Two New Books on Green Homes

by Jennifer Roberts. Gibbs Smith Publishers, Layton, Utah, 2003; 160 pages, hardcover, $39.95

by Angela Dean. Gibbs Smith Publishers, Layton, Utah, 2003; 136 pages, softcover, $24.95

Homeowners wanting to understand what a green home is and custom home builders wanting to introduce green home ideas to potential clients could benefit greatly from these two recently published books from Gibbs Smith Publishers. While both books make extensive use of case studies to convey the essence of green home building, they are quite different.

•Know Where You Are – on the relationship between place and sustainability;

•Size Matters – on why smaller, more compact houses are better for the environment and often better for homeowners;

•You Have the Power – on energy-efficient design, heating and cooling, and making use of renewable energy sources;

•Build for Today and Tomorrow – on durability, maintenance, and other strategies for ensuring the longevity of homes;

•Clean Living: Protecting Our Air and Water – on creating homes that will protect the health of occupants and use water efficiently;

•Build a Better Wall – on both conventional and alternative building methods (with greater focus on alternative techniques, such as building with straw and earth); and

•Use the Right Stuff – on material selection, with significant focus on salvaged materials, FSC-certified wood, and rapidly renewable building materials.

Each of these paths, or chapters, includes concise prose outlining the basic issues, checklists of more detailed information (Good Green Recommendations), and beautifully illustrated home profiles. A useful glossary and listings of some of the more useful resources round out the quick-to-read book. Author Jennifer Roberts, who with Chris Hammer creates the e-mail-distributed

Green Clips newsletter, has a clearly demonstrated grasp of green buildings.

Green by Design, author Angela Dean approaches the issues of green design quite differently. The four primary chapters cover design intent, design process, design strategies, and design specifics. Each of these chapters provides some information in the main text, then conveys a lot more information through detailed case studies. The final chapter, Design Specifics, provides the most detailed information of the four, but none goes into significant depth.

Most of the houses profiled in the book are custom homes in the West or Southwest, though a few are in other regions. Many of the designers of these homes will be familiar to those who have followed the green building movement. As with

Good Green Homes,

Green by Design emphasizes alternative construction systems, such as straw-bale.

After reading these two books and observing the fundamental similarities—both using case studies of custom homes to illustrate the principles discussed—I was surprised to discover that both were put out by the same publisher, particularly since the two are not designed as companion books. We recommend either book (or both) for providing a general overview of green building and for illustrating these ideas through actual homes. Neither includes enough detail to make it a useful

reference on green building for designers and builders, but both succeed admirably as idea books.

– AW