On Mon, 7 Jun 2004 10:09:27 +0100, "IMM" wrote:



Most people have no impressions these homes are out of their experience. If
Wimpey stared to build al their homes as eco and they looked much like all
others, then the non-existent perceptions will disappear.

Possibly, but Wimpey are a commercial company with shareholders and
would perceive this as a risk that they may not wish to take.



The car is ubiquitous, how many people have actually seen an eco house?

Not very many probably, which is why I made the point that education
is a factor in this as well.

Energy Park in Milton Keyens has people touring it in their cars to see the
wonderful homes, which counters your pie in the sky claims.

The very notion of Milton Keynes and all that goes with it is a big
turn off to a lot of people.



And??????? Does that mean they do not work and they are not cost effective,
which is what this is really about.

No of course not. Something can work and be as cost effective as you
like, but people won't buy it if they either don't like it, think it's
too big a risk or are unaware of it.

If you want to know why Wimpey is not
building eco's by the 100s of thousands then go and ask the these people why
they are not? There is no reason whatsoever why they should not be building
eco homes.

Yes there is. They perceive that people don't want them, or that
they are more complicated or cost more or they can't get the people to
build them. Whether that is true or not doesn't really matter.

The same for the car makers. Why do they persist in using
outdated polluting technology when proven alternatives are around.

Same point exactly. Electric cars. manufacturers like GM and Toyota
launched them in the U.S. and made them available on lease, then had
second thoughts and terminated the leases.


The only way to charge these large money making dinosaurs is to legislate.

In the short term possibly. This is clearly not without political
risk or successive governments would have legislated zero energy homes
for all new builds.


"Just because Wimpy is not building them doesn't mean they are not cost
effective. They are."

"See ECO-House A Design Guide by Sue Roaf."

The point is that it does not cost any more to build an eco house than
any
other, as one poster repeated asserted, who obviously knows nothing of
them,
not how people perceive matters or how luddite builders view matters.

The builders are only going to build them if they can do so quickly
and efficiently with the trades at their disposal and if they think
that they will sell.

The builders have built expensive to build homes in the Uk for the past 70
years. We are virtual alone in using cavity walls. The Germans think we
are mad building two expensive walls when one can do. The British building
industry is backward.

We know all of that.

John Prescott has warned them to catch up or he will
make them do it.

By sticking one on the chairman of Wimpey?

So your view that if it was feasible they would do it
doesn't stand up.

I didn't say that it wasn't feasible or that it wasn't desirable -
clearly it is on both counts.

That isn't where the issues are.


They never even looked into other more cost effective
ways, just going along doing the same old expensive inefficient thing.

Because it is what they perceive that the public wants, and what they
know how to do.



It still comes back to the same three things though - education,
economics legislation. At present, the government is clearly
focussed on the third of these.

It has to be as certain industries are still in the 1930s. No government
wants to legislate unnecessarily.

The present one does it all the time.

If the private sector was delivering they
could just sit back. Unfortunately the government has to intervene.

There are a combination of factors.

Legislation is a short cut to achieving what the government doesn't
know how to do properly. It generally doesn't work or doesn't last if
it doesn't follow the natural order of things. Why is the government
thinking of legislating (in effect) condensing boilers? Because
people want to buy cheap and the construction industry is
conservative.




..andy

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