles out of this thing. No, you’re not.
Matt Brading
Really not.
Eric Aune
am a Toyota guy. I know, I
know. We are Toyota family. Dang, I’m stepping on a lot of cracks here. The Pecs thing, I hope I’m not dominating the conversation here. But the Pecs thing, well, I want to acknowledge a couple of things too, because there’s a lot of people listening to this. they might think of some scenarios they might have heard of, read about, seen on their own jobs where Pecs was failing that wasn’t at the joint.
Brad Lowery
I love it, man.
Now you’re good.
Matt Brading
Are you good?
Eric Aune
And there’s a few manufacturers out there that are very upfront and they say, look, we have some scenarios where our pipe might not be the best fit. And it tends to be like hot water with chlorination and like recirculation, like a lot of moving water. So like, I know, for example, one of the major manufacturers had some failures on pipe and it was pretty bad. It was bad for them, it was bad for the industry. And what it was is it was like the recirculating line on the hot side of things.
with chlorinated water, because it was municipal, that kind of stuff. And it turned out their pipe was fine for the first five, six years. And then year six, seven, somewhere around there, they started having failures. Not everything’s perfect. I will say, like I have many times, you can have failures on every piping system, though. Honestly, if you’re not applying it right, or you have to know going into it, look, this does have a less of a lifespan expectancy because of how we’re using it, that kind of thing.
Brad Lowery
So it all comes down to kind of to most of the failures are going to be due to operator failure more than anything.
Eric Aune
Installation is probably the first failure that we see. Installation error, like the installer error. And then application. Honestly, just because it holds water and you can install it in a wall doesn’t mean it’s the right one. You know what I mean? Just like I can install the wrong breaker in my panel and everything’s going to work until it doesn’t. You know what I mean?
Brad Lowery
Right, right.
Matt Brading
Right, right.
Brad Lowery
So
I wonder then does some of the pushback and this isn’t to be a just in any way, but does some of the pushback kind of come from the old guard towards new materials in the same way that home inspectors, you still got a bunch of the guys out here that run around with point and shoot cameras and iPads or notepads as opposed to, you know, using an app or they refuse to do video or things like that because you know, there’s risk involved. Yeah. Is there, is that some of it or
Matt Brading
has to play into it.
Eric Aune
It I’d
say absolutely. I’d also say just kind of on like, let’s keep everything in perspective here. You do have some old timers. Let’s call them old timers. You know, the older generation. Yeah, they had seen failures in systems. So maybe they’re skeptical, right? So like you, I’m working still around people that are in this trade. They’re probably close to retirement age or retiring now.
Brad Lowery
We say it with all respect. Yeah, yeah.
Right.
Eric Aune
that worked through the whole polybutylene debacle in the 80s. Most of those guys and gals that were working at that time are at least at retirement age or close. But if they’re skeptical of it, it’s usually based off of personal experience. They’ve seen problems. Or they have no experience with it. That’s what I see. That’s what I think I see most when I first started my social media stuff. So I was putting videos out there, press and copper.
putting in new technology heat pump water eaters and modulating condensing appliances like boilers and furnaces, stuff like, my gosh, that stuff is junk because the stuff we’ve had forever is so much better. It works. And while they’re maybe not wrong, well, they’re wrong about the junk part, but maybe they’re not wrong about what they have been installing. It’s fine. It’s usually because they have no experience with something new. It’s so easy to say,
Matt Brading
Right.
Eric Aune
you know, just to make assumptions and say, that’s junk. If you’ve had no firsthand hands-on experience with something that’s my take, that’s, think just society in general is kind of knee jerk reaction.
Brad Lowery
No, I definitely could.
Matt Brading
Yeah, I mean, I think
that these guys, these older guys, probably just there’s a little bit of poly butylene like PTSD towards any type of poly pipe, you know, I mean, because that was we do, you know.
Eric Aune
No doubt. Yeah, no.
I credit them. I acknowledge that. I do. I acknowledge that if you’ve had experience with something and you’ve seen it fail, and you can properly assess it and say, hey, we did everything right. We did it the way they said we were supposed to do it. If you did that and it failed, then I’ll totally listen to you. If you’ve never touched it and you try to tell me I’m doing it wrong or that’s junk, I’m probably not going to.
have a lot of respect for what you’re saying until maybe we can have a conversation about it.
Brad Lowery
There’s some pushback that comes on home inspectors just for that very thing. It’s like, you just go around and look at houses. You’ve not installed a dad gum thing, you know? So who are you to actually criticize this or this or, you know?
Eric Aune
I don’t know. If
I had a question on whether or not something was right or wrong, I got a couple of people in my phone, Matt being one. Like I could make a phone call and get at least a second opinion. You know, I’m not a framing carpenter. You know, like I don’t do that. So if I’m going to do something and I think, I think I’m doing it right, maybe I would consult a home inspector because I think there’s a lot more today that are better than they ever were. And there’s so much more knowledgeable and you guys are sharing so much knowledge with each other.
Brad Lowery
Of course, yeah.
Matt Brading
I think.
Yeah, I think that
has something to do with it. Yeah. mean, I think, you know, putting that out there, everyone has a chance to grow. Just like, you know, meeting you and other people in the construction industry, like I get to learn from everyone on a daily basis. And I feel like, you know, that’s what, you know, some of these inspectors are doing is, is learning from other inspectors that are putting stuff out there. So I think it’s more tangible. When I started this stuff just really wasn’t available. You you couldn’t get the training, the videos that are either really terrible and, and, and you got training in the
Eric Aune
yeah.
Matt Brading
In school, know, the home inspection school, it was not very good. It was what it was. You get experience on the job, but now there’s a whole lot of stuff out there. But I got a question for you because we were talking about your house and it’s copper in it. And we were talking about if you were to get a new house, you know, what would you do? And you were like, I’d probably do copper, but it’s like, I mean, I also I’m going to do it myself. And so like yours that I thought of another like question in that realm. If you were to buy a
Eric Aune
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Matt Brading
that needed a repo. What would you use? You use an older house and you know that it, let’s play it CPVC or galvanized or CPVC.
Eric Aune
Like if, so everything’s got a basement here in Minnesota, right? Yeah.
my gosh, if it had Galvanizer CPVC, I don’t care what would go in it as long as it wasn’t, as long as that stuff was coming out. I’ll be honest, I would have no hesitation putting PEX in if it meant that I had some, if I was crawling around a crawl space and to snake pipes in tight areas and didn’t have room to work, stuff like that, PEX is great. It’s great for that.
Matt Brading
What would you choose?
Yeah, I mean, for
retrofit, yeah, I mean, like, don’t think.
Eric Aune
For retrofit, think
it would end up being a hybrid system. There’s no doubt in my mind. If I built a new house or if I was re-piping something and I was living there, I would probably choose copper, not because I think PEX is a lesser product, but because it’s just material cost for me. I mean, I’m not paying myself to do the labor. Just as anybody I know that works in their own house is doing it, you know.
It’s the last thing to get done, and nobody’s paying them. So there’s no motivation unless you don’t have a hot shower or something like that, right? So I don’t have hesitation using either one. Now, in my house, I have copper. If I were to move or build a new one, it probably would end up being a hybrid of sorts, because there are some benefits to pecs over copper. And that would be longer distances on smaller pipe. We can get away with,
Matt Brading
For sure.
Eric Aune
better flow rates, we can use way less fittings with PEX. In fact, you can eliminate upwards of plus percent of the fittings in the system just by going with PEX. And with the PEX systems that we’re installing and have been for a while, if you’re paying attention as a plumber or as a general contractor and you’re looking at what’s really out there in these catalogs from the manufacturers, if you go beyond just a very simple, I recognize that as a
a T because it’s got three connections on it. It’s so simple. There’s some little tiny mini manifolds that allow a whole bunch of connection points all at once, but they eliminate connections. They consolidate all the, they eliminate fittings. They consolidate to small junctures and less cutting your pipe, less leak paths, things like that. So there can be huge advantages to a pack system actually.
I think a hybrid is really the way to look at it. think most home builders should really consider that. I think you’re plumbing in the mechanical space where your appliances are and stuff like that. I think we should be going away from pecs on those connection points where we’re relying on pipe to be straight and rigid and braced nicely so we’re getting rid of vibrations and things like that. And go to copper and then switch over when you’re in the trusses or you’re in the ceiling joists or whatever it is, wherever you’re working.
I think then going to PAX is a great way, like a hybrid approach.
Matt Brading
love these little copper stave outs that I see like at toilets and stuff like nothing bothers me more than a piece of peck just sticking out of the wall with a valve on it.
Eric Aune
I don’t, I think pecs sticking out of the wall is fine,
but here’s the deal. Go back to what I just said a second ago. If you know what’s in the catalog, you know what’s out there. Do know that they make these really awesome brass chrome sleeves that go over pecs? I’ve been using those things for years. My customers have no idea that there’s pecs sticking out of the wall. Cause A, I use the right kind of bracing that keeps my pipe straight. You know, you have the nice, but don’t get me wrong. I get it.
Matt Brading
Yeah, okay that…
Brad Lowery
Just to dress it up
a little bit. Yeah.
Matt Brading
That is cool.
embracing. Yeah.
Eric Aune
When people say, that looks like crap and stuff, yeah, usually because guys have stuff sticking out and it’s all wonky and gross. And I look at that and I’d be like, even if that was copper, I would say it looks like crap. You know what I mean? So you can do a poor job with good materials, and you can do a great job with any materials. You know what I’m saying? You can do a good job. I think it’s
Matt Brading
Yeah, because they don’t do it right.
Yeah.
Brad Lowery
Right.
It’s all about fit and finish, yeah.
Matt Brading
I said there’s
nothing worse than a piece of tech sticking out of the wall, but there is. My house has CPVC, unfortunately, right? I actually don’t have any problems with it, but the one problem that I do have is that all my valves are push-pull and I hate them. Yeah, it’s stupid, man. Like whose idea was this?
Eric Aune
You have this A-core things? Yeah, I know.
Anytime I see those, I remind my customers, like, hey, I offer this awesome removal and replacement service for those things, because they’re junk. They’re garbage. And if they’re not failing, all we have to do is touch it, and then it’ll fail. It’s one of those kinds of products. People, we were, hey.
Matt Brading
It’s garbage.
Yeah.
Brad Lowery
builder grade right there, right?
Matt Brading
Yeah, that’s what my house
- Terrible.
Eric Aune
Brad,
we were putting those things in because when I started out, I did new construction. every type of house from starter homes back when starter homes were fairly inexpensive, when you could build $150,000 house, you know what mean? That’s how old I am. then all the way up to million dollar plus houses, right? We were installing those in like 99, 2000, 2001. And they’re still like, hey, I’ll acknowledge that they’ve lasted a long time.
Brad Lowery
Sure. Yeah.
Matt Brading
Yeah.
Brad Lowery
Yeah, what are those? Yeah,
we’ll never see them again.
Sure.
Eric Aune
But they
are garbage. They don’t hold back water. You shut them off, remove a toilet. That thing’s just dripping the whole time. You’re like, I’m going to replace this thing. And I’m sorry it’s going to cost you a few hundred bucks. But you’ll never have to worry about it again. You know what I mean? And you have a functional valve when I’m done, because those things are garbage.
Matt Brading
Yeah, they’re, you
Brad Lowery
Absolutely, man. Now, I do want to talk to you about this. So we didn’t really get to see the rough end for the Rysinger build because it was, well, you did, okay. when we filmed ours, the drywall was up, floors were installed, everything.
Matt Brading
I did.
Eric Aune
Yeah, was at the
the build show live. had it. I’m sorry to interrupt, but they had they had the
Matt Brading
I went before
Brad Lowery
yeah, yeah, you’re
good.
Matt Brading
that. I was that built a lot, but I didn’t, I didn’t go on the tour. I don’t know what I was off doing, but no, no, you’re good. You’re good. I ended up down there like last August or something, just hanging out with, Mark, Willie and Jake, just, doing some filming and kind of checking it out. And it was like, I think we did a blower door test on it, you know, and like, it was, you know, definitely in the rough phase, but yeah, it was, wasn’t quite even ready for the,
Eric Aune
I’m sorry. I interrupted for no reason. Sorry, Brad.
cool. Very cool.
Matt Brading
I think because they were putting insulation in before the build show, I think, right? To show off the different types of insulation or something like that. And I didn’t even have any of that in there when I went. But I did get to see it in a rough stage.
Eric Aune
Yeah, yeah.
Right on.
Brad Lowery
And I’m
sure that there’s, you know, I’m sure Matt’s got some, some videos on, the build show channel about it, but can you kind of tease it a little bit here on what, what went into that?
Eric Aune
Yeah.
It’s surprising. A lot of people might not have, if you haven’t seen the videos. And I did a couple plumbing and mechanical videos for Matt’s series, because he takes off in the summertime for a nice long family vacation. They were shooting. They’re like, we’ve got to get these videos done, because the walls are going to get covered, stuff like that. And so I was down there. And if you want to watch them, there’s some videos with me in them. They’re probably not as good as the ones with Matt. But we did cover plumbing and piping and different types of systems that are in there. And believe it or not,
So they’ve got a Legend brand. Legend was a sponsor, so it’s no problem. We can mention it. It’s cool. Legend Piping, they’re an importer up in Michigan, and they have a whole bunch of piping systems for potable and hydronics, like that. Fittings, they’ve got press fittings. They’ve got everything. Anyway, Legend Pax was in there, and they used a push to connect type of fitting system. And it’s interesting. It is. It seems as though most people would be like, whoa.
Brad Lowery
Interesting.
Eric Aune
And the reality is this, a lot of people don’t like push to connect. If I say Sharkbite, that’s a brand that’s not Legends brand, right? Yeah, it’s like Kleenex at this point. Now, RWC, the company that owns Sharkbite, name doesn’t like it when you say that. But you know what? They were the first, and they were the ones that perfected the fitting system in North America. So that’s what we’re going to call them. But Milwaukee invented it, right? And that’s their name.
Matt Brading
That’s it.
Brad Lowery
Right.
Well, sawzalls are sawzalls and yeah, yeah. Right.
Eric Aune
I never got a ReSIP, so do you? So anyway, I don’t ask for Charmin or whatever. You get the idea. But yeah, so they use the push to connect fitting system. Plumbers are probably a little skeptical when they’re installing it, but I talk to them. And so I know the Plumbers a little bit that work for Matt’s Hosses on the Rysinger properties. And I asked them straight up, like, what do you think? Cameras are off, I’m just like, tell me what you think. And they’re like, at first, I didn’t think it was like,
Matt Brading
Hahaha!
Brad Lowery
Yeah, no.
Yeah, here’s your dress.
Eric Aune
going to be great. And then they did the whole house. they’re like, I mean, it was pretty nice. You’re just cut and packed at that point and just pushing it together. They have this system. It was nice. The cool thing about those Legend fittings, I think they’re called Clearlock. I hope I’m getting that name right for my friend Wade Tennant at Legend, you’re listening to this. Sorry, Wade, if I got it wrong. I think it’s called Clearlock. And the point of it is this.
Brad Lowery
Yeah, yeah.
Matt Brading
Yeah, I mean, it sounds awesome.
Eric Aune
They’re made out of the same plastic that all PEX fittings are made out of, but they’re transparent. So you could see where the end of the pipe was and that you were fully inserted into the fitting. And a plumber would look at that and go, wow, I don’t have to mark the tubing and measure it out and all that kind of stuff. And they were just snapping it together. And they liked it. And they were honest with me. I think I know these guys enough that were like, yeah, no, we were skeptical at first, but it’s good stuff.
Brad Lowery
Mm-hmm.
Now, what are some things that home inspectors really need to be looking out for with some of these new fittings and connections that are going in? mean, because again, Brisinger loves to highlight some of the new best and most efficient materials and standards in the industry. So from the inspector side of things, when we’re looking at new plumbing and new plumbing materials, what are things that we need to be aware of?
Eric Aune
Yeah.
I think it’s important to just check out the website and the technical information from the manufacturer, right? So if you see press fittings, you probably have seen them a million times now on copper. And you go, OK, I mean, I don’t really know much about that. But obviously, you can learn pretty easily off of, let’s say, the manufacturer like VEGA or NIPCO. You can go to their website and find out how it’s installed. I think it would be good for home inspectors.
to just understand the process of installation. Because if you understand how it’s supposed to be done according to the book, you could look at the install and go, OK, I’m not sure that this guy’s doing it right. You know what I mean? And ultimately, when it comes down to piping distribution systems for potable water and stuff like that, I don’t know. My inspectors here, my building inspectors, that if I’m working in a city that has a trade specific, those inspectors are a little more thorough.
Brad Lowery
Right, right.
Eric Aune
They’re looking at how I’m sizing my pipe. They’re making sure that I’ve got everything. I don’t downsize too soon. I’m not taking fixtures off, too many fixtures off half inch, stuff like that. So they’re looking at that a lot closer than, let’s say, my building inspectors that are looking at all of the, they’re doing every inspection on the job, that kind of thing. They’re less likely to be looking at that. But I think it’s important. I think understanding just like, if you look at a bathroom group and you’ve got three fixtures and you, and you,
Matt Brading
Right.
Eric Aune
in, or let’s say you have four fixtures in a bathroom group. can tell you right now, shouldn’t have feeding that bathroom. Shouldn’t be half inch. It’s too small. It’s supposed to be at minimum three quarter. Right? So there’s like the basics of like, I can have three fixtures on half inch, but as soon as I go to the fourth, I got to go to three quarter, that kind of stuff. And then ultimately we kind of already talked about it. You guys aren’t there watching them ream that copper or deep, you know, chamfer that, you know, plastic PVC drainage fitting or something like that.
Brad Lowery
Mm-hmm.
Eric Aune
But if you can look at the full system, understand what’s going on, and you can see things that are pretty important, like supports. Like, pex plumbing’s supposed to be supported every 32 inches. How often do you see that? Like, I mean, I’ve had inspectors literally be like, I think you’re too wide on your supports. They look like 34,26. You know, like, OK. But he’s wrong. He’s looking at it, looking at things that are important long term. Like, if we’re not doing even just the
Brad Lowery
Right, right.
Matt Brading
Right.
Brad Lowery
Right.
Eric Aune
basics, because what is it they say about the code, right? It’s the minimum standard. So I think if you guys are looking at that and just going, look, the pipe is supported properly. can very clearly see how they did this venting. We’re not trapping anything that might fill with water in the attic or something like that. And obviously, you guys are looking at things like.
Matt Brading
Yeah.
Eric Aune
does that fricking three inch line come from the bathroom group have slope on it? You know, like that’s the basics. Like I’m not trying to tell you guys how to do it, but like that’s pretty important. but the fitting systems and like how it’s going together, that’s tough. Cause you guys aren’t there when it’s being put together, right? You’re there after it’s done.
Matt Brading
Yeah.
I mean, it’s a little bit outside of our scope. I think for just about anybody anywhere in what we do in terms of general home inspection, but what you were talking about, you know, especially whenever I’m doing like pre, you know, rough in type stuff, you know, make sure it’s properly supported, protected from nail damage and stuff like that. What, let me ask you something. This is, I hope, I hope this is entertaining. what, do you have any things like about inspectors that just like get on your nerves?
Eric Aune
gosh, yeah, huge protection. Yep.
Matt Brading
Like what, what is it about inspectors that like really gets under your skin? Is there like one thing or maybe multiple things.
Eric Aune
I’ve never, no. Yeah, OK, so I don’t. No, it’s not related to critiquing my work. I look at like, I did a lot of new construction, did new construction for a long time. I don’t do it anymore. All right, so I might do a new home or something new-ish, like an addition or something like that. I might do that every couple of years.
Matt Brading
Yeah, yes.
Brad Lowery
Yeah,
he reversed that so fast.
Matt Brading
You
Eric Aune
My work is being inspected. It’s more like my heating systems, like I’m putting in a new boiler, I’m putting a new furnace, something like that. That, we pull permits, we get it inspected. But if I’m putting a new sink in and stuff, I’m not going to lie. Not always pulling permits for everything we do, because some things we do don’t need permits. My biggest gripe, and I kind of have to stretch a little bit back to when I was doing new construction regularly, and it still happens today. But my biggest thing is like,
the inspection window thing. Because in Minnesota, as a licensed trade, we have to be on site. So we have to be there for an inspection. And I got to say, that is one rule. I don’t think I’m willing to work towards changing. I just wish we could change the whole admin side on the inspection side of things. It feels like you stand around waiting a long time. I don’t want windows. I want a time. That’s my big thing. The other thing is,
I’ll be honest with you. I have had some of the longest conversations in my life on a job site with inspectors. Like they just want to talk. It’s like, maybe I’m just too nice or something, but like, I want to, like, I got to, like, I got to backfill this trench here. Like the concrete guys are concrete guys are probably my least favorite people on the job. And they’re always at the plumber’s heels. Like when you’re to be done. And they’re filling in their trenches. Like, dude, I’m not even inspected yet. You know, like that kind of thing.
Brad Lowery
You want to get to work. Yeah.
Matt Brading
Yeah.
Eric Aune
I don’t really have a lot to say. Honestly, I think time is wasted when we’re standing around doing nothing. That’s just kind of my personality.
Matt Brading
That sounds like building inspector type stuff like our stuff or at least what I do especially even when I do the rough-in stuff isn’t really like that and there’s definitely nobody on site or at least not usually I mean sometimes they are they’re just finishing stuff trying to cram it in before I go see it but I mean like It isn’t that kind of deal where like I’m inspecting so you can move on like what I do and I think what Brad does too is is We’re just working for the buyer. You know what I mean? So like they’re
Eric Aune
Yeah.
Matt Brading
The builder usually, not always, but usually depending on where they’re at, has inspectors or people that come through and look at things at a certain time too, that can impede progress. Like for us, like I can go in there and I can tell you something’s wrong, but that doesn’t mean you gotta stop. You can just keep going. But the buyer knows now that something’s wrong, so they can either negotiate, hey, we gotta stop. I’m not moving forward anymore. Or they kind of discuss what happens from there.
Eric Aune
Yeah.
Brad Lowery
Yeah. If I’m doing like
Eric Aune
Yeah, and those.
Brad Lowery
a, if I’m doing a pre drywall inspection and you know, I’m checking out the plumbing that’s there. I’m trying to stay as out of the way of the building as possible. You know, I’m not trying to talk to the tradesman there.
Matt Brading
Yeah. Right. That said though, like I
get it, like, and I’m like this too. I mean, I try to be respectful of people’s time, but if like, have a moment to absorb some knowledge from somebody, like I will do that. And so, you know, but, but, but I also try to be respectful of people’s time. So I wonder if that’s like what these guys are doing. Cause I mean, you know, uh, they, see somebody out there, they might have a bunch of questions.
Brad Lowery
Yeah, sure, yeah.
You’re using, you’re using press fittings.
Eric Aune
I
Matt Brading
Yeah,
yeah, yeah.
Eric Aune
love answering questions and having a conversation. That’s different from now we’re 25,30 minutes in and we’re talking about how you’re going on an RV trip. I’m just looking like, if you have a question about what I did or a critique about it, or you could say, hey, I don’t think that that’s right. Could you show me how we’re in the code books to say you should do it that way? I love that question.
Matt Brading
Yeah.
yeah yeah, no forget that. No.
Brad Lowery
Yeah.
Eric Aune
I love to be asked by an inspector, as a plumbing and HVAC contractor, like I just said, the best way I think it could be worded is, and look, this is my feelings, right? And this is how I feel about it. But if you could say to a tradesperson, hey, I’m not sure I understand why you did it that way. Could you show me? I have the code book. Would you take a minute? Could you show that? And that’s an opportunity for you guys, for us to both learn together, because I make mistakes.
Matt Brading
Yeah.
Eric Aune
I make mistakes. But also, it’s a way different conversation then moving forward than, that’s wrong. And if it’s wrong, it’s wrong. I need to be told that, and I need to learn from that. But if you approach it that a different way, like, I don’t see it like this a lot. You’re doing it differently. Is that right? Could you just show me that? And I wish inspectors would think about it that way. And some of them do, obviously. Some people are great with communication and stuff like that. But it’s.
Matt Brading
Yep. Yep.
Yeah, sure.
Eric Aune
The job site oftentimes is filled with people, myself included. They’re like very proud of what they did. And we’re, just talked about it. We’re in a hurry. We got a thing, you know, we’ve got things to do. And like the last thing you wanted to be do be told is you got to do something over. I don’t know why it hurts so bad to hear that, but it really sucks. But yeah, yeah, exactly. Like I want to be like, that is never going to matter in a million years, but like, but then it’s so quick in.
Brad Lowery
I’m sorry, that was supposed to be a half inch into the stud and this is only th. So you need a strike plane. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Eric Aune
Different personalities don’t mesh, but also there are some strong personalities in construction. We all know that. So like, arguments can happen pretty quickly. And maybe you don’t even intend for it to happen, or maybe you’re just having a bad day, or maybe you misheard or you thought what they were saying was something completely different. But the reality is, is I think communication can be a big thing. And I’m not saying inspectors have to treat me a certain way. just wish that, like, if it comes up, I wish we could have more of a dialogue about it and be like, hey.
Would you mind showing me where that is instead of saying, that’s not how I interpret it? Because that sucks from the start.
Brad Lowery
Yeah, It’s
Matt Brading
Yeah.
Brad Lowery
combative
instead of like collaborative. Yeah. Definitely makes sense,
Eric Aune
Yeah, yeah. And look, it’s
easy to talk about it on the podcast. And it’s easy for me to say, I would react differently if you said that. Like, hope I would. I hope I would.
Brad Lowery
Sure.
No, I think it’s a good place to talk about it just because it’s like, mean, honestly, how many podcasts episodes where do you have about on-site decorum, you know, or anything like that. But it’s something, I mean, we’re all working on the same property here and working around each other and we’re all highly specialized and very well trained and licensed in what we do. So there’s a lot of respect to go around. It’s just extended and you receive it in my mind, you know.
Eric Aune
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Brad Lowery
That’s
good, man. So I do want to ask you quickly, if you could educate us, let’s use this educational term here. Let’s take that tone. Could you educate us a little bit about the heat pump water heater that is in the Rice Eager Build house? Tell us what is the science behind this guy?
Eric Aune
yeah.
All right.
- So heat pumps are basically what they did is they said, you know what? You have a heat pump already in your house. It’s called a refrigerator and freezer. And so they said, we could heat water using that same kind of concept. Although with a refrigerator, if you think about it, what they’re using the refrigeration process, they’re using it to pull the heat out of what’s inside the box. And instead, a water heater, just think of it as the opposite. We’re trying to put heat into the box.
So now we’ve got a tank full of water, and we’ve wrapped it in a jacket of usually it’s this aluminum small diameter tubing that’s got refrigerant running through it because we put a compressor on top of this unit, on top of the tank of water. And we’ve run hot, superheated refrigerant through those lines and through conduction, because the tubing is wrapped in contact with that steel tank. Through conduction, it’s just transferring the heat because heat goes from hot to cold.
through the side of that tank into the water. The water’s colder than the refrigerant. It’s going to heat up. So think of it the opposite way we do with a refrigerator and freezer. We’re using the same technologies. Really, I mean, for purpose of this explanation, it’s not any different. The cool thing about heat pump water heaters is they have a couple of benefits, actually, depending on where you live and where you put them. And then depending on where you live, you could really benefit from the technology and heat water for using very minimal amount
energy as opposed to other types of water heaters. So like if you live in the south and you can put your water heater outside your house, like say you live in Arizona or you live in Hawaii or Florida, there’s all kinds of places in this country they do that. Can’t do it here in Minnesota. We have everything inside. Can’t let it freeze, that kind of thing. But if you live in an area where you can have your water heater outside, a heat pump is amazing because now you could just…
use all that energy that’s in the atmosphere, all that relative humidity that’s holding tons of heat. And you can just absorb energy out of it and transfer it into the water. That’s really cool. And then as far as the rise in your house goes or the houses I install, we have basements up here. We’re installing our water heaters in basements like 9.9 times out of 10.
These heat pumps then take a few different considerations. as soon as you put that thing inside, now you’re expelling, because of how it operates, you’re expelling a whole bunch of cooler air out into the room, into the space it’s installed. It’s like, yeah, so there’s kind of like a little bit of a benefit, right? So you have this cooled air. It’s very dry. And it’s being force fed out of the unit just through a fan into the room.
Matt Brading
Like extra air conditioning. It’s got to go back to that end of the load, I guess.
Eric Aune
And so there’s a couple of things you have to know on just really about where these things can be installed. Otherwise, you’re going to have problems. if you, for instance, every manufacturer, based off of basically the size of a heat pump compressor is about 500 watts. And through the refrigeration process and over a certain period of time, it requires a certain amount of air to pull energy out of before you just lose that energy.
you so you need like a specific or minimum volume of space and that’s like all of them are like hey you need 750 cubic feet and so we know the cubic is three-dimensional and you got to put it in a room that’s 750 cubic feet or bigger and if you don’t you have to duct air into that space so you can supply it with the energy because you’re using literally just the energy that’s in the atmosphere in the air around it to transfer that heat into the water.
So is that a lot or too much or not enough?
Matt Brading
I think it’s
Brad Lowery
No, it’s the science.
Matt Brading
good.
Brad Lowery
I mean, I could kind of put two and two together. I’m like, all right, instead of an air to air heat exchanger, it’s an air to water heat exchanger of some sort. It’s just the, the, do you put the compressor? Where’s the expansion coil? Like where it’s like, how does that function in an enclosed space? You know, just all of that.
Eric Aune
Yep.
maybe kind of the advantage about a heat pump water heater, in this case, like an all-in-one system, is that it’s not a repairable type. It has a life expectancy. I think they’re saying that based off of water, not taking into consideration water quality. These are 10 to 15-year appliances.
Water conditions can affect how long tanks last. Let me just put that out there. It doesn’t matter if it’s a heat pump or any other tank. So it’s all in one. So you don’t have any refrigeration, refrigerant piping running to the outside. You’re not having outdoor unit or anything like that in these typical units like you saw at the rising air build. That was an LG model. I haven’t installed that. I have monkeyed around with that one. It’s the first and only one I’ve ever seen.
Brad Lowery
Sure.
Sure.
Eric Aune
from that brand. yeah, they’re basically the same as like, if you think of like the air to air, right? So like you have to move air across that coil. All we’re doing is we’re taking that coil and we’re making it bigger. We’re making the tubing inside that coil longer. We’re just wrapping it around a steel tank filled with water and then insulating the heck out of it. So that refrigerant that would be in that coil and the air running across it through the fins and everything like that. Instead, it’s
Brad Lowery
Sure.
Mm-hmm.
Sure.
Eric Aune
smack dab tight up against that tank and just through conduction. Like if you were to take and hold that cold glass in your hand, Matt, you feel that cool liquid inside there because your hand is hotter than the glass. Right. So that’s what’s happening with the tank and the refrigerant and that heat transfer is done right there instead of having airflow and fins and things like that.
Brad Lowery
That makes sense. Definitely makes sense. Now, before I ask the last question on there, since Matt held up his drink, a very quick drink of the day, Matt, what is it?
Matt Brading
Yeah,
okay, well for me, I made a whiskey sour, what I call like a summer whiskey sour. Basically just lemon juice, little simple syrup, little bitters, a couple ounces of some good bourbon and I top it off with club soda. So it’s nice and bright.
Eric Aune
A summer whiskey sour.
Brad Lowery
I love it.
And once we get off the show here, I’m gonna toast freedom in America with a rum old fashioned. I found a recipe for this guy. Rum old fashioned? Yeah, you use, it’s coconut cartel rum. It’s a Guatemalan blend. You use chocolate bitters, orange bitters, a little bit of simple syrup, but I think it’d be even better with like a brown sugar syrup. And…
Matt Brading
Yeah, you tell me about that. That sounds good.
Eric Aune
fashion.
Matt Brading
I think that’s all
there is.
Brad Lowery
Stir it up instead of shake it, pour it over a big cube. I had it at a restaurant one time where they had a candied orange slice dipped in chocolate that they just topped that off with. And I was like, this is dessert in a cup. Man, it’s good though, but I figured out how to make it. but of course, drink of the day sponsored by Inspection Fuel, September 8th through the 10th in New Orleans. Be there, be square, links in the bio.
Eric Aune
Yeah.
Brad Lowery
But back to Eric back to the water heater one more time if you were going to if you’re a homeowner and you wanted to install something that was going to be the newest most efficient thing out there Would you use something like a heat pump water heater or is it is a tankless water heater still more efficient?
Eric Aune
Well, I think we need to throw around the word. And I’m not calling you out. I’m not pointing at you. But I think we use the word efficiency. I think we rely on that too much. All of these appliances are very efficient. Tank water heaters, in general, are less efficient than a tankless water heater. And the reason why is because we’re storing this big volume of water that often requires
Brad Lowery
go ahead, yeah.
Okay.
Sure.
Eric Aune
maintenance to keep the temperature up. It needs a fire if it’s gas, or it needs to energize elements, or heat pumps, or stuff like that, even when you’re not using water, because there’s heat It’s just sitting there. If you have a tank of water that’s degrees and your room is degrees, that tank is going to lose heat over time. And you’re going to have to reheat it, even if you’re at work, or on vacation, or whatever.
Tankless in that sense, then you could make the argument is more efficient, even if you’re comparing it to a heat pump water heater in this sense, is that most tankless are only heating when you run water out of a faucet. So now we’re not running when it’s sitting idle, when we’re sleeping, when we’re at work, when nobody’s around, that kind of thing, because we’re not maintaining a temperature of big volume storage. That said, I kind of would like to put that out there. I think people use the word efficiency.
Brad Lowery
Sure.
Eric Aune
and they’re applying it wrong. Now tankless, if you’re looking at tank versus tankless, heat pump, anything like that, I think you just got to look at your load. Like what do you really use for hot water? And that’s not hard to figure out. It really isn’t. It sounds foreign to most people who have just never thought about it. But if you look at how many people are in your house, we have some very good numbers that are averages. So we know that on the average, most people, family of four,
Brad Lowery
Sure.
Eric Aune
each person is going to use roughly 70 to 80 to 100 gallons of water, depends on kind of your lifestyle, per day. So if you take a 10 minute shower and you’re running two and a half gallons a minute, how many gallons of water is that?
Matt Brading
Man, don’t make me math right now. You already know it.
Eric Aune
OK, it’s 25 gallons. But you take one shower a day,
Brad Lowery
Yeah, come on man. Yeah, yeah, May 25th.
Eric Aune
yeah, it’s 25 gallons. But if you fill a bathtub to take a bath versus a shower, you’re to use more water than you did in the shower, right? So you could just look at how you use your water, how many people are in your house. And there’s some pretty good numbers, actually. I hate to say this, by the government that says this is you probably are going to consume in a day versus hot water. And so what do you want to use to make that hot
Tankless water heaters are great because, like I said, you’re not storing any water. They can make their endless. You can just leave them in a faucet run. They’re not going to shut off. And that’s awesome when you’re talking about gas tankless. I love them. Heat pump water heaters, I think that they’re fantastic. I fully understand and can apply them properly. And I think my customers are very pleased with them. But you have to know a couple of things going into it. It takes infinitely longer to reheat that tank of water than it would if it were, let’s say, even an atmospheric
Brad Lowery
Yeah.
Sure.
Eric Aune
burning gas water heater. But if you size them properly and you store at the proper temperature, maybe you put a mixing valve in so that you temper that water down. Now you have even more water than you think you have because it’s hotter than you need to have. And now you can, everybody can get into that routine where you’re showering in the morning. Maybe everybody showers in the morning. You’ve got a tank that’s large enough for that. And then it has all day long to recoup and get back up to temperature.
Brad Lowery
Sure.
Mm-hmm.
Sure.
Eric Aune
If you’re going to have recirculation and you’re going to have people home during the day and people up during the night and all these kinds of things, you need to look at really what’s best. Probably not a system that’s going to take hours to recoup and reheat like a heat pump. So maybe you look at that and go, hey, I worked the night shift. My wife works during the day. We’re opposite schedules. And we got kids. We got all this high demand all day long, that kind of thing. We look at and then go, tankless. Seems to be a good fit.
Brad Lowery
Sure.
So application’s key then, yeah. Yeah.
Eric Aune
Yeah, I think it’s application and just understanding what you need because not every house
is the same. have customers that have, you know, six, eight people in them in their house. I have customers that have massive houses, six bathrooms, and there’s like two people in them. You think they have the same water heater? No. Do they have same demand? No. But like if those two people moved out of that six bedroom house and you know, six person family moved in it, they’re going to use a lot more water than
Brad Lowery
Sure.
Right. Right, right.
Eric Aune
two people did. See what I’m getting at? So it’s all about application.
Matt Brading
Right.
Brad Lowery
I definitely definitely.
Matt Brading
We had an issue
back in, you know, because down here in Texas, we don’t see much in the way of freezing temperatures, but every once in a while we do. And when it does get really bad, know, things fail, right? And so we had a ton of people move down here in the last several years. so infrastructure wasn’t really built for the amount of houses they were putting together. And we lost power during the winter because something failed because we had a real cold winter back in 2021 .
something failed and a lot of people lost power for quite some time. was wild because like, you know, those of us with like gas tankless water or gas tank water heaters, we at least had hot water, you know, like, but, but they’re building so many houses with around here with gas tankless water heaters and like, that’s great, but you gotta have power for it. And so they didn’t have it. I felt like that was a disadvantage, but that’s like a disadvantage because of a natural kind of disaster, you know?
Eric Aune
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, if you really want to plan for that, then just put a generator in, right? Yeah. It’s like, I don’t think that I would plan around that. I don’t think that would influence the selection of my appliances as much as it would be like, look, we’re prone to losing power around here. And if we do, yeah, you need backup. I’m lucky. Look, we live in a pretty extreme climate here in Minnesota. It gets to be below every once in a while. It’s pretty frigging cold. Yeah. But.
Matt Brading
Get a generator. Yeah.
You need backup power.
Brad Lowery
Yeah, y’all are nuts.
Eric Aune
The reality is, like we don’t have a lot of power grid problems. most of like in my area, sure, there’s plenty of above ground power, but it’s not like Texas where you guys are like all rock and blasting things and things like that. And in other parts of the country where like they’re not bearings, like I don’t see any power lines around my house. You could drive for about two miles before you see the first one. Right? So like.
Matt Brading
was different.
Brad Lowery
I look outside my window in Florida. That’s the only thing we do is above ground here.
Eric Aune
Yeah, because
of so different conditions, right? And so because we don’t have a lot of overhead power, and don’t get me wrong, we have overhead power. But because it’s less common, we have less issues with trees knocking it down, ice storms, or snow and wind and things like that. Because believe it or not, it can get cold enough and storms can happen that we can just actually break power lines and stuff. Thankfully, that’s not a huge issue here.
I think the generator thing, we’re looking at it at our house. They’re just so expensive. It’s like I don’t really need it, but the few times we lose power in a year, it’s for very short periods of time, the few times makes me think every time it’s like 40 below, like, oh crap, what if we lost power? You know what I mean?
Brad Lowery
Yeah, dude.
Matt Brading
Yeah.
I Yep.
think the, mean, I don’t know how you feel about it, but mean, like honestly, a big portable generator is what I got. Cause I mean, they just want too much for these whole house generators. I don’t even know how long I’m going to be at my house. I don’t feel like it’s my forever house. And yeah, that’s great that like the second the power goes out, it just starts right up. I got to get mine out and plug it in the house, but it runs my whole house.
Eric Aune
I know. There are obvious adva- I mean, there obviously are advantages to the, you know, the whole house generator that you can have installed versus a portable. They are very expensive. I think it’s a piece of mind for people. Like, if I do one, it’ll be because I installed it myself, you know what I mean? And with my electrician buddy, I just needed to run my heating system, to be completely honest with you.
Matt Brading
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, I get it.
Eric Aune
which would double
up for cooling and then like your refrigerator and a few lights.
Matt Brading
Yeah, the refrigerators
Brad Lowery
You’re basically a central, yeah.
Matt Brading
and I mean like here it’s more cooling because we’re more prone to lose We did lose power in the winter. We’re more prone to lose power this time of year because of hurricanes.
Eric Aune
Yeah, sure.
Brad Lowery
Yep,
same over here, man. Same over here. Dude, well, Eric, this has been awesome, man. Seriously, before we jump off, where can everybody follow you again? Just say one more time.
Eric Aune
Yeah, it’s at Mechanical Hub, pretty much everywhere, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, at Mechanical Hub. It’s make trades great again. It’s not political, even though that’s kind of why I named it that way, because people are like, wait, what? If I could get one second on my podcast. So I have a co-host. His name is Andy Mickelson. If you could say in your s, you got a best friend. He is my best friend.
Brad Lowery
Fantastic and name of the podcast again.
Matt Brading
Yeah.
Brad Lowery
Yeah.
yeah.
Eric Aune
Known him a long time. He’s a plumbing heating contractor in Missoula, Montana. I’m in Minneapolis, Minnesota area. And we both run businesses. And we both talk about how we do our jobs and kind of just how we started out, how we get through it, decisions we make. He’s got employees. I don’t. So it’s a different conversation all the time. It’s pretty cool. So if you want to just trade related, easy listening, we don’t get too serious. It’s called Make Trades Great Again. We got about episodes. So if you want to start at the beginning.
You’re not gonna run out.
Brad Lowery
Yeah, you got plenty of content. There’s a bank there to bed. Yeah.
Matt Brading
You can bend it.
Brad Lowery
Hey, up in Minneapolis, have you worked with a structure tech inspectors at all?
Eric Aune
I
follow Ruben and have like talked to him on the phone a few times. Like that dude, that guy, think now forgive me if I’m wrong or correct me, but I think that guy’s like, like he’s like legit really into his job and like very professional and into education and just sharing information and stuff like that. At least that’s what, from my perspective, that’s what I see.
Brad Lowery
Great guy, man.
completely. Yeah.
Eric Aune
And I’ve always just followed him on social media. I’ve referred people to him because I think he has a good reputation and I think that their company does a good job. But it seems like he shares some wild stuff. Like the photos I see, think, man, I’m embarrassed that that’s in my state.
Brad Lowery
He’s one of the he’s
one of the good guys in this industry for sure and knows his stuff man. Great team of inspectors for sure. They’ve got an awesome podcast to structure talk. He and Tessa Murray who’s a building science expert up there. Actually she moved down to Tampa. She’s just up north of me now. But anyway yeah good people up by you man so.
Eric Aune
Yeah.
Matt Brading
You know, Eric, I feel like I want to mention this because I want other people to hear it. know, you, like I said, I consider you an expert in the industry. You put out a lot of material on plumbing, on HVAC, stuff like this, but also like, you know, there’s a lot of eyes on you and would be in the social media world and you’ve got a large audience. But one thing that I noticed about you early on and that I kind of admired is that you’re not really afraid to just.
Eric Aune
Thanks.
Matt Brading
say whatever you want. And maybe some people wouldn’t like it, maybe they would, but you put things out there, not necessarily business related, like maybe personal, or maybe just stuff that you think is funny. You do that. And I talked to you about it one time a while back, and you said something to me that really resonated. you just, no, no, no, I think it’s great. You just said that you just try not to take.
Eric Aune
boy.
Matt Brading
all of that too seriously and that you’re constantly reminding yourself that social media is really a place for it to be entertained. that really resonated with me. And I’ve kind of lived with that’s where I want to mention on this podcast is one of the people to hear it. I mean, I think we all need that reminder every now and again that that isn’t actually real life. I mean, look, we’re doing real life things like we were telling you about our jobs and things we’re doing that. But that is not real life.
Eric Aune
Thanks.
Matt Brading
What’s happening there isn’t real.
Eric Aune
I think, yeah,
thanks for saying that. I appreciate that. And it’s amazing you even remember we had that conversation. Thank you for listening. I mean it when I say you can’t be too serious. Here’s the deal. Look, I share information all the time. And I do it because I truly want to. And if it was such a burden and a job, and it was just a chore and I just had to do it, you’d
I’m not going to be interested in it. You’re going to know right away. And it’s just not as fun. Do you want to go home every day and be like, man, my job sucked today. My job sucked, and I just love how bad it sucks. No. Just kind of try to keep it light a little bit, because the job always gets done. We’re going to share information tomorrow.
I’m going to make another video. Like this isn’t this one video that didn’t do good or you somebody had a bad comment on it. I didn’t like it. Like, I’m not going to let that bother me. I’m just, I’m going to forget about it tomorrow when I post the next video, that kind of thing. Like it’s not that important. And you can, you can, you know, what’s the whole, like you attract a lot more, you know, what is it honey? I don’t know what the saying is, whatever, but you know what I mean? Like, like I think people are,
Matt Brading
I don’t know you’re saying, but I can’t think of it either. What is it?
Brad Lowery
Track more beats with honey, that it? I don’t know.
Yeah.
Eric Aune
like automatically attracted to other people that are just like a little more upbeat, a little more real. Like, you can say things how they are. You don’t have to insult people. You can just say it the way it is. Or if you have an opinion about it, share your opinion. You know? Like, that’s OK. Don’t be so worried about it. That’s my take. Sorry.
Brad Lowery
That’s the best Midwest nice note that we could possibly end on. love it. That’s perfect. All right. Well, seriously, Eric, thanks so much for being on the show, man. This has been great. We got to do it again sometime soon. And thank you guys, everybody for, for listening and watching. Be sure to share this, be sure to subscribe to the show, follow the newsletter and sign up for Inspection Fuel, of course. And, know, we’ll see you right here next time. Better than ever. Right on. You got it.
Matt Brading
love it, man.
Eric Aune
Ha ha
ha ha!
Matt Brading
Rattle.