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Home & Interior Design books:
The Home Energy Diet: How to Save Money by Making Your House Energy-Smart (Mother Earth News Wiser Living Series)

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With rising energy costs, homeowners are beginning to examine the energy efficiency of their own homes, asking questions about where energy comes from and how much it costs, how to choose new appliances and what options exist for renewable energy.

The Home Energy Diet answers all these questions and more while helping readers take control of their personal energy use and costs so they can save money, live more comfortably and help the environment. Energy auditor Paul Scheckel first explores energy literacy, and then describes how your home uses-and loses-energy you pay for via:

Electricity
Hot water
Heating and air conditioning
Windows, walls and insulation

The Home Energy Diet involves readers in learning about their own homes by: measuring, metering, investigating and considering habits related to household energy use; learning how to quantify energy consumption and cost and making informed decisions about cost-effective improvements and upgrades. The book explores the misunderstood concept of efficiency versus cost by comparing fuel costs and equipment choices, including the possibility of using renewable energy for meeting home energy needs. This authoritative guide makes efficiency fun through personal anecdotes and humorous "tales-from-the-basement" energy misadventures.

Since energy efficiency is an investment that offers returns greater than Wall Street, readers can earn several hundred dollars every year just by following the advice in this book. As a bonus, many of the energy-saving strategies described can make for improved indoor air quality and healthier, more comfortable homes.

Paul Scheckel is an energy auditor who has visited thousands of homes, educating people about energy efficiency, cost-effective improvements and indoor air quality. With a passion for efficiency and renewables, he walks the talk by living in a solar-powered house and driving a car powered by vegetable oil in his home state of Vermont.

Consider "Insulate and Weatherize" Instead -
Consider starting with "Insulate and Weatherize: Expert Advice from Start to Finish" by Bruce Harley instead which is a more practical "Go Do It" book with lots of photographs.

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The Home Energy Diet -
A thorough review of everything you can do to save money and make your home energy efficient. Helpful photos, illustrations and charts. Good resource for understanding and maintaining major systems of a house such as heating and cooling, electric and appliances.

More than just an overview of ideas. -
This is the best book I've read on the subject of improving household energy efficiency. Many of the books I've read in the past go through the basic things that homeowners can do to improve efficience, but this book explains the hows AND the whys.

The book surprised me when I first started reading it. I expected another "easy reader" on the subject. I was pleasantly surprised to find detailed explanations on why things should be done, situations where a particular improvement may not be the best, and how to approach the many different systems in a house - air heating and cooling, envelope, insulation, water heating, ventilation, etc. It was also refreshing to find different ways of examining the same system - for example, amount of fuel used for different heating systems, amount of heat generated for a particular type of fuel, and all the relationships between them.

As you start reading, you will find a lot of sidebars and short stories to highlight the discussion in the chapter. One thing I found slightly annoying is the number of Math Boxes that interrupt the flow of the book early on. These are sidebars that present sample calculations for the various topics, e.g. efficiency, fuel used for different heating systems, etc. I'd prefer the Math Boxes to be contained in an appendix with references in the main body of the book, but that's just me. Other readers may not find this annoying, and it's certainly not enough for me to reduce my rating of the book.

I highly recommend this book if you are serious about exploring ways to improve your house's efficiency. It's not an "easy reader", but it's well worth the time to read through it.

Great information that will save your money -
The first third of the book is general information about energy, how it is made, how to count it, how to work the numbers. It should be a required class textbook for High School seniors. This background information is very well written and easy to understand. But, that is not why folks should buy this book.

The real meat starts at about page 93 with some very important electrical power safety tips, followed by an appliance-by-appliance list of items that use energy in a typical North American home. It is alphabetical and organized like an index.

Each item listed includes information about the amount of energy it uses and tips on how to save money using it. The "what to do" information is very specific and easy to put into practice. It starts with Air Cleaners and goes right through to Well Pumps.

Some items get just a sentence or two and others get a whole chapter. The biggest energy users get the most page space. Hot water, heating and air conditioning get their own chapters, as they should.

Like most grouchy old engineers, I read the book looking for details to disagree with. That approach was rewarded with frustration. In fact, there is so much good stuff in this book that I put it on the shelf next to my desk where it will be a handy reference.

I am forever getting questions from folks wanting to know how much they save when they shut off the item in question. The book has a handy chart, as appendix C, which does a good job answering that question.

More importantly, it provides focus for action by letting you identify the big energy users in your home. I get too many questions from people worried about the cost of running a computer when they should be focused on their heating, cooling and kitchen energy use.

The book is targeted at folks who own a house, but renters should read it too. If you pay the energy bill at your home this book will pay back the cover price many times over.

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Good book -
Good read, I got a lot out of this book. The author really knows his stuff.