August 2007 Books
Your Green Home; Consider This: Questions That Make You Think
Your Green Home
I don't know too many people who haven't given some thought to creating a home that meets all of their needs with minimal impact on the environment. Our thinking has most often centered around creating self-supporting homes or communities fueled by alternative energy sources, “off the grid.” If you've had thoughts along these lines, or concerns about minimizing maintenance or running a home more economically as energy costs rise, Your Green Home will help you orient your thinking on these issues. And it will set you to thinking about topics that may never have occurred to you.
Your Green Home is a simple yet far-reaching guide to understanding the fundamentals of designing, building, and living in an environmentally friendly home. The book was written for the growing lay population concerned about making sustainable choices in creating a dwelling, but even a professional builder or designer will find it a valuable resource, packed with clearly presented ideas and thought provoking considerations. But if you're a greenhorn (pardon the pun), reading it won't turn you into an expert.
Its most useful contributions will be to orient your thinking so that you ask the right questions, and to give you resources—from helpful books to magazines and Web sites— to turn to for help. And in the back, you'll find a thorough glossary of building terms and a detailed index.
As you can well imagine, green homes don't spring up by accident. It requires a long series of conscious decisions, and as Alex points out, a willingness to invest in upfront design. But even if you're looking at “greening up” an existing dwelling, you will learn a lot about what you can do. There are so many things to consider! For starters, how to hire the expertise you need and pick a site, or work with the site you have.
Whether you want a single-family home or a clustered community; building to maximize comfort while neutralizing carbon dioxide emissions, conserving energy and water, and otherwise minimizing environmental impact. Designing and building to assure economy, accessibility, adaptability, durability, and wind and moisture control. Dealing with topography, soil types, and groundwater. Accommodating existing vegetation and wildlife. Creating a safe and pleasant indoor environment (carpeting, appliances, ventilation, lighting, heating and cooling, etc.) and appropriate landscaping.
There's even a section on establishing your own prairie!
Finding the best orientation for your house and garage. Framing and insulation alternatives, including strawbale construction. Selecting the best “green” building materials. Dealing with construction and home waste. Designing to maximize community interaction and minimize vehicle use. Understanding zoning and building regulations. Taking into account human history on the land, toxins from previous landowners, views. And so much more.
As Alex points out, your green home is built to last, so you will want to think ahead from the very beginning to the day you or your heirs decide to sell it. “Experience is showing that energy-efficient green homes appreciate in value faster than conventional homes,” he reports. And it can only get better for those who plan.
While this is a book about green homes, it also provides a wealth of incidental information. For example: “A highly detailed 1999 study of hundreds of classrooms in the San Juan Capistrano School System…correlated the rate of learning with the presence or absence of natural daylighting …and found that learning progressed 20% faster in math skills and 26% faster in verbal skills in classrooms with the most natural daylighting….”
Hmmmm…. Where are you sitting as you read this review?
Alex Wilson is the president of BuildingGreen, Inc., in Brattleboro , VT , and executive editor of Environmental Building News and the Greenspec ® Directory . A biologist by training, he brings to this book over thirty years of experimentation and learning in green building, put together in a way any interested person can enjoy and understand. His approach is even-handed, no-pressure. As he says, “Even if you can only implement a small percentage of the ideas that are in this book, you will have helped to protect the environment—and you'll likely end up with a house that's safer to live in and less expensive to operate.” Green. Life. Earth. Yes. Go for it. — Chiwah
Consider This:
Questions That Make You Think
I recall a talk Werner Erhard gave many years ago in which he affirmed the importance of living in the question. It struck me as a great idea—here we are running around all the time looking for answers, when perhaps the real challenge is to come up with the right question!
If you're looking for answers, you won't find them in Consider This. But if you're bored or tired of your mental rut, this is the perfect book to jar you out of it. Or if you're a would-be socialite but just can't seem to keep a good conversation going, you'll find a plethora of thought-provoking questions to save your day.
The questions Kipfer poses are the kind ordinary people come up with from time to time. Here's one: “Describe the simple life” in three words.” (If it's simple, that should be easy, right? An interesting question to poll your friends on and compare the results.)
Or try this one on for size: “Does omnibenevolence entail benevolence toward bad things?” (Hmmmmm…we have to consider, how do we come to a consensus on what things are consider, how do we come to a consensus on what things are inherently bad? And…does such a question have a place in “the simple life”? Oh, interesting. I just closed the book and reopened it, and there, staring me in the face, I see the question, “What is bad?”)
Moving on…here's one that could spark a lively discussion: “How can one swear to love another forever and to love no one else?” (Yikes! Why does English have just one word to cover shades of meaning that some languages divide up between scores of different words? There are many kinds of love, and I'm not sure what swearing has to do with any of them.)
See what I mean? Is there any question that doesn't come with a ton of embedded preconceptions?
Is there any end to where this book could take us?
Consider This poses over 1,000 questions that cover some meaningful ground. Interested in finding out who your friends really are? Will you still love them if some of their answers shock you? Do you dare to find out?
—Chiwah
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