Customer Reviews

Building Green: A Complete How-To Guide to Alternative Building Methods Earth Plaster * Straw Bale * Cordwood * Cob * Living Roofs

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is big and heavy. It's packed with colour photos and diagrams showing lots of construction details in a step by step fashion. Very thorough. Although all of the green techniques are studied and explained in depth, the main focus of the book is on the construction of a tiny guest house with four walls made of straw, cob, cordwood and modified stick frame and topped off with a living roof. If you want to build a home with one of these materials you'd want to obtain some more in depth reading material specific to you technique of choice.

This could easily have been two book actually: a how-to guide for building a little cottage and another explaining the methods and drawing comparisons. The authors even manage to cover details that aren't required for the demo cottage, like load bearing straw bale. They touch on passive solar as well which is great. Clearly the demo cottage was built for a moderate climate.

The illustrations and photos make this massive volume a refreshing change from all the other excellent reference books out there that lack decent photos and illustrations. It's an excellent book, even if you're just looking for something to thumb through.

This book's strength is that it goes step by step into building a small cottage with alternative building methods, which allows the reader to really understand how it's done. I was really pleased with how many pictures were included in this book, including pictures of other green constructions and alternatives.