So what do you make of this Decathlon thing?

"We've been interested in the potential of solar power since the oil crisis of 1974, and (the Solar Decathlon) is a great place to come and see how far it's progressed.

"We're recent retirees, and we're planning to move down to Charlotte, North Carolina.  If we can, we'll build something new there, and try to include a lot of what we've seen today in it.  Mainly, that would be the passive design stuff -- overhangs, serious insulation, advanced windows, etc.  But on the active side, we could probably manage solar hot water;  PV might have to wait for better pricing or better incentives."

Andy and Pam Cudahy

"We were impressed by the bamboo trusses (in the University of Illinois entry).  For who knows how many years, we've used whatever wood worked well for studs;  now we see there's a wood that's been around all the time that's strong, doesn't expand or shrink, and regrows quickly, so it's more sustainable.

"We're from Ohio, and that means it gets plenty cold in winter.  We're not building a new house, so we're here looking for ideas that can work with an existing house.  The first thing we want to do is make the building envelope as secure as possible, then see what works on the active side.  We do understand that we can count on electricity prices going up, so the sooner we can afford some level of PV, the better."

Alan and Carolyn Knowles

"I've been to all four of these events.  What they build gets better and more sophisticated every time.  The materials are better, the way they use the PV is better, the overall strategic direction is better.

"To me, the strongest argument for solar is the national defense one.  Why give away our treasure overseas when we have unlimited fuel here?

"Unfortunately, I live in Virginia, where it seems they don't really want you to have solar -- there's little financial incentive and the utilities are uncooperative."

Catherine and Bianca Potter

"We've been gradually improving our house in Sarasota for years.  We have solar hot water and 5kW of PV, which the Florida state rebate helped us with.  And our graywater goes into rain barrels for use in the yard.

"We liked Rice University's house;  it had a practical feel to it.  And the California house had a good open feel to it.  The Spanish entry seemed more like an advanced design concept than a home.

"Overall, this event is a great opportunity for people to be exposed to other ideas, new ideas, some of which won't work and some of which will, and those ones will help drive the system toward cleaner solutions."

Tom Mawn and Diane Desenberg