What Happens when Your House or Business Begins to Physically Collapse (Journeys of the Mind)

[music] Hello, this is Carl Arian, host of Journeys of the Mind under that rubric called Think Tech Hawaii. Today we are lucky to have Matthew Hos Matt um who is representing Foundation Systems and we are exploring in some senses um the environment of Hawaii and the um the the earth itself [laughter] the soil the aina as it were. So welcome Matt. >> Hi Carl. Thank you very much. >> Before we get started about Foundation Systems tell us about your journey. I mean you know how did you get working there? you know, where did you come from? Were you originally from Hawaii? All that sort of stuff. >> You know, I came into foundation systems as um brand new to foundations to to construction work. Uh I had uh worked in many different arenas before this. Um and you know what really drew me to it was the fact that they have a mission to make things stable for homeowners all across the islands. And so, you know, their their connection to uh the local population is immense. Uh they do great work. Uh they can stand behind it and they're great people to work with. So, that's you know, that's what attracted me to the whole thing and uh I'm very very happy to be here and learning what I have. >> And I imagine, you know, every day it's a different thing. So, tell us about some of the projects you're working on. And of course, it all deals with the geology of Hawaii and you know, we have hurricanes, we have volcanic soil, we have holes in the ground that need to be filled, you know, all these sort of things. But what's your I mean, you know, your your your the name of your organization talks about foundations, but so what do you do on a on a daily basis? >> On a daily basis, we have three estimators here, and they go out to houses all over Aahu, uh, especially um, but to every island, you know, we service every island in Hawaii. And uh we look at various problems that people present uh with their homes and a lot of it is due to the movement of the soil or migration of the soil and that's where homes can experience settlement uh where retaining walls can uh begin to fail uh and that's in the form of cracks or in leaning and so we assess those problems and give them the best case scenario best solutions uh and work kind of within their goals for their home. >> Okay. Because you probably have projects ongoing. give us without giving names of course uh give us a specific example of you know a problem that you're facing right now with a home in Hawaii and of course the reason this is all so important is our major investment for most Americans unless you're extraordinarily wealthy which is you know very difficult these days unless you >> only a few of us yeah [laughter] >> unless you invent something new on the computer or something like or AI so give us a good example >> yeah you know I've got a I've got a Great example. Uh if I am working on uh in Kyua, I'm working on uh a home uh that shares a wall. Uh the the folks in the upper home uh have two walls on their property, 9 ft and six feet high. And then below that is an older wall uh on which both of those walls were built uh that is beginning to fail. Uh that one's about 5t high. So the challenge is the failing wall is underneath thousands and thousands of pounds uh of of rock and earth. And the challenge is how do we how do we remove that wall, replace it uh and and fortify it without you know the rest of them falling on top of us. So we had to devise a plan where essentially we used our micropile technology and tiebacks uh which I'll explain in a second exactly what that is. uh using those to not only secure the upper two walls um but then allow for the careful removal of the wall below uh in order to hold it essentially suspend it uh you know over the earth while we install the new one. So I mean that's that's one of the more challenging ones uh that we've seen uh in in recent time. >> So how do you get a look underground because you know you're not being able to see stuff. So how what do you what kind of devices do you use to to look at the underground you know wall? >> We as foundation repair uh contractors are uh you know that we'll rely heavily on geotechnical engineering for something of that nature. That's a highly complicated situation. uh we essentially had to build um or you know we're going to be retrofitting one of the walls to suspend it which means we have to not only do deep ground anchors to hold it up but then uh you know then we have to build what's called a grade beam basically a large uh concrete beam along the bottom so that it can you know that can withstand uh all of the weight while we work from underneath using geotechnical engineering uh they go into borings at various places on the property uh go deep into the earth and and test the soil. So, the composite of the soil is really really important to uh how deep we go with our anchors, how many of them we use, you know, how many pounds each of them will hold. You know, when you're doing uh things in in clay versus sil versus volcanic soil or um things areas that are heavily boulder, heavy and uh and rocky, those are all different soil types and they're all going to have different bearing strength. What we have to do is work with the geotechnical engineer you know very closely uh to monitor that uh so we can create the right plan. >> This is kind of analogous to medicine in the sense that you know you guys are the PCP you're the regular doctors and so do you call in like geologists and say hey what's going on with the soil uh and um how does that work? the geotechnical engineer does uh the majority of the work on that. They'll come in, they'll do the soil borings, they'll test it uh and they'll give us uh basically a map of exactly how the soil looks underneath and that based on that they'll make recommendations and that's how we then bid the project. >> Are there any times when the um soil engineers come in and say, "Uh-oh, you know, there's, you know, there's there's there's so many problems here. You guys are going to have to be careful or perhaps you can't do anything." I mean, are there any occasions like that? >> No occasions where we can't do anything. No. Um, in some cases, it's going to take a it's going to be a little bit beyond our scope. You know, whether it's going to be heavy excavation or a large rebuild, you know, something that we're not specialized in, then we'll pass it off. Um, but in most cases, you know, we can make make a repair uh in in almost all >> Let me give you um an example that I see here in Monoa um often. And you know when I walked down Pey um which is not not too far from our house. I walked down the street and I at the end of the Pey uh right below right above some stairs uh there was a slide and that slide damaged for some reason the the [snorts] foundation of the house there. Um so in that sort of a case what do you guys do? >> Well we have to assess exactly what happened there. Can you tell me a little bit more about the slide? It was a rainslide. Uh, in other words, it was caused by, you know, torrents of rain. And then the, uh, you know, if you look, you know, the house is supposed to be like this, and the house started looking like this. So, it was tilting. And so, I imagine that was a a foundation problem. And so, if you guys were called in, um, what would you do? I mean, what would what would be your kind of assessment and, uh, what are the kind of questions that you need to ask the homeowner before you can do anything? We would definitely give uh the house a good look, but you know, from your description, honestly, Carl, that's something that we would uh call in a general contractor to help with. In the cases where the home is uh has pressure on it, you know, from the hillside beside it, it's um like I had I had a similar one of these situations where the hillside had migrated over time and uh and begun to press into the retaining wall, which also was the back of the house. So the retaining wall was sitting in the back. The house was built directly in front of it. It was, you know, that wall was also a room. And what had happened uh was that migration had begun to break apart and and cause failures throughout the CMU wall. Uh at that point, the only option was uh for us to bring in heavy heavy equipment, do a six-foot trench behind it, uh remove that earth, remove that wall, uh push it back, and you know, put the put the wall upright again. One thing people don't realize, I think a lot of times, is that with retaining walls, uh once they've leaned, you can't push them back. You know, there's no amount of pressure that we can use to push, you know, an entire mountain side back. So, you know, it's important to watch for those things. Uh, and I I want to go over things to look out for, uh, you know, in your home when it comes to the retaining walls and and foundation. But in that specific case, uh, you're looking at the house being pushed, uh, by the earth. We would have to get a general contractor in to figure out whether whether we're rebuilding in front of it, you know, or tearing out a piece of the house from the behind or if we can do some work to remove the wall or remove the hillside, which typically takes something called shockrete. Now shockrete is um you know one of the more extreme measures that we take in uh in soil retention and that is basically a system of um they call them soil nails um but these are called tieback anchors. They're drilled into the hillside at a 20° angle um and provide bearing strength against uh the uh against the hillside. First, we put down a large wire mesh so that essentially that's the cage holding everything in. Those tieback anchors go down so that that mesh never goes anywhere. And then on top of that, we spray about 6 in of 4,000 PSI concrete. >> Here's my question. So, you know, concrete has to be shipped in to Hawaii. And um you know, when uh Punoho school was building their middle school, um for a while there was some sort of strike, long Sherman strike. So they weren't getting the cement. So my question to you is I don't know about strikes, but did the tariffs affect affect cement cost and where does your cement come from? >> I can't answer that question with uh with specificity. It's more that I I do know that tariffs have affected you know all all building materials uh you know one way or another we're affected by that stuff. Um but uh I think that our concrete has multiple sources. So you know we we try to make sure we stay ahead of the curve there. Um that we're well equipped. you know, we bring it in by the shipping container, you know, so it's uh you know, so it's a pretty extreme amount uh that we use on a regular basis. Uh our company specifically has uh four crews going five days a week uh at various jobs. So we finish off a few hundred jobs a year. >> What does that mean in terms of your reserve? I mean, if you're talking about, you know, one one cement bag is a pretty big bag, but I mean, do you have like thousands in reserve? Is that what you do? or you know cuz I mean it's just you know I'm thinking about you know a job like you just mentioned where you're going to need a lot of cement. >> It's not often that we have to provide all of it when it's in such large quantity. You know there are a lot of other companies on the island that that keep a far greater reserve than we would. Uh and those would be the folks that we call in in situations like shot or whether we you know we have to do a heavy pour. Uh mainly what we keep on site is when we're doing small micro piles um which only take a few bags of concrete each. Let me ask you about that still on the concrete issue. So if tariffs r have caused you know a rise in building materials is that passed on to the consumer? Is that what happens? You know in words if your bag of cement let's just say one bag of cement is you know $20 and um well how much is a bag of cement? I I'll just ask you roughly >> it can range. We use 95 pound bags uh you know and so we get them at a at a wholesale rate. Um, so retail, you know, they're only about 50 bucks or so, uh, you know, typically. But, uh, when it comes to, yeah, just when it comes to reserves, uh, we just prepare for, you know, the the jobs that we have ahead of us. >> Let's say you have a 50 um $50 95 pound bag of cement um, and then there are tariffs put on it and so it goes up to 75. Who's paying that? I mean, in other words, obviously you're paying it upfront, but um uh do you pass it on to the consumers? I mean, you must have to do something like that. >> Yeah, I think with any business, you know, as building materials rise, you know, that does, you know, affect the end user. So, it does have to be passed on to the customer. Uh you know, the company can only shoulder so much and we try to be as um as reasonable as possible. Um but, you know, as as those things arise, it affects everyone. Are there other issues in terms of um uh I mean do you have other big buys in terms of um uh equipment like you must have cement mixers and things like this? Are these all entities that um you buy here in Well, you probably don't buy them here in Hawaii. They're probably shipped in like everything else. Uh but do you have a lot of um a lot of uh do you have a lot of equipment with for your organization? what we employ here at the yard are are more uh customized, highly specialized drilling equipment that we use for our large jobs uh and you know and down to small. One of the benefits to working with foundation systems is that we use mainly hand tools. So when it comes to drilling, we can do that in hard-to-reach places where we're not going to have to knock down a wall, bring in a gi giant excavator, uh and uh and essentially tear up your yard on our way to the back end where we might need to do the repair. You're talking about having people come out with with picks and shovels, I assume. I'm using that as kind of a metaphor. A >> little bit more advanced than picks and shovels, but yes, [laughter] essentially, you know, things that can fit into small spaces. Yes. >> Like drills, for example. >> Yeah. Is that what you're talking about? >> Drills. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Like those drills you see breaking up cement on the road. Well, that's that that's great. >> I was I was going to say like the drills we use for you. >> There we go. So, let me let me ask you also about walls um in general because you know almost everyone in Hawaii has sometimes they have rock walls. So, do you help fill up rock walls also? I mean, do you experience you must experience rock walls? I know in Hawaii, I mean, we have, for example, a rock wall on both the back side of our house or the front side of our house. Uh, do you work with rock walls? >> We work with all forms of walls. Uh, and we specifically work on the repair of those walls. Uh, it's an entirely different operation to take one down and rebuild it. Uh, so it's not typical that we that we engage in that type of job. uh that that takes large equipment, lots of excavation, um you know, long permitting process because you're really moving around a lot of earth there. Uh so when it comes to working on walls, we work on CMU walls, this the uh the concrete walls, uh poured in place walls as well as uh as rock walls. Um and most importantly what we what we deal with is cracks and failures uh leaning uh or especially in the rock wall sense we find separation when it comes to uh the settlement that they see. So when the when the earth moves in those, you know, in the kind of cobblestones that are, you know, the lava rocks that are uh making up that wall, you see separations in the uh in the mortar there, that's when you call us is because we can use micropile technology in ground anchors to help support where those are losing ground either from undermining through water um or just the natural soil migration. and uh we can support that and prevent them from continuing to drop because as as you might know as the wall begins to fail that allows earth to move behind it. So if you're imagining the wall is holding back earth moving this direction uh the more that it begins to teeter the couple inches comes from somewhere and we don't want that to come from under your house. if you have like cracks in uh you know um you know occasionally I'll be on our street and some guy will come by and say hey can I help you with your your rock wall I mean if the rock wall has spaces between um the rocks and there's is supposed to be cement there could you just basically go in and fill the spaces with cement or is is it more complicated than that >> you know in some cases it is but it one of the things that is the detriment to many homes here in Hawaii is long deferred maintenance. You see a crack and you see that crack every day and you see that every crack every day for 3 years, 5 years, 10 years, 20 years. The fact that it is not moved yet is not necessarily an indicator of the future there. So, one of the things I tell all homeowners is when it comes to a house that's on post and pier and you can get underneath it, get under your house once a year and take a look. take photos, you know, get to know how your house is moving so when something happens, you know, when that change occurred. Uh, and you can either tie it into something like Konolo Storms, um, or you can just say that it it seems like the house is moving faster and faster these last few years. I really should do something. But now, to answer your question about the Rock Wall guy coming around to to help mortar, that's absolutely great. You know, so many times I'll run into walls that have deferred maintenance for 10 years plus. Like, oh yeah, that crack has been there, you know, forever and it's gone. Oh, it's gone an inch, now it's two inches, now it's three inches. You know, a lot of that stuff you can prevent. And you can help monitor by keeping up on your wall. So, if you see that crack now and you can get it filled in with mortar, that's great. Uh, especially when you move into a new home because now you have a timeline. say since I put that in a year ago, if that crack reupts, you've got settlement issues. You've got movement that's happening actively and that's when you should give us a call. >> Tell me about the cracks themselves. Not in a um a rock wall, but in a regular wall, there seems to be cracks. You know, in you know what I've noticed there when I look at the walls of our neighbors or whatever or even our own, there seem to be slight cracks, but they seem to go kind of proportionally. And uh there seems to be a proportion uh proportionality to all this. And I wanted to know, you know, what's what's the deal here? Are are there just, [laughter] you know, are there just like certain segments of the wall that that will show cracking? What's the deal? >> Well, they can happen in two ways. uh when you're talking about a CMU wall or cement wall uh cement block wall um you can have you can have one thing if it's if it's going down the line like I know the wall that you're talking about it's um you know it's moving down the side of the driveway and it's uh it's along a hillside so it's going this way and the hillside is moving down. So as as the soil migrates that settlement can begin to break in certain sections of the wall and uh and that's where you might find the cracks occurring. Now what you can do is uh you know this is how you can be your own detective in a way is you're looking for settlement in uh in the wall versus spalling cracks and I'll explain what that is later but the uh the settlement cracks will usually follow the path of least resistance and that is the grout line. So in your cement blocks, if you see the cracks following a stair, if that pattern is occurring, then it's usually the fact that it's starting to break away from uh break away from the wall in those sections just because that's where the drop off in soil is. When it comes to cracks that you see running down the very center of the block, you know, where where it kind of it might migrate into the grout for a little while, but then goes back to the center and then out again, that is typically a spawning crack. So, a long time ago, uh, and now, we still use, uh, rebar reinforcement in a lot of these, uh, these concrete block walls. And in a lot of cases, those weren't necessarily either engineered for or, um, or known to withstand moisture for a long period of time. So, one, if they are a retaining wall, then they are are packed against uh, earth for a long time. that moisture then builds up against it and it just starts to permeate the wall. In other cases, if it's directly exposed to the elements, uh like in so many times I'll find that the concrete columns, you know, they're supporting so many of the houses here in Hawaii, the ones that are on the ocean side, you know, or the ones that are exposed to the elements, those are the ones where I see cracks 12 feet high, you know, the ones on the other, you know, the back side of the house, uh seem to be just fine. They were both poured at the same time, but it just means that that uh that exposure to the elements is solid crack. So spalling is when rebar is affected by moisture, it begins to rust and then begins to expand. Once it expands, it pops open the blocks and that's where you start to see those little hairline cracks. After those hairline cracks emerge, obviously more water can get in and the rebar begins to expand faster. So when you see those blocks completely broken off, that's a huge failure. It means on the inside and and you know I've seen this across hundreds of homes now that it's very likely that the rebar is dust. It's no longer doing any work to help uh you know retain the wall and uh and keep it fortified. It is just now allowing tons of moisture in. More failures are going to occur and as the rebar continues to start uh to expand and rust, it opens up more to allow more moisture in and expand those cracks. So, that's one of those things for deferred maintenance that is absolutely something to watch for and uh and call us right away rather than waiting until it's taken out your entire column and I have to come replace it. >> The rebars are made of metal I assume. Um you know, and you know, is there is there in your experience is there a better metal than um than you know I mean you know is it is it iron? Is it steel? Is it copper? What's a better I mean what are the rebars made out of? There's no better uh there's no better option than steel, but what we use is uh where is a hot dip galvanized oceanrated rebar and that just means that we uh you know we pay the extra for the coating to make sure that it's uh going to withstand as much of the elements as humanly possible. Doesn't mean it's going to last forever. You know rebar tends to have you know a 15 20 year lifespan sometimes better. um but when exposed to the elements that's where it lands and we might probably buy yourself another five years all depending on how expend you know how uh exposed it is to those to those elements. Now one option that's out there uh it's a little harder to come by but they do fiberglass rebar now and so for for areas that are you know heavily uh withstanding water uh those can be a good option. The only difference is that that takes a little bit more uh time and planning. Straight fiberglass rebar is available uh right away, but if for any reason I have to use either, you know, an engineered cage uh or I have to bend it, we've actually got to order it that way uh because it can't just be kind of bent on the spot, you know, obviously it'll just break in half. Well, you're giving me great images of surfboards being in the middle of walls, you know, with a fiberglass, you know, which is, you know, when when fiberglass came around as opposed to boards, uh, with surfing, it was it was a great invention. So, I, you know, this this is this is great. So, let's say you >> you caught me. We just cut them up and throw them in the wall. Yeah, [laughter] >> there I go. So, the surfboard walls. So, you know, you go to let's see, you know, I don't know if you've had any projects on um the Big Island, but you know, let's just say that it's it's also occurring here in Aahu. Um that you have a giant volcanic hole and uh I know you have computer stuff that you could go down part of the way, but sometimes those holes, you know, you don't know where they're going to they're going to end. So, what do you do? I mean, what do you do if there's a if there's a giant hole that could affect perhaps it's affecting the the foundation? Perhaps it's not affecting the foundation. Um, but because of our geology here, you know, all uh geology based on volcanic soil, um, if you have one of those volcanic holes, um, you know, especially that occur on the Big Island, what are you what are you going to do? or holes that for example are created by you know um uh sewage systems in the past you know um where they just used to pump the the sewer into the land itself um that that sort of thing. >> Yeah. Uh there's there's a couple of things uh there are certainly galities when it comes to cesspools and uh you know specifically if that's what we know it is and the city has to be involved with uh you know the proper removal or or um or filling of that uh that area. But what we tend to do if if we we know there's a void um either we're doing some detective work uh which is called a probe and grout where we take a wide swath of area uh that we know surrounds uh where the void is and then we begin to kind of try and locate uh you know where the main uh artery of that uh either that lava tube or uh that opening really is uh so we can get in there and and fill the holes. Um in other cases uh a lot of times we see this we have a large project um where we're doing an airirst strip uh right now and that is um that's completely undermined by water and what we're having to do is go systematically you know foot by foot uh to fill in grout until we see return and then we move on uh in order to fortify uh you know the small amount underneath. So it's a little bit of detective work. If um you know if we can locate the void then we try to determine what the size of it is so we know how to fill you know whether that's uh you know using buckets of concrete you know that we that we mix by hand as we go um you know using our our drill system which we can inject grout directly into uh the ground if it's a small area or if we're getting a cement truck involved uh you know to figure out what we're doing there. But it's a lot of detective work. Um there's not a lot of of handy tools that we use right off the bat. If it ends up being something more complicated where there needs to be um you know scopes and drilling um then we call in the geotechnical engineers and and so forth to uh to do that really complicated stuff so we get a great idea of what's happening. I was really amazed uh seeing your um you have kind of like a mini cement mixer and uh could you describe that to our audience because you know I always think you know when you're talking about you know you know especially as a little boy I used to love those cement trucks what we should be turning and you know I don't think any kid in America who sees a cement truck a cement truck isn't really interested but you have a kind of a mini version of that. How does that work? >> It's a simple it's called an Oberman. It's a simple um cement pump. Uh so we mix it in the vat uh and then it will uh it will pump uh grout out through our tools. And one of the ones we use mainly is uh is one of our hand drills. And that will essentially send uh grout through the hollow bar that we use uh and down into the hole uh outside, you know, out the end of the drill bit. So the drill bit that we use uh has uh has holes in the bottom and then the bar that we use uh it's called a hollow bar system. But that steel bar is about two inches in diameter and it gets uh gets sent down with the bit and once we reach the depth that we need to if we're adding a microp pile per se uh then we'll inject grout from the bottom up. That way we're not you know we're not pouring buckets over the top of a hole where there might be uh you know small small voids or or air pockets. Um, this ensures that we get a a fill all the way up from the bottom, >> right? And you know, I know when that when that fill comes up, you know that it's it's it's it's solvent and stuff like that. But there's a there like two blades that I'm using my hands here, uh, they that that people could break cement, then you add water. It's kind of an ingenious little instrument because it it helps do what the big cement truck does, but for a for a smaller thing. So, Matt, we're nearing the end of our time here. So what what kind of advice do you give to homeowners because you know um geology issues um are faced by almost every home homeowner at one point or another and it's because you know we have so much underground water for example in Monoa we have that volcanic holes on the big island >> um uh or volcanic voids as you pointed out the word void I like it volcanic voids and um so what kind of what kind of um recommendations do you have for, you know, our our general public in our houses. And once again, you know, the house is the major investment of most people. So, and you're there to, you know, be sort of the the the super people to come in and help people. So, what kind of recommendations would you give to people? I think the one that I said earlier, you know, one of the most important things is uh is get under your house. Go take a look. Uh get familiar with how it looks right now so that you can understand when there's movement, when movement occurs, when cracks occur, when failures in your wall occur. You want to know about that as soon as possible so you can take action. I have so many times where, you know, the cost of a of a project has doubled or tripled or, you know, even worse, it's it's not repairable now um or has failed completely because someone decided that right now was not the right time to make their uh make their repair. At the very least, you can get a sense of what it's going to take to do it and then you can plan effectively. you know, don't be afraid of um you know, of the news I might bring you, you know, for for what the cost of the project is or, you know, the uh the size of the project that we have to do. Um but let's come up with a plan. Uh the other thing is, uh watch for failure points. So, if you have a post and pure house, uh a lot of times, first and foremost, you're going to see that the the peers are sinking into the ground. Uh you're going to notice that water is now able to hit the termite pans and rust those out. uh which will allow, you know, little critters to start eating away at your at the underside of your house. Um you're watching for floors uh to be off and uh in their pitch. So, uh you know, if they're dropping in certain areas or windows and doors are beginning to stick uh quite regularly throughout the year, not just after rains, then you're starting to have a problem. And it's, you know, it's time to take action then rather than than waiting it out. I think when it comes to walls, you have to make sure that you know the cracks are something you address right away. They will get bigger. Failures don't suddenly sew themselves back up again. So if a wall cracks, the walls crack will get bigger. It's just going to be only a matter of time or um a matter of a you know major rain event, earthquake or or any other thing that you know that God might send down uh to you know to mess with our lives. So, uh, this is something where you take action early and, you know, you'll find your way. And then most importantly is think long term. You know, think about the situation that you are in your home. Some people are trying to sell soon. Some people want to pass things down to their kids. And if you plan, uh, you know, that you're going to stay in this home for 20, 30 years. Consider microp pile anchors. You know, these things are really formidable. They go 25 ft into the earth. We send a steel bar down and create an underground column that's pretty much immovable. You know, it's uh it withstands thousands and thousands of pounds of pressure. And if your home is sliding, if your walls are beginning to lean, these are exceptional ways uh you know to extend the life of your home. I mean, honestly, the one that's given you so many memories what for 20, 30 years now, uh you got to give it some love back sometimes. >> That brings up my last question to you, Matt, today. And that is um there's a psychology here and you know when you go into a home situation and you're a pretty mildmannered guy I would say a very mildmannered guy and you go in and you give people the news and then you give a price tag on top of that and a price tag that may be continuing as you do their project. how you know what what are people's reactions and and you know how do you how do you deal with those reactions in a uh mild manner way because you represent of course uh Foundation Systems and you're you're trying to do the best that you can but you know it's you're a baron you're you're a harbinger of of of of bad news so how do you deal with that you know not all the time sometimes I'd say you know what you're good don't worry about that thing but uh yes I know it's um it's not necessarily dealing with it is it is the approach that we are here to help. You know, first and foremost, you called us, we didn't call you. You know, we are here to help for the problem that you brought us out for. Uh, you know, we try to address that first and foremost. And then, uh, you know, we we play a lot of detective work, like I said. So, I will I, you know, kind of make a diagnosis of what's going on at the house. Then I'll say, you know, why don't we take a full walk around and see what might be causing this issue and see if we can do some preventive measures. And then we talk that out. So I can say, "Here's what we would do to fix everything, but maybe here's what it would do to fix the thing that you're most worried about right now." You know, and based on where your budget lies, based on, you know, your home situation, whether you're going to stay in a house longterm or short term, um, you know, we can devise a plan that works uh, for most every situation. Uh, and one of the things is we're very honest with with what's going on. So, if you have a giant crack in your floor and it's uh it's breaking off like a cracker and your and your house is, you know, tilting in a in a way that needs to be handled, then I'm sorry, but I have, you know, this is the baseline of what you must do uh in order to fix that thing. So, well, let's work out the, you know, the details from there. But I think that, you know, we we take an approach of fix the thing that's most important now. uh here's what you can do preventatively if you're ready for it and let's decide what the next uh you know order of business is what's your path >> we will conclude on that note that was a wonderful way to end uh Matt and you know I I'm going to use that metaphor that I used before you really are the house doctors I mean you come in and you you're the PCP and you say to your patient uh or you say to your client hey this is what you got to do and uh uh the only bad part about this I think for the client is that you know this raises expenses, but as you said, you know, better to do it, you know, it's sort of like you're you're you're the doctor advising and saying, "Well, you need to walk more, you know, or you need to you need to exercise more, you know, and this is, you know, if you do this, you're going to last a lot longer." So, I like that. Thank you, Matt, for your uh really words of wisdom for all of us here in Hawaii where we spend, you know, a lot of our time in our houses and this is our major investment. So this is uh uh Carl Aki, host of Journeys of the Mind under the broader rubric of Think Tech Hawaii. Aloha Matt and thank you Carl. Thank you very much. [music]