Reddit mentions: The best sustainability & green design books

You're welcome. It seemed that my own choices/experience lined up with the kind of place you were already picturing.

There is other stuff too -- but most of that is more in the form of "generic" home buying advice (i.e. make certain you get a REALLY GOOD home inspection done before signing, ideally you should be there WITH the guy as he inspects the place).

And in addition to the basics of "inspection" {blatant of big existing problems} you also want to checking for {and at least know about} things like what construction/material choices went into the place {watch out for particle board [bad] or OSB/chipboard [not so great] or plywood [better] or actual boards [best]; and look for PVC/CPVC [acceptable] or copper [best] supply line plumbing rather than Galvanized [bad] or blue Polybutylene [BAD] or even PEX [trendy/debtable], etc -- Cf http://plumbing.about.com/od/basics/tp/Types-Of-Pipe.htm -- Oh and note that copper has other advantages {antimicrobial, etc} that often aren't talked about, and that the other types of pipe lack; plus while PEX is "fast" and cheap to install, it's durability over decades is questionable {tends to get brittle is exposed to UV -- and not all vendors properly store their PEX out of sunlight -- tubing installed might work fine for 10 years, then become brittle and something triggers a break and suddenly start flooding the walls, and unlike copper, "patching" a section of pipe isn't really possible}).

Or other things like making certain the house ISN'T in some recently land-filled or the low-lying area (not just some "flood plain", but you want to avoid too much settling or shifting, not to mention seasonal "muck") -- ideally you should rather want the house itself to be located up a bit higher than much of the surrounding land, enough so that natural drainage will prevent "wet/damp basement" problems, and so on.

Also... especially if you're looking for exurban/rural "country" home & land... make certain you learn a bit about private wells, and private septic systems. Both so that you know what "inspections" should be done, as well as how to "live with" a small residential septic system -- people moving out from cities where they are used to city water/sewer, tend to NOT understand that a private well and private septic are DIFFERENT critters; for example, you don't use the toilet as a "garbage disposal" the way many city folk use their sewer system (at least not unless you want to have to rip out and replace your entire septic leech bed). Think about picking up one of the following (or similar):

• http://www.amazon.com/Septic-System-Owners-Manual/dp/0936070404/
  
  
• http://www.amazon.com/Country-Plumbing-Living-Septic-System/dp/0911469346/
  
  
• http://www.amazon.com/Septic-Systems-Slickers-Nancy-Martin/dp/0992367700/
  
  I'd do some additional reading (books or online) about building -- even if you're planning on buying something already existing rather than building your own place -- but keep in mind that a LOT of crap is focused on what is "trendy" and aesthetically appealing (i.e. resale "value" and/or spec home crap designed to get WOMEN to "fall in love" with "dream homes" and etc) rather than solid advice on livability/durability. Plus of course, most everything in the industry is aimed at "families" rather than single people (especially single MEN).. who are considered an unimportant/irrelevant and trivial market niche.

They grow banana trees and other tropical fruits inside the earthships in Taos, New Mexico. I'm not sure what climate zone that is, but it does get below zero in the winter. The design of the house keeps it 70 degrees inside all winter without heating. You can build an earth sheltered greenhouse in such a way that the surrounding mass of earth absorbs heat during the summer months and releases heat during the winter. It is possible to maintain pretty much whatever temperature you desire by adjusting the average annual temperature inside the greenhouse through venting or earth tubes.

Check out John Hait's book "Passive Annual Heat Storage," he does a really good job of explaining the science behind the concept, and how to build it without making some key mistakes. Here's a link to the book on Amazon:
http://amzn.com/0615905889

It is also possible to use earthworks as "sun traps." Think of a large U shaped berm, maybe 20 feet tall, oriented so the U opens towards the sun/south and with heat absorbing materials around the inside. Large boulders work great for absorbing heat, you can even build a rock wall to reflect light/heat toward the center of the U. In front of the berm you can build a pond to reflect light/heat into the U. All of these elements combine to create a micro-climate in the center of the U that is much warmer than the surrounding environment. I recently went to Paul Wheaton's land, where he is building something like this in hopes of being able to grow a lemon tree in Montana. Sepp Holzer has been growing citrus at high altitude in the Alps for years using these methods.

Another variation is the crater garden, which is exactly that, a large below grade garden in a crater like hole. The humidity from the plants inside the crater raises the temperature of the air, creating a warmer miocro-climate.

None of these authors would probably call themselves modern communists but I do view them as such. Some of the material here goes into great depth to outline a possible post-scarcity scenario while some stay on the surface but are non the less a great read and great thinking exercices about a possible future.

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Peter Joseph - The New Human Rights Movement: Realizing a New Train of Thought

https://www.amazon.com/New-Human-Rights-Movement-Reinventing-ebook/dp/B01M3NWW48/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1550425640&sr=8-1&keywords=peter+joseph+the+new+human+rights+movement

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Jacque Fresco - The Best That Money Can't Buy

https://www.amazon.com/Best-That-Money-Cant-Buy-ebook/dp/B0773TB3GX/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1550425758&sr=8-2&keywords=jacque+fresco

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Buckminster Fuller - Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth

https://www.amazon.com/Operating-Manual-Spaceship-Buckminster-Fuller-ebook-dp-B010R3HVOW/dp/B010R3HVOW/ref=mt_kindle?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=1550425647

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Jeremy Rifkin - The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World

https://www.amazon.com/Third-Industrial-Revolution-Lateral-Transforming-ebook/dp/B005BOQBGW/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1550426107&sr=8-1

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Peter Diamandis - Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think

https://www.amazon.com/Abundance-Future-Better-Than-Think-ebook/dp/B005FLOGMM/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1550426273&sr=8-1

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Ray Kurzweil - The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Trenscend Biology

https://www.amazon.com/Singularity-Near-Humans-Transcend-Biology-ebook-dp-B000QCSA7C/dp/B000QCSA7C/ref=mt_kindle?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=

I've been a fan of solar for decades, it's free energy that just falls on everything we own. It's almost literally like cash raining from the sky, and we mostly just sweep it up and throw it in the trash without using it. A square meter can have just over a thousand Watts of energy falling onto it under really good conditions, and even up here away from the equator it's pretty easy to catch 500-700 Watts with a square meter of PV. Solar water heating is even more cost-effective, and in fact, before the advent of natural gas pipeline distribution systems solar water heating was very popular and growing quickly.

Lots of info in this well-researched book:

https://www.amazon.com/Let-Shine-000-Year-Story-Energy-ebook/dp/B00E512102/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1522290009&sr=8-1&keywords=let+it+shine+history+of+solar+power

Did you know people were using solar heating principles four thousand years ago? If I were to recommend just one book on the subject of solar energy, I'd recommend this one.

I'm really not sure of that answer. My experience is all with industrial materials, so I can't say for sure what the best alternatives would be now. I'm not sure that w/7-9 billion people that we can simply go back doing what we used to. Something like an American Indian longhouse is not very durable, but it can be easily maintained w/local materials.

Here's a list of the oldest buildings in America. This could be quite helpful:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_oldest_buildings_in_the_United_States

I can guess based on what worked before industrial times. We used solid masonry walls and cob and thatch very successfully for a long time. Natural stone works also.

I said it earlier, but I recommend reading this book for ideas:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Natural-Building-Construction/dp/0865714339

Before capitalism/industrial revolution, we weren't building to make money -- we built things that worked the best. I feel like we either built to last, or we built things that could be easily maintained w/local materials.

The problem we have now is that nothing is built to last, and we have no local materials to maintain our buildings.

>However the reality is the evidence has shown you people just won't do that - and after 25-30 years you need to accept the way our society is set up; which means your 'solution' isn't.

I really don't understand how you're concluding this? There are countless examples of developed cities that rank very high on liveability and quality of life measures that environmentally outperform Australian cities by a long, long way. Australia has one of the worst carbon footprints per capita, primarily because of the way we structure our cities. Strategic approach to cities do evolve and many cities have adopted a compact growth approach to great success.

>And hence why you have accept that people require space, and that it IS perfectly possible to do that within the behaviours of our society

That's the thing though. By using all of our space for private homes we sacrifice shared spaces like parks, pedestrian boulevards, recreation facilities and wilderness/conservation areas. By developing up you can free up a huge amount of space that's available to all of the community (not fenced off to private homes).

You're equating quality of life with the internal size of a house which I strongly disagree with, and modern subdivisions don't even include large backyards anymore. There are so many trade-offs that are made when you subdivide land for detached homes that outweigh the extra size of people's wardrobes or an extra bedroom that isn't occupied.

There's a wealth of material on the subject. I studied urban planning and have been working in the industry for years so I've spent some time researching it. I'd recommend David Owen's Green Metropolis as a good entry read on the subject.

I've removed this thread as this is all pretty broad, easy to find, hard to answer in a comment, or covered here plenty of times before.

> What loop/sample sites offer free samples/loops

You can find this with search

> What is the best way to fill in the buildup?

Listen to tracks you like and do what they do

> Anything to take into account with vocoders and vocaloids?

Learn how they work and where vocals sit in a mix

> Is there anything I should know about mixing&plastering as well?

There are entire books about this, such as this and this and this ;)

You're welcome to post all of these in our regular "there are no stupid questions" threads; there should be a new one today. Best of luck and don't be afraid to research and just try things!

I'm buying my 40 acres in the San Luis valley (Colorado Rocky Mountains). Super dry, super cold in winter but my plan would work in your region too. We're working in the oil fields from February until June to be able to afford supplies, well and PV system.

June we move onto the land for summer to live in a yurt while we begin excavation on our earth home. It'll be a bit earth ship, some straw, some cobb and a bunch of windows. Read as much as you can, $500 in books will save you thousands later. The design I've settled on is a hybrid design but mostly based on passive annual heat storage. http://www.motherearthnews.com/renewable-energy/passive-annual-heat-storage-zmaz85zsie.aspx#axzz3IF3b3PD6

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0615905889/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1417051788&sr=1-1&pi=AC_SY200_QL40

This book is a must but Google cord wood building, straw bale building, cobb building, earth homes, underground greenhouses, rainwater harvesting, permaculture and anything else you can get your hands on to read. I've been buying a book every pay day for the last year and am quite proud of my natural building library I've collected and as a result I have a very specific plan custom tailored to my property and lifestyle.

https://www.amazon.com/Hempcrete-Book-Designing-Hemp-Lime-Sustainable/dp/0857841203/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1466731405&sr=8-1&keywords=building+with+hemp+lime

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoYIBdzZYWI

"So we have here is a hemp shiv or also called the hurd which is the internal part of the stem of the pant. That’s mixed with a lime based binder, so with that lime based binder and the hemp we’ve got a negative carbon footprint. Now the difference between lime and concrete is that lime you don’t have to heat up as much with concrete you have to heat it up to almost 3,000 degrees which takes a lot of energy and does very poorly on the carbon footprint. Hempcrete actually sequesters carbon, let me tell you how it does that first of all any cellulose material would for example or hemp takes carbon in during its life cycle and usually when it decays it lets it back into the atmosphere. If you take that plant and put it into a wall and for example hempcrete than that carbon is now sequestered in the wall and not becoming part of climate change. This building what I’m building alone will sequester 20,000 lbs of carbon that’s a pretty big accomplishment. I think this is the best wall system in the world. I’m all about hemp I think hemp is an important thing to push because it’s food, fiber, building material, but really i’m choosing this building material because it’s the best in term of buildings styles. Why is this true? First of all because this is a breathable wall system. I don’t mean breathable for air we’re actually building an airtight wall, but it’s breathable for water. Why is that an advantage? Well in a typical wall you have a cavity that you seal tightly and you fill with insulation, well, water will get inside that cavity because that’s its job, in the world , our body is 70% water, it can dissolve any material anyway so what we want to do in a building is create a wall that welcomes water but doesn’t rot when it lets the water in and that’s exactly what hempcrete does. When humidity changes in the air outside the wall can take on that extra humidity and hold it until the humidity drops outside then it will let it back out in the meantime because the lime is wrapped around the cellulose the cellulose won’t rot. The lime is trying to go back to being a rock this means that this wall is going to get harder and harder and harder over time it’s going to petrify. So these walls will last for 1,000s of years not 40 years like what we are used to building."

The Handbook of Natural Plant Dyes is the book I use, great photos of dyes and how they will turn out using different mordants. Super useful! (I also did some extensive work figuring out how to get the best blue dye from black beans and blogged about it here.)

I'd amend my above post to say **good** energy analysts take carbon leakage and the like into account. And those analyses still show urban centers as being more environmentally friendly, especially after controlling for income.

Dense cities are much better for the environment than suburbs, and usually quite a bit better than rural areas. https://www.amazon.com/Green-Metropolis-Smaller-Driving-Sustainability/dp/1594484848

I'm currently designing an off-grid home. You're welcome to create an account on community.solar and I'll get you free access to my battery management system course video in exchange for a review. I'll periodically update the class with lessons learned as a result of the design process. I also recommend this book as an introductory to solar design. It's great for handy beginners, but it doesn't go too much into off-grid design. Free for kindle unlimited readers.

So I have not done any green building myself, but I've met a number of people who have. One of them wrote this book which I only browsed through but it is essentially a ground up guide to sustainable building techniques, mostly from an architectural standpoint I believe. There are other books like this that should be incredibly helpful in giving you an idea of what to build.

I am rather a fan of Green Metropolis, and Triumph of the City. These are more written for a general audience rather than people planning to work in the field, but are still worth your time.

I should second the statement of The Atlantic Cities. That is a really great site.

A friend of mine, who is an architect recommended this book to me. When selecting a layout, whether for a home that is to be built, or for a pre-existing structure this will be very helpful. http://www.amazon.com/Whats-Practical-Finding-Designed-Sustainable/dp/0986580015/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1413901215&sr=8-1&keywords=what%27s+wrong+with+this+house

If you want to learn about the basics of environmental engineering, you might try this book: http://www.amazon.com/Environmental-Engineering-Fundamentals-Sustainability-Design/dp/0470165057

My school used this in the intro ENVE class, and while a textbook, it reads pretty smoothly and is broad enough that it doesn't get too technical. This would give you a good overview of the different fields/concentrations within ENVE.

Edit: but again know that it is a textbook (equations and problems etc). I just think the text at the beginning of each chapter would be of interest to you as well as the overall range of topics.

So pretty much the whole array.


I don't know if you're looking for academic books. But these two are what I'd go with. The first provides an overall intro to ENVE Eng with engineering based calculations, but covers all topics.

The second gets more in depth into design work and the theory behind certain equations and what they are used for.

Both together cover all the topics you mentioned. A little pricey, but both are among the books on my shelf.

Book 1

Book 2

Look up cohousing. Especially ones that remodeled existing structures (like N Street Cohousing) rather than building new. Creating Cohousing is a great book to read on it-my local library has a copy, but it's on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/Creating-Cohousing-Building-Sustainable-Communities/dp/0865716722

https://www.amazon.com/LEED-MOCK-EXAMS-Explanations-Certification/dp/1612650198/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1466265945&sr=8-3&keywords=leed+ga+v4

Is a great book to pass.

Green Metropolis - For a good read.

Environmental Justice - For notes from legal cases.

The Environment Equation - For specific steps you can take.

I toured the author's greenhouse in the high mountains of CO. Pretty crazy to see bananas growing in a place that gets many feet of snow in the winter. https://www.amazon.com/Forest-Garden-Greenhouse-Design-Permaculture/dp/1603584269

You need this:

https://www.amazon.com/Septic-System-Owners-Manual/dp/0936070404/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1523974654&sr=8-1&keywords=septic+system+owners+manual&dpID=6161zjPsUoL&preST=_SX218_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch

Here is the desktop version of your link

No, they all have much smaller block sizes and narrower streets. Even though NYC's are fairly long in one dimension, there's s fair number of avenues in NYC that cut their blocks in half, much like the mid block streets I mentioned in SLC.

There's a few interesting books that talk about how the layout of streets affect the development of a city. Green Metropolis specifically talks about NYC and The Death and Life of Great American Cities talks generally about city planning.

Some of what you are saying is correct, bad regulation plays a large role, but the solution is better regulation, not less. It is cheaper for builders to build out instead of up, building out has all of the problems of sprawl without the efficiencies of dense urban centers.

So this is not a problem that free markets can solve on their own, in states/areas with limited zoning/development planning the default is suburban development, it's cheaper.

I think you might also be mixing up styles of development/zoning planning, yes cities like SF have stupid height limits, and barriers on density... but suburban places have just the opposite, so like I said the problem is not regulation and the need for the free market, the problem is bad regulation. No regulation can go either way, yes maybe some dense development, but also the possibility of tenement slums and unsafe conditions, think no fire code, no sanitation requirements etc... or really spread out expensive (an unsafe) if it encroaches on wildlands with fires.

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Check out this book The green metropolis its all about dense urban development and how it is better than what alot of our zoning right now promotes.