I’ve been doing a lot of work in the MetaEfficient lab. I thought I would post an update on my experiments and research:

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In his book, How To Live Well Without Owning A Car author Chris Balish exposes the true costs of car ownership, and shows how car-free living can put anyone on the path to financial freedom. Take a look at the book’s car cost worksheet, and see how much owning a car really costs — you’ll be surprised. Then, see how easy it is to transition to a car-free or car-lite lifestyle using Chris’s strategies for commuting, running errands, taking trips, dating, socializing, and more. Without car payments, rising gas prices, and traffic jams to worry about, you’ll have more money and leisure time to spend as you choose.

See also our review of the Carfree Cities book.

Available from Amazon.

This book, Human Wildlife, is an interesting survey of the fungi, yeasts, bacteria, worms and other creatures that inhabit the human body. Though sometimes hard to read, it’s certainly illuminating to know about the symbiotic relationships that the human body entertains, and well as the more parasitic ones.

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As the Small House Society points out, compact homes are efficient in many ways: they require less power, they require less maintenance, they require less materials to build, and they have smaller environmental footprint. Another advantage is that you can invest in land, rather than spend money building a huge home.

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In Off the Grid Homes, architect Lori Ryker, examines a number of modern homes that are “off grid” — meaning they are self-sustaining in regards to electrical power and water use. Looking at each home, she highlights the techniques that were used to generate power and conserve it.

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Solar Water Heating is the first book I’ve seen that focuses solely on solar water heating. It’s a technique that’s been practiced since ancient times, but until now there’s been strangely few resources on the topic for a North American audience. The author, Bob Ramlow, examines state-of-the-art solar heating systems. He covers not only solar water heaters, but also solar water and space house heating systems and solar pool heating systems, including their advantages and disadvantages. Since people often get turned off by the up-front cost, the book focuses especially on the financial aspects of solar water or space heating systems, and shows that such systems can save significant costs in the long run.

It’s available from Amazon for $16.47.

This new book by Jennifer Roberts is a detailed and well-photographed guide to remodeling your kitchen using green techniques. Roberts examines green kitchen building materials in depth, and brief surveys water and energy efficiency in the kitchen. The book has over 150 color photographs, and includes case studies of some great looking green kitchens. The strength of this book is attention the author pays to weighing up the materials that go into a kitchen renovation. Each countertop material, for example, gets a full page discussion on it’s composition, manufacture and durability. I haven’t come across a more through examination of materials, with especially with an eye to their green attributes.

Available from Amazon for $19.77

Interested in knowing where you can find places free of cars? There’s an extensive list of carfree places around the world, available now on the Wikipedia. There’s also a book about Carfree Citites available. Here’s our review:

Imagine life in a city free from the noise, stench, and danger of cars, trucks, and buses. Imagine that all basic needs, from groceries to child care, lie within a five-minute walk of every doorstep. Imagine that no commute takes more than 35 minutes from door to door, and that service is provided by a fast, cheap, safe, comfortable public transport system. This is the future that J.H. Crawford envisions in Carfree Cities.

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Weed ‘Em and Reap is a light-hearted but informative introduction to the free bounty of wild foods in lawns and woods, prairies and pastures. Even if you have no intentions of brewing up a crock of dandelion wine or tossing a salad of sour dock and purslane, you will enjoy reading Roger Welsch’s adventures in the world of weeds. We’re betting it won’t be long before you will be watching roadsides and byways for your own secret trove of morel mushrooms, wild asparagus, or elderberries.

Available from Amazon for about $10.

Chile peppers contain one of the most effective curative substances in the world — capsaicin. While many people enjoy eating hot and spicy food they are not aware of the therapeutic properties of chile peppers. The authors of The Healing Powers of Peppers present a wealth of scientific and medical information, including personal testimonies about the healthful advantages of chile pepper living. They show that many cultures have known about pepper power for quite some time and catalog dozens of medicinal recipes. The book is available from Amazon for $10.50

This practical book is the first step-by-step green building guide we’ve seen. It is packed with photographs illustrating building techniques like Earth Plastering, Straw Bale Construction, Living Roofs, Cordwood Building and Cob Building. At over 600 pages, this hefty guide is useful for anyone wanting to see the nitty-gritty details of green building. The author’s web site is Think Building Green. Available from Amazon.

You can make household and personal care products at home. The mixtures you create will be healthier and of a higher quality than those found in stores. Once you have the right ingredients, mixing them up is quite straightforward. The book, Better Basics for the Home, offers more than 800 simple alternatives to toxic household products, covering everything from skin care to gardening.

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People often think of using solar energy for producing electricity, but it is actually easier to harness the power of the sun to heat your home. It’s free heat that has been utilized since ancient times but few modern architects or builders really understand the principles involved. The Solar House, by Dan Chiras, explains architectural techniques that can be incorporated into a house to capture heat and store it. The techniques use ordinary building materials and work in both cold and warm climates. They add little expense to the overall cost of a home. See more about this book on the author’s web site. See also Passive Solar Home, which is another book that explains solar heating.

Available from Amazon for $19.77

Earth sheltered houses make use of earth or “berms” for protection against the natural elements.

These homes can be complete underground homes, or homes which are protected by earth on just one side. The major advantage of this style of building is that the house has a constant and comfortable temperature throughout the year, so it is much less expensive to heat and cool. They are also much more resistant to weather and natural disasters. Here is a list of 25 advantages of earth sheltered houses.

Malcolm Wells, the author of “The Earth-Shelted House”, runs a web site with a lot of information on underground building.

BuildingGreen has recently released the GreenSpec Directory of environmentally preferable building products and materials. It includes more than 1,850 listings that designers, builders and building owners can use in identifying products to improve the environmental performance of their buildings.

This increased availability of a diverse range of such products and building materials is helping architects and engineers to take green design to the next level.

You can read a sample chapter here.

More information: Greenspec Directory

Who would have thought sprawl could be so entertaining?

I guess its the combination of Dolores Hayden’s extensive collection of sprawl coinages and the aerial photography by Jim Wark that makes this book an intriguing coffetable read.

By glancing through the pages you see examples of curious sprawl phenomena such as “Pork Chop Lots”, “Boomburb”, “LULUs” and “Clustered Worlds”.

This book offers a perspective on the U.S. landscape that I have not seen before, even while flying over cities. The photographer Jim Wark has obviously done extensive low-level flights to capture these images.

Available from: Amazon ($15.72)

Greg Pahl has just released a new book about Biodiesel. Pahl is the author of the informative book Natural Home Heating, which we featured previously.

We like biodiesel because it a renewable fuel that can replace conventional diesel worldwide without the need for massive infrastructure change.

Here is a review of the book:

After setting the tone for the book by bringing to light the potential crisis of Peak Oil, Pahl begins to delve into part of the solution as he leads the reader on a great story ride through the life of Rudolf Diesel, to the early pioneers of biodiesel across the European eco-industrial landscape and back to the present day biodiesel industry currently emerging in the U.S. The book is full of personal interviews with key players that brings this rapidly evolving world of agriculture, science and alternative energy to life. Greg Pahl does an excellent job of providing a balanced look at both the possibilities and the social and environmental challenges of drawing increasing amounts of energy from the soil.

Available from: Amazon.

Many people are reluctant to plant bamboo because they are afraid it will spread like wildfire and have the entire neighborhood up in arms against them. But there’s a simple solution to this problem — plant the right kind of bamboo — the “clumping” kind. The invasive kind is the “running” bamboo which probably should never touch foot in your garden.

Victor Cusak is an Australian expert in clumping bamboo, he is the author of Bamboo World, a book which explores some of the 1500 different species of bamboo in the world. He says:

The problem is that many countries, Australia amongst them, have inherited these originally northern Asian, cold-climate, monpodial bamboo species from European settlers who didn’t know the existence of the clumping species. The spreading habit of running bamboo has caused a strong prejudice to develop against all bamboos.

Cusak explains, with obviously enthusiasm, which clumping bamboos can be grown in cold climates, which bamboos are great for eating, and which species produce great windbreaks or “walls”. Bamboo World has many photographs of unusual, colorful species such as black bamboos and striped bamboos.

Available from: Amazon

Natural Capitalism is a book which dicusses similar ideas to those we present here at MetaEfficient.

Written by Paul Hawken and Amory and Hunter Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute, the book starts off by explaining the authors’ theory of “natural capitalism”, but then it really picks up and provides a fascinating and well-referenced examination of the vast inefficiences of our current modes of manufacturing and farming.

The authors explain that the reason why more efficient techniques have not been adopted is because of high initial costs, lack of knowledge of alternatives and entrenched ways of thinking. However, they point out that even small improvements in efficiency creates a compounding beneficial effect and improves the way a society functions overall.

Available from: Amazon

Straw bales are a renewable resource, and they are becoming a widely used construction material in some parts of the U.S. Many localities have specific codes for strawbale construction, and some banks are willing to lend on this technique. Bale walls can be erected quickly, even by amatuer builders.

This book, The Beauty of Straw Bale Homes, is lavishly illustrated, and shows that straw bale houses can take on a large variety of forms, including very modern looking interiors or traditional, rustic styles.

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