Are you thinking about building a new home? Or just beginning to put together a plan?

Maybe you're a builder or designer -- and the lion's share of your clients are now interested in building green.

Here's a single book that delivers everything you need to know about building a safe, energy-efficient, environmentally friendly home.

Brought to you by Alex Wilson -- the country's foremost expert on this topic -- Your Green Home offers a wealth of practical, up-to-the-minute information on every facet of green building.

In terms of environmental impact, budget and comfort, the author demonstrates how making the right design choices can help you make sure your green home performs exactly as you intended.

Here are some of the field-tested, sustainable solutions you?ll find to some of your big-picture challenges:

• Finding the right designer and builder
• Deciding where to build
• Understanding building systems
• Energy-efficient building design
• Renewable energy systems
• Selection of products and materials
• Indoor environmental quality
• Water efficiency
• Reducing construction waste
• Environmental landscaping and plantings
• Costs of green building
• Living in a green home

With this comprehensive -- yet eminently readable -- guidebook by your side, you'll have all the advice you need to design and build a house that's truly green.

About the author
For over 25 years, Alex Wilson has written about energy-efficient and environmentally responsible design and construction. He is currently the Executive Editor of Environmental Building News. In 1985, he started his own company, now Building Green LLC.

Alex is also co-author of the Consumer Guide to Home Energy Savings and the Rocky Mountain Institute's comprehensive textbook, Green Development: Integrating Ecology and Real Estate.

Customer Reviews from Amazon

I thought this was a good primer on the subject and got several helpful tips. While I already knew a lot of the material, nevertheless It inspired me to make some changes in my own home.

I was also inspired by The House That Faux Built which showed how to give your home a facelift without ripping things out (and filling the landfills) It showed me how to paint and plaster over cabinets, tiles and floors for a complete update. the 2 books together made a big difference.

I am an interior designer and work for an architectural firm. Because of the information I have learned thru my education and professional experience, I found very little new information in this book. If you have no knowledge of green building practices, this book would be beneficial.

This book was a overview/introduction to building a green home. Should be a must read for builders and anyone planning on building a new home. Not all strategies will work for every situation, but there's lots here that would apply for any situation or budget.

The text is well-written and can appeal to a wide audience. It's simple enough to understand for those without a great deal of knowledge in sustainable design, yet interesting and usefull enough for the professional who's more trained in sustainability. The text covers sustainable homes in a logical order, first stressing the foundation concepts like siting, orientation, passive solar, and building envelope efficiency, BEFORE moving on to less critical (but more popular) topics such as green materials.

I am a professor of Environmental Design and am currently building a passive solar, zero-energy home, and if I were to write a text that comprises the whole of the process and goals in sustainable home building, the format and breadth of topics would be similar to this book.

One negative of the book is the absence of color images to illustrate some points. The simple line drawings get the point across, but photos might have a better impact - especailly in sections discussing more advanced systems such as renewable energy systems or rainwater catchment systems.

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