Natural Home Heating


Book Description

"Natural Home Heating" is the first comprehensive guide to heating your home with renewable energy sources. Greg Pahl offers a well-organized, easy-to-understand tour of all available home-heating options, including traditional oil and gas furnaces, wood stoves and masonry heaters, active and passive solar systems, and heat pumps. Included is everything you need to know about the fuels, systems, technologies, costs, and advantages and disadvantages of each option. Pahl teaches homeowners how to retrofit existing heating systems and choose renewable replacements, or design an entirely new house that can be heated comfortably with minimal environmental and financial impact. Consider: - 95% of American homes are heated with fossil fuels. - Oil and gas prices are up by more than 20% as supplies dwindle and sources become less reliable. - Home heating costs could double or even triple in the event of a fuel crisis. - The fossil fuel economy is unsustainable. - There are viable, clean, healthy, and afford able home heating alternatives! Learn how to burn environmentally friendly bio-diesel fuels, not just in your car, but in your furnace. Find out how a ground-source heat pump works and why it can achieve 400% heating efficiency. Discover what it takes to make burning wood truly sustainable. Natural Home Heating explains all these details and more, making it unique in the marketplace.







Solar Home Heating Basics


Book Description

As fossil fuel supplies dwindle, home heating will be one of the major challenges in temperate and cold climates in upcoming years. The reserves of natural gas used to heat the majority of North American buildings are rapidly being depleted. This latest Green Energy Guide helps readers who want to slash their energy bills and reduce their dependence on scarce resources to navigate the sometimes confusing maze of clean, reliable, and affordable options. Solar Home Heating Basics focuses on renewable energy strategies to heat new and existing homes and small businesses. These include: *Energy efficiency, weatherization, and insulation *Solar hot air heating *Solar thermal systems *Passive solar heating *Backup heating systems While most solar home heating resources are geared primarily towards new buildings, this practical guide addresses ways of retrofitting existing buildings, making solar a reality for many people. Packed with all the essential information home and small business owners need to find alternatives to conventional heating solutions, Solar Home Heating Basics is your key to a personal energy solution. Dan Chiras is a respected educator and the author of thirty books on residential renewable energy and green building, including The Homeowner's Guide to Renewable Energy and Power from the Sun. Dan is the director and lead instructor at the Evergreen Institute's Center for Renewable Energy and Green Building, where he teaches workshops on energy efficiency, solar electricity, solar hot water, small wind energy, green building, natural plasters, and natural building.




Electricity for Refrigeration, Heating, and Air Conditioning


Book Description

ELECTRICITY FOR REFRIGERATION, HEATING, AND AIR CONDITIONING, International Edition is the ideal book for students and beginning technicians. It provides readers with the basic electrical principles necessary to understand today's modern control systems. The practical approach taken in this book allows readers to focus exclusively on the electronics information they will use in the field, without bogging them down in unnecessary theory. ELECTRICITY FOR REFRIGERATION, HEATING, AND AIR CONDITIONING, International Edition places an emphasis on developing systematic diagnosis and troubleshooting methods and procedures that will enable readers to become highly-skilled, professional HVAC-R service technicians. A comprehensive glossary is also included to assist those who are new to the field in understanding and using industry terms.







Combined Heat and Power


Book Description

Combined Heat and Power Generation is a concise, up-to-date and accessible guide to the combined delivery of heat and power to anything, from a single home to a municipal power plant. Breeze discusses the historical background for CHP and why it is set to be a key emission control strategy for the 21st Century. Various technologies such as piston engines, gas turbines and fuel cells are discussed. Economic and environmental factors also are considered and analyzed, making this a very valuable resource for those involved with the research, design, implementation and management of the provision of heat and power. - Discusses the historical background of combined heat and power usage and why CHP is seen as a key emission control strategy for the 21st Century - Explores the technological aspects of CHP in a clear and concise style and delves into various key technologies, such as piston engines, steam and gas turbines and fuel cells - Evaluates the economic factors of CHP and the installation of generation systems, along with energy conversion efficiencies




Microshelters


Book Description

If you dream of living in a tiny house, or creating a getaway in the backwoods or your backyard, you’ll love this gorgeous collection of creative and inspiring ideas for tiny houses, cabins, forts, studios, and other microshelters. Created by a wide array of builders and designers around the United States and beyond, these 59 unique and innovative structures show you the limits of what is possible. Each is displayed in full-color photographs accompanied by commentary by the author. In addition, Diedricksen includes six sets of building plans by leading designers to help you get started on a microshelter of your own. You’ll also find guidelines on building with recycled and salvaged materials, plus techniques for making your small space comfortable and easy to inhabit.