More on Building Standards; Client Rant Edition

Following my post yesterday about the E.U. construction standards directive, I received the following two emails from my friend and client Lydia Duff.

Given what people until very recently were paying for in their home purchase decisions, and builders were providing — e. g. Cathedral ceilings, minimal insulation, no double paned windows, huge foot prints and cheap construction — it seems that rulemaking to impose more energy efficient building prototypes is just what we deserve. Zero will be hard to get to but I think we’re a long ways from technical impracticability at this point. 

Why can’t they make as much, or more, money selling equally expensive houses, smaller with more meaningful features? Building disposable houses (and hence communities) is obscenely wasteful. Our time horizons for modern construction are so short. We’re beginning to turn people from disposable coffee cups; perhaps we’ll shift to enduring buildings, rather than architectural and moral hideosities we merely endure.  (Bias note: my house was built in c. 1860)

Will any of my friends in the development community pick up the gauntlet that Lydia has thrown down? (Oh, and my house was built in 1862, and we love it, but I wish it were more energy-efficient.)

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