The Independent Home: Living Well with Power from the Sun, Wind, and Water (Real Goods Independent Living Book) [Paperback]

Michael Potts (Author), John Schaeffer (Designer)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0930031652 | ISBN-13: 978-0930031657 | Publication Date: October 29, 1993 | Edition: 1st

Mr. Potts's home has been featured on the ABC evening news as an example of a sane approach to simple living.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Whether you already own a home or plan to build one, The Independent Home will show you how to transform it into an energy-efficient, comfortable, self-sustainable home of the future-- right now. Michael Potts's home has been featured on the ABC evening news as an example of the sane approach to simple living; he demonstrates how one can live well, save money, save resources, and still retain modern conveniences and comfort. The Independent Home proves that it is not necessary to live in mud-floored huts and cook brown rice over a campfire to go back to the land.

From Publishers Weekly

Potts, who has lived the life he writes about, here explores the promise held out by independent living, made possible by new solar technologies and other alternative methods, for anyone--"urban refugee" or not--who would like to cut the stranglehold of expensive and environmentally hazardous utilities systems on their lives. "In the sweep of history," he writes, "the twentieth-century American house will probably be regarded as a temporary aberration, an embarrassment to enlightened builders and planners" for its "resource-gobbling conveniences," unconscionable "consumerism" and arrogant disregard of nature. This is probably wishful thinking, and all readers will not cotton to the born-againism--and, at times, the extremism--of the contemporary pioneers Potts visits and profiles in pursuit of his creed. Still, the idea of improving life without harm to earth has got to be attractive, and he spares few details in the attempt to persuade. For anyone with thoughts of making a big change, his book will provide a great deal of information, anecdotal charm and--not least--courage.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 300 pages
• Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing Company; 1st edition (October 29, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0930031652
• ISBN-13: 978-0930031657
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,672,519 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A bedtime book not a build it yourself guide., November 1, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Independent Home: Living Well with Power from the Sun, Wind, and Water (Real Goods Independent Living Book) (Paperback)

I found this book very disappointing. I was looking for more of a "How-To" book which would provide answers and ideas for a mountain cabin. Instead I found it to contain warm hearted informtion in the form of short stories. At a minimum this books title should be modified to "The Independant Home - Good Hearted American Stories of Living Well with Power from the Sun, Wind, and Water.

34 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Poorly written feel-good stories of independent living, May 27, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Independent Home: Living Well with Power from the Sun, Wind, and Water (Real Goods Independent Living Book) (Paperback)

As an editor and writer, to me this book is awful. The title is misleading: it provides no idea that this is simply a collection of feel-good stories from people who have succeeded in living independently. For the person wanting to start to live independently, this is NOT the book. Except by accidental gleanings from the stories, there is no comparison of technologies, no systematic analysis of how to go about it. The incomplete and inadequate descriptions of technologies are poorly placed and you wonder why they were placed where they were at all; the applied information could be culled into ten pages or less. There is also a nauseating rash of redneck chest-thumping about why America is so great and why it is losing the "race" to go green, presented in the very way that provides an implicit answer: America is great because it is full of greedy, competitive, small-minded, insular, arrogant people built to exploit the country's natural resources - the very ones that (most of) these people - including me - would like to get away from. This is off-set by some (again, accidental) very brief and quiet mention of the usefulness of non-American technologies. I expected more from this book, especially given the reviews it has received already. Much like the authors approach to his own building, the book may be euphemistically called `organic'; otherwise, it may be called just wasteful, inefficient, and poorly focused.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars This was a disapointment., March 3, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Independent Home: Living Well with Power from the Sun, Wind, and Water (Real Goods Independent Living Book) (Paperback)

I was looking for a book on technical data for energy independent sytems, how they hooked up to your house, how it interacted with the existing power company system etc. This book has more opinion in it than information. I only read the first three chapters so far but the construction of all the chapters seem to be the same. It starts out with someone's story where they put down the power companies and insert a lot of "save the Earth" jargon. Most of the chapters consist of this type of rhetoric and at the very end of the chapter there is some useful information about a certain system, PV,wind, etc. I was also disappointed to find out that this book was copyrighted in 1993. The field of PV has taken leaps and bounds since this book was published. There is some useful information in this book but in my opinion, it could have been condensed into a short concise booklet of about 45 pages.