Basic Business Management: A Guide for Small Volume Home Builders

Learn how to obtain financing, control costs, ensure consistent quality standards, and more effectively manage your employees and trade contractors. You’ll find out how to identify market and industry trends that will yield business opportunities. Whether you are just starting your small-volume building business or you want to refine your current business practices, Basic Business Management will provide you with management guidance you can use to improve your efficiency and profitability.

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Energy Free: Homes for a Small Planet

2011 International Book Awards Award-Winning Finalist in the "Environment: Green/Alternative Energy/Conservation"

Energy Free is designed to equip building professionals and homeowners alike with a toolkit for creating homes that use no more energy than they produce--this means homes that are free from the vagaries of energy-price fluctuations and that help to free society of the high political and environmental costs of fossil fuels.

Individuals and institutions have been working toward "zero-energy" homes for decades. This volume is the first record of those collective efforts, distilling their experience into a practical and comprehensive how-to guide. The author includes resource information and step-by-step guidance on how to make decisions that will yield an energy-free residential project, whether a single-family home or multifamily building, new or existing, in an urban or a rural setting. The unique needs and opportunities of each context are addressed.

The principal topics include:

• Project boundaries (why you have to consider not only your home's behavior, but also your own)
• Prioritizing strategies (e.g., insulation vs. photovoltaics)
• Economics (including payback periods and incentives)
• How to minimize a building's energy needs
• How to minimize your energy needs
• How to power the energy needs that remain
• The critical role of integrated project planning

Energy Free offers a wide array of resource information, including detailed window and insulation comparisons; assessments of the relative contribution of different building elements; and overall performance. It draws on research and empirical data from myriad sources, including the Department of Energy's Building America program; Sacramento Municipal Utility District's House of the Future; Passiv Haus Institute in Europe and the Passive House Institute of the U.S.; Florida Solar Energy Center; Living Building Challenge; Affordable Comfort, Inc.'s, Thousand Home Challenge; and many pioneering individual home projects across North America.

Price: $25.00

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