Tag: building

Green from the Ground Up: Book Review

Here’s another book spotlight for you: I’ve been reading this for the past few days, and just love it! While it’s mostly aimed at professional builders, anyone can glean from this book. It’s just jam-packed with useful, solid, comprehensive advice on every aspect of green home-building – foundations, roof, windows and the passive solar aspect, insulation, plumbing, etc. Plus, it’s full of photographs that are very illustrative and demonstrate each point very clearly, even to non-professionals. I wish I had this book in print, since I imagine it would be a lot more comfortable to view this way, but anyhow, it’s one of the most useful books I’ve read lately.

Note: I didn’t get any review request or compensation from the author; I just had to share this because I found it so useful.

From a review: “Eco-friendly housing used to be thought of as expensive, ugly or just plain weird. Now it’s becoming common. David Johnston and Scott Gibson offer guidance on environmentally sensitive home building in Green from the Ground Up: Sustainable, Healthy, and Energy-Efficient Home Construction. The book helps builders and homeowners create houses that conserve natural resources and are energy-efficient and healthful. It’s packed with information, tips, illustrations and case studies that offer wisdom earned from experience.”

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Building Mistakes

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Read my latest Mother Earth News post about the lessons we learned while building our cabin:

“Mistakes are an integral part of a learning process and can be expected if you are an amateur builder, but it might also be very frustrating, since this isn’t just a practical lesson – it’s a real dwelling you are trying to raise and make livable and comfortable, often under great constraints of time and money. It would be wise to mentally prepare for making mistakes and fixing them as you go.”

Also, this will probably be my last post before Pesach, so happy Pesach to all my Jewish readers, and a happy spring to everyone else!

 

Health and homesteading

Check out my latest Mother Earth News post: what happens when physical limitations stand in one’s way to self-reliant life.

“Even in our modernized age when almost everything is done at the click of a keyboard, being able-bodied is still an essential part of building your own house, starting a homestead, and keeping it going. But what do you do if certain health problems interfere with your homesteading goals? Should you accept that some things just aren’t meant to be – like building with your own hands, for example?

It is my belief that there is an alternative way to do pretty much anything, and even to profit from the seemingly untoward circumstances that might seem as a death certificate to your dream.”

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Illustration: mid-renovations mess in our living room, just before our son Israel was born.

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