(Green Building Press, 264 pages, $25)

by Ann V. Edminster

reviewed by Liz Hamill

November 2010 — Author Ann Edminster states right up front that she’s looking to architects, engineers and home designers as the primary audience for her new book about serious energy conservation construction, Energy Free: Homes For a Small Planet. Developers may also find this book quite useful — especially those looking to cash in on the growing concern homeowners feel both for eco-consciousness and for the ever-growing wallet pinch of utility costs.

It’s no surprise that as a consumer-level reader, I found most of the science of energy free home design to be way over my head. Chapters 1-4 dig deep into the mathematics and engineering of energy conservation in home construction. And while I’m definitely interested in adding high-efficiency windows and doors to my home, the energy coefficient calculations for the windows were way beyond the scope of my understanding.

And yet, I got more than I anticipated from this book. In fact I’m filled with ideas for my own house, about everything from that major energy-saving door and window retrofit to ordering a few $30 “smart” power strips for my plug-in gadgets.

One thing that strongly differentiates Energy Free from most of the other net-zero house-building books on the market is that Edminster writes for homebuilders and retrofitters who want to stay on the grid. In fact, she makes a great case for why staying on-grid is overall a better choice for true energy conservation in the long run. Also running through this whole book is a sense of pragmatism — Edminster is not advocating that her readers abandon urban life in favor of rural communes with composting toilets and cold showers once per week. Instead, her book focuses on how people live in houses and apartments in urban America right now. Her design ideas work just as well for high-density housing projects as they do for single-family dwellings — in fact, Edminster points out the potentially significant energy savings that can be achieved in multi-family dwellings over detached single-family units.

Consumer-level readers like me will find the most useful information in Chapter 5: Minimize the Occupant’s Energy Needs. Here’s where Edminster goes into detail about the decisions homeowners — or even renters — can make for themselves. Edminster answers important questions: What does an Energy Star label really mean? Which home appliances suck down the most electricity, gas or water? Easy-to-read graphs make it painfully clear that those super-slick plasma TVs cost about five times as much money to use than any other type of television on the market today — ouch! The good news: This chapter provides dozens of ideas for minimizing energy consumption that the average consumer can put into practice immediately that cost little or no money at all.

There’s just one suggestion I’m not going to follow regardless of how much energy it saves: I’m not turning my shower on and off “navy style” while I soap and shampoo. Been there, tried that — it makes for a miserably chilly and unpleasant shower experience every single time.

If you’re an architect, housing developer or general contractor who’s interested in green design and construction, or has clients with serious energy conservation goals, put Energy Free on your shelf as a great reference tool. Edminster’s book might also make a great text for home designers teaching classes in net-zero energy home creation or for architectural students looking for an additional reference guide to green design.

For consumers, Energy Free would be a good buy if you’re about to retrofit an existing home or build a new house, and you’re serious about creating a net-zero energy structure that includes everything from an on-site solar energy source to construction techniques that provide optimum insulation all year round. You can use the book both to educate yourself, and to provide to your architect and contractor to show them the kinds of ideas they should be considering.