Green Building

David Easton has been designing and building with rammed earth since the late 1970s, when he stumbled upon rammed earth construction methods while searching for a way to build himself a low-cost, and energy/materials efficient home. Since then, his company, Rammed Earth Works, has become one of the major builders of rammed earth structures in North America. This beautiful book takes you through all the steps for building a rammed earth home, from design and planning, through soil evaluation, on to construction details and techniques synthesized from almost thirty years of building with rammed earth. Inspiring and instructive color photos fill this newly revised and updated edition.

The publishers of Environmental Building News, the number one source for up-to-date articles on green building design, processes and materials, bring you this terrific guide to environmentally friendly building materials. Few of us have the time, expertise and training to properly evaluate building materials to determine which ones are truly “green” and which ones are not-so-green. These people do it for us. They don’t receive a penny from the manufacturers of the recommended products, so you can be assured that you are getting the unbiased opinions of experts. For a wealth of up-to-date information, and more product evaluations than are listed in this book, visit their web site at www.BuildingGreen.com.

Applying the principles of this book should have widespread appeal, not just for folks who live in arid climates, but for all areas that may experience extended droughts in today’s world of changing climates. Whether you live on a city lot or country acreage, this is an excellent primer for practically reducing your impact and improving your use of natural water to nurture your landscape and/or gardens. Volume one is an excellent well-illustrated guide to the basics. Volume two is a detailed guide to earthworks, including mulch, vegetation and grey water recycling. Volume three is a detailed guide to roof catchment and cistern systems.

Written by master cob builders, and often described as the cob builder’s bible, if you are seriously considering building with cob then you should get this book. It is beautifully illustrated with inspiring photographs and copious hand drawn details. A fine, coffee table idea book as well as an excellent practical how-to manual.

If you are interested in building an environmentally-friendly natural home, that uses locally available materials, such as a straw bale, log, cob, rammed earth, adobe, or an Earthship, then this book will give you a great start. It provides a detailed summary of many different building systems, including pros-and-cons, plus interviews with builders who specialize in most of these systems. This is the kind of book to help owners decide which building type suits them, then shows you how to plan and build their home, while also pointing them toward the best sources for materials and more in-depth practical information.

This book fills in the gaps in left by previous straw bale books. Many of those earlier books were focused on building with bales in dry southwestern U.S. climates, but builders from Northeastern United States and Eastern Canada wrote this book. It is a thorough handbook covering all aspects of building with straw bales, including a variety of design and materials options.

Unlike Bruce King’s books, The Beauty of Straw Bale Homes, this really is a coffee table book filled with inspiring photographs and design ideas. Don’t expect how-to information, you will need to look to the other references for that, but this is a great book for helping people to home in on what style, look, finish, and layout they may want for their straw bale home.

This beautiful book is an excellent how-to guide for building with cob (earthen clay mix similar to adobe, only without the blocks). It is also a wonderful guide to complimentary natural building techniques, such as earthen and lime plasters; thatch and turf roofs, hardened polished earthen floors, rubble trench foundations, natural paints, etc.

This is an excellent practical guide to green building concepts, building system selection, layout and design. There is no single “right way” to design and build a green building. This book lays out many of the options and considerations, including nuts-and-bolts kinds of practical information that helps the prospective home builder to make decisions about what kind of home they should build, how it should be oriented, how to treat the site in an eco-sensitive manner, and what kinds of energy and water conserving appliances and systems could be incorporated into the design to minimize the ecological impact of the home.

This is an excellent introduction to passive solar concepts and is a good book for helping you to plan and design a passive solar house. It is written by a civil engineer, who also ran a company designing and manufacturing passive solar kit homes for about 20 years. A big bonus to this book is that it comes with a CD for an open-source solar analysis and design software, that also includes a photographic tour of passive solar homes. Use this CD to analyze your existing home design to consider remodeling and energy upgrade options, or your new design. Very helpful for rapidly comparing various “what-if” scenarios while fine tuning the design for your solar dream home. Kachadorian’s patented innovative solar slab heat storage system has formed the core of numerous comfortable, functional, and modestly priced solar homes. Now that his patent has run out, you can incorporate it into your home, taking advantage of more than twenty years of building experience with this unique solar slab design. The book’s title is a bit misleading, since there is very little focus on passively cooling homes in hot climates. Newly revised and updated edition.