Customer Reviews

Energy Efficient Houses (Great Houses)

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This book may have been good for it's time, but technology advances have dated it. It also leaves out numerous efficiency improving technologies and construction technics for existing homes. IMHO, it is better used as a coffee table book than a planning guide for your home- especially if you don't have $500,000 to spend constructing a house. Still, it gives some good food for thought.

While the book was published in 1993, it is a compliation of articles that appeared in the magazine Fine Homebuilding,leading up to that point. Thus, you'll find articles from the mid to late 80s. While many of the designs are dated and at times impractical, because of technological improvements since then (and really now, how many people can live in an earth berm house?) The take home message shouldn't be lost in, at times, bizarre approaches: heating the floor via an embedded series of air ducts.

Rather, the take home message should be (and is readily apparent with the cross sectional construction drawings) in insulating the home and making it as tight as possible. Because of the excellent photography and the diagrams, I would start here, but certainly not end here. Moreover, for $5, it's not a bad starting point.