sustainable home

You are currently browsing articles tagged sustainable home.

Green Book Review: Renewable Energies for Your Home

September 16, 2009 in Books, Home Projects, Product Review by Jennifer | No comments

I recently reviewed a new McGraw-Hill green home book – Renewable Energies for Your Home: Real-World Solutions for Green Conversions by Russel Gehrke; and overall I think it’s a good book for folks looking to create a more sustainable home that won’t cost you a fortune.

Basics:

From the publishers, “Renewable Energies for Your Home offers authoritative, practical, and fun do-it-yourself projects and tips for greening your home and car. Gehrke covers biodiesel, ethanol, CNG, hydrogen, electricity, waste vegetable oil, and biomass, and provides the following information for each fuel: how it works; its carbon footprint; efficiency; strengths; drawbacks; source; applications; a dabbler’s guide; and tips.”

Renewable Energies for Your Home covers:

  • Energy savings and environmental benefits
  • Biomass fuels, including biodiesel, ethanol, used fryer oil, and wood
  • Producing your own biodiesel without titration
  • Assembling a biolight grill and fire starter
  • Making bioburn-a firewood substitute
  • Wind turbines
  • Solar lighting, heating, water heating, and electric generation
  • Building a solar heat collector
  • Creating a wind/solar hybrid electric system

What I thought: Read the rest of this entry »

Free Green Home Plans!

March 18, 2009 in Green Building by Jennifer | 1 comment

Later today we’ll wrap up our green apartment series, but first I wanted to alert you to a super-fly green home site; FreeGreen.

FreeGreen offers spiffy (and free) building plans for green homes. Plans vary in depth, some showing energy consumption between buildings that meet basic code vs. building that have greener features.

HOW IT WORKS:

  1. Head to FreeGreen.
  2. Search for a home you like – there are various ways to do this. You can search by type of home, check out the open source network (which is not free, but cool), plus you can search by all types of various criteria like energy use, size, popular green features, and more.
  3. Download the plans you like and even buy blueprints.

EXAMPLE:

I picked one house to check out so I could tell you how this works. I went with the Suburban Loft. Once you click on the virtual tour you can make changes and add custom features. Basic features and concepts are explained during the tour. The image slide show is crisp and really nice, showing both exterior and interior features.

Once you click download, you’ll have to register, but the form was short and fast. Then it asks you if you want basic or premium service (which is $100 a year). The plans are pretty basic but give you a nice idea to start with if you’re considering building green. Plus this particular plan offers slides of both energy features and efficiency.

Visit FreeGreen and see the plans for yourself.