> Nevermind the fact that all over the world people have been living in smaller houses on average compared to those in the U.S. for many years. Yes, my TH will

> Nevermind the fact that all over the world people have been living in smaller houses on average compared to those in the U.S. for many years. Yes, my TH will the size of an average townhouse in sq ft in Ireland. > what I think is unfortunate in house design and construction is that houses are built for use < 100 years, aren't easily upgradable via conduits, etc. I agree but if you're clever you can low-tech hack by inserting pipes through the wall which contain what I'm going to call 'guide wires'. That shall allow one to insert new cables into walls in the future. You have to appreciate also that buildings get a 'deep upgrade' every 30-50 years. If only because with today's shit tier new growth wood and shoddy craftsmanship a house deteriorates around the time people finish paying a mortgage. What an unholy alliance there exists between bankers and building/material standards... > Aerogel's Spaceloft that could significantly decrease residential energy needs is barely spoken of. Don't tell internaut that! Things said by internaut in the last three months include: > we do not see things like technologies to make heart attacks impossible or cheap aerogel insulation, the kinds of leaps we made in the past that really lifted all boats. > using a material invented by them called aerogel (thin strips!) to thermally isolate the studs to prevent thermal bridging, it'll cost me just 1300 to raise the R (insulation) value by a min of 10% - 20% > suppose the manufacture of aerogel could be brought down by 2 orders of magnitude. The caveat I have to mention is that getting cheap aerogel production is not enough by itself to effect large industrial level change and an order of magnitude drop in energy bills for new builds. We also need an AR system (a special pair of glasses/goggles) that highlighted the places in the dwelling that require foam, special housings around penetrations, beads of chaulk, all in order to prevent the air escaping. Good insulation is close to worthless without the correct methods to prevent air infiltration. Myron Ferguson does a nice demonstration of what I'm talking about on Youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mhv9iFE3AY4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mhv9iFE3AY4 The passive house people are getting there but that will take forever unless they can be augmented by AR. So that is a good B2B start-up idea. > We could be building small modern castles that we could hand down, but instead we still build cheap throwaways. Yeah. The next generations should not have to worry about building their own houses unless they really wanted to. My problem with modern building systems is that they are biased towards modern architecture styles I dislike. My attitude is the same as most normal people. Passive house cannot succeed without allow traditional building styles to exist.