Product Description

In this new comprehensive volume, Chiras includes chapters on green building materials, earth-sheltered architecture, passive solar heating and cooling, sustainable approaches to water and waste, energy efficiency, and environmental landscaping. He sets the record strait on the vast potential for passive heating and cooling and provides a resource guide, recommendations, and a green-building checklist.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #90821 in Books
• Published on: 2004-05-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

From the Publisher
As homeowners become more environmentally savvy and demand ecological choices, a new generation of architects and builders is emerging, intent on creating warm and inviting homes that cause only a fraction of the environmental impact of conventional building methods. Dan Chiras’ The New Ecological Home provides an overview of green building techniques, materials, products and technologies that are either currently available or promise to be in the near future.

About the Author
Author Dan Chiras provides a wealth of up-to-date, practical information for homebuyers, owner-builders, and anyone interested in building for a sustainable future. He is a leading authority on green building and renewable energy options, and is the author of The Solar House and The Natural House, which Earthship inventor Michael Reynolds has called "a much needed, unbiased encyclopedia of sustainability that will put wind in the sails of our future."

Customer Reviews

Good General Guide
Having been the first of it's kind I have read, this book is well-organized and readable. It seems good for the person brainstorming on what steps to take in the design of their eco-home. For more specific information to carry out the tasks, I would suggest other resources.

great textbook!
This book could very easily serve as a textbook for a green building course. It's not a coffee table book - the photos are small, and black and white - but very useful in supporting the text. This is a serious book about alternative building written by and about a group of people who have been creatively, responsibly, thoughtfully building for a very long time. It's a good choice for builders who want to learn more about sustainability, students who want to go into the field, or homeowners who are looking to build. It's not so much glitzy and inspirational as it is informative and useful: comprehensive from site selection and design through building options and techniques, to landscaping, it also contains a great resource guide.

Excellent introduction to wide array of green building options
During the planning phase of building our first home, this book was very helpful. We liked the emphasis right at the start on site selection -- what to look for in everything from the overall community to aspects of the land itself and how to environmentally protect that land during construction. A comparison checklist for assessing lots is included. Even though ours will not be a "natural House" (rammed earth, straw bale, etc.) and though those types of construction are covered, there was plenty of solid information on building a more energy efficient, and less wasteful, home of wood and concrete. Also included are chapters on design, using green and non- or less toxic materials, sustainable approaches to water and waste, environmental landscaping, and enery-efficient design, heating, and cooling. As this will be a retirement home, we especially appreciated the chapter on accessiblilty and ergonomic design.