(Part 2) Best sustainability & green design books according to redditors

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

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

I am only trained in industrial methods and I have little experience otherwise. However, you can look at traditional methods of how we did things before the industrial age. Mass walls can last a very long time. We used to make stucco by hand to apply to the outside of mass walls and you can see this in old European cities. This technique worked well. There are wood foundations that have lasted for thousands of years.

Here's a great book I flipped through -- I'd highly recommend something like this: http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Natural-Building-Construction/dp/0865714339

There are cob and thatch homes that have been around for centuries. I watched a documentary showing guys working on a thatch home with 700 year old thatch that was still performing well. The problem though is that you have to know what you're doing to maintain a thatch house. You could learn, but the process takes years of practice. I believe in the future, the skills of building with natural materials will again be valuable (local wood, natural stone, mass walls, cob/thatch).

If you are going to build an industrial house, here are things I recommend:

• Use professional products from Sika, BASF, Henry, GE, etc. You will not find these at Home Depot, but will need to go to a specialty contractor store. The best way to find these is to locate your local Sika or BASF rep, and see what other brands they carry.
  
  
• Use silicone instead of urethane. Silicone will last decades longer than urethane.
  
  
• Use roofing materials that are designed to last more than 50 years. A lot of roofing today is total crap, like TPO. TPO is cheap, and it's often the best solution when your goal is to make money.
  
  
• Avoid any engineered products where possible. This means, avoid TJI, LVL, OSB, plywood, pressure treated woods, Tyvek, etc.
  
  
• Look what institutional buildings do. They are typically designing for a 100 year lifespan, so they try to use higher quality materials.
  
  
• If you're using wood sheathing, use plywood instead of OSB. Plywood is much better at staying dry.
  
  
• Use a liquid elastomeric waterproofing rather than building paper or Tyvek. On the concrete foundation wall, always use a very expensive and high quality elastomeric waterproofing. This will bridge cracks and this is the highest level of protection for concrete. Always add drainage and a drainage board to your foundation to keep water off of the concrete
  
  
• Use CMU (called cinder blocks by non-engineers) instead of wood walls. CMU won't rot and you have better resistance to earthquakes & wind.
  
  
• Use naturally rot resistant woods instead of pressure treated woods
  
  
• Do not count on sealant alone to keep water out. You can make details that count on drainage and flashing so that if sealant fails, you'll be ok

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."

I just bought Hacking the earthship and Earthships in Europe, but could not find the time to read them yet. For what I could find, it seems that there is not a large choice of books about earthships, but you can find some more about ecological building.

Housing codes need to take sunlight into effect. The ancient Greeks knew it - why don't we?

https://www.amazon.com/Golden-Thread-Ken-Butti/dp/0714527300

Upcycling is fascinating in that it redefines how we relate to our waste (not quite the same as recycling). The first book that turned me onto the concept was Cradle to Cradle. The same authors more recently published The Upcycle. I'd recommend the first.

Also, shameless plug for /r/circular_economy, which deals with much of the same philosophy on waste and mimicking nature.

https://www.buildingscience.com/document-search?term=&field_doc_topic_tid=All&type%5B%5D=8

https://positiveenergy.pro/building-science-podcast

https://www.energyvanguard.com/

http://www.healthyheating.com/

https://www.amazon.com/Building-Science-Climate-Handegord-Hutcheon/dp/0969436602/ref=sr_1_1?qid=1554986293&refinements=p_27%3A+G.+Hutcheon%5CcNeil+B.%3B+Handegord&s=books&sr=1-1&text=Neil+B.%3B+Handegord%2C+G.+Hutcheon

https://www.buildingscience.com/bookstore/books/high-performance-enclosures

https://www.amazon.com/Passivhaus-Handbook-Constructing-Retrofitting-Performance/dp/0857840193

Source: the book Rainwater Harvesting by Brad Lancaster. This part is in the foreword by Andy Lipkis.