The average Australian household spends over $2,000 a year on gas and electricity bills. Now, not only can you reduce those bills, but you can even wipe them out, while making your home more comfortable.Paying for energy is the largest running cost that most home-owners are burdened with. And that’s no surprise — we use energy to heat our water, refrigerate our food and drink, run our heaters and air conditioners, light our homes at night, cook our meals, run our T...

A manifesto for a radically different philosophy and practice of manufacture and environmentalism"Reduce, reuse, recycle" urge environmentalists; in other words, do more with less in order to minimize damage. But as this provocative, visionary book argues, this approach perpetuates a one-way, "cradle to grave" manufacturing model that dates to the Industrial Revolution and casts off as much as 90 percent of the materials it uses as waste, much of it toxic. Why not ...

A how to book for those interested in building a Conventional Home . When you are ready to look at the most important aspects of a project, this is the book for you. I discuss budget, needs, and design. Using the included exercises and worksheets you move through the process. Then I guide you step by step through estimation, design, and ultimately the construction process. This literature is a proven way to develop a workable project, design, and budget for only the cost of the book. This ...

Sustainable building from the ground up - the pros and cons of the latest green and natural materials and technologiesFrom foundation to finish, a wealth of information is available on sustainable construction methods-entire volumes have been published on individual green and natural building techniques. But with so many different ideas to choose from, there is no single resource that allows an owner or builder to quickly and objectively compare the merits of each ...

Vasthu is getting popular in West like Feng Shui. When Vasthu principles are applied correctly wealth, health and many fruitful things in life can be achieved with less struggles. As a consultant, beginning as a hobby and now a passion I have helped hundreds of household and businesses who are at their worse and now seeing improvements after applying my advices correctly. This little pocket book can equip you in your decision making on your properties and businesses. Every tip written is b...

What book would you want if you were stranded on a desert island? Widely regarded as the 'bible' of off-grid living, The Solar Living Sourcebook might be your best choice. With over 600,000 copies in print worldwide, it is the most comprehensive resource available for anyone interested in lessening their environmental footprint and increasing their energy independence.The Solar Living Sourcebook-14th Edition is the ultimate guide to renewable energy, sustainab...

2009 Winner of the Benjamin Franklin Award for Best Biography/Memoir, Me and the Biospheres is the definitive autobiography of John P. Allen, inventor of the largest laboratory for global ecology ever built and one of the most luminous minds of our time. Contained within a magnificently designed air-tight glass-and-steel-framed setting, Biosphere 2 covered three acres of Arizona desert and included models of seven biomes: an ocean with coral reef, marsh, rainforest, savannah, desert, farm ...

This book presents numerical and experimental research in the field of wind energy exploitation in urban environments. It comprises a selection of the best papers from the international colloquium “Research and Innovation on Wind Energy Exploitation in Urban Environment” (TUrbWind), held in Riva del Garda, Italy in June 2017. The book includes contributions from different research fields in urban wind resources, wind energy conversion systems, and urban integration, mainly focusing on the ...

This book addresses the main challenges in implementing the concepts that aim to replace the regular fossil-fuels based energy pattern with the novel energy pattern relying on renewable energy. As the built environment is one major energy consumer, well known and exploited by each community member, the challenges addressing the built environment has to be solved with the consistent contribution of the community inhabitants and its administration. The transition phase, which already is unde...

Optimization techniques offer immense potential for the improvement of performance-driven design, since they allow the adoption of an holistic approach. This can lead to great advantages: optimal design solutions can be properly identified only if all criteria are considered at the same time, rather than separately. There are two barriers which obstruct optimization from being applied to building design: a technological barrier (applying the algorithms is not easy and can be quite time-con...

All the advantages of a tiny house at a fraction of the cost!Imagine what you could do with your time if you didn't have to spend $16,000 a year on rent or a mortgage. Old single-wide mobile homes can often be found for free (and installed for a couple of thousand dollars) in rural areas, so trailersteading is akin to dumpster-diving. A trailer allows you to live without debt, to keep your ecological footprint to a minimum with energy bills at or below the national...

The book explores advanced building-facade daylighting design practices based on diverse energy and human-factor performance metrics. It also defines effective daylighting by rethinking the simplified approach to glazing and facade systems to incorporate the local climate and the needs of building occupants as critical drivers of building performance, design solutions and technological innovation. It discusses state-of-the-art approaches in the context of simulation-based design workflows,...