The energy wise home : practical ideas for sustainable living / Jeff Dondero.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

When picking out a home, there are a number of aspects to keep in mind: location, size, and layout. One issue that many people neglect is energy conservation, which is quickly becoming one of the most important aspects of modern life. How do make your home energy wise? Where do you start? What aspects of home living can affect, and be affected by, our energy choices? This task can be momentous and intimidating. The Energy Wise Home: Practical Ideas for Saving Energy, Money, and the Planet makes it easy. Jeff Dondero walks you through your home's walls, doors, windows, and roof, room by room and appliance by appliance, breaking them down into simple terms so that you can make the smartest energy and resource choices possible. He even covers gardens and garages, explaining what household items cost to run, how to conserve energy when using them, giving guidance on what's sustainable and what isn't. This encyclopedic manual is very helpful for understanding the machine that is your house, and how to keep it maintained and running well and "green" while saving you money. This guide is a great fit to make sure that you make the best of your home and the resources that power and run it. Conservation in the home is something that you owe to yourself, your family, and your planet.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Geared toward the general reader, this practical text provides an up-to-date guide to improving energy efficiency in the home. The last 50 years have seen marked progress in the building of well-insulated houses and in the manufacture of energy efficient appliances; even though homes are designed with energy efficiency in mind, implementing the ideas in this book can still result in significant energy (and cost) savings. Dondero, a journalist, presents a compendium of conservation strategies throughout the home, including heating and cooling, water heating, kitchen and laundry appliances, and irrigation. The book is organized into 37 chapters, culminating in a comprehensive "Home Energy Audit." Adding insulation, reducing airflow through cracks, upgrading to two-pane windows, insulating with curtains and drapes, reducing energy flow through the roof--each of these easy strategies provides benefit to the planet as well as financial savings to the homeowner. Dondero is a proponent of simple synergies: for example, using a clothes line to air-dry laundry saves energy while also adding humidity to the air indoors (particularly beneficial during the winter months). There are very few references; still, this is a thoroughly practical guide. Summing Up: Recommended. All readers. --Larry E. Erickson, Kansas State University

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Jeff Dondero has a diverse background and experience in writing, ranging from web content, B2B, books, hard news, and interviews to feature writing. He began his career as stringer and freelancer for the San Francisco Examiner, worked as a reporter and editor for several suburban newspapers, was the entertainment editor for The Marin Independent Journal, a writer and editor of various magazines, wrote for KTVU-TV in the San Francisco Bay Area, toiled in a trade magazine mill, and created a website dedicated to sustainable construction industries (http://www.greenbuildingdigest.net/). He was invited as a writer-in-residence at the art colony in Rancho Vista, Arizona in 2014, where he wrote a slim volume of poetry. He continues to expand his national readership with books, social media, various writers' blogs and websites, radio and television appearances.