Drawing on his columns in the Independent that followed his progress from finding a plot, getting planning permission, and building himself a stunning contemporary eco-home that mirrors the fine-tuned ecology of a tree, Will Anderson has created a diary that is invaluable to anyone contemplating building their own eco-house. The Diary of an Eco-Builder focuses specifically on environmental issues through the story of his attempt to realize an inspiring and challenging vision. Honest, amusing, and unexpected, it highlights all the key issues that arise when you build an eco-house, records the process of the nitty-gritty of self-build, and provides contacts and references for more information.
Passive solar heating and passive cooling—approaches known as natural conditioning—provide comfort throughout the year by reducing, or eliminating, the need for fossil fuel. Yet while heat from sunlight and ventilation from breezes is free for the taking, few modern architects or builders really understand the principles involved. Now Dan Chiras, author of the popular book The Natural House, brings those principles up to date for a new generation of solar enthusiasts. The techniques required to heat and cool a building passively have been used for thousands of years. Early societies such as the Native American Anasazis and the ancient Greeks perfected designs that effectively exploited these natural processes. The Greeks considered anyone who didn't use passive solar to heat a home to be a barbarian! In the United States, passive solar architecture experienced a major resurgence of interest in the 1970s in response to crippling oil embargoes. With grand enthusiasm but with scant knowledge (and sometimes little common sense), architects and builders created a wide variety of solar homes. Some worked pretty well, but looked more like laboratories than houses. Others performed poorly, overheating in the summer because of excessive or misplaced windows and skylights, and growing chilly in the colder months because of insufficient thermal mass and insulation and poor siting. In The Solar House, Dan Chiras sets the record straight on the vast potential for passive heating and cooling. Acknowledging the good intentions of misguided solar designers in the past, he highlights certain egregious—and entirely avoidable—errors. More importantly, Chiras explains in methodical detail how today's home builders can succeed with solar designs. Now that energy efficiency measures including higher levels of insulation and multi-layered glazing have become standard, it is easier than ever before to create a comfortable and affordable passive solar house that will provide year-round comfort in any climate. Moreover, since modern building materials and airtight construction methods sometimes result in air-quality and even toxicity problems, Chiras explains state-of-the-art ventilation and filtering techniques that complement the ancient solar strategies of thermal mass and daylighting. Chiras also explains the new diagnostic aids available in printed worksheet or software formats, allowing readers to generate their own design schemes.
Ecotrain Green Career Guide#13;#13;#13;#13;Ecotrain Media Group presents the most comprehensive green career and business guide in the world. Co-founder provides 17 years of personal interest in ?sustainability,? and green research into a green career resource with over 125 pages of useful information, directories, and green industry contacts. Our guide will save you thousands of hours of personal research, time and money allowing you to spend your time landing that green job, green career, or green project first. Ecotrain Green Career Guide is for Individuals, Educators, Business, and Entrepreneurs.#13;#13;#13;#13;Ecotrain Green Career Guide provides 3 sections vital to your success no matter who, what, when, how, and where you are at in your transition to a GREEN future.#13;#13;#13;#13;Green Industry and Employment Breakdowns pp. 6-65#13;#13;This comprehensive section will step you through a non biased approach and summary background to the growing cleantech economy, and five industry sectors: the 1) Green Economy as a whole, 2) Renewable Energy, 3) Green Building
Build your home the 'green' way to reduce running costs, be more self-sufficient and create a more comfortable home. Whether you want a turf roof, solar-powered hot water, or a super-insulated house, this book demonstrates that green is the way forward. Written by award-winning architect Jon Broome, The Green Self-Build Book provides an accessible overview of the different methods of sustainable and eco-friendly construction techniques. Covering the essential elements of design and the self-build process, this practical book includes information on sustainable foundations, floor finishes and insulation. Jon also shares insights on how to build for comfort and health. Inspiring case studies of green building projects using earth, straw, steel and timber are also included. Packed with attractive colour photos throughout, this is an essential resource for anyone who is planning a self-build project or involved in housing.
Since the spread of classical design and construction amongst the upper echolons of British society in the late seventeenth century, traditional construction methods have largely fallen by the wayside. Centuries later, as the construction industry faces up to its environmental responsibilities, this book explores its rich and ancient tradition to provide tried and trusted solutions to modern day construction problems. By way of introduction, the ancient and historical lifestyles that dictated the nature of traditional construction are explored, before focussing on its health and ecological benefits. As well as cultural background, this book includes a detailed scientific description of traditional building materials and their constituents which draws a sharp contrast with modern petrochemical-based materials. The studies of traditional buildings included reveal the sustainability of features such as natural ventilation and breathing walls, and comparisons with modern construction methods show how they could prevent 'sick building syndrome'. The author argues that maintenance for long life, by contrast with the modern concept of life-cycle costing, is at the nub of sustainability and underlies the contribution traditional building construction can make to tackling climate change. Over 250 original photos, and over fifty bespoke diagrams illustrate the features, techniques, and characteristics of traditional construction that could make such a valuable contribution to the industry today. The inclusion of a close study of how these methods relate to British building regulations makes this book a practical guide for construction professionals, as well as an authoritative resource for students and policy-makers.
An exploration into the history of our collective response to the challenges of extreme weather conditions and climate. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the world finally woke up to the reality of climate change and began the arduous task of freeing itself from dependence on fossil fuels. But the time lag in the Earth's ecosystem is such that our best efforts to cut carbon today will make little difference to the changing climate of the next 30 years. As we work towards a secure, low-carbon future, we must address the changes that are already taking place in the planet's climate. We must learn to live with higher temperatures, intense rainstorms, rising sea levels and prolonged drought. We must also confront the secondary impacts of climate change, especially on energy and food security. Britain has a mild, temperate climate where occasional weather extremes tend to have serious impacts because we are simply not prepared for them. Yet across the world, communities have been living with such extremes for millennia. If we have the imagination to learn from others and rethink the ways we build and live together, we can face this unsettling future with confidence. Homes for a Changing Climate celebrates this collective wisdom, exploring traditional and contemporary responses to the challenges of climate and illustrating the many ways in which houses can be designed, built and adapted to cope with these challenges. Examples are drawn from across Europe including the supervolcano of Thera, the 100mph winds of the Western Isles, and the cutting-edge eco-building projects in Britain. Based on the climate projections for the UK published by the Met Office in June 2009, Homes for a Changing Climate combines inspiring case studies, striking photography and practical advice to create a book of imagination and hope in uncertain times.
This book is an example of how dramatic innovations frequently have their origins in the distant past. By rediscovering the most ancient of all building materials -- earth -- homebuilders can now create structures that set new standards for beauty, durability, and extraordinarily efficient use of natural resources. Rammed earth marks a step into a sustainable future, when houses combine aesthetics and practicality with a powerful sense of place. The solid masonry walls permit design flexibility while providing year-round comfort and minimal need for added heating or cooling. From the equatorial tropics to the coldest northern latitudes, the builder and resident of a rammed earth house will experience the satisfaction of creating permanence in a world dominated by the disposable.
This book is the inspirational story of one project that shows you how you can become involved in building and running your neighbourhood. The author, co-founder of Lilac (Low Impact Living Affordable Community), along with other members of the community and the project team, explains how a group of people got together to build one of the most pioneering ecological, affordable cohousing neighbourhoods in the world. The book is a story of perseverance, vision and passion, demonstrating how ordinary people can build their own affordable, ecological community. The book starts with the clear values that motivated and guided the project’s members: sustainability, co-operativism, equality, social justice and self-management. It outlines how they were driven by challenges and concerns over the need to respond to climate change and energy scarcity, the limits of the ‘business as usual’ model of pro-growth economics, and the need to develop resources so that communities can determine and manage their own land and resources. The author’s story is interspersed with vignettes on topics such as decision making, landscaping, finance and design. The book summarises academic debates on the key issues that informed the project, and gives technical data on energy and land issues as well as practical ‘how-to’ guides on a range of issues such as designing meetings, budget planning and community agreements. Low Impact Living provides clear and easy to follow advice for community groups, practitioners, government, business and the development sector and is heavily illustrated with drawings and photographs from the architectural team.
It is widely understood that good, affordable eco-housing needs to be at the heart of any attempt to mitigate or adapt to climate change. This is the first book to comprehensively explore eco-housing from a geographical, social and political perspective. It starts from the premise that we already know how to build good eco-houses and we already have the technology to retrofit existing housing. Despite this, relatively few eco-houses are being built. Featuring over thirty case studies of eco-housing in Britain, Spain, Thailand, Argentina and the United States, Eco-Homes examines the ways in which radical changes to our houses – such as making them more temporary, using natural materials, or relying on manual heating and ventilation systems – require changes in how we live. As such, it argues, it is not lack of technology or political will that is holding us back from responding to climate change, but deep-rooted cultural and social understandings of our way of life and what we expect our houses to do for us.
