Everyone can make green home decisions on a budget with this inspiring, information-packed guide.

Whether you are building, remodeling, buying, or just curious, here are real-world strategies for getting the greenest results from your budget, with hundreds of ideas for a home that is built to last, comfortable and healthy, money- and time-saving in the long term, and kind to the planet.

• What shade of green is right for you, your resources, schedule, and setting, and how can you achieve it
• What questions should you ask
• What approaches and resources are best for the Northwest?

From your home's exterior to its operating systems within, from siting to interior design, this is the basic training that has given many the confidence to proceed.

Award-winning sustainable design and building consultant and teacher Kathleen O'Brien and architectural designer and sustainability consultant Kathleen Smith offer their "top picks" for each phase. Their perspective is both down-to-earth and cutting edge. They've also each faced their own green home challenges in a single family house and a duplex, and other case studies show affordable energy-efficient green homes both old and new.

Brimming with ideas, clear and logical, with tips, checklists, and resources for green home planning, construction, remodeling, and maintenance, extensively illustrated with photos and diagrams, this is the essential green home manual for novice and professional alike.

Contractors, urban planners, architects, and handy homeowners can use this detailed volume from two researchers in sustainable design to understand and use "green building" principles to make dwellings more gentle on and complementary to the environment. Examples and discussion are centered particularly on the Pacific Northwest's Cascadia climate region but many ideas can be applied elsewhere. Topics include: green project management, planning a green remodel, renewable energy choices for the Northwest, purchasing a green home, site choices the building enclosure, operating systems for the home, interiors, and operations and maintenance. The others also help readers evaluate options and tradeoffs related to cost and other considerations. Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Any building should provide shelter from the elements. Witht a green home, we ask for more.

Everyone can make green home decisions on a budget with this inspiring, information-packed guide. Whether you are building, remodeling, buying, or just curious, here are real-world strategies for getting the greenest results from your budget, with hundreds of ideas for a home that is built to last, comfortable and healthy, money- and time-saving to maintain in the long term, and kind to the planet. This basic training manual will help novice and professional alike to:

• evaluate options and tradeoffs
• create your own green home wish list
• manage green home projects
• apply solutions that are best for the Northwest
• create and maintain an energy- and water-efficient, healthy home

In this pioneering book, Kathleen O'Brien and Kathleen Smith provide the sort of intelligent, thoughtful, experienced insights thatandmdash;if followedandmdash;will ensure that we make the right choices. Certainly, anyone considering bulding, remodeling, or buying a green home should have this book. Those developing and redeveloping neighborhoods and communities should also take a look. And finally, it should be on the desk of every mayor, urban planner, and architect in the region.

From the foreword by Denis Hayes

Award-winning sustainable design and building consultant and teacher Kathleen O'Brien and architectural designer and sustainability consultant Kathleen smith offer advice that is both down-to-earth and cutting edge, with regional examples from new and renovated green homes.

Kathleen O'Brien is founder and president of Oand#8217;Brien andamp; Company, a nationally recognized leader in sustainable design-build consulting, education, and research.Kathleen Smith is an architectural designer who runs her own sustainable design and consulting firm.