| | |  | SALE | Home » » Green by Design | | | | | | | Description: | | Author and architect Angela M. Dean offers specific, hands-on advice for creating your sustainable home. Inside you'll find a wealth of information. | | | Features: | |
• Reasons for Building Green
• Choosing a Design Team
• Hiring an Architect
• Managing Your Budget
• Siting to Take Advantage of Natural Resources
| | | Product Details: | | | Author:
| Angela Dean | | Paperback:
| 160 pages | | Publisher:
| Gibbs Smith | | Publication Date:
| September 15, 2003 | | Language:
| English | | ISBN:
| 1586851721 | | Package Length:
| 9.7 inches | | Package Width:
| 9.6 inches | | Package Height:
| 0.4 inches | | Package Weight:
| 1.25 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 7 reviews |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
Average Customer Review:
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0 of 3 found the following review helpful:
 Overview of Living GreenApr 04, 2007
This introductory guide to sustainable living will give you new ideas for building your home in an environmentally-friendly way.
9 of 10 found the following review helpful:
 Outdated BookFeb 25, 2007
I agree with Bill below - this book is outdated. The author seems to miss the concept of ecological footprint. The first two houses she features in her book are 3,300 sq ft (for three people) and 3,000 sq ft (for two people). Another house is 4,175 sq ft.
Even if people use green materials and building practices, the houses aren't green if they're using excessive materials and space.
There are a number of better green books, but one that specifically focuses on minimizing environmental impact is Little House on a Small Planet by Shay Salomon.
1 of 3 found the following review helpful:
A Perfect PrimerFeb 03, 2007
I am a SoCA tract homeowner getting ready to relocate to the mountains of northern Utah. My husband and I are committed to building a home that is environmentally responsible, but the "green" concept is absolutely overwhelming. Green by Design is a terrific overview of the concept of sustainable living. Through the several case studies we learned that we would not have to be locked into an ugly straw box or uglier geodesic dome, and this book gave us just what we needed for next steps. If you already have expertise in this area and are looking for a how-to, I'm sure there are more appropriate books to help you build your home. However, if you want an introduction, this book does a great job.
16 of 22 found the following review helpful:
 Fluff book with no practical adviceJun 28, 2006
This book uses a lot of buzz words and offers very little substantial advice when it comes to actually designing your own house. It touches a little on straw bale and reused materials and barely grazes cob/clay/rammed earth. It doesn't even mention geodesic domes as far as I can tell. The book advocates on one page (p.72) that people should live in small humble buildings, only having the square footage they absolutely need. Then a few pages later (p.79) it shows a 4000+ sq. ft. home, with the title "an excersize in efficiency." I fail to see anything efficeint about a 4000 sq. ft. home, especially when it's a standard A-frame building (granted, it's for a family of 6, but then again there's nothing "green" about having 4 children).
It does cover some good stuff like gray-water use, rain collection, alternative heating and cooling, but it glosses over all of this and takes up a lot of space with strange-angled shots of rooms and floor plans. I KNOW the floor plan I want, and there's very little that a floor plan has to do with green building (it's more about orientation to the sun for passive solar use). What I'd prefer to have seen was simple diagrams of how the systems of the house work. There's a spot that explains how one house has the pool hooked up to the AC such that the hot exhaust from the AC heats the pool. Now THAT's something I can get into, but I want more than a couple sentences about it. That deserves a diagram!
8 of 12 found the following review helpful:
This Book is About "Sustainable Living" in Practice not Just TheoryFeb 06, 2006
My 50's Florida ranch style home is in the design stage for major remodel. In the the first "case study" in Green by Design the owner's took a 50's style one bedroom home in Utah and incorporated the foundation and concrete masonry shell into the new design. Exactly my plan. The author uses 14 green design homes as case studies with wonderfully insightful pictures and just the right text to accompany the pictures and to explain "process", "design", "site", "materials", "space", "energy"- all concepts I can use to make my newly remodeled home a certifiable Florida Green Home.
Building Green is NOT about the latest designs and materials as the previous reviewers would have you believe. It's about designing for "sustainable living". Go to floridagreenbuilding.org to find a 5 page checklist of features required to build a green home in Florida. Nothing will get you more points (other than a small home) in this 5 page checklist than not having a permament irrigation system. In fact not having a swimming pool, not living on a natural body of water and not having an attached garage all count toward living "green" in Florida. If you want an up-to-date and "exhaustive resource" buy the latest edition of the "Greenspec Directory"-$89.00 here on Amazon. However the last 5 pages of this book is a list of resources, including the Greenspec Directory and 5 local green building programs. With Florida's now you have 6.
The ultimate green home is a SMALL HOME! In Florida, a 1000 sq. ft. home will get you 50 points (out of 200 required minimum for certification) and a 2000 and above sq. ft. home will get you 0 points. Over 50% of the case study homes in this book would have recieved extra points if they would have been built in Florida. Which brings me to the regional focus of this book. Most of the homes featured where located in western states ( a few were in the northeast) and normally that would disqualify most books for a Florida resident, but not in this case.
I highly recommend this book if you are serious about designing a home for sustainable living.
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