Best Energy Efficient Remodeling & Renovation Books
Here you will get Best Energy Efficient Remodeling & Renovation Books For you.This is an up-to-date list of recommended books.
1. Back to Basics: A Complete Guide to Traditional Skills (Back to Basics Guides)
Author: by Abigail Gehring
Skyhorse
English
456 pages
Over 200,000 copies soldfully updated! Dye your own wool, raise chickens, make your own cheddar cheese, build a log cabin, and much much more. Anyone who wants to learn basic living skillsthe kind employed by our forefathersand adapt them for a better life in the twenty-first century need look no further than this eminently useful, full-color guide.
Countless readers have turned to Back to Basics for inspiration and instruction, escaping to an era before power saws and fast-food restaurants and rediscovering the pleasures and challenges of a healthier, greener, and more self-sufficient lifestyle. Now newly updated, the hundreds of projects, step-by-step sequences, photographs, charts, and illustrations in Back to Basics will help you dye your own wool with plant pigments, graft trees, raise chickens, craft a hutch table with hand tools, and make treats such as blueberry peach jam and cheddar cheese.
The truly ambitious will find instructions on how to build a log cabin or an adobe brick homestead. More than just practical advice, this is also a book for dreamerseven if you live in a city apartment, you will find your imagination sparked, and there’s no reason why you can’t, for example, make a loom and weave a rag rug.
2. 40 Projects for Building Your Backyard Homestead: A Hands-on, Step-by-Step Sustainable-Living Guide (Creative Homeowner) Fences, Chicken Coops, Sheds, Gardening, and More for Becoming Self-Sufficient
Author: by David Toht
Creative Homeowner
English
256 pages
Learn all about how to build sheds, feeders, fences, and other backyard structures to enhance your sustainable living! Garden structures: Raised beds, planters and arbors, self-watering beds, grow-light stand, soil blocks Fences and pens: Fence post basics, picket fence, solar electric fence, installing and stretching fences, hen pen and hurdle, gates, PVC hen pen Housing chickens: Basics for housing chickens, building a coop and run, complete material and cutting lists, exploded views, building an A-frame chicken tractor Building sheds: Basics for building, goat shed, saltbox garden shed, backyard-homestead shop, roofing alternatives Solar and wind power: Compressor and gearbox windmills, how solar works, erecting a windmill, installing a solar power system Aquaponics and hydroponics: Understanding aquaponics, understanding hydroponics, basics of a DIY aquaponic system, how to install a hydroponic system Building beehives: Langstroth beehive, Warr beehive, top-bar beehive (aka the Kenyan or Tanzanian beehive), step-by-step building instructions and exploded views Plumbing and wiring: Plumbing basics, ground-fault circuit interrupters, freeze-proof watering options, outdoor wiring, supplemental lighting A companion volume to Backyard Homesteading, 40 Projects for Building Your Backyard Homestead provides details on how to build more than 40 projects to enhance your sustainable living.
3. Crisis Preparedness Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Home Storage and Physical Survival
Author: by Patricia Spigarelli Aston
English
464 pages
0936348011
The crises of 2020 impacted every single one of us.Were you prepared? Are you prepared for the next crisis? This new, updated third edition gives you the tools you need to ensure safety and survival so you can be prepared for any disaster that comes your way.
You’ll learn how to: Identify your crisis risk Create a customized preparedness plan Design a basic food-storage system that’s ideal for you Safely store water and fuel Tackle sanitation issues and communications breakdowns Protect your home and familyThis book also gives you unique benefits you won’t see in other preparedness books, such as:5 Things You Can Do NowQuick-start ideas in each chapter to get you goingQuick ChecksChecklists that help you evaluate optionsWorksheetsPlanning tools to optimize your preparedness planResource SectionReviews of unique products that help you preparePersonally SpeakingPatricia’s tips, insights, and survival life-lessonsYou’ll love Crisis Preparedness Handbook because it gives you everything you need to confidently handle any crisis and feel the peace that comes with being prepared.Get it now.
4. The Visual Handbook of Building and Remodeling
Author: by Charlie Wing
Taunton Press
English
688 pages
Whether your home is small or large, an apartment in the city or a country cottage, it is a space that should be at once beautiful and livable. The key to that is managing the upkeep without feeling flustered. Until now, there has never been a comprehensive resource that not only tells how to care for your home and everything in it, but that also simplifies the process by explaining just when.
With secrets from Martha Stewart for accomplishing the most challenging homekeeping tasks with ease, this detailed and comprehensive book is the only one you will need to help you keep your home looking its best, floor to ceiling, room by room.
In Martha Stewart’s Homekeeping Handbook, Martha shares her unparalleled expertise in home maintenance and care. Readable and practicaland graced with charts, sidebars, illustrated techniques, and personal anecdotes from Martha’s decades of experience caring for her homes this is far more than just a compendium of ways to keep your house clean.
6. Unf*ck Your Habitat: You're Better Than Your Mess
Author: by Rachel Hoffman
1250102952
English
224 pages
“The perfect housekeeping guide for somebody who is overwhelmed with their mess and can’t figure out how to start.” LifehackerAn accessible guide on how to clean for normal people.” Livestrong”It actually changed my life and my home; I’m serious.” Book RiotFinally, a housekeeping and organizational system developed for those of us who’d describe our current living situation as a f*cking mess that we’re desperate to fix.
Unf*ck Your Habitat is for anyone who has been left behind by traditional aspirational systems. The ones that ignore single people with full-time jobs; people without kids but living with roommates; and people with mental illnesses or physical limitations.
Most organizational books are aimed at traditional homemakers, DIYers, and people who seem to have unimaginable amounts of free time. They assume we all iron our sheets, have linen napkins to match our table runners, and can keep plants alive for longer than a week.
Basically, they ignore most of us living here in the real world! Interspersed with lists and challenges, this practical, no-nonsense advice relies on a 20/10 system (20 minutes of cleaning followed by a 10-minute break; no marathon cleaning allowed) to help you develop lifelong habits.
7. Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volume 1, 3rd Edition: Guiding Principles to Welcome Rain into Your Life and Landscape
Author: by Brad Lancaster
Rainsource Press
English
288 pages
2020 Independent Press Award Winner-Home & Garden Category Turn water scarcity into water abundance! Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volume 1, 3rd Edition is the best-selling, award-winning guide on how to conceptualize, design, and implement life-enhancing water-, sun-, wind-, and shade-harvesting systems for your home, landscape, and community.
This book enables you to assess your on-site resources, gives you a diverse array of strategies to maximize their potential, and empowers you with guiding principles to create an integrated, multi-functional plan specific to your site and needs. Clearly written with more than 290 illustrations, this full-color edition helps bring your site to life, reduce your cost of living, endow yourself and your community with skills of self-reliance and cooperation, and create living air conditioners of vegetation growing beauty, food, and wildlife habitat.
Stories of people who are successfully welcoming rain into their life and landscape will invite you to do the same.
8. Homesteading: A Backyard Guide to Growing Your Own Food, Canning, Keeping Chickens, Generating Your Own Energy, Crafting, Herbal Medicine, and More (Back to Basics Guides)
Author: by Abigail Gehring
Skyhorse
English
464 pages
Whether you want to live off the grid as part of the modern back to nature movement, or simply learn new skills that will make your home more comfortable and your garden grow, this companion to the bestseller Back to Basics, is for you!
Who doesn’t want to shrink their carbon footprint, save money, and eat homegrown food whenever possible? Even readers who are very much on the grid will embrace this large, fully illustrated guide on the basics of living the good, clean life.
It’s written with country lovers in mindeven those who currently live in the city. Whether you live in the city, the suburbs, or in the wide-open spaces, there is plenty you can do to improve your life from a green perspective:Start container gardening.
With a few plants, fresh tomato sauce is a real option with your own homegrown fresh tomatoesReduce electricity use by eating dinner by candlelight (using homemade candles, of course)Learn to use rainwater to augment water suppliesMake your own soap and hand lotionConsider keeping chickens for the eggsFrom what to eat, to supporting sustainable restaurants, to avoiding dry cleaning, this book offers information on anything a homesteader needsand more.
9. The Hand-Sculpted House: A Practical and Philosophical Guide to Building a Cob Cottage: The Real Goods Solar Living Book
Author: by Ianto Evans
1890132349
English
346 pages
“The Hand-Sculpted House inspired me to learn and do more and transformed how I saw homes and building in general.”Mother Earth News “If you follow it word for word you will build yourself a house no matter who you are.”Builder Paul Dillon, quoted in The Irish Times Are you ready for the Cob Cottage?
This is a building method so old and so simple that it has been all but forgotten in the rush to synthetics. A cob cottage, however, might be the ultimate expression of ecological design, a structure so attuned to its surroundings that its creators refer to it as an ecstatic house.
The authors build a house the way others create a natural garden. They use the oldest, most available materials imaginableearth, clay, sand, straw, and waterand blend them to redefine the future (and past) of building. Cob (the word comes from an Old English root, meaning lump) is a mixture of non-toxic, recyclable, and often free materials.
Building with cob requires no forms, no cement, and no machinery of any kind. Builders actually sculpt their structures by hand. Building with earth is nothing new to America; the oldest structures on the continent were built with adobe bricks.
10. Off Grid Solar: A handbook for Photovoltaics with Lead-Acid or Lithium-Ion batteries
Author: by Joseph P O'Connor
Old Sequoia Publishing
English
208 pages
Off Grid Solar, a reference guide for builders of solar and battery projects. This book includes all the steps to build an Off Grid energy system, and will help you make better decisions, so they can understand your technology needs rather than trust other’s recommendations.
You will learn:How many solar panels are needed to refill the batteriesHow to design to minimize costs of equipmentThe best angle for your solar panelsA detailed comparison of many battery typesTools requiredWire sizing and typeHow photovoltaic cells workWhy a BMS is needed for batteriesDescription of Charger Controllers and InvertersHow to attach panels to your roofThe first and only book to focus on:Off Grid solar only, eliminating the confusion of grid-tied systemsFuture technologies, such as Lithium-Ion batteries, Battery Management Systems, Microgrids, and Off Grid Battery InvertersGlobal audience, using internationally recognized codes and standardsSolar and battery expert Joseph P.
O’Connor draws from his years of experience to craft a how-to guide needed by everyone around the world. O’Connor has conducted and taught the installation/maintenance of Off Grid solar projects to people and communities as far away as the central African rainforest and right in his own backyard of Oakland, California.
11. Prefabulous Small Houses
Author: by Sheri Koones
Taunton Press
English
240 pages
Prefab home construction has come into its own. Prefabricated homes used to be considered inferior to houses built on site, but not anymore. In Prefabulous Small Houses, best-selling author Sheri Koones presents 32 stunning prefabricated homes from around North America. 250 beautiful photographs and floorplans show the amazing breadth of styles available to today’s homeowners.
Small is the new big. Everyone from Millennials looking to buy their first homes to Boomers trying to downsize have turned to small houses in recent years. These homes cost less to build, less to heat, and less to maintain.
All of the houses in Prefabulous Small Houses range from 325 sq.Ft.To 2,000 sq.Ft. And showcase construction methods perfect for any climate. Building better, building greener. All of the houses featured here are highly energy efficient and are built with sustainability in mind.
In eco-friendly prefab construction, local materials are used when possible, metals and wood are recycled, and houses are built with a conscious attempt to preserve the land on which they now stand. A foreword by actor and environmentalist Robert Redford speaks to the urgency with which we must act to combat climate change and how prefabricated small homes have a role to play in that challenge.Amazing diversity.
12. Install Your Own Solar Panels: Designing and Installing a Photovoltaic System to Power Your Home
Author: by Joseph Burdick
Storey Publishing, LLC
English
200 pages
Labor and related costs account for more than half of the price of the average home solar installation. But homeowners can save thousands of dollars with this user-friendly manual, which follows the same process professional contractors use. Through detailed directions and step-by-step photos, veteran solar installer Joseph Burdick and seasoned builder Philip Schmidt teach you how to determine the size, placement, and type of installation you’ll need.
This comprehensive DIY guide covers everything from assembling rooftop racking or building a ground-mount structure to setting up the electrical connections and making a battery bank for off-grid systems.
13. Remodel Without Going Bonkers or Broke: Have a Stress-Free Renovation and Fall In Love With Your Home Again
Author: by Jim Molinelli PhD
English
254 pages
0578843056
Everyone wants a home they love and are proud to show off.REMODEL! Without Going Bonkers or Broke helps you plan and coordinate your professional renovation so the project meets all your needs and leaves you smiling. Get honest answers to your toughest remodeling questions – and step-by-step instruction from a lifelong industry insider so you can remodel with confidence.
Learn to avoid: costly mistakesruined projects, andshattered dreamsEnd the embarassment of living a home that is dated, broken-down, or has failed to keep up with your changing life. Apply the proven method in REMODEL! Without Going Bonkers or Broke and get ready to fall in love with your home again .”Remodel your home and remodel your life!”
14. The Homesteading Handbook: A Back to Basics Guide to Growing Your Own Food, Canning, Keeping Chickens, Generating Your Own Energy, Crafting, Herbal Medicine, and More (Handbook Series)
Author: by Abigail Gehring
Skyhorse
English
272 pages
Here is a full-color guide to help you and your family to be kinder to Mother Earth, while being kind to your bank account! It doesn’t matter where your homestead is locatedfarm, suburb, or even cityyou can learn to grow vegetables, use alternative energy, can and preserve, and more!
You, too, can be more self-sufficient! With the rapid depletion of our planet’s natural resources, we would all like to live a more self-sufficient lifestyle. But in the midst of an economic crisis, it’s just as important to save money as it is to go green.
Plan, plant, and harvest your own organic home garden. Enjoy fruits and vegetables year-round by canning, drying, and freezing. Build alternate energy devices by hand, such as solar panels or geothermal heat pumps. Differentiate between an edible puffball mushroom and a poisonous amanita.
Prepare butternut squash soup using ingredients from your own garden. Conserve water by making a rain barrel or installing an irrigation system. Have fun and save cash by handcrafting items such as soap, potpourri, and paper. Experience the satisfaction that comes with self-sufficiency, as well as the assurance that you have done your part to help keep our planet green.
15. The Doable Off-Grid Homestead: Cultivating a Simple Life by Hand . . . on a Budget
Author: by Shannon Stonger
English
192 pages
1624145388
Start Your Own Off-Grid Homestead the Simple, Budget-Friendly WayIf you’ve ever thought about creating your own family homestead but weren’t sure how to get started or if it were even possible, Stewart and Shannon Stonger have been there and can help guide your way.
They left their home in the city and moved to an empty plot of land with hopes of building a more sustainable way of life. Their years of research, limited budget, creativity and pursuit of their dream produced effective solutions that have taken them step by step to an independent, debt-free and off-grid homestead.
In this book, they share how they did it to help others take the first steps in achieving their simple life dreams. You’ll learn how to build inexpensive infrastructure, harness energy from the sun, manage an off-grid home, grow vegetables in tough conditions, preserve the harvest, build an earthbag root cellar, raise beginner’s livestock and so much more.
These attainable, game-changing tips and projects have allowed Stewart and Shannon to live a simpler, more rewarding life with their children. If they can do it, so can you!
16. Going Off the Grid: The How-To-Book of Simple Living and Happiness
Author: by Gary Collins
English
165 pages
1570673543
Is city life fencing you in? Break free of the daily grind with off-the-grid solutions for a simpler, stress-free tomorrow. Are you overworked and overcrowded? Do you dream of dropping off the radar? Do you crave the peace of mind that only nature can provide?
Fitness and military intelligence expert Gary Collins has helped thousands of people roam free with firsthand advice shared on his popular website. And now he’s here to help you reclaim your independence. Going Off the Grid: The How-To Book of Simple Living and Happiness contains step-by-step instructions for creating your self-sustaining refuge in the untamed wild or the blacktop jungle.
Through Collins’ methods, you’ll identify and purge unnecessary stressors from your everyday life. You’ll also learn the basics of off-the-grid living from home construction to energy alternatives, from sewage disposal to internet access. In Going Off the Grid, you’ll discover: How to downsize your current living conditions for a clutter-free future- Techniques for simplifying your hectic schedule so you can enjoy life’s simple pleasures- How to find the ideal off-the-grid property that will meet your every need- Common types of building techniques and materials for high energy efficiency and insulation- Fun and informative stories detailing Collins’ off-the-grid nomadic lifestyle and much, much more!
