No one likes mold and toxic chemicals in their home! Yet often securing total home safety can seem difficult, expensive and time-consuming. Unless you call Environix that is, they can fix up any indoor air quality issue for good! For over 14 years, Environix has been helping any home become safe, efficient and comfortable.
“We do indoor environmental testing clean up.” Says James Mallory, president of Environix, “I tell people basically anything unpleasant inside of a home or building we're going to figure out if it's there what caused it how do we clean it up and how do we make sure it never comes back again. We have no interest in just addressing the superficial symptoms of an issue in we really want to get to the source of it and permanently eliminate the cause of the issue.”
“A lot of our work is in attics and dealing with condensation-based rot and mold growth on the underside of roof sheathing. We're keenly interested in stopping vapor transmission up into an attic and we had tried air ceiling penetrations and stuff but fairly early on realized that if we can't figure out can lights we're not going to accomplish much from an air ceiling standpoint.”
Covering can-lights is a core part of the Environix treatment, highlighting just how important this often-overlooked element of attic insulation is. Moreover, it really matters what approach is chosen to deal with attic fixtures, some are costlier than others!
“We've been using your product for quite a while now. I know we had been using some really clunky solutions either cutting pieces out of sheetrock foaming them together to make inverted boxes to cover can lights, and we had tried some of the other competing offers, but they were they were far too bulky to carry around in the in the attic space.”
“We fairly quickly got frustrated with how labor intensive and costly the other approaches were. So, we were looking for something like [CanCoverIt] because we're passionate about permanently solving our customers problems.”
“We needed solutions that customers would be willing to pay for and we get integrated into a reasonably priced solution that both had a good product cost but also had a low labor cost because we could move throughout and out quickly.” James describes, “So when we landed on CanCoverIt that solved those two big needs, one the underlying taking care of our customers to make sure we've really stopped the source of their issue, and two they could be deployed in a way that made economic sense.”
Environix is obviously committed to quality work, but they also do their cost homework. When asked about the price difference between cardboard boxes or other cheap covers and CanCoverIt James was very clear: labor savings is more important than just product cost.
“We're pretty rigorous about putting metrics around our jobs and what are the real costs of each activity, the labor costs how much time does it take a technician per units of activity to do it and really figure out where our costs are and when we did this we were really surprised to see that some of these seemingly ancillary things like can lights were taking more time than our what we thought was our core activity during our jobs.”
“In my mind time in an attic should be minimized as much as possible. Even just the wages that you're wasting by having a guy crawl around up there. Especially on really hot weather there are all sorts of reasons why the time spent in attic is a real detriment to the profitability. Plus it’s that much more likely for them to put their knee where they shouldn't and pop out the sheetrock or throw their back out because they're twisting in the wrong position.”
“The labor savings with CanCoverIt is enormous. If you pay your technicians a good solid wage, which we do, then in our math on these jobs it more than compensates for any extra costs for the can covers. We want to give a really quality service we don't want to skimp but we want to do it fast and the CanCoverIt's have that in spades.”
Environix has even innovated the install process, thinking of a new approach that we had never considered before!
“Our techs have techniques down by utilizing zip ties on groups of the bags that [the CanCoverIt units] come in that they can easily quickly crawl through low height low access attics with a dozen or more of these under an arm which before CanCoverIt and this technique would have taken multiple trips back and forth.”
Environix had experimented with using LED retrofit kits alone, but found that customers wanted more choice, and moreover found that those retrofit solutions still need further treatment: air sealing is never truly complete without actually covering up the fixture in the attic.
“I found there are several problems [with using retrofit kits alone],” James explains, “one, a lot of them don't come with a gasket or if they do come with a gasket on the trim piece it's such a in rigid material that it's not really air sealing very well. The other is yes you can caulk it in place or seal it in place but because those LED retrofit kits you can't replace the bulbs you have to replace the whole thing now you may be tearing off or messing up your sheetrock and have a real mess in your hands when you need to replace that.”
Like many in the industry, Environix learned that just a retrofit kit alone is not enough to improve the attic situation. Luckily CanCoverIt is the ultimate fixture friend!
“What's made us dramatically swing back toward CanCoverIt is that it allows the customer freedom to choose the type of light bulb and trim cover that they like for their can light while achieving the best air seal possible, because we're doing from the top we can foam around the perimeter go over all the little undulations between a heavily textured ceiling none of that matters anymore. Because we're air sealing it to the very smooth top side of the sheet rock so those are our two biggest reasons we really emphasize the CanCoverIt over other options.”
As a final thought, James shared what he thinks all customers deserve and highlighted why Environix is a Profile in Excellence.
“Well certainly nobody likes to spend money on fixing attic condensation and mold issues, it's clearly not a the most fun entertaining way to spend their hard-earned cash,” James chuckles, “so what I love about our approach is that not only do we solve the frustration and solve the problem that they called us for in the first place but by really focusing on air sealing the lid correctly we're also improving the energy efficiency of the home and the overall performance of the house.”
“So the customer gets to get a two-for-one when they hire us to deal with these issues: not only does it make it permanent, they're going to see lower energy bills and a much more tightly sealed structure. They’re not just remedying a negative they're actually getting a positive, it's going to improve their house.”
“A customer should not be satisfied with anything less than permanent solutions. Every dollar spent should be fixing a problem permanently, so they never have to spend those dollars again. I'm shocked by how often that's not done.”
“My analogy would be you would never hire a water damage company to come dry out a drippy faucet without also making sure the plumber fixed the drip! What I see with a lot of attic issues or indoor environmental issues, especially humidity related stuff, is that customers are paying a lot of money to have it cleaned up but because the underlining conditions that caused in the first place aren't fixed a year or so later sometimes as short as a few months later it all comes roaring back and the customer has to spend not only the money they would have in the first place to prevent it from coming back but now they have to clean it all up again!”
“So my recommendation for customers regardless of the industry but really specifically for moisture management indoor environmental type work is to demand permanent solutions, they are absolutely possible. Fix it once and for all.”
Here, here James! Thanks to Environix for your stellar work. Find their locations on our Hire a Pro page and their website.
Share this article around if you want to let your friends and family know that quality results in a short time at a great cost is possible! You deserve to permanently upgrade your home for health, safety, comfort and savings, and Pros like Environix can make it happen!
If you are a pro using CanCoverIt send over an email to info@cancoverit.com with a quick explanation about how you use CanCoverit to get an interview going for a feature in Profiles in Excellence!
