Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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75 of 75 people found the following review helpful:
Wonderfully illustrated and full of inspiration, 19 Dec 2001
By A Customer
Sue Roaf's Ecohouse in Oxford is one of the most high profile low energy houses in the country. Sue has had a one-woman crusade to get ecohouse design on the agenda. In 1994 she put her money where her mouth is and took on a huge mortgage to design and build what is still one of only a handful of net zero energy houses in the UK. The house is a well insulated passive solar design. Triple glazed windows and between 150 and 250 mm of insulation means that the energy requirements are very low. There is a solar hot water system and a 4 kW photovoltaic array means that the house produces more energy than it uses. The heating system uses condensing technologies and there is a Kakkleoven which can be used to burn wood cleanly and efficiently.Sue is one of a very small elite band who have designed and built and lived in a very low energy environmentally friendly ecohouse. This makes her well placed to produce a book about this experience. Naturally the Oxford Ecohouse is used extensively to illustrate the text but is only one of the 21 case studies included in the book. Before you get excited by the idea of so many UK ecohouses, it should be noted that only four are British. One of the strengths of the book is that it draws on different cultures and climates when illustrating different approaches to ecohouse design. Case studies include buildings from India, Israel, USA, Argentina, Scandinavia, the Far East, Australia and New Zealand. Before the case studies there are chapters on the basics of ecohouse design. There are chapters on the technical aspects - photovoltaics, solar hot water systems, passive solar design, ventilation, detailing and the environmental impact of building materials. But there are also chapters dealing with the wider issues. Christopher Day has contributed a chapter on 'Building in soul' and there are other sections on 'Health and happiness in the home' and the 'Form of the house'. This is the first chapter in the book and treats the building as an analogy. Reading about 'the swallow', 'the brick in a storage radiator' or 'the building as a bucket' makes fascinating reading.
A criticism often levelled at low energy buildings is that they look awful. By taking the wide view Sue Roaf has been able to show wonderful examples of climate-sensitive design from around the world. She addresses the architectural issues head on. The book is a good read, wonderfully illustrated and full of inspiration for the eco-enthusiast or self builder.
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50 of 50 people found the following review helpful:
Both inspiring & practical - an excellent guide, 16 Jan 2002
By A Customer
I was prepared to find some of the sections a bit too techie, but in fact was riveted from start to finish. Very well written throughout and the case studies are fantastic.The chapter by Christopher Day describing how to build soul into your home is substantially different in style from the other chapters, which threw me temporarily. But re-read it provides an invaluable guide to stepping through the flow of a home - something that may appear simple, but is not. A very elegant & thought provoking chapter, and perhaps one that is too easy to skip over - I recommend reading this chapter separately so you don't underestimate it's content. An excellent book to go back to and I will use it to help me design my own home. Would really like to see an additional book of case studies if this were possible.
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47 of 47 people found the following review helpful:
A no-nonsense instruction manual for the eco-home builder, 13 Sep 2001
The author takes us on a concise tour through the well established principles of eco-design, and illustrates each with examples of vernacular dwellings from around the world. She then goes on to describe how these principles can be integrated into the design of a modern eco-house, and backs this up with examples and details from built and tested experimental houses. Some of the sections are extremely up-to-date; for example the chapter on photo-voltaics include information on national grid pricing policy, installation costs, as well as specifications for the necessary hardware. Almost enough, in fact, to use as a DIY manual. The book culminates in a series of case studies which inspire and illuminate. At no time did I feel that the presentation was dry; the text is well supported by diagrams, photographs and technical drawings, some of which are beautifully presented and very detailed. In addition, and unusually for a book based on somewhat unproven science, Sue Roaf is unafraid of committing herself to personal opinions. For anyone wanting to be told how to go about establishing a personal ecological philosophy, this book offers firm guidance. My only criticism is that sometimes more questions are raised than answered, but in a book of this size and for this price there is a limit to the amount of information that can be offered. There are certainly plenty of references to help further study. The information is never less than practical and so far I have not come across a better way to grasp the subtleties and contradictions of what makes an ecohouse.
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