@feld @pony @RedOct American building codes are generally terrible; note that this problem doesn't exist in German or Nordic Passivhaus construction. Then there's the fenestration - American buildings love to use slide windows, which are harder to insulate than tilt-and-turn, but then one of the people in our program lives in a modern New York condo with tilt-and-turn windows and tells me they're not as well-insulated as German ones, for reasons neither of us knows.