Practical Green Remodeling: Down-to-Earth Solutions for Everyday Homes

Practical Green Remodeling: Down-to-Earth Solutions for Everyday Homes Review

Practical Green Remodeling: Down-to-Earth Solutions for Everyday Homes Feature

• ISBN13: 9781600850882
• Condition: New
• Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!

Going green at home can seem like an all-or-nothing proposition. Do you sell everything (including the house) and start over, building and buying only eco-friendly, renewable goods? Or do you take the advice offered up in this smart and sensible book — and remodel instead? Green building expert Barry Katz makes a compelling argument for remodeling, as he guides readers through what can be a perplexing and daunting process. Too many decisions? No worries. Katz explains how different choices impact a home’s overall green quotient, as well as its bottom line. Emphasizing off-the-shelf materials, the book shows how homeowners of ordinary means can “green up” a remodel, resulting in less waste, more energy-efficient homes, lower maintenance costs, and more comfortable, healthful environments. This is an essential guide for anyone who has ever wanted to go green but wasn’t exactly sure where to begin.

The Hand-Sculpted House: A Practical and Philosophical Guide to Building a Cob Cottage: The Real Goods Solar Living Book

The Hand-Sculpted House: A Practical and Philosophical Guide to Building a Cob Cottage: The Real Goods Solar Living Book Review

Are you ready for the Cob Cottage? This is a building method so old and so simple that it has been all but forgotten in the rush to synthetics. A cob cottage,cobb, however, might be the ultimate expression of ecological design, a structure so attuned to its surroundings that its creators refer to it as "an ecstatic house."
The authors build a house the way others create a natural garden. They use the oldest, most available materials imaginable--earth, clay, sand, straw, and water--and blend them to redefine the future (and past) of building. Cob (the word comes from an Old English root, meaning "lump") is a mixture of non-toxic, recyclable, and often free materials. Building with cob requires no forms, no cement, and no machinery of any kind. Builders actually sculpt their structures by hand.
Building with earth is nothing new to America; the oldest structures on the continent were built with adobe bricks. Adobe, however, has been geographically limited to the Southwest. The limits of cob are defined only by the builder's imagination.
Cob offers answers regarding our role in Nature, family and society, about why we feel the ways that we do, about what's missing in our lives. Cob comes as a revelation, a key to a saner world.
Cob has been a traditional building process for millennia in Europe, even in rainy and windy climates like the British Isles, where many cob buildings still serve as family homes after hundreds of years. The technique is newly arrived to the Americas, and, as with so many social trends, the early adopters are in the Pacific Northwest.
Cob houses (or cottages, since they are always efficiently small by American construction standards) are not only compatible with their surroundings, they ARE their surroundings, literally rising up from the earth. They are full of light, energy-efficient, and cozy, with curved walls and built-in, whimsical touches. They are delightful. They are ecstatic.

Living Green: A Practical Guide to Simple Sustainability

Living Green: A Practical Guide to Simple Sustainability Review

Over 85% of Americans today express concern about health and
the environment, but only a small fraction say they know where to begin.
Whether you are concerned about climate change, personal health, or just
want to live more lightly on the planet, this book is for you. It helps you
get past the worry and take positive action to improve both your health and
the health of our environment.

Based on a lifetime of research and practice, this practical guide for
living green offers advice and solutions you can easily put into practice,
like:

*The 10 foods you should always eat organic to avoid pesticides,
herbicides, hormones and antibiotics.
*Affordable and practical ways to offset your "carbon footprint" and
neutralize your personal impact on global warming.
*The most chemically-intensive personal care, household cleaning and lawn
care products, and their effective natural alternatives.
*How soft plastic water bottles hurt your health, your pocket book and our
environment, with a simple and refreshing alternative.
*How a simple carbon filter can dramatically improve your everyday health
and potentially add years to your life.
*The truth about hybrids and flex fuels.
*Why an organic mattress is the most important health investment you can
make.
Foreword by Jordan Rubin, New York Times best-selling author of The Maker's
Diet.