Building Green, New Edition: A Complete How-To Guide to Alternative Building Methods Earth Plaster * Straw Bale * Cordwood * Cob * Living Roofs (Building Green: A Complete How-To Guide to Alternative) Paperback – Illustrated, August 4, 2009

Just as promised. Interesting topic.

haven't quite finished yet but i'm really enjoying reading this a lot. tons of really great photos, and it's very easy to understand for someone with limited building knowledge.my only complaint is the author does not know the difference between loose and lose :p

I really would love to build a green house for my retirement. I am thinking about combining timber frame, straw bale and cob in an English/Irish cottage style with some more contemporary touches like french doors to a patio. I love the timber frame structure, it is so beautiful, the straw helps insulate in colder weather and keep it cooler in hot weather and with the proper orientation of the house and windows I can maximize the light and heat from the sun. I want the main living area to be open. I would like a good portion of the cottage to be the kitchen, dinning and family living area with the bedrooms and baths toward the back of the cottage. I want to use solar passive heat, solar pannels and wood stove heat in the kitchen for cooking and a woodstove in a fireplace in the main living area just for heat and beauty. The cob over the straw bales provides a good thermal mass to keep the temperture comfortable in all seasons. The cobb is also fireproof, insect proof, prevents allergies, or at least doesn't aggrevate them and the house built like this could with stand exteme weather, even earthquakes. The building materials are less expensive and these kind of cottages can last for hundreds of years and are beautiful to look at and live in. I love all the information this book contains. It is a useful reference book to learn more about green building styles. You can also use cob to build a pizza or bread oven and create inexpensive walls around your garden.

This book is a great read for anyone who wants to know more about four building techniques with demonstrable "green" or "sustainable" attributes. It strikes a good balance between theory and practice, as well as moving from concept through design to execution. Beautifully illustrated with copious photos, this thick and heavy book is a pleasure to either read from cover to cover as I did, skim or pick and choose what you want to explore in greater depth. The co-authors approach the material from somewhat different viewpoints – one a bit more starry-eyed than the other, but both of them accomplished builders with pragmatic concerns about how to build structures which shelter the body, inspire the mind, and sit as gently as possible on the planet. This is all done while administering just enough – but not too much – righteous political argument about how wasteful many other methods of building and construction are.You don't need to know much already about the subject material to get value from this book, as it is written clearly enough to convey basic concepts to complete beginners, while providing enough detail to satisfy more advanced readers. I look forward to sharing the book with my precocious twelve year-old nephew who is fascinated with 3D computer modeling and architecture, that is, *after* I'm done with it!

We build everything ourselves and pride ourselves on a truly green footprint, so bought this book for ideas about alternative building. This is a wonderful and comprehensive guide for anyone wanting to do-it-yourself in an Earth-friendly way. It has become our Bible for building--everything from our own house to the outbuildings for our chickens, goats and homestead tools.The book contains informative historical backgrounds for several building styles such as cob, strawbale, conventional stick framing, timeberframe, cordwood and so on, while giving real-life step-by-step instructions on how you can do it yourself. It also has sections on natural floors from dirt, stone, etc.; living roofs; drainage ideas; recycling bottles and other things as decoration, insulation and more. It is chock full of tips, and includes insightful perspectives on the things that worked well and those that did not.My copy of this book is well thumbed (I've read it through cover to cover several times and go back to it often). I really never get tired at looking at it and planning new projects. It is so inspiring!

This book has it all! I have been buying several books on Green Building and Design, which this one is the best. Several boks are focused merely on one topic or method of construction making it possible to describe the process in better depth while others that try to teach everything thats out there simply give you an overview. Not this tome. The writers give a detailed How-to of several green building or eco-building principles. This book covers Cordwood, Living Roofs, Cob walls, Strawbale homes, stick framing, retaining wall, Foundation, Site Planning, Rain water Catchment, glass bottle wall, tile and earthen floors, and so much more. I was pleasantly surprised at the heftiness of this volume. There are literally thousands of step-bystep photos and diagrams to completely show and describe how to get it done. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in building anything the green building or eco-friendly route. Also if any of you have read "A Pattern Langauge" you can see where this mans ideas draw from it the ideas of separation flow and others.

I have been involved with energy efficient building since my Architect Grandfather retired and enlisted my Cowboy Dad into building a passive solar home for his retirement. This sparked many trips to Taos New Mexico and eventually to them subdividing our ranch and building several more Passive Solar homes. I was influenced by all this in my early teens ( I'm 50). This book is an incredibly well written storehouse of everything I have ever learned and then some.

Honest, straight forward, interesting and informative. Even though I'm more specifically interested in straw bale construction I thought this looked like a book to have, and I'm glad I made the decision to buy. Straw bale may only be a small part of the book, but the other building methods discussed feed your imagination and much of the detailed information is relevant no matter the type of building you are constructing. Having just completed the outside of my own straw bale house I'm glad I had this book to help me of the way, I'm already looking forward to building my next project and adopting more of the ideas in this book. Buy it, it's the most up to date and informative I've read out of my collection of ten or more on the subject.

I used the approach exactly as laid out in the book to make a flat turf roof and can only say that it's worked out perfectly. It's been in situ for about 4 years now and zero issues so far and looks excellentAn excellent, genuinely practical and inspirational book for anyone wanting to self-build green.

very completei have the french version toodescribes and illustrates with many photos all of the steps and techniquesvery praticalvery good

It has everything one would need to build if only I had cash, land and any skill. But a man can dream.

Informative, arrived quickly