Green Restorations: Sustainable Building and Historic Homes - Softcover

This wonderfully accessible, well-organized and informative book fills an important void in the marketplace of books; an invaluable resource.- Sarah Susanka, FAIA, architect and the author of The Not So Big House series Green Restorations should be on the bookshelves of at least four groups: owners of historic homes, contractors, preservationists and architects. - Donovan Rypkema, Principle, PlaceEconomics and author of The Economics of Historic Preservation An incredibly useful tool for helping owners of older homes get the energy-efficiency they want without sacrificing the historic character they love. - Dwight Young, author of Saving America's Treasures So you live in a historic home and want to turn it green while preserving its unique character? This book proffers tips (and secrets!) for rehabbing older homes, whether you just want to make a few adjustments or are looking to gut and renovate a decrepit domicile. After all, it's almost always greener to recycle and repurpose rather than simply to ditch something because it's outdated. Book Roundup, Sierra Club Green Restorations is the first-ever book about renovating heritage homes in an Earth-friendly way. It is endlessly practical, with room-by-room advice and gorgeous photos, diagrams, and case studies. Written by an expert restoration contractor, this book has useful information on every page. - The David Suzuki Foundation

Some 40 percent of North Americans live in homes built prior to 1940, and when it comes time to remodel or restore our older homes, homeowners and contractors can find themselves lost in a morass of wildly divergent information and opinion. With Green Restorations, author Aaron Lubeck brings his expertise as a restoration contractor and preservation consultant to this first-of-its-kind guide, leading the reader through the steps for restoring historic buildings using sustainable practices and green building techniques. In a readily accessible room-by-room and system-by-system format, Green Restorations covers rehabilitation and remodeling questions applicable to old homes, focusing on the core techniques and debates often seen in practice. Here you'll find the answers to restoration questions, such as: * Is sealing my old crawl space a good idea? * Should I replace or rehabilitate my windows? * Are there historic aspects of my home I need to preserve, and what can I change? * What are the cultural, environmental, and financial implications of my proposed changes? * Do residential historic tax credits apply to my home, and how can I access them? Written in such a way as to be accessible for homeowners but technical enough for contractors, this book will appeal to anyone trying to green an older home while preserving its historic and cultural significance. Aaron Lubeck is a partner with the award-winning Trinity Design/Build, a restoration and preservation consultancy in North Carolina. He is a member of the United States Green Building Council, and has completed the first historic building to be LEED-certified in North Carolina.