Sustainable building and self-sufficiency

 

Simple changes to your home can save you energy and money. Thinking of a major extension to your home, or a new build? You need this ebook! Save money - save energy - improve the quality of your house, your garden and your life! It's simple if you know how. Get the latest advice, facts and great photos from this new 400 page Green Home & Building Ebook. Many wide-ranging sections and 105 chapters! This ebook is guaranteed to reduce your carbon footprint. Do you want to know more about green homes, gardens, building techniques, solar and wind energy, water saving, recycling, and read discussion articles on all the big topics?

This ebook contains practical advice & ideas for:

• Builders, home renovators and remodellers
• Interior decorators, home makers, DIY enthusiasts
• Gardeners, ecologists and biologists
• Planners, agents and building professionals
• People that want to save money
• People that want to sell their house quicker and at a better valuation
• Students who need the latest facts and figure

The book is written and edited by Geoff Davis MA, director of Ecotist Homes, with a section by Ivy Ngeow RIBA, of Ivy Ngeow Architects, an international architectural practice; additional text and research by Aldous Tacoda. Ecotist Homes are a green homes developer based in London. We work with Ivy Ngeow Architects to build high quality sustainable homes and offices

The ebook contains 400 pages including :

257 pages of practical advice for green builders and green buildings, energy saving home improvements, remodelling, refurbishments and DIY. From "Land - finding, buying, planning" via solar panels, solar thermal, wind turbines, foundations, walls, roofing, tiling etc, to "Building end of life issues".

51 pages of general articles including energy and water conservation & saving tips, eco gardening, composting, global warming and climate change, population and ethical shopping

41 pages of sustainable building concepts, government policies, health and safety,
UK, US and Australian organisations

51 pages of Architect's advice on general refurbishments

With Diary of a Timber Building (construction from brownfield site to home) with 30 pages of photos

Dictionary of traditional methods with 255 entries

Did you know the building decisions you make today will affect the environment and your wallet for years to come? That's why you should consider your home's total environmental and energy-saving potential before you build or buy.

If you’re considering building a solar house or retrofitting an existing home with solar features, you may have started your project by reading a few books or articles about solar homes, only to find yourself overwhelmed by all the information. Many people are surprised when they discover building a solar home isn't as simple as adding some solar panels to the roof, but must be approached from a "whole-building" perspective.

Lime is a traditional and environmentally-friendly building material that was largely replaced by cement during the 20th Century, but is now coming back into fashion. Various types of lime are used in building as mortars, renders, plasters, slurries and washes. All are made from limestone, which is a sedimentary rock made from the dead bodies of sea creatures that produce calcium carbonate (coral, shellfish, some planktons). Most limestone was laid down in the Cretaceous period (60-150 million years ago).

This ebook is just what you are looking for if you want to build an environmentally friendly house, garage or barn from natural materials, this is the e-book for you. Explore the pros and cons of building with straw, logs, cordwood, earth and local lumber. Learn how to manage local building codes and inspections. And find out how you can design any home to take advantage solar heat and natural cooling.

Plus, extra articles on green roofing options, used building materials and choosing the perfect plaster.

67 pages with detailed advice and great pictures.

Here is a great plan for an easily built shop forge which will enable you to heat metals and do blacksmiths work,tempering etc.

Built from scrap items such as on old sink and a vacuum cleaner motor you can build this great working forge for very little expenditure.It works as well as any expensive commercial model to.

A great item which will enable you to do all kinds of metal work which you could not do without a forge.

First the round wood part – round wood is straight from the tree (with or without bark), without any processing, squaring or planking.
Timber framing is creating the structural framework for a building from wood. The frame bears the load, then the walls are filled in with something else, which could be timber cladding, straw bales, wattle & daub, or bricks and mortar.
Traditional timber framing uses mortice and tenon joints secured with wooden pegs and wedges, all of which is traditionally done with hand tools (although commercial timber framers now use power tools). Mortice and tenon joints are female / male. The mortice is a slot, and the tenon fits into the slot. Then a hole is drilled straight through the joint, into which fits a peg. There are different types of pegs: a tapered peg wedges itself into the hole; the peg could be untapered and octagonal, so that the corners make the diameter of the peg slightly larger than the hole, and it locks itself into the wood when it is hammered in; the peg could just be round; it could be wedged in; or there could be wedges in the end of the joint.

This CD provides information and ideas as well as complete plans for solar projects that can be built at home or a small workshop. The CD contains 35 solar plans in Portable Document Format (PDF) - an open standard for document exchange. The plans are accessed through a menu system (please note this CD and menu system will only run on a PC) which will auto-run when you insert the CD.

This book presents all sorts of options to utilize solar energy in your home. Learn the basic principles of solar heating, solar hot water and solar electricity. From do-it-yourself to more complex projects, this e-book covers the spectrum of solar energy. Plus a bonus article on solar water distillers!

How does free hot water sound? How about a lower heating bill? Solarize Your Home will help you create a home that is healthier to live in, easier on the environment, more valuable and a delight to come home to.

All types of solar is included including passive, thermal and PV.

About the author

David MacKay is a Professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Cambridge. He studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge and then obtained his PhD in Computation and Neural Systems at the California Institute of Technology. He returned to Cambridge as a Royal Society research fellow at Darwin College. He is internationally known for his research in machine learning, information theory, and communication systems, including the invention of Dasher, a software interface that enables efficient communication in any language with any muscle. He has taught Physics in Cambridge since 1995. Since 2005, he has devoted much of his time to public teaching about energy. He is a member of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Climate Change. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society on 14 May 2009.

About the "free book" license

This is a free book. I didn't write this book to make money. I wrote it because sustainable energy is important. If you would like to have the book for free for your own use, please help yourself to any of the electronic versions on this website. There's pdf and html versions (thanks to William Sigmund!); we are working on other formats.

This is a free book in a second sense: you are free to use all the material in this book, except for the cartoons and the photos with a named photographer, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share-Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales Licence. (The cartoons and photos are excepted because the authors have generally given me permission only to include their work, not to share it under a Creative Commons license.) You are especially welcome to use my materials for educational purposes. This website includes links to separate high-quality files for each of the figures in the book.

In response to generous readers...
If you enjoy the free electronic copy of the book and would like to make a financial donation, without buying the paper book for yourself, please may I suggest that you find a library or a school that would like a copy of the book, and buy a paper copy for them? Thank you!

Wood finishing can be tricky and after spending hours on building your project you want to be sure that you get the best outcome possible.

In The Complete Guide To Wood Finishing you will learn how to get beautiful, professional results no matter what your project is, even if you have never tried your hand at wood finishing before.

For the environmentally conscious and style conscious homeowner. More than 50 recipes and techniques for natural paints and finishes. Use readily available ingredients to create beautiful eco-friendly interiors. Illustrated with 200 gorgeous photographs. A really comprehensive guide.

Unbuilding? Think building an old house, only in reverse. Two of the country’s leading experts on salvaging unwanted house explain the “green” art of unbuilding and take us on a fascinating tour of the process. Covering everything from assessing a building for salvage potential to deconstructing a whole house safely. The ultimate guide to taking apart a building and rescuing its reusable part and pieces. Many of these materials, including ornate hardware, period lighting and long lengths of hardwood flooring are of a quality that’s unmatched by anything available new.

Discover fascinating details on construction techniques for houses both ancient and of more contemporary vintage, and helpful methods to determine their value or salvagability. Unbuilding covers a variety of projects, from simply dismantling a wall to completely unbuilding an entire house safely, while saving the reusable parts and pieces for another building or purpose. You'll find just how satisfying, fun and economical it can be to reuse old building materials - whether for their original purpose or for decorating.