Easy-Living Homes: 200 Exciting Plans for Active Adults, Professional Couples & Empty-Nesters (Blue Ribbon Designer Series)

Keep construction on track with helpful checklists

Turn your dream of a custom home into reality!

Thinking about building your own home? This easy-to-follow guide shows you how to plan and build a beautiful home on any budget. From acquiring land to finding the best architect to overseeing the construction, you get lots of savvy tips on managing your new investment wisely -- and staying sane during the process!

Discover how to:
* Find the best homesite
* Navigate the plan approval process
* Obtain financing
* Hire the right contractor
* Cut design and construction costs
* Avoid common mistakes

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Expanding the American Dream (Suny Series in the New Cultural History): Building and Rebuilding Levittown

Today, a new generation of architects and builders is emerging, intent on creating homes that meet human needs for shelter while causing only a fraction of the environmental impact of conventional housing. "The New Ecological Home" provides an overview of green building techniques, materials, products, and technologies that are either currently available or will be in the near future. Author Daniel Chiras provides a wealth of up-to-date, practical information for home buyers, owner-builders, and anyone interested in building for a sustainable future. Included are chapters on: - The Healthy House - Green Building Materials - Wood-Wise Construction - Energy Efficiency - Earth-Sheltered Architecture - Passive Solar Heating and Passive Cooling - Green Power: Electricity from the Sun and Wind - Water and Waste: Sustainable Approaches - Environmental Landscaping

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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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Cordwood Building: The State of the Art (Natural Building Series)

Cordwood masonry is an ancient building technique whereby walls are constructed from "log ends" laid transversely in the wall. It is easy, economical, aesthetically striking, energy-efficient, and environmentally sound.

Cordwood Building collects the wisdom of more than 25 of the world’s best practitioners, detailing the long history of the method, and demonstrating how to build a cordwood home using the latest and most up-to-date techniques, with a special focus on building code issues.

Author/editor Rob Roy has been building, researching, and teaching about cordwood masonry for 25 years and, with his wife, started Earthwood Building School in 1981. He has written 10 books on alternative building, presented four videos—including two about cordwood masonry—and has taught cordwood masonry all over the world.

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The Natural Plaster Book: Earth, Lime, and Gypsum Plasters for Natural Homes (Natural Building Series)

For builders of natural homes (straw bale, cob, adobe, rammed earth, and other natural materials), this unique step-by-step guide takes the confusion out of choosing, mixing, and applying natural plasters.

From principles to practicalities, and with every stage of the process illustrated, The Natural Plasters Book details the entire process of plastering with earth, lime, and gypsum for a long-lasting and durable finish. Starting with an overview and history of the natural building movement, the book handles a wide variety of topics including earthen plaster versus cement stucco, tools and techniques of the trade, plaster recipes, and pigmenting plaster or painting walls with natural paints. First-time builders will appreciate tips on common mistakes (and how to avoid them) discussed at each stage of the plastering process. Special focus is paid to the importance of planning and designing for earthen plasters—before building begins.

The only comprehensive guide available on natural plasters, this book is written for the growing number of people who have decided to build their own natural homes as well as for professionals. Heavily illustrated with practical drawings and photographs, it also includes an extensive resource guide listing books, magazines, videos, builders, and suppliers.

Marketing Plans:
• Ads in Natural Home and Environmental Building & Design
• National print review campaign to natural building, self-sufficiency, and environmental magazines, newsletters, websites.

Cedar Rose Guelberth has been working with natural home construction and plaster techniques for 25 years and is a nationally recognized natural building educator and consultant. Dan Chiras is the author of fifteen books including The Natural House: A Guide to Healthy, Energy-Efficient, Environmental Homes (ISBN: 1-890132578, Chelsea Green, 2000). Both authors live in Colorado.

Also Available
The Art of Natural Building: Design, Construction, Resources
TP $26.95, 0-86571-433-9 • USA
Straw Bale Building: How to Plan, Design, and Build with Straw

TP $24.95, 0-86571-403-7 • USA

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Long Road Home: Building Reconciliation and Trust in Post-War Sierra Leone (Series on Transitional Justice)

The 1991-2002 war in Sierra Leone was infamous for mass amputations, widespread sexual violence, and forced recruitment of children into rebel forces. It was not an ethnic war, but one that tore families and communities apart in ways that could not be sustained in peacetime. After the war, the Sierra Leone government and civil society organizations encouraged the combatants to return home and encouraged the communities to accept them, even though the combatants, or the forces they were associated with, had committed horrendous crimes in those very same villages. Long Road Home describes how the ex-combatants and the civilian survivors in Sierra Leone struggled to reconcile and build trust in their communities a year after the war ended. The book explores the contribution of the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission toward reconciliation and justice, and it questions whether reconciliation is always a good thing. It also examines how the seemingly nebulous concept of reconciliation can be understood so that the term is useful for peace building and is consistent with justice. Finally, the author argues that Sierra Leone has much to teach peace builders in societies emerging from intra-communal violence and much to contribute to comparative analyses of post-conflict transitions.

Price: $89.75

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Earth-Sheltered Houses: How to Build an Affordable... (Mother Earth News Wiser Living Series)

An earth-sheltered, earth-roofed home has the least impact upon the land of all housing styles, leaving almost zero footprint on the planet.

Earth-Sheltered Houses is a practical guide for those who want to build their own underground home at moderate cost. It describes the benefits of sheltering a home with earth, including the added comfort and energy efficiency from the moderating influence of the earth on the home’s temperature (keeping it warm in the winter and cool in the summer), along with the benefits of low maintenance and the protection against fire, sound, earthquake, and storm afforded by the earth. Extra benefits from adding an earth or other living roof option include greater longevity of the roof substrate, fine aesthetics, and environmental harmony.

The book covers all of the various construction techniques involved, including details on planning, excavation, footings, floor, walls, framing, roofing, waterproofing, insulation, and drainage. Specific methods appropriate for the inexperienced owner/builder are a particular focus and include:

• Pouring one’s own footings and/or floor
• The use of dry-stacked (surface-bonded) concrete block walls
• Post-and-beam framing
• Plank-and-beam roofing
• Drainage methods and self-adhesive waterproofing membranes

The time-tested, easy-to-learn construction techniques described in Earth-Sheltered Houses will enable readers to embark upon their own building projects with confidence, backed up by a comprehensive resources section that lists all the latest products such as waterproofing membranes, types of rigid insulation, and drainage products that will protect the building against water damage and heat loss.

Rob Roy is a former contractor with 27 years of experience and 12 previous books to his credit, including Cordwood Building and Timber Framing for the Rest of Us. An expert on underground building, he founded the Earthwood Building School in 1981 with his wife, Jaki, and is frequently a speaker at events throughout North America.

Price: $27.95

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