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.




Passive Solar Architecture


Book Description

New buildings can be designed to be solar oriented, naturally heated and cooled, naturally lit and ventilated, and made with renewable, sustainable materials—no matter the location or climate. In this comprehensive overview of passive solar design, two of America’s solar pioneers give homeowners, architects, designers, and builders the keys to successfully harnessing the sun and maximizing climate resources for heating, cooling, ventilation, and daylighting. Bainbridge and Haggard draw upon examples from their own experiences, as well as those of others, of more than three decades to offer both overarching principles as well as the details and formulas needed to successfully design a more comfortable, healthy, and secure place in which to live, laugh, dance, and be comfortable. Even if the power goes off. Passive Solar Architecture also discusses “greener” and more-sustainable building materials and how to use them, and explores the historical roots of green design that have made possible buildings that produce more energy and other resources than they use.




The Permaculture Student 2


Book Description

Representing & collaborating with dozens of experts & organizations from around the world, Matt Powers' latest installment in his series of curriculum takes permaculture to a new level & organizes all regenerative techniques & methodologies into one clear, understandable system that also serves as a path to deeper study. The Permaculture Student 2 - Why is it better than what's available? New Research & Collaboration Up-to-date - the last time a book covered anything close to this breadth was 1989 (Permaculture: A Designer's Manual) & the advancements in science have been incredible in the last 28 years - this book reflects those new insights, research, and examples Over 20 expert reviewers and editors: Dr. Elaine Ingham, Darren Doherty, Peter McCoy, Joel Salatin, John D. Liu, Dr. Willie Smits, Geoff Lawton, Larry Korn, & more Fully annotated with references to guide and direct further studies The Permaculture Student 2 covers more material than other books and part: Soil in-depth with Dr. Elaine Ingham, Fungi cultivation and partnerships, Keyline Design, Transportation, Urban Permaculture, Large-Scale Land & Ocean Restoration, Non-Violent Communication, Holacracy, Carbon Sequestration, & much, much more Written by an experienced professional educator, gardening expert, and curriculum expert Written for a High School Setting - Easy to Understand & Read Aligns & transcends state and national science standards as a full-year science elective in both a high school and college setting Holistic yet Iterative- Understand Permaculture like never before: retain information in an organized format designed for better retention Unifying all regenerative practices into one organized system Designed to change the world by teaching young adults permaculture while still in high school and college, The Permaculture Student 2, is a book for everyone - for a brighter future for all. This book is full of photographs of real-life examples, instructive diagrams, engaging illustrations, inspiring and instructive quotes, and current references that connect, organize, and highlight the current leading examples of applied permaculture in numerous fields and situations. Readers get a clear idea of how they can apply permaculture in their own way in their own lives. This book is designed for both hemispheres, both imperial and metric, all climates, and all peoples. It is for a regenerative, abundant, and hopeful future.




A Guide to Residential Wood Heating


Book Description

This publication is intended to help plan a successful installation of a wood-burning heating system and to use the system in the most safe and effective way. Topics covered include: low-emission wood burning technology; wood heating options, including space heaters, wood stoves, conventional and high-efficiency fireplaces, pellet stoves, high thermal mass masonry heaters, and central heating; planning a space heater installation; installation safety; installation of wood stoves and flue pipes; chimneys; avoiding wood smoke spillage; efficient wood combustion; purchasing and preparing the wood supply; calculating costs of heating; and heating system maintenance.




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




The Solar House


Book Description

While heat from sunlight and ventilation from breezes is free for the taking, few modern architects or builders really understand the principles involved. Yet "natural conditioning"--Heating and cooling with passive solar techniques -- is a viable alternative to fossil fuels. Acknowledging the good intentions of misguided solar designers in the past, the author highlights certain egregious errors and shows how to avoid them. The author shows how to select a cost-effective, energy-efficient, and environmentally friendly backup heating system; how to preserve indoor air quality in an airtight, energy-efficient home; and ways of employing green building materials in a naturally conditioned home.







Geothermal Heat Pumps


Book Description

Geothermal Heat Pumps is the most comprehensive guide to the selection, design and installation of geothermal heat pumps available. This leading manual presents the most recent information and market developments in order to put any installer, engineer or architect in the position to design, select and install a domestic geothermal heat pump system. Internationally respected expert Karl Ochsner presents the reasons to use heat pumps, introduces basic theory and reviews the wide variety of available heat pump models.







Wood Heat


Book Description

Using the latest technologies to stay warm safely, cleanly and efficiently. Wood Heat is a comprehensive and practical homeowner's guide to using wood as a reliable source of heat with the latest wood stoves and traditional fireplaces. The book explores the efficiency of wood compared to other fuels, the environmental impacts of various fuel types as well as sustainability issues that have led to so many adopting a wood-burning lifestyle. Heating with wood does more than keep a house warm. Though it can be a hands-on expression of self-reliance, it does bring us closer to the land by using fuel that is renewable and sustainably harvested, and renews our wonder in the cycle of the seasons. And the biggest benefit is that wood heat saves money in the long run. There are four ways that wood can be used to heat a home or cottage: wood stoves (the most popular), fireplace inserts, pellet stoves and masonry heaters. Wood Heat explains the pros and cons of each. The book provides all of the information and advice needed to convert to a wood-heated life. How-to topics include step by step directions. They include: The comparative advantages of heating with wood Buying, cutting, splitting, stacking, storing and moving firewood Building the perfect woodpile Varieties of wood and their burning characteristics The latest technology for burning wood efficiently and cleanly Energy content of wood varieties per air-dried cord (BTUs) Catalytic and non-catalytic stoves Cooking with a wood stove How to make a good fire Essential hearth and fireplace tools Sizing wood-burning appliances A chimney maintenance checklist. Currently, over 10 million U.S. households use wood as their main heating fuel or to supplement other forms of heating. Unstable, increasing fuel costs and the desire of many people to move toward self-sufficiency will only increase the numbers of those choosing to burn wood for heat. Wood Heat is the ideal guide for all.