Episode 13 - Alan Gibson, GO Logic
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Prefab Review
Hi, my name is Michael Frank, and this is The Prefab Pod presented by Prefab Review, where we interview leading people and companies in the prefab industry. Today, we're speaking with Alan Gibson, the founder of GO Logic and GO Home. And Lily Keel, a project manager with GO logic. Welcome, Alan and Lily.
GO Logic
Hi there. Hi.
Prefab Review
Apologies for the name slip up. We've had an army of people inquire about your company on our site all the time. I think they usually call it GO Logic. So I'm probably not the first person who's messed that up. Anyway, I'm very excited to learn more about your company. But first, I was hoping to learn a bit more about both of you. I guess maybe, Yeah, Alan you could start since you sort of founded the business. How did you get into this world and end up starting GO Logic?
GO Logic
Well, I have been a carpenter basically since I got out of college. I'm a history major, so I don't have any technical or architecture background. But I've been building houses for a long time and I was always interested in energy performance and being at the cutting edge of high performance buildings. And, you know, through the 90s and early 2000s, there wasn't a whole lot of call for that. But then in 2006, a colleague, friend and I saw a first presentation of Passive House, the German high performance energy standard, at a conference in Boston. And we were totally hooked. We were like, "this is it. This is what we're gonna do." And we founded Geologic a couple of years later with that sole purpose to design and build a single family, really nice looking, contemporary for the most part, homes and have them all be meeting the Passive House standard for energy performance. So that's how my former business partner, Matt OMalley, who's an architect and I got together to found the company.
Prefab Review
Lily, how did you get involved with GO logic?
GO Logic
Well, see, I live in a GO Logic house in Belfast. And I was, I mean, I've known Alan and his wife, Sonna, for a bunch of years. And I actually was doing some portraiture and some photography for GO Logic. And they needed a project manager and I also have a background in project management. So I stepped in last September.
Prefab Review
Terrific. OK, so can one of you explain to me a little bit about basically what's the core thing you do at GO Logic? And, you know, we get questions about GO Logic, but also the GO home. Sort of explain the different parts of your business and what you really sort of emphasize.
GO Logic
Sure. The core of our business is a design and build company. So we focus on single family residential. Although we have done some multi-family projects and would love to do more of that. We've done some institutional work as well. But we have an office staff which is composed of designers, licensed architects, and the project managers. And then we have a field staff of about 15 builders who build primarily work that we design, although we also sometimes build work that others have designed. And that's where general contractors anywhere in the mid coast of Maine, south to Portland to up through, you know, to Bar Harbor, basically the coast of Maine. And we also developed along the way after we had done a few houses, we made some of them into pre-designed models. So they are what you see on the GO Home and the GO Home is one branch of GO Logic. We do a lot of different things, but the GO Home is sort of our bread and butter where we have these pre-designed models that you can see on our Website. And there are several of them to choose from. Basically anything from six hundred square feet to twenty five hundred square feet and about one hundred two hundred square foot increments. Single story and two story. And you can configure the homes to a large degree on the Web site. And then you contact us and we do a design process and we eventually have a complete set of drawings. Your house, which we will build from start to finish in our normal range. Outside of that range, we will prefabricate and deliver and assemble a shell package that basically consists of walls, floors and roof structure with windows and doors installed. And that makes it much easier for builders around the Northeast to get a High-Performance passive home shell delivered so they don't have to figure all of that out. And then the local GC will finish the rest of the house out. So that's in a nutshell, how the GO Home works.
Prefab Review
That makes sense. So on the GO Home . A couple sort of follow questions. Initially, So outside of the sort of Maine area where you serve as the GC as well, do you end up having a builder network for that or for consumers? Is it really like finding your own builder? But then, you know, you provide whatever the shell or the envelope or whatever you want?
GO Logic
Yeah, I've been working toward creating a builder network and I am starting to do that in some areas like the Hudson Valley of New York and Northwestern Massachusetts. And we've worked with a couple of builders a couple of different times. And when we work with someone for the second time, it generally is a much smoother and easier process. So I'd love to develop a builder network. So it's our builders out there who are interested in this sort of collaboration, then I'm happy to talk with them. So that's something we're working on, too.
Prefab Review
And then one of the things that we see with other companies, I think it's sort of a joke, but it's sort of a truism for some companies in the industry is that when they have plans on their site, no one ever exactly builds the plans. And they're sort of, at least for some companies, they are kind of advertising. In terms of your experience with customers, do people end up actually building like the go homes as they appear on the site, or does it end up being that they just sort of end up being like inspiration points?
GO Logic
That's the interesting question. I mean, everybody wants to make changes to our pre-designed models. You know, everyone is an architect to some degree, and they want to customize things. And we try to encourage people not to do that because it affects the cost. And we're trying to do these at a reasonable cost and, you know, keep a lid on that. But, you know, it's somebody's dream home and. Yeah, the way we do things in America is you, well, for a certain segment of how people get homes, is they hire an architect and that means you have sort of full rein to design the house however you want. And we're offering something and trying to promote it as something that gives you this really nice, high quality home in the end, but without as much architect involvement and therefore less cost on that side of things. So we accommodate customizations and changes pretty routinely. And once we have that complete set of construction documents, people do build to those.
Prefab Review
Yeah, that makes sense. And then let's talk about the sort of construction/fabrication side. So do you own your own factory in Maine?
GO Logic
We have a facility. I don't call it a factory because it is not highly mechanized and it's rather small. But our demand has been so great that I am looking to build a larger, more state of the art facility in the next year or two. And yeah we produce really high quality panels, one at a time with basic tools and some tools that are specifically for panelization. And I'm super excited about it. I just love the quality and the process of doing the panelized system.
Prefab Review
So walk us through, I've never been to your factory. I've been to other factories. Walk us through what your factory looks like. Are we talking about essentially a huge warehouse where people like a team of, you know, sort of subs are building panels like they would on site? Or how might they be different?
GO Logic
Well, yeah, it's interesting. Our space is not very big. And that's part of our challenge is we only have room for a couple of framing tables and some materials and some other tools. I guess the really interesting and different thing about prefabrication is that all of the decisions about how you build something have to happen before you make your first cut in the first two by six. So there's an extensive process where the architectural drawings are translated into sharp drawings. And that's a whole subject about how that's done. But basically, there is software that translates a wall that you see on an architectural drawing into a framing drawing that shows where every stick of wood is going to go, how long each one is. And any kind of structural detail about that. And that gets put on a piece of paper that goes out to the shop floor and there's a Cutlass and we have, we're getting in a semi automated saw that will make that cutting process quicker. The lumber goes to a table where a crew puts together the wall, as you know, similarly to how it would be done on site, except you're inside in a controlled environment with the material at a comfortable height and everything laid out for you and pre-cut. And our walls are complicated. They're there and our typical wall designed for cold climates like the Northeast is an R-50 wall.
Prefab Review
Do you use a SIP or do you use any kind of specific insulation?
GO Logic
Yes. So our wall consists of a two by eight stud wall and that will be insulated with blown cellulose. And then working to the outside we put a layer of sheathing on that, which is a structural sheathing, which is also the airtight layer. So we're connecting all those sheathing pieces with tape to make them airtight. And then we've been using a product that we're importing from Europe, which is a rigid wood fiberboard insulation, and we get that in about a six inch thickness. And that goes on. It's the next layer. So that's our continuous exterior insulation to eliminate thermal bridging through the frame. And then we put a layer of wood strapping over that. And then the siding material goes on.
Prefab Review
Well, that's great to kind of get some details on that. So that actually leads well into the next question. And I guess it'd be great to hear sort of on the technical side and sort of theoretical side from Alan on this and then also hear from Lily as sort of a consumer and an owner of a GO Home or GO Logic. So a passive house, these sort of, you know, increased insulation that you describe, I assume, is sort of out of achieving the Passive House standard. Can you explain a little bit more about what the passive standard is and why sort of you thought it was sort of crucial or important as sort of a part of your firm?
GO Logic
Sure. Well, at its most basic level, it's pretty simple. The concept is just to build an enclosure that is extremely well insulated and made to be airtight and because it's airtight you have to put in a ventilation system so you can bring in fresh air. So there is a ventilation system with heat recovery. And that's pretty much it. You know, you have to utilize the best building science practices and how you construct walls with more insulation because that gets trickier and you need to use better windows and doors. We use triple glazed windows, for instance in the passive house. The whole idea is that you are reducing the heating and cooling load of the house by about 80 to 90 percent from standard construction. And what happens when you do that is a lot of amazing things living inside that house. It's like a completely different environment. Lily can speak to this. It's incredibly quiet. The air is still. The air is fresh because you're bringing in fresh air continuously. There's very little noise. There's virtually no mechanical system other than the ventilation machine, which is very quiet and usually up in an attic or something. You're gaining this huge amount of energy savings in terms of costs for heating and cooling, but also the comfort and the quality and the durability comes along with it. There are a lot of other things to say about it, but in a nutshell, that's kind of what Passive House is. It's not rocket science. The details of how you put it together can be confounding to people who believe they're not familiar with it. But it's something that, you know, should be the standard for all buildings. There's no question about it. And it doesn't really take a whole lot more, a whole lot more cost, time, effort to do it. It's just kind of a different approach. Then, Lily, it'd be great to hear about your experience.
Prefab Review
I know you're involved with the company as an employee, but also as a consumer. Why was it important to you and what your experience has been?
GO Logic
Yeah, so let's see. I've been in my house for about two years, and I have to say, once you live in one of these houses, you'll never want to live in another kind of house again. And it's funny because I was just remembering what I used to, you know, understand or what I thought when I first heard about passive houses a bunch of years ago. And I just thought, well, isn't it? You know, my mother Swedish and her mantra is, you know, fresh air, fresh air and exercise and sunshine. And I just thought, why would anybody want to live in a house that's, you know, sort of hermetically sealed? Right. Like that was what I understood. Is it like this totally enclosed thing? And also, you know, there was a misunderstanding. I think there's still a misunderstanding about, like, you can't open your windows, which is completely untrue. But it's. Yeah, I mean, it's true what Alan said. It's like I live in this solid, totally snug house with gorgeous light and fresh air. I never lived in a beautiful house before I moved into this. But it was like this constant source of anxiety. And I never worry about it. Just don't worry about things falling apart because it's so beautifully built. And yeah, I, I have to say, there's like there's not a draft to be had. I, you know, I, I cook the same way that I always have. I don't have any kind of hood and yet I can cook whatever I want and there's no lingering you know, you can cook, I don't know say, sausages or something like that, in a normal house. And you, you know, you go away, come back, you can still smell it. It's just not the case with this because of that HRV constant air circulation. But I don't know. I mean, I'm just madly in love with living here. And my heating bill is like twenty five, twenty bucks a month, which is also pretty sweet because then the other house, it was like a thousand dollars every five weeks or something. I don't know. But yeah, I mean I can, I'd love it if, if there's anything you want to ask me in particular.
Prefab Review
I have some questions. Either you or Alan can touch this. So one of the things in terms of figuring out options, one of the questions we get a lot in the higher end homes is around like radiant heat versus more of a typical kind of pump system. Is that something that's frequently integrated into passive homes or your passive house? Just because that seems kind of consistent in terms of the lower energy cost, less pushing of air. But, yeah. Are those two things frequently connected together?
GO Logic
No, not generally. And it's interesting because our typical foundation is a slab on grade foundation that's super insulated. And when I did my first one back in 2007, I put in radiant heat in the floor because that's just what you do with the slab. You have to heat it or it's going to be uncomfortable. But for, I don't know, at least five years, the owners never turned it on. They had a little woodstove and thought that was ample in Maine to keep the house warm. So it comes down to when you invest more in the building shell with the insulation, better windows and doors and air sealing and all of that, you pretty much eliminate the need for a conventional heating system. And if you put in like a radiant hydronic heating system, whether in slab or radiators is quite expensive. So there's no payback.
Prefab Review
There's the same thing of applying for, So we help people across the country, but we do a lot of work in California where you're now required to basically have solar as of this year on new projects, or I think it's you have to be net zero in energy. So do that however you want, but typically ends up being solar or whatever some type of Similar system. Does that mean that solar also doesn't make as much sense with passive houses? Because again, your savings are just lower?
GO Logic
Well, to some degree, yeah. But the cool thing is a bunch of amazing things about integrating renewables with Passive House. One is that you bring your loads down so low that you don't need a giant system to make your house net zero. Right now, most of our house is like for, you know, four to six KW, which is a pretty reasonable price. It's the cheapest form of electricity you can get in most states in the country. And if you look at the payback, like on an annual or a monthly basis, you know, that's a whole other subject. Like, you spend more in a passive house. You spend more on solar panels. But every month, if you look at your total cost of ownership between the money you borrowed to buy those solar panels or do the passive house, you end up ahead every month. Right. So the affordability question just kind of goes out the window. And the other really cool thing is that when we look at our grid, putting renewables into our grid is great, but it has some real limitations based on the fact that it's only sunny during the day. And what happens at night and when you have houses that conventional houses with high standard loads, when the sun goes down, there's this thing called the duck curve, like the power plants have to ramp up to such a huge degree to cover the time when renewables stop. People come home from work and they need all this energy. And if you're in a passive house, you're going to reduce that curve to a huge degree because your heating system doesn't have to come on, your cooling system won't have to come on and it will even out that duck curve and make the grid perform much better. So a passive house is really the key to our non fossil fuel electricity grid future.
Prefab Review
Makes sense. So let's, we were just talking about cost. Let's talk about costs. This is a question that we get constantly and I think partly because it's oftentimes hard to sort of get straight answers from manufacturers for very understandable reasons. Right. Because every site's different. So with all those caveats, though, we do try to be educational. So let's assume that you, your company in particular, is very liable for, it seems like, at least in the Maine area posting kind of estimated costs on your Web site. You know, with all the caveats you just mentioned around site and customization stuff, let's say I'm building a GO Home let's say one of you're bigger ones, right. Like one of your two thousand square foot homes in the Boston area or, you know, like my parents live in Lexington. Right. So, you know, kind of a sort of higher-end suburb outside Boston. If I'm thinking, if I'm trying to understand costs and I understand you can only control some of this, do you think you can sort of help me break down costs in terms of, you know, I've already bought the land, I'm on a flat site that's accessible and doesn't have whatever crazy power lines in front of it? What are the costs? Let's say, let's say a two thousand square foot house. I don't care if you get these in total cost, or dollars per square foot or, you know, the shell and design costs that I might incur if I work with the GO Home or GO Logic, let's say, the GO Home. And then at least in the Boston area, I should probably do some work. What sort of finishing the home in terms of like the local builder foundation and whatever connecting utilities, stitch, finishing the inside, just so people can get an understanding of this with again, the caveats that every home's different.
GO Logic
Sure. That's a really great question. And it is hard to answer, but I'll give you my best shot. And I can say with some degree of certainty what the house would cost if GO Logic did the whole thing as the general contractor and the prices on our Web site, you know, we're looking at Oh, yeah. Two thousand square foot home is going to be. I think I can build that for 250 dollars a square foot if I'm in control of everything and people don't go crazy with finishes.
Prefab Review
Well, you GC all the way down to Boston or it sounds like?
GO Logic
You know, we won't just because it gets too expensive to send
Prefab Review
Totally understandable, right?
GO Logic
Yeah. So we try to part and that's where it gets tricky because I will provide the shell package, which is the walls, windows and doors, triple glazed windows and doors from Germany, installed, air sealed. The whole structure is watertight and airtight, ready for siding and roofing. That's what we provide. And we can do that for one twenty five square foot. So then the question is what
Prefab Review
So in this case we're talking about, you see one hundred twenty five dollars a square foot.
GO Logic
So yeah. Right. For that shell package, I guess. So then it's a question that's, you know, roughly half of the finished house cost, not including site work. No prices you ever see from builders will include site work, you don't know what you're getting, right, with any given site. And that can range, you know, totally flat site with utilities in the street. You can probably get away with maybe twenty five grand for getting all that hooked up. But on a rural site with a quarter mile driveway and, you know, underground power for a thousand feet. Yeah. That can cost one hundred grand. So there's a wide range of site costs. So that gives you a sense of it. And then our design fee is typically for our produce line model, about five percent of construction cost. So if it's a five hundred thousand dollar house, we're gonna charge twenty five thousand for the design process, which is developing a site plan, going through all permitting and code research, a complete plan set with some degree of customizations and all of the finishes and all the schedules. It's a construction document that is more detailed than you typically get for residential. We do engineering for that as well.
Prefab Review
Is that something the builder will do?
GO Logic
No. We do full engineering. Yep. If we have to do something civil, we can do that. But we always involve our structural engineer in every project. So it's all code ready and standing by an engineer.
Prefab Review
And then I have a feeling I know the answer to this because most interests are somewhat similar. Let's say I say, OK, I love your stuff. I want to build a custom home with you on the GO Logic side. I assume that's also probably a percent of the construction costs. But just curious about what I'd be looking at there, how the construction costs change. I'm sorry if I want to build a custom home with you, like sort of from the ground up. Yeah. Like oftentimes we see architecture in like 15 to 20 percent range. Something like that. Is that? Yeah. That's also true for you?
GO Logic
Yeah. We wouldn't generally go that high. It would probably be more, you know. Twelve. Twelve percent is usually a pretty nice fee.
Prefab Review
That's awesome. Yeah. And then perfect. And then let's see. OK. So I want to transition now into our fire round. These are asking a bunch of sort of common questions we get all the time. And basically, either one of you can answer both or you can answer. We try to keep the answers to under a minute. But I'm not too much of a stickler on it. So get ready for it. All right. First question. So you obviously build in Maine. What are the key things buyers should be aware about, about building in cold weather areas where there is snow, etc.?
GO Logic
Build a passive house. Period.
Prefab Review
That definitely was under a minute. And anything more about building in cold climates?
GO Logic
Yeah, just the site is important. There's free energy from the sun for passive solar heating. And our houses are not overly heated by passive solar and therefore uncomfortable. We've figured that out in architecture in the last 30 years, 40 years. But orienting the house toward the sun brings you a lot more light and some free energy. So do that if you can. Not always possible. You know, look at how you're going to manage snow and design your site so that that's not going to create problems. It's going to be easy to deal with. We typically specify metal roofs, which means the snow, It's going to slide off, which is a good thing. But you also want to look at sometimes keeping snow on the roof so it doesn't fall on your walkway. Other than that, can you think of anything other than what I just said? Just being passive. I mean, it can be 20 degrees outside, you know, when there's any kind of sun 70 degrees and I don't ever turn the heat on. I mean, I don't feel it. It can be blasting wind out there. And I'm snug as a bug. It's the best.
Prefab Review
OK. That's good to know. So let's say the next question. So I want to go build a dream home. My vacation home or whatever. It's my dream to put a passive GO Home on it. What should I be looking at in terms of evaluating a site if I'm just trying to look for land? As a sort of part of my checklist. Just because I imagine incredible slopes make it more difficult. But it'd be great to understand if there's a couple of things to specifically look for.
GO Logic
Our homes can be built on any site. And it's just a matter of cost generally. So the least expensive site is one that has a nice flat area where the house and the driveway can be placed and you have a septic system usually if you're on a rural site. So looking for some amount of flat land, say, you know, a half an acre is all you really need. Look at the length of the driveway to the road. Try to keep that as short as possible because that's just cost per foot. You want to make sure that the land either has municipal services or it's been tested for septic viability. You want to look at whether it's rocky, which is not usually a problem or if it's really wooded, forested. What sort of an opening would you be OK with making ideally so you can get at least sunlight on the roof for active solar, if not sun in the windows on the south facade for passive solar and views and price and all that go into the equation as well.
Prefab Review
And then the final question, the fire round, so we talked a little bit about sort of building a builder network and how sort of, you know, you're doing this sort of slowly, if I'm building if you don't have a local builder in the area that I'm looking at and I need to go out and to evaluate my own builder to see if this person is going to be capable of doing a really competent job? What are the things I should be looking for? Is panelized experience necessary here? What's your checklist or criteria that you would recommend that I look at?
GO Logic
It's really just someone who is a reputable builder, who has done architect designed plans in the past, who reads plans, pays attention to plans and follows them. That's really important. It's amazing how many builders out there sort of glance at plans and then do whatever they want. So the nice thing about our system is that we're providing all the tricky bits that have to do with the High-Performance in our Shell package. And we have a few other things they have to pay attention to, but they are pretty minor. And so it's really just a quality, reputable builder who is easy to work with and is open to the GO Home concept. And I'm finding this more and more builders as there are fewer skilled tradespeople in the industry. There are GCs around who are like, oh, you guys can do that big piece of it for me. That's great, because I'll just focus on the stuff I like to do, like the finishes and the client interaction and whatever. But I have gotten pushback from builders who say I can do what they're doing cheaper, let me do it all, which is always a disaster. I must say. So it's a three way relationship. The owner comes to us for what we do. They find a builder who is on board with the whole concept and the three of us work together to produce the finished product.
Prefab Review
And I realized I missed a question. How many homes you build each year just to get a sense of scope?
GO Logic
About ten either, you know, from the ground up or shell packages. It's going to be less this year because of CoVId 19 for sure.
Prefab Review
Like when or how? How is that affecting your business? I mean, we're just starting to see it here. Most of the California factories are closed in other parts of the country, It's kind of weird from a public health standpoint and my personal aspirations. But construction seems to actually be going on. How has it slowed for you or there?
GO Logic
Well, we've been dealing with it, dealing with it quite directly and proactively. A couple of weeks ago, we shut down our production facility shop and I'm not sure when we're gonna reopen it. We developed guidelines for safe working. Job sites, which basically means we're reducing the number of our people on job sites to essentially working on separate things a distance away from each other, we're scheduling subcontractors totally separate from each other. And often our people won't be on site if there's a big subcontractor crew there. So we're kind of just limping along with the skeleton team to keep projects moving. But there are gonna be some serious effects on the schedules.
Prefab Review
It may be that a lot of that we've actually done a few projects in the area. A lot of the communities have building windows. Right. Like, you know, October 15th, the end of April. You can't do foundation stuff like that. Right. So you sort of have a deadline and some of the stuff, right?
GO Logic
Well, yeah, there are going to be some projects that we have slated to start in the fall that I think are probably gonna get bumped to next spring.
Prefab Review
Makes sense. Yeah. And the world we live in. Well, it's good to have you doing your best to keep everyone safe. Final question. And I ask a happier question. I ask this to everyone on every podcast, more or less. It would be great to have both of you answer. What are you most excited about for your company or the industry for the near future?
GO Logic
Can I go first? Well, I mean, I guess I would say it's exciting that we're going to be growing, that we're hopefully going to be breaking ground on a shop. But also we just keep thinking more and more about how we can be contributing to carbon sequestration and then having a positive impact on climate change as our team continues to grow. It's just a really good tight group of people that love working together.
GO Logic
I don't know. I just love working for this company. It's unlike any other. Yeah. I as you know, once we get over the Covid thing, I just. Yeah I guess it's, I lost my train of thought. Sorry. You can edit that out Michael.
Prefab Review
Great. I like it. Very authentic.
GO Logic
And I'm really excited to take what we have now. We've built for the last ten years, which is this platform of the design, the engineering, the pre-designed plans to GO Home and just produce a lot more of them in a more efficient way. I'm really excited about taking that to the next level of efficiency in prefabrication. Now, the building industry is like the last major industry to embrace high tech and leveraging digital technology into their industry. And it's really quite amazing how archaically we build houses these days. It's not that much different than the Middle Ages. So taking what we do and producing it in a much more efficient and higher scale way is what I'm really focused on for the next phase of GO Logic.
Prefab Review
Awesome. Well, thank you both so much for joining. Thanks again. Alan, Lilly. For more information about GO Logic and the GO Home visit, gologic.us or thegohome.us And as always, you can read about lots of companies and different stuff going on in the industry at prefabreview.com. Thanks again, both of you. Thanks for having us, Michael.