once again, Lancaster County builders are at the forefront. it is good to see companies like Wheatland Custom Homes and E G Stoltzfus taking that kind of initiative. Energy savings homes are the homes of today.

That article seems to depict home-buyers as pretty ignorant of the basic principles of sustainability, which I think is probably sadly close to the truth. I'm glad builders are finally picking up the slack, because, I feel...in a lot of America's history they've been playing the wrong role.

If you look at the history of building in America, you see a steady decline in the quality of construction probably reaching its low in the '70's. Sometimes I feel like the last real quality in building happened in the 1920's. I've lived in apartment buildings from the 20's as well as more modern ones and I hate to say it, but in general, the newer buildings have had shoddy construction, less insulation, and overall less "green" design. A lot of new homes going up nowadays are little more than scams...flimsily built, mass-produced piece of junk sold at jacked up prices for a fast profit.

I think that if home-buyers had been intelligent and had demanded basic efficiency and quality in homes, we could have been living in "green" buildings in the 50's that exceeded the best design nowadays. Instead, we went downhill instead and we're only now rediscovering the principles of "green construction", some of which are new innovative technologies, but much of which are just things we once called common sense.