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Your Search: Category: Green Building
75 Items Found

    Creating a Comfortable, Healthy Home That Saves Energy
    $29.95
    Available for Pre-order (Expected Ship Date: August 16, 2013)
    The second edition of No-Regrets Remodeling will educate homeowners about opportunities for improving their home's energy efficiency and comfort at one of the most critical junctures in home ownership. That moment comes when homeowners are faced with the decision to remodel a recently purchased or existing home, or due to a component failure, need to upgrade their home's HVAC, appliances, lighting, or other energy-related systems.


    From Buying a Woodland to Making a Chair, 4th Edition
    $29.95
    Available for Pre-order (Expected Ship Date: July 15, 2013)

    First published in 2002, Living Wood is both a practical manual and an inspirational guide, updating much of the information included in Mike’s best-selling book Green Woodwork.



    Staying Safe and Independent In Your Own Home As You Age
    $30.00
    Altman takes you through renovating your dream home, as you enter older age


    Adapting Our Homes and Communities to Cope with the Climate of the 21st Century
    $35.00

    Climate change is inescapable. Even if the whole world stopped pumping carbon dioxide into the sky today, at least forty years of climate change are ahead of us, thanks to the long time lag within the Earth’s ecosystem. As the century progresses, extremes will become more common: heat waves, drought, storms, and floods will test the design of our buildings and the resilience of our communities. We also face the slow rise of sea levels and the secondary impacts of climate change, especially on energy and food security.



    $30.00
    Diary of an Eco-Builder focuses on environmental issues through the story of Will Anderson's attempt to realize an inspiring and challenging vision: building his own eco-home, which mirrors the fine-tuned ecology of a tree.


    Heating, Cooling, Ventilation, Daylighting, and More Using Natural Flows
    $85.00

    In a comprehensive overview of passive solar design—the resurrected solar strategy that is sweeping through Germany and rapidly regaining popularity in the United States—two of the nation’s solar pioneers give homeowners, architects, and builders the keys to successfully using the sun and climate resources for heating, cooling, ventilation and daylighting.



    $34.95
    Imagine building a house with superior seismic stability, fire resistance, and thermal insulation, using an annually renewable resource, for half the cost of a comparable conventional home. Welcome to the straw bale house! Whether you build an entire house or something more modest--a home office or studio, a retreat cabin or guest cottage--plastered straw bale construction is an exceptionally durable and inexpensive option. What's more, it's fun, because the technique is easy to learn and easy to do yourself. And the resulting living spaces are unusually quiet and comfortable.


    You Can Hand-Sculpt Your Own Home
    $23.95
    An easy-to-read look at the world of cob-building.


    A Home Construction Guide for All Climates
    $34.95
    Serious Straw Bale is the first book to examine thoroughly the specific design considerations critical to success with straw bale building in cold and wet climates.


    How to Design and Build Your Own Eco-Home
    $50.00
    The Green Self-Build Book gives inspiration and information to guide you through the green building process. It is intended for anyone who is planning a do-it-yourself project, and for housing professionals, students, and teachers.


    A Step-by-Step Guide
    $40.00
    With the increasing awareness of eco-building techniques alongside the desire to make our homes healthier, the historical benefits of using natural renders and paints are being rediscovered. Using Natural Finishes is an in-depth guide to the selection, mixing, and application of lime- and clay-based plasters, renders, paints, and washes. Providing step-by-step instructions with detailed illustrations to show the practical elements of working with lime- and clay-based finishes, the authors demonstrate how these natural “breathable” plasters and paints can be used on a wide variety of wall surfaces, including traditional and eco-build materials like cob, strawbale, and stone, as well as modern plasterboard and concrete surfaces, with stunning results. Easy-to-follow DIY projects guide the reader through all aspects of using these natural finishes, with beautiful photographs of techniques and examples from around the world.


    A Step-by-Step Guide
    $45.00
    Building with Cob covers everything from design, planning, and siting to roofs, insulation, and floors. It is lavishly illustrated with more than three hundred inspirational color photographs.


    Passive Heating and Cooling
    $29.95
    The principles of solar design and construction have been used by traditional builders for thousands of years—until the era of so-called cheap fossil fuel, when we collectively forgot many of the lessons of vernacular architecture. Dan Chiras's book covers state-of-the-art passive solar heating and cooling, combining age-old truths with cutting-edge ecology.


    A Complete Guide to Healthy, Energy-Efficient, Environmental Homes
    $40.00
    A comprehensive overview of thirteen natural building techniques including straw bale, rammed earth, adobe, cob, and cordwood masonry, as well as a primer on renewable energy systems, passive heating and cooling, sustainable water systems, and Earth-friendly building materials, The Natural House is an indispensable guide for anyone planning to build green.


    A Complete Guide to Green Building Options
    $35.00
    The most comprehensive overview of green building techniques, materials, products, and technologies for environmentally conscious home buyers and builders.


    Designing & Building a House Your Own Way
    $40.00
    The most complete and easy-to-use house-building handbook available. With an emphasis on accessibility, ergonomics, and "pattern languages," this comprehensive manual of design, planning, and construction provides readers with the tools to build a home that will be beautiful and comfortable long into the new century.


    A Practical Guide to Constructing and Refurbishing Buildings for Ultra-Low-Energy Performance
    $45.00

    The Passivhaus Handbook is an essential guide for everyone wanting to realize a supremely comfortable, healthy and durable home with exceptionally low energy costs. Whether you are building an extension, renovating your house or starting from scratch; and are new to low-energy design or already have some experience, this book will help you navigate the potential pitfalls and misconceptions. It brings together current thinking and best practices.



    A Practical Guide to Constructing and Refurbishing Buildings for Ultra-Low-Energy Performance
    $45.00

    The Passivhaus Handbook is an essential guide for everyone wanting to realize a supremely comfortable, healthy and durable home with exceptionally low energy costs. Whether you are building an extension, renovating your house or starting from scratch; and are new to low-energy design or already have some experience, this book will help you navigate the potential pitfalls and misconceptions. It brings together current thinking and best practices.



    The Complete Guide to Photovoltaics for Your Home
    $39.95

    The original Photovoltaics How-To Handbook, acclaimed as "the Best of the Books," is now revised, expanded & updated for our New Age of Photovoltaics. Condensing years of hands-on & industry experience, PV pioneers Joel Davidson & Fran Orner tell you everything you need to know to go solar.



    Essays on Design and Building for a Sustainable Future
    $17.00
    A remarkable collection of more than fifty vibrant and varied readings exploring the critical relationships between built and natural environments. Includes essays by cutting-edge architects, designers, planners, public works experts, and educators, teaching that when social, cultural, and environmental systems are combined creatively, architecture can meet the aesthetic and practical requirements of today without compromising the needs of future generations.


    $40.00
    The Rammed Earth House is an eye-opening example of how the most dramatic innovations in home design and construction frequently have their origins in the distant past.


    A Guide for Making a Versatile, Efficient, and Easy to Use Wood-Fired Oven
    $18.00
    A comprehensive guide for planning and building a practical, efficient and affordable wood-fired oven. The barrel oven offers surprising convenience because it is hot and ready to bake in within 15-20 minutes and is easy to maintain at a constant temperature.


    A Guide for Making a Versatile, Efficient, and Easy to Use Wood-Fired Oven
    $18.00
    A comprehensive guide for planning and building a practical, efficient and affordable wood-fired oven. The barrel oven offers surprising convenience because it is hot and ready to bake in within 15-20 minutes and is easy to maintain at a constant temperature.


    Homes for a Small Planet
    $25.00

    Energy Free is designed to equip building professionals and homeowners alike with a toolkit for creating homes that use no more energy than they produce—this means homes that are free from the vagaries of energy-price fluctuations and that help to free society of the high political and environmental costs of fossil fuels.



    Stone Masonry, Log and Strawbale Construction
    $30.00

    The house of your dreams does not have to be expensive. The key is all in the planning. How much a house costs, how it looks, how comfortable it is, how energy-efficient it is—all these things occur on paper before you pick up even one tool. A little extra time in the planning process can save you tens of thousands of dollars in construction and maintenance. That is time well spent!



    A Practical and Philosophical Guide to Building a Cob Cottage
    $35.00
    This bible of radical simplicity explores the philosophical underpinnings of natural building while presenting the most comprehensive how-to guide to cob ever published.


    How to Design Small Interior Space
    $14.95
    Available for Pre-order (Expected Ship Date: August 15, 2013)
    Compact Living opens our eyes to the possibilities of living a compact and low-impact urban life. This is a book of design solutions for small spaces, ideally suited to compact urban dwellings, with each chapter providing useful, basic tools for organizing an entire house and garden no matter what kind of space we live in.


    Heating, Cooling, Ventilation, Daylighting, and More Using Natural Flows
    $85.00

    In a comprehensive overview of passive solar design—the resurrected solar strategy that is sweeping through Germany and rapidly regaining popularity in the United States—two of the nation’s solar pioneers give homeowners, architects, and builders the keys to successfully using the sun and climate resources for heating, cooling, ventilation and daylighting.



    36 Remodeling Projects to Help Kick the Fossil-Fuel Habit
    $35.00
    The Carbon-Free Home gives you the hands-on knowledge necessary to kick the fossil-fuel habit, with projects small and large listed by skill, time, cost, and energy saved. For every aspect of your life currently powered by fossil fuels, The Carbon-Free Home offers alternatives you can accomplish yourself to get started using renewable and sustainable sources of power.


    36 Remodeling Projects to Help Kick the Fossil-Fuel Habit
    $35.00
    The Carbon-Free Home gives you the hands-on knowledge necessary to kick the fossil-fuel habit, with projects small and large listed by skill, time, cost, and energy saved. For every aspect of your life currently powered by fossil fuels, The Carbon-Free Home offers alternatives you can accomplish yourself to get started using renewable and sustainable sources of power.


    Understanding, Installing, and Restoring the World's Finest Roof, 2nd Edition
    $40.00
    Completely revised, greatly expanded and updated version of the award-winning The Slate Roof Bible, with six new chapters and 330 color photos and drawings. The down-home style of Joseph Jenkins converts potentially tedious subjects like slate geology, roof safety, tools, installation, and repairs into readable delights.


    A Practical Guide for the UK and Ireland
    $24.95

    This fully revised and updated edition includes new construction drawings, standard details for best-practice design, examples of off-the-peg drawings for small buildings such as summer houses and studios, and designs for affordable houses. These designs have a carbon rating of less than zero.



    The Complete Guide to Heating and Cooling Your Home
    $40.00
    Now this definitive guide to passive solar home construction includes custom software to analyze the passive solar potential of new building plans and existing homes anywhere in North America.


    How to Build Your Own
    $26.95
    Khalili's classic, authoritative manual describes how to build arches, domes, and vaults with earth, as well as techniques to fire and glaze earth buildings to transform them into ceramic houses.


    $21.95
    Robust and versatile, the yurt has evolved into the ultimate portable dwelling.


    Guidelines to Using Fly Ash for Higher Quality, Eco-Friendly Structures
    $20.00
    Making Better Concrete is written by a practicing structural engineer after using and learning about fly ash concrete from the academic experts, concrete suppliers, engineers and architects who have studied, developed and used it. This isn't just for people who want to "build green"--this is for people who want to build better concrete.


    Structural Design for Rammed Earth and Straw-Bale Architecture
    $25.00
    An approachable and readable how-to book on ecological/sustainable architecture.


    A Home Construction Guide for All Climates
    $34.95
    Serious Straw Bale is the first book to examine thoroughly the specific design considerations critical to success with straw bale building in cold and wet climates.


    Water-Harvesting Earthworks
    $39.95
    The second book in the series of Rainwater Haresting for Drylands talks about Earthworks and how they are one of the easiest, least expensive, and most effective ways of passively harvesting and conserving multiple sources of water in the soil.


    Guiding Principles to Welcome Rain into Your Life and Landscape
    $29.95
    Available for Pre-order (Expected Ship Date: June 13, 2013)
    The first volume of a three-volume guide on how to conceptualize, design, and implement sustainable water-harvesting systems for your home, landscape, and community. This book enables you to assess your on-site resources, gives you a diverse array of strategies to maximize their potential, and empowers you with guiding principles to create an integrated, multi-functional water-harvesting plan specific to your site and needs.


    $29.95

    Designed as a dual-purpose book, The Woodland House is both a volume for the armchair enthusiast and an inspirational guide for those wishing to build a similar structure. Beautifully illustrated with more than 100 color photos, this step-by-step guide shows how Ben built his home, hewn from his own woodland, for under $45,000. It covers the basics of self-building and gives full details of the evolving design process, the identifying of materials, costs, project management, and the actual building stages, from foundations and frames, through to interior features. Includes a seven-year update detailing the extension of the house, natural insulation trials, and round-wood engineering calculations.



    Building Naturally Using Local Resources
    $39.95
    This definitive manual marks the birth of a new vernacular for the 21st century. Over 400 colour photographs and step-by-step instructions guide you through the building of anything from a garden shed to your own woodland house. This practical ‘how to’ book will unquestionably be a benchmark for sustainable building using renewable local resources and evolving traditional skills to create durable, ecological and beautiful buildings.


    Rediscovering an Old Way of Warming
    $35.00
    A comprehensive survey of masonry heating systems, Lyle brings us back to a time of wood heating systems--with high efficiency, safety, and no pollution.


    A Comprehensive Guide to Integrative Design and Construction
    $59.95
    The authors apply the work and technology of the homespun communal natural building movement to the rapidly burgeoning green architecture movement. They present natural building approaches with thorough, science-rich, detail-intensive information.


    Simple, Affordable, and Earthquake-Resistant Natural Building Techniques
    $34.95

    The lay-up of adobe bricks is an easy, forgiving way to achieve a solid masonry-wall system. Contrary to stereotypes, adobe is perfectly adaptable for use in cold, wet climates as well as hot and dry ones, and for areas prone to earthquakes. With its efficient use of energy, natural resources for construction, and minimal effort for long-term maintenance, it’s clear that the humble adobe brick is an ideal option for constructing eco-friendly structures throughout the world.



    The Complete Guide to Photovoltaics for Your Home
    $39.95

    The original Photovoltaics How-To Handbook, acclaimed as "the Best of the Books," is now revised, expanded & updated for our New Age of Photovoltaics. Condensing years of hands-on & industry experience, PV pioneers Joel Davidson & Fran Orner tell you everything you need to know to go solar.



    The Complete Guide to Renewable Energy Options
    $30.00
    The first comprehensive guide to heating your home with renewable energy sources.


    A Comprehensive Guide to Integrative Design and Construction
    $59.95
    The authors apply the work and technology of the homespun communal natural building movement to the rapidly burgeoning green architecture movement. They present natural building approaches with thorough, science-rich, detail-intensive information.


    From Sprawl to Sustainability
    $21.95
    People who live in compact traditional towns have far smaller environmental footprints than those who live in sprawling suburbs. Is urban sprawl inevitable? Are there better ways of getting about? And can 60 million people crammed into a land bulging at the seams ever find ways of treating it with respect? This book argues that we should look for the answer to America—the country that embraced urban sprawl and car dependency on a far grander scale than the UK ever did. There is much we can learn from its "Smart Growth" movement, which is successfully arguing for compact cities, rail-based transit systems, and restoring communities decayed by decades of self-centered suburban life.


    A Complete Guide to the Construction, Use, and Benefits of the Finnish Bath
    $30.00
    This completely revised, full-color edition contains everything you need to know about building and enjoying your own sauna.


    Simple, Affordable, and Earthquake-Resistant Natural Building Techniques
    $34.95

    The lay-up of adobe bricks is an easy, forgiving way to achieve a solid masonry-wall system. Contrary to stereotypes, adobe is perfectly adaptable for use in cold, wet climates as well as hot and dry ones, and for areas prone to earthquakes. With its efficient use of energy, natural resources for construction, and minimal effort for long-term maintenance, it’s clear that the humble adobe brick is an ideal option for constructing eco-friendly structures throughout the world.



    A Practical and Philosophical Guide to Building a Cob Cottage
    $35.00
    This bible of radical simplicity explores the philosophical underpinnings of natural building while presenting the most comprehensive how-to guide to cob ever published.


    A Practical and Philosophical Guide to Building a Cob Cottage
    $35.00
    This bible of radical simplicity explores the philosophical underpinnings of natural building while presenting the most comprehensive how-to guide to cob ever published.


    A Guide to Building with Slipforms
    $34.95

    Stone House contains all the hard knowledge, helpful tips, and fresh ideas you'll need to successfully build a stone home of your own. Tomm Stanley, an international business consultant, active ecologist, and all around handyman—who decided to go for his dream of building his own house—leads you through the entire process. Using a lighthearted narrative approach, Tomm describes the trials and tribulations that accompanied the wonderful successes he experienced as a first-time self-builder creating his own house of stone.



    $34.95
    Imagine building a house with superior seismic stability, fire resistance, and thermal insulation, using an annually renewable resource, for half the cost of a comparable conventional home. Welcome to the straw bale house! Whether you build an entire house or something more modest--a home office or studio, a retreat cabin or guest cottage--plastered straw bale construction is an exceptionally durable and inexpensive option. What's more, it's fun, because the technique is easy to learn and easy to do yourself. And the resulting living spaces are unusually quiet and comfortable.


    $34.95
    Imagine building a house with superior seismic stability, fire resistance, and thermal insulation, using an annually renewable resource, for half the cost of a comparable conventional home. Welcome to the straw bale house! Whether you build an entire house or something more modest--a home office or studio, a retreat cabin or guest cottage--plastered straw bale construction is an exceptionally durable and inexpensive option. What's more, it's fun, because the technique is easy to learn and easy to do yourself. And the resulting living spaces are unusually quiet and comfortable.


    A Step-by-Step Guide
    $45.00
    Building with Cob covers everything from design, planning, and siting to roofs, insulation, and floors. It is lavishly illustrated with more than three hundred inspirational color photographs.


    A Step-by-Step Guide
    $40.00
    With the increasing awareness of eco-building techniques alongside the desire to make our homes healthier, the historical benefits of using natural renders and paints are being rediscovered. Using Natural Finishes is an in-depth guide to the selection, mixing, and application of lime- and clay-based plasters, renders, paints, and washes. Providing step-by-step instructions with detailed illustrations to show the practical elements of working with lime- and clay-based finishes, the authors demonstrate how these natural “breathable” plasters and paints can be used on a wide variety of wall surfaces, including traditional and eco-build materials like cob, strawbale, and stone, as well as modern plasterboard and concrete surfaces, with stunning results. Easy-to-follow DIY projects guide the reader through all aspects of using these natural finishes, with beautiful photographs of techniques and examples from around the world.


    An Architect's Sketchbook
    $29.95
    Wells’s work is revolutionary, but readers will find his message to be pure common sense. Earth sheltering offers superior comfort with minimal energy input, and it is adaptable to diverse terrains as well as a variety of architectural aesthetics.


    Renovating Your Home with a Deep Energy Retrofit
    $29.95
    In The Greened House Effect, author Jeff Wilson brings his twenty-five years of construction experience and knowledge of home building to bear on making our current houses cleaner, greener, and healthier. Think of a deep energy retrofit (DER) as a "home makeover" -- one that represents a significant investment, but that saves money from the get-go by capturing the energy you "drop on the ground" every month, every year, through inefficiency, poor design, or simply living in a typical older home. Using his own family's DER of their 1942 home as a prime example, Wilson weaves a readable narrative at a practical, hammer-and-nail level.

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