Off The Grid Homes (ISBN 1586856898)

Sustainable 4,000 sq' homes?:
Nature is efficient. To become sustainable, we need to relearn the art of efficiency. The six "off the grid" homes featured in this book include two that are over 4,000 sq'. Did the author consider how much energy it took to build these things? The smallest house is about 1,600 sq' and it is the only one of the six that is actually off the grid. Four of the others are on intertie connections and one is featured because it uses geothermal. A more honest title would be "How to Generate Some of the Energy Required by Your Oversized House". This book demonstrates that sustainability depends not so much on changes in technology but changes in the way we think. Two books which I found helpful in changing my understanding of shelter are the classic "Owner Built Home" by Ken Kern and "The Hand-Sculpted House" by Evans, Smith and Smiley.

No how-to's; just some pretty pictures of what an architect thinks is architectually interesting:
Has very little for which I was looking. A lot of white space per page around pretty photos of architectually interesting structures that are off-grid. A lot of paper material for few words and little useful information. If you want information to help you know what it takes to go off-grid, this isn't it; it's just coffee table cosmetics.

A start to becoming aware of what we should do:
This book was really fun to read. The pictures were beautiful and the surrounding of most of the homes were incredible. Some times the floor plans were a bit confusing and one of them had no definitions for the numbers that represented the rooms. It definately inspired me to do more with less and to consider green building as my next project. I was a bit dissapointed in the definitions of some of the energy saving apparatuses. I wish that the book would have gone into more detail on the excerpts of geothermal, solar hot water, PV arrays, and wind turbines. At best these were teasers and left me wanting much more explaination. I will say it gave me a world of great ideas. I would be very interested in a book on totally off the grid, fully functional with flushing toilets etc incorporating all aspects of rain water collection, grey water heating and collection, optimal design to do this and more, plus sub 1200 square feet homes that offer options on what can be afforded. In depth explainations on all the buzz words like living machines what it entails (cost,size,optimal location, size vs. amount processed per hr or day or what? better diagrams with flow directions and larger in format etc. This should give the author another book to write that I for sure will purchase. I am well over 13!