Your Green Home: A Guide to Planning a Healthy, Environmentally Friendly New Home (Mother Earth...

Your Green Home: A Guide to Planning a Healthy, Environmentally Friendly New Home (Mother Earth News Wiser ... | Alex Wilson | good primer

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Your Green Home: A...

	Your Green Home: A Guide to Planning a Healthy, Environmentally Friendly New Home (Mother Earth News Wiser ... Alex Wilson New Society Publishers, 2006 - 256 pages average customer review:based on 4 reviews view larger image
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More and more homeowners today want houses that are healthy to live in and cause minimal damage to the environment. That's what green building is all about.

Your Green Home is written for homeowners planning a new home-whether you are working with an architect or builder, or serving as your own general contractor. Intended to improve the overall environmental performance of new houses being built, the book sets out to answer some of the big-picture questions relating to having a home designed and built-and getting what you want.

Your Green Home covers:

Home location and its relationship to the community
Site design
Construction systems
Building design to optimize energy performance
Renewable energy systems
Material selection
Indoor environmental quality
Water efficiency
Material selection

Written by the founder of BuildingGreen-North America's premier green building authority-this book will prove useful not only to future homeowners, but also to designers and builders seeking to meet this demand. Building professionals well-versed in green building may find this a useful book to give to potential clients to convey the scope and principles of green building.

Alex Wilson is president of BuildingGreen, Inc. and executive editor of Environmental Building News, the oldest and most respected publication serving North America's green building industry. A green building expert since the 1970s, he has authored countless articles on the topic and several books, including Green Building Products, the Consumer Guide to Home Energy Savings, and Green Development: Integrating Ecology and Real Estate.

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Great overview of building a green home.

This book was a overview/introduction to building a green home. Should be a must read for builders and anyone planning on building a new home. Not all strategies will work for every situation, but there's lots here that would apply for any situation or budget.

good primer

I thought this was a good primer on the subject and got several helpful tips. While I already knew a lot of the material, nevertheless It inspired me to make some changes in my own home.

I was also inspired by The House That Faux Built which showed how to give your home a facelift without ripping things out (and filling the landfills) It showed me how to paint and plaster over cabinets, tiles and floors for a complete update. the 2 books together made a big difference.

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Nice text, appeals to broad audience

The text is well-written and can appeal to a wide audience. It's simple enough to understand for those without a great deal of knowledge in sustainable design, yet interesting and usefull enough for the professional who's more trained in sustainability. The text covers sustainable homes in a logical order, first stressing the foundation concepts like siting, orientation, passive solar, and building envelope efficiency, BEFORE moving on to less critical (but more popular) topics such as green materials.

I am a professor of Environmental Design and am currently building a passive solar, zero-energy home, and if I were to write a text that comprises the whole of the process and goals in sustainable home building, the format and breadth of topics would be similar to this book.

One negative of the book is the absence of color images to illustrate some points. The simple line drawings get the point across, but photos might have a better impact - especailly in sections discussing more advanced systems such as renewable energy systems or rainwater catchment systems.

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not for architects or designers

I am an interior designer and work for an architectural firm. Because of the information I have learned thru my education and professional experience, I found very little new information in this book. If you have no knowledge of green building practices, this book would be beneficial.

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