Green from the Ground Up: Sustainable, Healthy, and Energy-Efficient Home Construction (Builder's Guide)

A thorough, informative, and up-to-date reference on green, sustainable and energy-efficient home construction that clarifies definitions of green and sustainable and guides builders and architects through the process of new or remodel green construction, including issues of site, landscaping, durability, and energy-efficiency. It starts with clear explanations of the concepts and fundamentals of green, healthy and energy-efficient construction and walks the reader through the entire construction process, injecting expert advice at every decision point. Construction techniques, materials, and products are thoroughly explained, making the often vaguely understood concepts cleanly understandable. The book gives builders and architects the tools to respond to growing requests from homeowners for green and energy-efficient houses, whether new or remodeled. Homeowners can use the book to understand the concepts, process, and options, whether they're doing it themselves or working with a professional.

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How to Design and Build a Green Office Building: A Complete Guide to Making Your New or Existing Building Environmentally Healthy

As energy costs rise, more and more companies are looking to create green offices buildings ones that use resources efficiently while simultaneously creating healthier working environments. The energy use statistics are staggering: The heating, cooling, and powering of offices accounts for 40 percent of carbon dioxide emissions in the United States and are responsible for more than 70 percent of the country s total electricity usage. Office computers consume $1 billion of electricity annually. Moreover, recent surveys demonstrate that employees are fed up with their companies energy-wasting ways: One-third of workers are more inclined to work for a company that is going green, and approximately 50 percent want their employers to be more environmentally friendly. How can you attract workers and reduce your costs at the same time? By going green; the tips in How to Design and Build a Green Office Building will show you how. In this book, you will learn how to protect the building occupants health, how to improve employee productivity, how to use resources more efficiently, how to reduce your impact on the environment, how to select a site for a new building, how to protect and maintain the current landscape, how to use recycled content, how to use natural lighting, how to install high-efficiency lighting systems, how to select heating and cooling systems, how to select materials, and how to use dimensional planning and material efficiency strategies. You will also learn everything you need to know about water savings, energy efficiency, environmentally-friendly building materials, indoor environmental quality, building shape and orientation, alternative energy sources, dual plumbing, green building guidelines, gray water systems, water-conserving fixtures, the costs and financial benefits of building green, foundations, floors, and roofing. In addition, How to Design and Build a Green Office Building provides you with thousands of low or no cost ways to make your office more environmentally friendly. Whether you are building a brand new building, remodeling an existing one, or even just looking to make small changes that will have a big impact, you need to read this book. Employing the techniques in this book will ultimately save you money, increase your productivity, and attract more employees.

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Your Green Home: A Guide to Planning a Healthy, Environmentally Friendly New Home (Mother Earth News Wiser Living Series)

More and more homeowners today want houses that are healthy to live in and cause minimal damage to the environment. That’s what green building is all about.

Your Green Home is written for homeowners planning a new home—whether you are working with an architect or builder, or serving as your own general contractor. Intended to improve the overall environmental performance of new houses being built, the book sets out to answer some of the big-picture questions relating to having a home designed and built—and getting what you want.

Your Green Home covers:

• Home location and its relationship to the community
• Site design
• Construction systems
• Building design to optimize energy performance
• Renewable energy systems
• Material selection
• Indoor environmental quality
• Water efficiency
• Material selection

Written by the founder of BuildingGreen—North America’s premier green building authority—this book will prove useful not only to future homeowners, but also to designers and builders seeking to meet this demand. Building professionals well-versed in green building may find this a useful book to give to potential clients to convey the scope and principles of green building.

Alex Wilson is president of BuildingGreen, Inc. and executive editor of Environmental Building News, the oldest and most respected publication serving North America’s green building industry. A green building expert since the 1970s, he has authored countless articles on the topic and several books, including Green Building Products, the Consumer Guide to Home Energy Savings, and Green Development: Integrating Ecology and Real Estate.

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