#17 Ellora Coupe: Pioneering Healthy Homes Through Her Own Space

A Conversation with Ellora Coupe

Discover how Ellora Coupe, founder of Her Own Space, is transforming the renovation and retrofit industry for women homeowners. Join us, where Ellora shares her innovative strategies that are making air quality and ventilation relatable and actionable. With her unique blend of branding expertise and renovation savvy, she advocates for healthier living environments and provides a platform that empowers women to take charge of their homes.

Collaboration and trust are key in the realm of home retrofit. Through Her Own Space, Ellora has cultivated a thriving community of over 3,000 women who support each other through the trials and triumphs of retrofit projects.

If you listen to the podcast, you have probably heard me talk several times about the need to better frame subjects like air quality in the built environment. To understand stakeholder needs and find ways to communicate in more effective ways.

I have a lot of respect for Ellora; she has created in her own space a place of story telling, knowledge building and trust. Something we could learn a lot from in nieces like air quality and ventilation.

Learn how to understand a stakeholder group, in this case, women in retrofit, renovation, and home building. But more importantly, open communication up into a dialogue—a conversation, a network.

Ellora Coupe - LinkedIn
Her Own Space
Her Own Space - Facebook

Transcript

Simon: 0:14

Welcome to Air Quality Matters, and this is a conversation with Ellora Coupe. She is the founder of Her Own Space, a rapidly growing platform of over 3,000 UK-based women needing support in renovation and retrofit projects. With over eight years of managing extensive renovation projects, the intent is to create the right, trusted support for women homeowners and educate and understand the drivers to uptake retrofit work. In addition, she works across a network of professional women in the retrofit industry, encouraging their training and funding, whilst developing a new platform to meet their personal and professional needs. With her combined experience within the branding industry and the built environment, she hopes to identify better the opportunities to support women homeowners and drive women to work within the retrofit industry.

Simon: 1:14

If you listen to the podcast, you've probably heard me talk several times about the need to better frame subjects like air quality in the built environment to understand stakeholder needs and find ways to communicate in more effective ways. I have a lot of respect for Ellera. She has created in her own space a place of storytelling, knowledge building and trust, something we could learn a lot from in niches like air quality and ventilation. Learn how to better understand the stakeholder group, in this case, women in retrofit and renovation and home building, but, more importantly, open communication up into a dialogue, a conversation, a network. It was a fascinating conversation, as it always is with Ellora, and coming from a place of genuine passion for what she does, I think that really comes across. Thank you for taking the time to listen.

Simon: 2:14

Air Quality Matters is back from a short break and ready to go. This is Ellora Coupe. We often talk about the need to better frame things in the built environment to resonate with stakeholders in a more meaningful way, and I think ventilation and air quality struggles with that, the same as many other fields within the built environment do. What's your perspective on that and how we might better start to position some of the things within the built environment to particular stakeholder groups?

Ellora: 2:47

So I actually wear two hats, which I think helps, which is I have a built environment construction background from running a business managing renovations specifically through the lens of women homeowners, specifically through the lens of women homeowners. But in addition, during my early start to my career, I was very involved in branding and visual communication strategies for various businesses and have worked in also design agencies in London kind of throughout my career, and I'd say one of the most significant challenges in any branding and visual comms work we've ever done with every client, no matter what sector, is that you have experts in their field with a vast amount of knowledge and a vast amount of experience and you, coming in, have to explain to them that we don't need to get all that across to the audience. We have to try and explain that we have to filter that down to a number of things, to approach a subject from a very different angle, through the lens of the audience, and I think that's something that I'm really interested and passionate about is how you resonate with women homeowners in a creative way, and I think creativity is a really key tool because I've seen the power of it in terms of communicating really complex subjects and making an impact on an audience that would never normally be interested in that subject. I've had to deal with everything from scaffolding to supermarkets, to road safety messaging. All these kind of things are challenging and can be dull and can be boring.

Ellora: 4:28

And what I'm fascinated with working with women homeowners is what touch points visual touch points do they have with everything to do with retrofit, indoor air quality, comfort in the home that explains to them that this matters, and at the moment there isn't any. So my view is how do you create those touch points? To start with, I think we all know, as homeowners and as women, that that smell of the fresh scent of essential oils, for example, in the home implies suddenly a calming environment, a fresh environment. I mean again, that's the power of, of advertising and and commercialism around those things that has created a false narrative in the sense, because we all know, you know you don't want to burn every incense and scented candle out there, that's for sure.

Ellora: 5:28

But how do we shift that? How do we shift that mindset? And I also think one of the challenges is that people can be convinced by what they see, and this is an area that's really really tricky, because you can't see it, you can't put your hands on it, you can't touch it. You're not buying something. You're buying into data that is there, that exists, that tells you that something can be wrong in your home, but it's something that, hey, you're not going to be able to see, you're not necessarily going to be able to know is wrong. So it's a really, I think, really really hard exercise that I'm constantly trying to understand.

Simon: 6:12

Yeah, it's that kind of buying into an idea as opposed to a tangible product that you can touch. But you mentioned a couple of times from the perspective of women. I think that it's probably a good juncture to explain why that interest exists for you and and um and her own space, which is the um, the portal and and and um platform that you run. Perhaps explain to listeners a little bit about that journey to, to thinking of this as an idea and what her own space is currently.

Ellora: 6:52

So not to go to too much detail, but my father was a builder southwest London for over 30 years, so I've always been immersed in renovation work. I studied interior design and retail interiors renovation work. I studied interior design and retail interiors, but nine years ago I was really drawn back into supporting residential renovation work again in London and I found I had a huge amount of knowledge in the area and expertise in the area and just fell into supporting women homeowners managing their renovation projects. But during the pandemic predominantly really gave me the time to get immersed into retrofit and the approach of renovation through that instead and it just became inherently obvious that this was the right way to go, and so I created her own space because I just felt I wasn't going to be able to make a difference home, helping one project one by one, and I was also seeing commonality between the same issues.

Ellora: 7:50

It's constantly the same problems that women homeowners are having. It was literally groundhog day from one project to the next, and so her own space was a portal to really support women homeowners throughout their renovation project, because I could really see the load that they were carrying and my approach was that how are you going to introduce them to retrofit and engage with them on this subject. So from my experience, women really resonate with other women going through the same journey, and so her own space became a really obvious space for women homeowners to talk to each other about the decisions they were making. What's interesting is actually when you put a group of women together, in that sense they don't go for the worst quality, they go for the best quality there's kind of a fear that you know suddenly everyone might do things worse. Actually it proves that people do things better, better, because when you're given so many choices and then people present the right choices to you from some and somebody opens the door to another choice, actually it resonates. People can see quickly okay, that looks good, that works well, that's actually got long-term benefits, and.

Ellora: 9:04

And then quite easily and quite quickly, there were women in the trade who were professional as well in the built environment, who were interested in this space, knowing that it's not there to sell.

Ellora: 9:16

There's no agenda to selling your services. They just really wanted to help. So Heron space basically become a space that puts women homeowners at the core who are undergrowing renovation or retrofit work, and it's grown organically and we've got around just over 3 000 women homeowners all across the uk with all sorts of projects, and the amount of knowledge sharing and type of conversation happening really creates a very, very active group. You can see people regularly updating everybody throughout the journey they're going through. They're taking each other on the same journey. It's not a question of who's chosen this or what sliding doors or what insulation have you gone for. It's kind of look, hi, everyone, I've had a breakthrough, I've managed to do this. So there's a real sense of camaraderie as well, and I'd really like to see how to improve the support for women homeowners, educate them and engage around really tricky subjects like indoor air quality, um yeah, without overloading them any more than they already are.

Simon: 10:32

So that's where her in space and without kind of devolving it down into tropes of why you would need a space for for women, I, I is there anything analogous out there to her own space with other stakeholder groups, and do you think there's something that could be learned from what you're doing with her own space to help other groups of stakeholders? Um, because that there, I'm guessing, there's real value in that stakeholder perspective.

Simon: 11:10

In your case it's for women but, I'm assuming there must be other stakeholder groups tenants, for example, in housing or something like that, where having something that comes from a place of perspective and framing and understanding and community could help us in all sorts of areas of the built environment. Would that be fair to say?

Ellora: 11:37

Definitely. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's what interests me so much is sharing the knowledge that I gain from looking through the lens of women homeowners. And there's nuances and there are specifics that, with a niche like that, to be honest, frankly, is really luxurious for me to just focus. I don't have the same challenge as others in the retrofit industry looking through much broader perspectives of homeowners and also I'm dealing with a very able to pay side to homeowners typically who are undertaking renovation work themselves. But I think it inherently comes back to those drives that we as people have to better our lives, our family, our children, our health. So, without a doubt, I think it's really important that I share all that information.

Ellora: 12:35

I'm part of Working Group 6, which is also the National Retrofits Working Group, looking to drive retrofit uptake across homeowners, and I really want to contribute as much as I can because I think it's a great initiative seeing so many people in so many different walks of life sharing how they're tackling communicating retrofit to homeowners. And then again I'm coming from also probably quite creative brand strategy hat. So I think you've got to be really careful in my, my recommendation. You could be really careful with with um things like focus groups and things where people are put in a controlled space to ask questions about a subject we know can tend to steer people to making a comment about something, but it doesn't necessarily give you the right answers or solutions, um. So I think there's a real opportunity also to engage with people I've worked with in the past um in the creative industry, seeing how they would tackle this from a completely different perspective when you're dealing with in the retrofit industry.

Ellora: 13:50

I've encountered a huge amount of extremely competent, experienced, academically driven, fantastic knowledge sources, but it's actually a completely different challenge. It's not about communicating all that. As I said, it's about trying to find the touch point that really resonates with homeowners so that they make maybe the same decisions around their appliances as they do about their home. When it comes to performance, maybe it's the same decision you make about your car. You know we like the aesthetic of a car, but performance is a big part of the decision making process as a woman or a man. Maybe there's lessons to be learned in um other approaches that we haven't quite tapped into yet, but I think it's really important to share all that information.

Simon: 14:47

That's why I think these conversations are so fascinating. I was only saying the other day that we know a lot within the built environment. The knowledge is there and the knowledge is there both within the men and women in the academic field and the engineer. I mean, you and I both know there's some absolutely phenomenal technical women in this business, like real powerhouses in the sector. It's not a lack of knowledge and it's not a lack of it's less a lack these days of on the ground at the coalface women in the industry as well. There's more and more of that happening um, thinking of some brilliant people within the likes of united living, driving shdf projects and like incredible experience within within retrofit and energy sprung and you name it. But where we struggle, I think, is outside of those technical fields. Framing it to homeowners in general and in your case, predominantly women homeowners is that translation of the technical um and the academic in a way that's meaningful for people and that's not to say that people aren't capable.

Simon: 16:06

And you know you've made this point in our preamble before that there's also a real hunger for technical knowledge with homeowners as well, we mustn't forget that in our drive to find other ways of framing things and seeing what resonates, people also want to know what particulate matter is or a voc is as well. Yeah, but in the day-to-day decision-making processes and and what resonates with people and what drives people to make decisions, we've got to find better ways of doing that, particularly with air quality, because it is so esoteric and invisible and often long-term in its health outcomes.

Ellora: 16:48

That seems to be a real challenge yeah, definitely, and I think one of the challenges of retrofit if you look at the project from a distance, it's the only personal project you're ever likely to take to undertake in your entire lifetime. That isn't a single purchase. It's actually a multitude of thousands of decisions from you know just where the shelves go in the cupboard as a woman, to what color this is, to how high this is, to what materials do I use? We obviously have the conversation of embodied carbon as well. Is that intrinsically linked to indoor air quality? Actually, I'm quite curious to look into that. You probably know a lot more about. But with all those multiple decisions, it's not a single purchase. It's not like going out and buying a car, where you know it's a yes or no question. And I did wonder. You know, obviously we're in retrofit, we're taking existing properties and we're upgrading them. So and and the I think they recently identified quite a few hundreds archetypes of homes across the UK, a lot more than one would expect. So it's almost you're creating a completely individual blueprint for every home, with different budgets, different issues. So it's almost you're creating a completely individual blueprint for every home, with different budgets, different issues. It's a really, really big task, but obviously you know a lot, simon.

Ellora: 18:15

I know that NVHR is resonating more and more with homeowners. I'm seeing more understanding. It's quite interesting over the last two years watching words become more familiar MVHR, off-gassing, non-petrochemical paints. I think three years ago those words would not have been understood and I think now they're more ingrained and I find what's really useful about space with everyone in it in one go is that it just takes one person to mention something.

Ellora: 18:51

There was recently a Swedish homeowner who'd moved to the UK whose immediate request on the group was right, I'm installing an NVHR, an NVHR. This was before any other renovation decision and immediately I was interested to see what she'd grown up with, where she was coming from, why this was so important to her, and she told her story. You know I've grown up with having it in the home and it improves the home so much for me. And she described those attributes of living in a home with MVHR and I'm sure a good hundred people did a quick google and quick check and thought what is this, how does this work?

Ellora: 19:35

And you could tell, because people also can still find posts, obviously going back, because they search in the group and it does prop up again because somebody searched and gone oh where did you go? Just following on from something six months ago, how did you find? Where did you go in the end with this? And I see people like the green building store coming up as well as a good source of MVHR systems and triple glazing and other high-performance building materials and products. So, yeah, it's quite interesting the power of just conversation in a space where people get very, very high-value information very, very quickly, without any sales going on, any hidden agenda.

Simon: 20:25

Yeah, I was going to ask you about that. Do you think the power of those dialogues comes from a place of neutrality, so it's seen to be non-vested in its interest and its imparting of information, or is it that the power comes from a place of storytelling? It's the fact that it's coming from somebody that isn't trying to to flog a technical product, but they're telling their journey, their story, their experience. Um, because I don't think we use storytelling enough within the built environment and people are natural storytellers if you give them the environment to do that. Um, so I'm wondering where you see the balance in in the kind of the power of those kind of dialogues. Is it that neutrality, or is it just people's natural instinct to tell a story?

Ellora: 21:22

um, in all honesty, when I set up the group I put in quite strict group rules already. Um, I knew inherently that trust was a huge issue already in the retrofit industry. So what I you know, unfortunately in a way, and it's just fact that most women if you look on a lot of the groups that exist in renovation are sold products and services very, very quickly, more from men. That's only because there's more men in the construction industry, that's all. So women's space one of the first things I had to say is not obviously discounting that women sell things and products and services, but I had to make sure that nobody was allowed to post or spam any products, any services in that group. You aren't allowed to mention anything unless it's a choice you're making or you have used it yourself. I'm also clear on you can't recommend products or services unless you've got actual experience with them. Um, but obviously you know you can say that I'm I'm looking at these three options or these four options or whatever. That's really important. I also have a couple of polls and I'm thinking about how that evolves. The first two really simple polls in the group were kitchen and bathroom products. You know, and it's got already just under 100 items, which brands people are going for, just to see which people are choosing and recommending.

Ellora: 22:50

Going back to your question on trust, the other thing was I also had a feeling that a platform like this and obviously I didn't know until I set it up would encourage more storytelling, a space where women felt they could share a bit more of their story. You know, I've had a bad day. This has happened to me, I would say inherently, a lot of people's posts include a lot of personal information about their lives and I think that interwoven is really important. If a woman shares her quick wins of the day, as somebody did yesterday who's been struggling for weeks with getting anywhere with her project but was really happy to go on and say, oh, by the way, I managed to do this from a DIY perspective. I'm really pleased how it turned out. They're in a space they want to share that and they do get a lot of encouragement.

Ellora: 23:40

And one other thing that encourages people to share those stories is I'm very active in the group. Um, I comment, I engage, I like I. If anything comes up, they aren't. It's, you know, it's creating a safe space for women, but in a different context, to be able to just share those stories. So I think it goes hand in hand the trust, the storytelling for me a really inherent part of what makes the group work. For me, a really inherent part of what makes the group work.

Ellora: 24:30

Um, in terms of people's reviews, I think the reviews are always focused on. You know, I wouldn't have got here without being able to share this. Two were tradeswomen who really helped them on a part of the project and she just wanted to send them a thank you, which I thought was really nice. So she asked if she could just direct message them and I said, absolutely you can. But people are aware I'm there monitoring, but at the same time they know I have the best interests at heart. I don't represent anybody. I am not paid. I do take it upon myself to not be paid by any products or suppliers as well. I think that's really important that they know I'm not pushing anything.

Simon: 25:10

Do you have many technical women on the group, kind of contributing as experts within their field? So I mean, I'm not even going to start to list the names that pop into my head, because we'll be here all day, but there's some amazingly experienced people out there, um, that I imagine.

Ellora: 25:29

I I would love to contribute to these kind of dialogues I have a staggering quality of women in that group from the professional environment.

Ellora: 25:43

Um yeah, for their own confidentiality, I won't name yeah, you'll know them all you'll know them all um, and they've really enjoyed um being able to help and and in in actually some of these women's jobs they don't actually encounter homeowners, they're not on site, they're not, they're not feeling the impact on the ground. So what surprised me, which was really nice to see, is how much they enjoyed taking and actually giving that free time. You know whether it's five, ten minutes a day. I've had women in the built environment say to me they always make a point every week of going on and just seeing what people are talking about and being able to answer questions. Um, I will talk. You know I've got Sarah Shooter, for example. She is actually one of the most and just seeing what people are talking about and being able to answer questions, I will talk. You know I've got Sarah Shooter, for example. She is actually one of the most incredible construction solicitors specialists in the built environment. She deals with everything from large, residential to, so she's really fantastic at dispute resolution, which obviously is always a really common issue that comes up in any renovation project at one stage or another. So she did a great webinar and a lot of the women do do free webinars in the group once every few months, which just allows all the homeowners to come on and just get a grasp of a subject, ask questions. So Sarah did a great one on managing your project. Grasp of a subject, ask questions. So Sarah did a great one on managing your project. But also, what was quite interesting is it wasn't about all the tools and Gantt charts and schedules and Excel spreadsheets. We find that women are so hyper organized in this group that actually it's the. The problem is when things go wrong and suddenly all these charts don't add up or the budget's gone over or this hasn't come on time. And what Sarah and I talked a lot about in this webinar was it's actually the agility mindset that we also need in project management to manage those unexpected things, and that's actually something that really carries into retrofit.

Ellora: 27:48

We had another fantastic woman, lucy Hayden, who's a homeowner, originally did the most incredible retrofit of her home in Teddington. She's in the group. She's done a webinar where we literally showcased her home. I went round, I took videos of the house. I spent a lot of time talking to her about what made her do such a huge project but also take so many risks, because she literally went into it blind. But her background is tax and accountancy and she's got a huge amount of experience and that's her career. What was interesting is she had those skills and she could apply them in a retrofit project and she was prepared to mitigate that risk and also go in without a budget.

Ellora: 28:34

I mean, that's unheard of to taking a retrofit. I wish everyone could go in without any budget. I think then we'd see retrofit uptake in no amount of time. So there's so many interesting dynamics of having women sharing their stories, and these are professional women a domestic energy assessor, because she's just become really passionate about it and she's studying in retrofit at the moment, so she's come back out. She's a professional as a professional as well, but clearly really cares. We also have Judith Leary in the group who talks about it as well. She wrote the Eco-Renovation Home. Obviously she's a really experienced woman with her own project. Again, those are the people that are really resonating.

Simon: 29:27

Do you get a sense that you're signposting potential careers for people as well in construction? I mean, you know particularly I don't know if it's a trope or not, but certainly you know there's a real need. We haven't unlocked the potential of women in construction. There's no doubt about that at all. But one of the potential avenues of getting more women into construction, away from the, the big blokey sites and the, the six o'clock in the morning starts in the center of london type lifestyle you know being on the m25 in a van at half five in the morning life which nobody wants.

Simon: 30:11

Um retrofit is seen as a real opportunity because it's it's there's more soft skills, there's it's people's homes, it's more of a service industry than it is a construction industry at time. Anybody involved in in retrofit knows you know we're dealing with people's lives and their homes and their environment. It's a very different place and it's potentially seen as a real opportunity to get more and more women in construction. Is that a fair assessment of that? Do you think there's an opportunity to pull women into this sector through?

Ellora: 30:49

retrofit and it's actually um the next phase of work that I'm doing at the moment, um having got to know so many women in retrofit over the last year or two. Um the need for their own space as well as becoming really prevalent, and I've had a lot of women saying they'd really like the same space and the reason is because they're really passionate about the careers they're in. Even though there is a distinct number of women in this space, there's still not a lot, and obviously we know that there is a huge need to upskill the workforce at the moment. And so, with all those kind of thoughts in place, I've just posted a survey trying to capture the experiences of women in retrofit industry at the moment that you can fill out if you're a woman in the industry, and it's trying to capture what they enjoy, what they don't enjoy about working, what kind of things they need support, training, mentoring, what kind of things they need support, training, mentoring um.

Ellora: 31:56

I recently had a friend who put me in contact with a friend of hers who was um building surveyor last summer, who's just really interested in retrofit and just felt, as a building surveyor, that she was just doing party wall surveys at the moment and she wanted to do more. And she's got a really sustainable hat on her, she said, and just the waste on site is actually where she was coming from. So I was able to link her with the IAA's retrofit courses that they did freely funded for her and she literally nearly walked away and I said, no, you can sign up and you'll start in two weeks. And she did and she's just completing at the moment level five and level three, and I invited her, met her at Future Build and she's brilliant and she's just really needing some mentoring and to speak to other women now in this field. But already she covers Southwest London and I don't know of anyone like her who's in southwest London, which is a huge area. So also, a lot of the women are really interested in working with other women homeowners and, again, if there's a trust issue with women homeowners and maybe they feel more comfortable talking to you know, then there's a real opportunity to introduce people to this career, make sure they got the right mentorship, access to training and funding and and also there's obviously real value, as you know, of of people just talking.

Ellora: 33:24

Finding out what other training courses, what thoughts people have in different areas, indoor air quality as well is something that comes up a lot, also with women. There's obviously lots of subjects about hormones and menopause is, you know, really big subject at the moment. A lot more understanding happening, but also a lot of data going around on that. So there's different types of conversations that I think a space for professional women in retrofit could really benefit from. So I'm hoping to have something, yeah, up and running.

Ellora: 33:57

But predominantly, I'd also like to see and this is the challenge how do you engage with younger people, people starting off in their career, or not only younger people, but people doing career changes later in life who have a lot of skills that could really resonate well with moving into retrofit work. I also am really passionate about this industry. I work in it, obviously, but also being self-employed. I think there's a lot of flexibility that you can have when you're doing project-based work. You know so that women who want that flexibility to work from home or, to you know, take breaks or sabbaticals in their career you know there's that opportunity there to create a more flexible and that localization shoot them that localization as well.

Simon: 34:46

You know the, the, the, the fact that you can work within a community in retrofit much more than you can perhaps in other parts of the construction sector you know has real value. You can, you can contribute to a local environment, a local area, all sorts of things, so that I think also can suit people, that there's not necessarily the kind of commute lifestyle involved in retrofit that there might be in others.

Simon: 35:14

You touched on something really interesting then as well, elora, that you mentioned about menopause and hormones, and I'm guessing that's a kind of a time orientated thing.

Simon: 35:29

There are points in people's lives that things mean different things to different people at different points.

Simon: 35:37

Um, and I know there's been some really good research in ireland, uh, through the behavioral analytics unit of the sustainable energy authority here, looking at what are the trigger points for people to make decisions or to value things in different ways, to try and understand how to drive um uh, interest in retrofit particularly, um, so if we kind of bring that, I suppose, a little bit focused towards ventilation and air quality, I'm guessing, when we're looking at framing things for particular stakeholder groups capturing people when they're having children or starting to build a home for the first time, or looking towards retirement or having to deal with age-related issues like menopause that they're they're a thing we need to frame things for people at different times, not just because they're from one particular stakeholder group. Is that kind of what you were pointing to when you were saying that, that people, there are certain points in people's lives where they're actually take a particular interest in something different to what they might have taken an interest to 20 years previously or if they were 20 years younger.

Ellora: 36:52

Yeah, yeah, I, I definitely think that's prevalent. And also in the able to pay residential kind of renovation, retrofit world, you're more likely to deal with women of a certain age um, simply because it's the time in their life they could afford to do something, or they can afford to do a big renovation or big retrofit. Obviously, you're not less likely to be doing that at a young age. So you can see consistency in the age group and the age range, which is very useful to see. And obviously perimenopause menopause is very prevalent as well in that age group at the moment.

Ellora: 37:36

Um, the link to petrochemical paints was probably one of the easiest um because it's a surface covering um and it covers such a vast number of surfaces in your home. So it's almost that's the low-hanging fruit in some sense, because it's a really quick and easy and obvious decision that women were making to improve the, the health of their home. I'm still not sure how many were aware of the indoor air quality, but there was a lot of conversation and we had Grafenstone come in and actually Patrick Foulkes did a great webinar which I asked him to do to the women in the group last year and then offered four winners Grafenstone paint, paint a room. But suddenly that conversation went around. Actually, not, that smell of fresh paint is not what you want after you've painted your child's nursery, and actually, again, children are a big incentive. Um, I'm very conscious, I've just painted my daughter's, my daughter's room again.

Ellora: 38:49

Um, she's 11. She likes to change the color of her room every few years. I was very, very keen to make sure that. Um, I used a paint that was not only breathable and obviously, from a retrofit point of view, was looking at the health of the lime plaster underneath, which I knew obviously about, but also something that she could move into relatively soon after. That I knew was healthy for her when it comes to breathing.

Ellora: 39:18

She also has allergies, which is inherited from me, unfortunately, and I think, as an allergy sufferer, what's interesting is I'm highly sensitive, more so to indoor air quality than most when it comes to pollen, dust, when it also comes to VOCs and off-gassing, because I react. So, the minute you react to the quality of the air you're around, you're suddenly aware of it and I've kind of realized that not everyone does have that factor, because it doesn't change their experience of their home as much as it does for me. It doesn't change their experience of their home as much as it does for me. Um, so I think capturing and being aware of women at different stages of their lives is really really important, but sadly, I don't know if it's enough to use that as a hook. And the reason is that women are really constantly looking at investments into their family's well-being and health all the time, and everything from the toiletries you use, from the food you buy, from the delivery of your organic veg, from the cotton and fabrics you use. There's a huge overload in this area going on. Um, and how do you make it easier? Um, I think is really important if it's really really hard for any homeowner. It's going to be hard to uptake something. Um, and but if you can change the paint you use and improve the quality of your child's bedroom, nice, easy win.

Ellora: 40:59

I'm very aware of off gassing with new furniture sofas. You know that formaldehyde used in plywood in kitchens, um, but actually, if it's easy for people to find a new option or alternative, people will change, they will shift. An example is a woman who did that recently on our group. She asked about plywood kitchens. She loved them. They look beautiful, but she was, but quite a few people just stepped in and say make sure it's a formaldehyde free kitchen.

Ellora: 41:29

And then obviously the conversations were what options are there? What are what? What do they call them? What? Um, uh, green gluing solutions are there? Um, and somebody mentioned hemp span and then the lignin green bio glue that's used. Have a lot of conversation about supplier choices. If supplier choices exist, they're accessible, even if there's slightly more people will invest in that. There is a belief that there's inherent product quality associated with an environmental quality, which is quite interesting. Our heads automatically assume if something is more biodegradable or those environmental considerations are a factor in the product, there might actually be a better product quality around that. Um, you know, it's unfortunate that kind of made in china. It's like kind of moving away from that. Otherwise we think god knows where it's come from, how far it's traveled yeah so shopping purchases.

Simon: 42:37

Yeah, it kind of reminds me of the. It's a kind of a Barbara Minto pyramid way of framing risk. In that it's one of my kind of go-to statements. But the reality is in our homes we only have a certain amount of levers that we can pull to impact air quality outcomes. One of them is the purchasing decisions we've made and we've been speaking about that quite a bit here that we can make decisions with the right knowledge to buy products that will introduce less risk into our environment in the first place.

Simon: 43:17

And when we talk about hierarchies of control, the elimination and substitution of hazards is the go-to way of reducing risk immediately and most effectively.

Simon: 43:31

But we also have engineering controls, so there are ways that we can protect ourselves from a hazard if it is going to be there.

Simon: 43:40

So, decent local exhaust ventilation, cooker hoods you and me have spoken about this one before that if we're going to create pollution, which we do by existing in our homes, what are the things that we can do to remove those pollutants when they're there?

Simon: 43:59

And then the general background ventilation having consistent flow of air that avoids the buildup of pollutants around us. If they're going to exist in our environment, and much beyond that there's not really a lot we can do so often this is why I kind of talk about the Minto Pyramid often is that often what people need is very basic frameworks to be able to make good decisions and have access to the information below that if they want to understand more about those decisions and have access to the information below that if they want to understand more about those decisions, laid out in a way that's not hiding or obfuscating information but is supporting that decision making framework for people and a lot of the work that I do is about setting those frameworks out for people is to say, okay, how do you create a decision process that gets a better outcome? And here's the supporting information.

Simon: 44:57

So we'll talk about cooker hoods, because I think it's an interesting one. It would appear from the evidence that's a that that's now around us that cooking pollutants is one of the most significant pieces of harm that we can incur in our homes from an air quality perspective. Yet the decisions we make, the purchasing decisions we make on things like cooker hoods at the moment, are the wrong decisions. They're aesthetic, they're cost-based. I joke, but I've never seen a specification for a cooker hood. It's invariably. Is it a wood one for my country kitchen? Is it a metal one for my modern kitchen? Or, if you're a developer, is it the cheapest possible one I can get with the kitchen? Um, yeah, so I think there's a really good piece of work that we can do in framing the importance of cooking extracts, but also, then, how we influence purchasing decisions and how we influence behavior, choices and use of those products. All could have a really big impact long term on people's health I also wondered um.

Ellora: 46:10

Last year the Advertising Authority came down with stringent rules on greenwashing and advertising and actually having the data to back the points you were making. But obviously, as you talk about cooker hoods, they don't have that problem because you don't choose it for environmental, sustainable reasons, as you said. I said predominantly it's led by the hob or the cooker that the women choose. And then hang on a minute. I need, I need an extractor fan. It's an afterthought of what matches, what fits within that space and what can the builder vent out um?

Ellora: 46:46

yeah which, uh, is probably the venting issue, is probably the number one problem when it comes to but it's. It's a real shame. But at the same time, women say, look, I can smell my neighbor's food or you know I'm. They notice it. They notice the problems that they have when it doesn't vent or filter properly. So there's an opportunity for the right conversation. As you said, there's no specification in there, so how do they make that decision at the moment is a real challenge when they don't know the various properties that it could have to improve their, their life in their home and in the kitchen.

Ellora: 47:34

It's really interesting because one exercise I also do, which I used to do with homeowners that I worked on, was actually explain how people assess and compare specification technical documents. It's really simple once you get your head around what you're looking for. But every product, every supplier, you can find the specification, the technical specification. Have that printed out for everything you buy, because at some point, whoever's installing it, is going to need it anyway. Are you going to use it as a point of reference? It'd be great if things like those touch points again, those instruction sheets, those things talked about indoor air quality and again, is that a legislative issue. Is that a policy that should be driven from up high?

Simon: 48:28

Yeah, yeah, I mean it's a responsibility.

Simon: 48:32

That's the ever lasting question with these things what balance between the carrot and the stick? You know information and you know social drivers versus regulations and standards. I think inevitably it's always a bit of both. Personally, I think we need to get much harder on the regulations. Personally, I think we need to get much harder on the regulations, although, having said that, a comment I've been making recently is I don't think the regulations can improve much more.

Simon: 49:04

They're pretty clear in their intent, not just for air quality and ventilation, but also things like energy efficiency and so on. They're pretty clear in their intent. The problem that we have is in the application and the policing of that intent. That's where it tends to fall down. And then, at the consumer protection end of things, we need a lot more powers to be a lot more robust on industry and supply chains setting the system up for success. You talk about specification. You know it's one of the absolute nightmares in ventilation that every manufacturer is presenting their information to put their best foot forward and trying to differentiate between one product and another sometimes can be an absolute minefield, as you know definitely.

Ellora: 49:59

There's also two other technology areas that definitely women are very conscious of, and I'd say obviously the water softener area, um, and the water filtering.

Ellora: 50:12

The water quality area of decision making in the home has become very prominent in the last few years you wouldn't see a woman install a kitchen sink now without actually that being an instant. My, my water softener where's it going to go under the cupboard? And also my water filter. Because there's also the conversation with what's good for your hair isn't good for your you know digestion either. You know women are saying we still keep the kitchen tap clear so that the fresh water isn't the water softener water, but they're looking at it in the bathroom, obviously, and for the washing machine and the dryers to run the dishwasher, to run through, to keep the parts clear. So interesting, how, um, how much that's surged, I'm sure. If you look to the data of the last 10 years, the number of sales in water softener and water filters has just skyrocketed. So I'm thinking there's still the opportunity in the extractor fan industry.

Ellora: 51:14

And the other thing is HEPA filters. When it comes to your vacuum cleaner and when it comes to air filtering, the HEPA filter is definitely something that I'd say most homeowners know what that is and no hospital grade HEPA filter. Maybe they know more if they've got dogs and cats, for example. Most people always have a HEPA filter. Maybe they know more if they've got dogs and cats, for example. Most people always have a HEPA filter in there. I've always known a HEPA filter from day dot because of my allergies, so I would never choose a vacuum cleaner without a HEPA filter now. So it's interesting. I wonder if there's an opportunity extractor fan if you knew the filtration in there or the system in there that got it right up to the best standards and it had a name hepa filter or you know, etc. A bit like sellotape became the name for a decent tape but actually was a brand name. Is there an opportunity there whereby nobody's going to choose an extractor fan without that filter, without that system or technology in place?

Simon: 52:22

That's really interesting because you know I was talking about being able to see the air. But I'm guessing nobody is dipping the water to see what the turbidity level is or what the ph level is of their water. Yet they're making a purchasing decision to filter air and to deliver a better product without necessarily having to understand the impact of that.

Simon: 52:46

You know, I'm sure people are making decisions based on water just being hard or soft or something, or perception of water quality or taste in the area, that to make a purchasing decision without having the numbers to back that up? Um, and I wonder if that could be analogous to air quality. That that yes, there's value in the data but equally, if you frame it correctly and it has enough value, you don't necessarily need that. You can introduce decent ventilation systems, decent filtration. People get a perceived benefit from it.

Ellora: 53:23

I mean, don't get me wrong, it will be real as well, but you don't necessarily doesn't need to be quantifiable necessarily no, it almost, I'd almost be interested even though this is not a positive exercise to do a placebo on. You know tasting your water in your home, with or without a water filter? Actually do you know? Obviously it doesn't take much for someone to say that water's tasting better with a filter. Or you know my hair, my skin, feels much better. Um, I do believe it's definitely better. But I wonder how many people feel just better at the thought of it rather than actually inherently making a difference.

Ellora: 54:04

Um, but then with mvhr, a lot of women do talk about the benefits who have got it installed, of sleeping better, of, um, not feeling cold and not feeling those damp parts anymore in the home. So again, nobody's. Actually one or two women were monitoring the, obviously, humidity level in the home, the relative humidity. So that's a tracker in a sense, but otherwise they're not really tracking the apart, the relative humidity. So that's a tracker in a sense, but otherwise they're not really tracking the apart from the temperature. Obviously, as well with the thermostat, they're not really tracking the level of the number of air circulations in the home. They just know that the system is set to do that and that's already been calculated, that data has already been factored in, but they do report those benefits. So I think there's opportunity as things progress and it shows the power of sentiment.

Simon: 55:01

You know that, yeah, if there's a feeling of it providing health and well-being and comfort. I mean, you know, when you talk to people about their perception of retrofit, one of the most common replies or one of the most highly scored areas of benefit is comfort, health and wellbeing impacts, often beyond the it saved me X on my SAP rating or this kilowatt hours per year, which is kind of the reason a lot of the built environment drives retrofit. Often the benefit is the perceived health and well-being benefit that you get from thermal comfort and decent air quality and good sleep and you know ill, less or less allergic, and all of that.

Simon: 55:47

They're the first things that are brought up every time you speak to people. Oh, you know, my, my kid was always suffered from asthma and he hasn't had an attack since we did the retrofit. The air quality is really good, or we can use that back room now because it's comfortable to sit in in winter and we've increased the usable space of the building. They're all those kind of sentiment based replies often, because that's what we feel, because, you know, we always say it we build buildings for people, so we need to lean on the human benefit much more than we do, I think definitely, um, obviously there's, you know, and with with awareness, sometimes there's caused by tragedy, in the case of obviously our Ishak's case, with mold in the home and terrible conditions.

Ellora: 56:42

That ends up happening if you don't go down that route. Mold obviously, as you know, is in your experience, obviously your background, is inherently something you see. So it's a signal that something's very wrong in the home at that point. But it's like intrinsically, before you get to that point, how do you make people aware of all the other benefits? And also, I've I've looked into a lot of aspects.

Ellora: 57:16

I mean you will probably know more what research, as you mentioned the Irish research on VOCs and EDCs as well as affecting perimenopause and hormone levels. I wonder who is undertaking that research and who might be undertaking the next phase of research from a women's health perspective, because there wasn't a lot out there and I read recently how research is often driven by commercial incentives to fund that research. So it would be really valuable for someone to take on that research, to look at everything from you know, the production function of estrogen and EDCs and phthalates obviously found in plastics and and reproductivity in the home and understand what the definitive is on making measures in the home to avoid poor indoor air quality around that? What makes a difference? What doesn't make a difference?

Simon: 58:34

um so, if anyone out there has any uh, great pieces of research, please, yeah forward my way I I know, I mean, I know harvard has done a lot of work on healthy buildings in general and that includes a lot of the kind of plastics and chemicals and forever chemicals that we introduce into the building.

Simon: 58:57

Um, I think it's a really interesting point how we, how we frame the longer term health risk. I mean, there's there's two challenges with with air quality. There's the acute impacts it has on the exacerbation of asthma and conditions and allergies and so on. But there's a very meaningful long-term health impact on all sorts of things from dementia to respiratory conditions to cancer, you name it, and it's, you know, it's in the order of magnitude of smoking and twice as harmful as alcoholism and road traffic deaths, so it's right right up there as a public health concern. Um, so so the better that we can get at framing some of those long-term risks and express them in ways that are meaningful to particular stakeholder groups, the better, and I think that's the the really interesting challenge. You know you were talking about hepa filters and allergies that you know that that generally tends to deal with the acute reaction of people, but actually that filtration of air and the removal of particles could have one of the most long-term health impacts on our health and well-being. Um so it's how we introduce that dialogue.

Ellora: 1:00:23

I think will be fascinating as we go forward I think my job will be to just make sure that conversation happens amongst the homeowners and the fact that they know I'm obviously not trying to sell them anything but the right decisions, excuse me. Yeah, and it's also ensuring that you don't overload people. It's a really tricky balance to get right. Something I've been doing a little bit of research on, just from my own understanding as well, is on the tools and the monitors in the home that allow us to monitor, and you kind of could call it handling retrofit. It's actually not about handling handling it emotionally or mentally, it's actually about how you handle your home. You know, from the controls you use to the thermostat you use, the women who do have mvhr are really adept in using it, into knowing when to change the filters and to be able to adjust its levels at different times of the year, already to manage the climate in the home. But I mean, really, until you, simon, had told me so much about the extraction fan issue, I really had no idea that it was that significant and it really has made me want to look into the extractor fans on the market and what's available and women can name the brands when it comes to cooker hoods and you know smeg versus, you know induction versus, and obviously we're trying to move away from gas, without any doubt.

Ellora: 1:02:16

So induction is easily becoming the preferred choice, which I was worried a few years ago wouldn't be the case, but now it's. You know, you've got La Conche, for example, doing amazing induction hob, even though that's obviously on the very, very high price end for most homeowners, but at least. But it really would slot in quite easily to make the cooker hood a factor in there. Um, and it's just not available at the moment. Um, in terms of choices, um, it's almost not even sold from um feet on ground level. I know a lot of the suppliers and I know a lot of the showrooms I go to. They really don't even talk about the cooker hood. Everything is focused on that hob, on the ability to have to above your head. That's literally filtering out, as you said.

Simon: 1:03:27

So, yeah, I'm personally now trying to look into it, trying to look into it just out of interest. I mean her own space as a, as a platform. Is it just where dialogue happens, or are you starting to embed resources in there for people as well and libraries? Is it starting to become a place of information as well as a forum, principally?

Ellora: 1:03:52

so, yes, so I've been working hard behind it. Um, I've got an eight pound membership a month where I've got a few women who sign up and they get access to checklists. And for me, going back to the whole overloading of things, I I've looked into, you know, courses and training and what do women need to actually take them through a renovational retrofit journey, and I found actually that the project management skills are there. Women have got them already at that stage in life where they're doing a project of this scale. They do not need somebody giving them project management skills. Most of them, you know, are in careers, a project managing their lives on an epic level. What they need is quick, bite-sized tools. So I kind of call it a new set of tools which allow them to just checklist quickly. Have I taken all these things into consideration when I'm buying the kitchen, when I'm choosing the lighting, when I'm planning the electrical overlay in the home, for example, when I'm, yeah, making the product, being aware of the, the purchase, the quantity of purchases you need to make in a kitchen alone, and, and you know the, the stumbling blocks, and what I can see is it's actually really little things. That's that that trip everyone up consistently. So actually most people don't realize you probably need about 20 to 30 kitchen handles when it comes to putting them on your kitchen and you know, at 80 pounds a pop if you go for them, that adds up really, really quickly and then suddenly you've gone over budget.

Ellora: 1:05:43

So having those checklists, I think, has been the most valuable thing to provide those who want it and then the support in the group. That's inherently what I think are the foundations for support that people need. And also another thing that's really important to me is obviously people. I can see the different regional bases of all the homeowners. There's a couple of women in Scotland, obviously, the Midlands, manchester, everywhere. We literally have every region covered.

Ellora: 1:06:07

Now, obviously, there's a weightier heavyweight in London density and Southwest England, but we equally have women in the north and then obviously a really fascinating cohort of women in Scotland who obviously have access to different regulatory benefits and funding as well for their home. So the next thing is really helping them to map out and have access to who's available in what region you're in to do a retrofit assessment or to do insulation or to, you know, provide those supplies and products for you. That's where the tradeswomen and trades professionals coming in really, really help add value. So Sarah, for example, has offered to do a really good project. Gantt chart, from her perspective as a solicitor and as somebody to mitigate risk, as a template which is done from her perspective.

Ellora: 1:07:03

So you really know, and I think that's. I think that's where professional input's really important and also I'm not here to vet anyone I think it's more important that people know all the choices available to them and and actually can make the right choices because they have the right list of questions to ask. So I've always said, when it comes to being involved in tendering for builders or contractors in any shape or form, I have that again, that checklist of what questions to ask. What are you looking from them for? What do you want them to have given to you so you can make an educated decision on whether the right person for your job. I think that tool is much more important than saying this is the person, this is the retrofit professional you need to use, this is the retrofit. I think that tool is much more important than saying this is the person, this is the retrofit professional you need to use, this is the retrofit. I think it's just knowing what questions to ask at the moment. So those are the resources and tools that are available?

Simon: 1:08:07

Is there a risk that it's a little bit niche in that it is the able to pay market, as you said, probably likely. Most of the members are at a certain stage in their life as well. I see a lot of the conversation that we've been having this morning valuable well beyond retrofit and certainly well beyond the potential demographic that you could argue this is pointed to. Do you have aspirations to break out of that niche to some degree? Because checklists for improving a kitchen are valuable for anybody, regardless of whether you're doing a 60 000 sterling retrofit or not yeah or or to understand better about air quality and cooker hoods.

Simon: 1:09:06

If you want to make that decision, I could imagine her own space is valuable to homeowners as much as it is to retrofitters. You know that, that there's a there's real inherent value in in women having access in your particular case, women but stakeholders having access to this kind of information and this kind of perspective, far more broadly than just undertaking a retrofit, do you?

Simon: 1:09:35

have any sense for example, like what the kind of the build-up of people are on that are accessing the site, that are there, people there out of general interest that are improving. You know, and I think about our own home, our home is a permanent exercise annually of improving something or trying to at least within our budget. Retrofit isn't necessarily a one big hit cost able to pay type affair. It can be a lifelong journey in a home often.

Ellora: 1:10:05

I think that's where kind of looking at a space for professional women became really obvious, because, having met so many great women, as you said, in different stakeholder segments, you know, looking at um everyone from affordable housing to social housing to all those areas the conversation that women have had by just having an opportunity to have a conversation have been really really valuable. Sharing information like this, I think, is absolutely a must. Again, that's why I wanted to be part of National Working Hub Retrofit Hub simply because needed to have a space where you could share your ideas and what's working. And the professional women want to have those conversations because people are coming at it from different angles. So I've seen a retrofit coordinator and an architect get together with a software engineer to find ways of making the visual presentation of a retrofit project more accessible for a homeowner, and that's something they're working on simply because the connection made now between them. So I think those connections are really really important. I mean, I have to say I think how LinkedIn's grown as a platform the last few years is is also testament to supporting an industry, because it's it's now not just a cv showcase, it's like access to a portal of knowledge. That's that's just definitely accelerating everyone's understanding what everyone is doing.

Ellora: 1:11:44

Um and I I also was um really enjoying talking this year and last year with, for example, lucy Middlemiss at Leeds University and all the work they're doing on energy across you know, fuel poverty and talking to her about all the findings within her own space, because Julia Menini as well, who works with them, looks at it specifically from a gender point of view. So one thing that I really enjoy is the amount of conversation with the amount of fascinating and, as I said, experienced people. I think that's a responsibility of mine to maintain those conversations, to share the insight. The survey on where women are within the retrofit industry that I've just undertaken as well is something that I will be sharing. I think it's really important to see how women are finding and experiencing working within the retrofit industry and where they'd like to make improvements, what they enjoy, what they don't enjoy, what their personal professional goals are as well. And then I do have a newsletter, which I really I'm not working hard enough on, but I intend to which is through the lens of the women homeowner on LinkedIn, and actually my next newsletter that's coming out is called Handling Retrofit, but it's not actually about handling retrofit as a woman homeowner.

Ellora: 1:13:10

Mentally, it's about how you see and how you cope with all the monitors and the tools and the apps around managing your home now and how you make it simpler, potentially easier. Are there lessons from the way you know Apple has made technology accessible? Is there software opportunities? Is there? You know, technology opportunities really interest me that actually make being a retrofit coordinator easier as well, because of the amount of data and mathematical acumen you need. There.

Ellora: 1:13:54

There's, there's an opportunity there that I think still being missed, but without creating a kind of blueprint for every home either. I know there's so many nuances, but there has to be a way of making it simpler because we do live in a world of technology and coding and programming that can make these things much easier to understand for both homeowners and those involved in retrofit. So, yeah, that's. That's something I'm just kind of throwing out there as a thought. Maybe someone will pick up on it and say, oh, you know, maybe we need to make this control simpler, maybe we need to, and, um, I have worked with a product supply in the past I can't name them um, doing testing and and working with the products that they produce already. Um, from the perspective as a woman in the home and from homeowners. So there's all sorts of products that they have coming out over the next 10 years, so that's something you're doing currently?

Simon: 1:14:58

is it because I was going to ask you? There's a lot of value locked up in this about perspective of a very important stakeholder group, particularly from a purchasing perspective. Often is the key decision maker from a home's perspective about decisions. Um so I mean, what do they say about? I will always offer that, yeah, yeah yeah, what they say we are the product aren't we ultimately in these things? You know the these kind of platforms that they they frame a perspective that can have real commercial value, I'd imagine and that's it I'm.

Ellora: 1:15:36

I'm I'm very protective of the women homeowners in the group, not being sold anything, but also I'm on there daily, hourly. You know I'm very invested in where their challenges are what works, what doesn't work, what changes. So I'm always happy and willing to talk to people who feel that they need that insight or that perspective. I think that's inherently really important for any product development or technology development or you know, around retrofit specifically and the benefits that access to the people who are using it and that perspective is is vital, because I do want those things inherently made produced that are better and easier for women homeowners.

Simon: 1:16:22

Ultimately, the end of the day, um does much of your dialogue center around the use of and the habits that are formed in the home as well. You know I'm a was talking last week with somebody about the lost art of airing the home, for example. Um, many of us would have grown up with, you know, parents throwing the windows open for half an hour in the morning if you're lucky enough to have someone at home to do that. Um, that there are habits and a social science element to this that's enormously helpful for performance outcomes in the built environment. Do you find much discussion on the platform around that element of the built environment?

Ellora: 1:17:09

not so much conversation, um, but, interestingly, actually, in my day-to-day life, with the women I socialise with, we probably talk about things like that more. Actually, you've triggered a memory of something a long time ago that always interests me was that Jessica Alba, the famous Hollywood actress, 15, over 15 years ago launched a product range called Honest, and it never took off and it never resonated but it was probably too soon for its time, unfortunately but were natural cleaning products all based around the off-gassing issues in the home and exactly around the fact that you should, after you've cleaned your home, open your windows for how long and how often, and it was the first time I'd ever heard this or thought of this and it was really quite wow. This is a. This is a really big change in the way we clean our homes and the way we think about the air quality in our homes. But it never took off, um, and it fell flat and it but that conversation in the marketing and the communication they had to women homeowners really stuck home.

Ellora: 1:18:29

I can still remember the website really clearly. I don't know if they exist actually anymore I haven't even checked, but they're definitely not in our. But I don't know if it's me who's just really interested in the sociological nuances of these things that that I particularly find it fascinating to read and research and converse with. Obviously it's not going to be everyone's dinner table conversation, um yeah, it was.

Simon: 1:18:59

It was an. It's an interesting conversation I was having with a lady in delhi, priyanka koltretta.

Simon: 1:19:06

She's a she's part of the indoor air quality community over there and one of the the major strides they can have in their environment over there is changes in habits and culture and behavior in the home about how you cook and how you clean and you know the things that you do within buildings could have as much of an impact, if not more in certain circumstances, than the right ventilation system or the right use of products.

Simon: 1:19:33

So that kind of administrative controls of managing risk elements of things is enormously important. And there are so many basic things we can do well, like put lids on pans and air the room frequently and close the bathroom door when we've had a shower, or dry our clothes in different rooms compared to what we normally do, and the kind of cleaning products that we use and what we introduce into our home. And there's all of these cultural, habit, behavior based things that could have an incredible impact, in the same way that we have discussions around the, the use of thermostats, and how we control heat and turning the, the temperature down by a degree, and and how we expect hot water to be used in our homes. If compared, you know, compared to combination boilers versus stored hot water, and there's there's an enormous impact behavior and culture and habit can have on outcomes in the built environment and if you can frame that from a stakeholder perspective, even more powerful, I'd imagine I also wonder, as you mentioned that, what the links are with our dietary changes over the last 10 years.

Ellora: 1:20:51

But then okay I'm, I've got to be careful because you know, diet is intrinsically linked to the cost of food at the moment and food affordability has gone through the roof. But if you look at things like raw food diets and clean living diets and these kind of things that actually lose less cooking, you know there's actually more benefits than just the fact that you're on a raw food diet, which I'm not advocating in any way because I don't have enough information on that on the nutritional side of things.

Ellora: 1:21:23

But, yeah, it's interesting the behaviors in the home and also we're looking at shortcuts, especially as women more than ever in our lives because of the load of things going on. So spending less time cooking as well is really important. Definitely very rare that women want to spend all time, you know, slaving over the kitchen, as any male homeowner would either anymore male homeowner would, either anymore. But at the same time, that is part of family and that is part of the still the family meals. That and families become again really inherent focus on our lives.

Simon: 1:22:05

But it's, it's, yeah, it'd be fascinating to delve into the behavioral habits that affect indoor air quality just I think it's really interesting yeah maybe ask the question of the groups you know, to, to see yeah what those habits and cultures are and what benefits people see that perceived as bringing.

Simon: 1:22:28

I had a really interesting conversation with somebody in social housing a month or so ago as part of some training and she was desperately trying to dance around a subject not to come across as racist when she was talking about cultural habits of cooking in the home and you could see she was really uncomfortable at trying to understand how to manage a perceived risk of certain cultures that would cook for long periods of time in the home and the perceived risk of condensation and dampen mold as a result of boiling pots being on for hours and hours a day.

Simon: 1:23:13

And I said to her isn't it funny how many of us hark back to a time of mothers slaving over pots and pans on a stove for hours and hours? Um, my wife always gives out to me when it's a stock day. I like to do keep up all the chicken carcasses and stuff and do a big stock day, you know, and everything in the house smells of chicken, you know for a day and you know. But so we kind of hark back to that in a kind of romantic way in a way. Yet in in you you translate that into another frame and then it's perceived as a risk that that perhaps we shouldn't be cooking for long periods of time and and so on. So this framing and habits and culture piece is really fascinating, because there's no such thing as no risk in anything we do, in any endeavor, but how we frame it and our behaviors and our culture around it could have as much of an impact as some of the engineering controls that we want to try to put into place.

Ellora: 1:24:19

I think that's really interesting, yeah, and I think it can um, so I think I think that's really interesting yeah and I think it can't be ignored. I think that's the main thing I haven't got the answers but it can't be ignored as a factor yeah um, it's behavioral habits and our daily lives around those things um, and how they're linked intrinsically and and retrofit struggles with this.

Simon: 1:24:41

Because you know, what we tend to do in retrofit is significantly change the shape and behavior of our built environment around us. I mean, it's why we do retrofit we're significantly shifting that built environment from one place to another and that's a double-edged sword. People express the benefits of thermal comfort and health and well-being, but then may struggle to deal with stored hot water for the first time if they've always had a combination boiler. So now the the benefit of a heat pump in combination with stored hot water loses its gloss because you run out of hot water for the first time in your life yes, if you've grown up with stored hot water.

Simon: 1:25:34

Everybody's got used from a habit perspective. If you don't get a shower first, there's always a chance that you don't have hot water definitely.

Ellora: 1:25:42

I think also, and there's there's two perspectives, perspectives from women homeowners when they undertake a project um, one is comfort and one is aesthetic, and there's two risks, I think, at the moment with retrofit. One is aesthetic and there's two risks, I think, at the moment with retrofit. One is that our perception of retrofit projects currently as women homeowners and I call it kind of the blandification of retrofit is that these homes can become very soulless and very Scandi, minimalist kind of boxes that perform exceptionally well. But you know, women still want the aesthetic appeal, the nostalgia of a home, the period details, the stained glass, the cornicing, the you know, the period features of the home to shine still through. That's one challenge.

Ellora: 1:26:38

The other challenge as well is, in the um, the physics of the home around comfort, which is that still this even though there's knowledge on things like HEPA filters and water softeners, there's still a perception that if you make your home incredibly sealed, that it's going to get really, really hot, um, that it's going to actually seal in and your home's not going to be able to breathe. And you talk about airing the home, people still want to throw the windows open on a beautiful day like it is today, and and they're, they're, they think they're being told they can't do that anymore, which is not the case at all. But also they need to understand that your a well-insulated home does not mean a hotter home. It actually means a cooler home. There's still a complete misunderstanding about that simple physics of of you're not keeping the heat in, you're also keeping the cool in as well and keeping the heat out as much.

Ellora: 1:27:42

Um, it's so funny how, uh, a lot of women come onto the group doing retrofit projects and that's the number one concern, um, and you have to have that quick conversation with them. You can insulate your home and obviously we're really conscious of hot summers at the moment. There was an interesting conversation with an architect asking if anyone knew whether you could put a a coolant system now on MVHRs so that, as well as circulate the air, you can get cooler air into the home as an option for air conditioning. So the women are very, very conscious that we've had very, very hot summers and there's still talks about hitting the 40s again. Um, so there's there's just so many things going on in that area that people aren't 100 convinced yet.

Simon: 1:28:37

Yeah, um so the more, the more dialogue they can have, particularly with with stakeholders that are similar to themselves, the better they can frame that and understand it and and navigate that kind of stuff um definitely where do people go laura to find her own space, and what's the, what's the kind of deal with signing up? How does it work practically for people if they're interested in looking into what you're doing in more detail?

Ellora: 1:29:09

Well, it's really easy Just go to wwwherownspacecom. You can sign up there if you're interested in the resources and you can find the link to the group as well. It's a facebook group as well. Predominantly it's free, um there's a list of group rules and questions asked to just understand where people are with their projects and, obviously, to make accessible for women. So, yeah, really simple and um connect with me on linkedin if you want to have a chat, obviously, about anything that I'm doing. Um really interested in networking.

Ellora: 1:29:45

I know one of my passions and skills in life is bringing people together. That's kind of where I am, yeah, and I'm having a lot of conversations at the moment with loads of fantastic women in retrofit um. So if you're a woman working the retrofit industry, please feel free to do the survey that I've just posted as well, but I'll be sharing the findings of that wide, widely anyway. But, yeah, and thank you, simon. Honestly, I need to talk to you a lot more about ways to kind of explain things to homeowners, because you have all the knowledge in the world.

Simon: 1:30:19

So I will be tapping into that as well, and likewise, our community needs to understand different stakeholder perspectives far better than we do, and how to communicate this better, and the more of these types of conversations we have, the better. Um so, yeah.

Simon: 1:30:38

I think it's a fantastic endeavor and I think it would be great to see it blossom out of just retrofit and more to people's own spaces and homes so that we can provide real roadmaps and signposts for people and how to get better environments and use those spaces more. And I think if you're involved involved in other stakeholder groups, I think what you're doing is well worth looking at because I think it can only benefit to replicate that out um to other interested stakeholder groups, because it's that perspective and that feeling of of being part of a community and having people that resonate and understand your perspective that's so powerful, particularly when we're talking, you know, from my perspective, when we're talking about things as esoteric and complex sometimes as air chemistry and ventilation and engineering, you know, the more people from a particular stakeholder group that understand it, it can relate. I think it's such a powerful thing, so fair play to you. I think it's such a powerful thing, so fair play to you. I think it's an amazing endeavor and there's lots of buzz around it in our community and all the women I speak to, my colleagues and associates in this field, all absolutely love her own space, think it's a phenomenal resource. So, yeah, do go and check it out.

Simon: 1:32:00

Um. Ella, thanks a million for spending some time talking to me this morning. Um, we'll catch up again very soon.

Ellora: 1:32:07

Thank, you pleasure? Definitely thanks, simon. Thank you.