Most Popular Green Home Building Books
I sell a lot of books on my Web site Greenhomebuilding.com, mostly as affiliate links through Amazon.com. Recently, my wife, who happens to be a former librarian, did a search through our sales records of the last four years and discovered some interesting trends. Our top seller was 'Earthbag Building: The Tools, Tricks and Techniques.'
Close behind this book is 'The Hand-Sculpted House: A Practical and Philosophical Guide to Building a Cob Cottage.' Actually, books about building with cob are very popular, with two others showing up in the top 11 best sellers: 'Building With Cob: A Step-by-step Guide' and 'The Cob Builders Handbook: You Can Hand-Sculpt Your Own Home. This makes cob building the single most popular topic!'
Green building
General books about green building are also very popular, with 'Building Green: A Complete How-To Guide to Alternative Building Methods' selling about five copies each month. 'The New Ecological Home: A Complete Guide to Green Building Options' and 'The Good House Book: A Common-Sense Guide to Alternative Homebuilding' were also in the top 15 best sellers.
Underground earth-shelters
Two books about underground and earth-sheltered construction made the top 25:
'Earth-Sheltered Houses: How to Build an Affordable Underground House'
'The Fifty Dollar and Up Underground House Book'
Actually the first of these is more about cordwood building, so if you combine this with 'Cordwood Building: The State of the Art,' author Rob Roy has two titles among the top seven best sellers.
'The Stone builder's Primer: A Step-By-Step Guide for Owner-Builders ,' 'The Solar House: Passive Heating and Cooling, and Earthship: How to Build Your Own,' Vol. 1 all made the top 10 list, selling about three each month. Then, if you add to this 'The Tire House Book,' which was also among the top 25, it is obvious that building with tires is a popular concept.
Adobe and earth building
There were three books on the top 25 list about adobe and rammed earth building: 'Adobe: Build It Yourself, The Owner-Built Adobe House,' and 'The Rammed Earth House: Revised Edition.' This makes methods of using earth for construction extremely popular.
Strawable building
Strawbale building also had three titles in the top 25:
'Small Strawbale: Natural Homes, Projects & Designs,'
'More Straw Bale Building: A Complete Guide to Designing and Building with Straw'
'Serious Straw Bale: A Home Construction Guide for All Climates.'
Considering how popular strawbale building has become in the last decade this is not surprising.
Root cellars
There are two books about storing food in root cellars that made the top 25 list:
'Root Cellaring: Natural Cold Storage of Fruits & Vegetables'
'Build Your Own underground Root Cellar'
Personal favorites
One of my favorite books, 'Home Work: Handbuilt Shelter,' a book published by Lloyd Kahn which features the earthbag/papercrete house I built in Colorado, along with many others, made the top 25 list.
The final book on the list is 'Ceramic Houses and Earth Architecture: How to Build Your Own.' The book was written over a decade ago by Nader Khalili of earthbag building fame.
For me, it is gratifying to see the popularity of all of these books, and many others that didn't quite make the list, that feature different aspects of natural building and sustainable architecture. It bodes well for the future.
Another encouraging trend I noticed while I was doing my annual update of books at Greenhomebuilding.com is the acknowledgement of global warming and the need to address the problem. In fact I counted at least 42 titles published in 2008 that are positive and only six that are negative. Two years ago this division was about 50/50, with most of the nay-sayers being funded by corporate interests. The times they are a-changing!
Kelly Hart is the producer of GreenHomebuilding.com and DreamGreenhomes.com.
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