Yay! Treehugger just gave high marks to Stephen and Rebekah Hren’s The Carbon-Free Home: 36 Remodeling Projects to Help Kick the Fossil-Fuel Habit. Nice to get a little love from an organization we deeply respect.

The Hrens have learned the hard way, and pass on their experiences, from their first attempt in a cob house they built thirty miles out of town, from their realization that driving that distance negated all the carbon savings and that they were not competent farmers, and then the move back into town.

They then take us through what they did to their house, doing the math and showing us how, all with links, references and cute little drawings.

Some of the projects are easy, that anyone could do; others are a lot more complicated, like this extraordinary solar wall oven.

Looking at Windows

I am preoccupied by windows, and use them as my test to judge what the writers’ values are. Here the Hrens are music to my ears:

In our opinion, replacing a functioning window that could potentially last many decades if not several centuries with a window that will be defunct in twenty years is planned obsolescence designed to sell as much product as possible. It is inherently energy inefficient and not viable in the long run.

They also do a very sensible bang-for-the-buck analysis of solar power comparing photovoltaics to solar hot water, and a wonderful comparison of biofuels to bicycles, noting that 41 pounds of soybeans made into biodiesel will push a car 30 miles, but if fed to a cyclist, the same number of calories would push that bike 3,332 miles.[…]

When the book was written, the big front-of-mind issue was climate and energy; now it is money and the economy. Yet every trick that Stephen and Rebekah teach us will save money in heating, cooling, transportation and food, from their freedom from utility bills to their rooftop vegetable garden. Whatever your reasons for going carbon free, this book is the operating manual.

Read the whole review here.

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