The Complete Guide to Greening Your Home: eBook Review
Pros:
- Excellent value for money
- Well-researched
- Comprehensive guide to every area of the home
- All tips are easy to implement
- Well designed and laid out
Cons:
- Written by company which plugs its auditing service in the book
- Links contained within are only relevant for US readers (but tips are relevant wherever you live)
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To see the book for yourself, head to the seller’s website here!
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Excellent Value Guide to Making Your Home & Life Greener
When I first started this website and began the hunt for really useful, well-written, good value guides for people who wanted to lead a greener lifestyle, this was exactly what I was looking for.
There are so many low-quality guides out there that profess to save you thousands of dollars by building your own power station in your home and other outlandish claims.
But it turns out that the very best ideas are often the simplest. And this guide is full of high-quality, researched, easy-to-implement advice on how to make changes to every area of your home to ensure you are living as green as you can.
Overview
The book is 66 pages long and written by Caelus Consulting, a green company providing energy audits. It is available in PDF, iBook, and Kindle formats, and is a very professional report which has clearly had a lot of time and effort put into it.
In total, it contains 42 different categories for making your home more sustainable and it aims to save you money, make you become more energy efficient, help you to create a healthier environment for your family, and even increase the value of your home.
It includes a checklist of every area of your home which you can print out and use as you go around checking the different rooms and appliances. The guide can then be read through as it is or used as a quick reference when you want to check something.
Rebates and Other Financial Benefits
For American readers, there is a section on rebates and tax credits which you can receive by going green, and this is another great way to save money. The guide was written in 2010 so some of these may potentially become outdated, but hopefully they will update these if needs be.
Areas Covered
The guide basically covers every area of the home, including:
- Appliances
- Home Fittings
- Bathroom
- Bedroom
- Electronics
- Furnishings
- Housekeeping
- Kitchen
- Lawn & Garden
- Energy
In each section, an entire page is given to the various items that you will find there. So, in appliances there is a page for washing machines, a page for air conditioners, etc.
Each page is full of tips such as how to choose the best one, things to avoid, things to consider, what not to do, and practices to avoid so that you have all the advice you need to make sure your carbon footprint is reduced and you are living as green as you can.
Comprehensive & Well Researched
There are lots of things which I did not know in the guide. The writers clearly know their stuff and have done their research carefully, and I’m betting that most people who read this will discover a number of things which they did not know before about how to make improvements in their home. When you consider that even a few simple changes can make such a big difference, it becomes clear just how much a guide like this can help you to achieve.
Extras
Aside from the main guide there is another free guide that comes with it called ‘The Green Guide to Winterizing Your Home’. For a freebie this is pretty comprehensive. It is 16 pages long, and provides tips and advice on making sure your home is as energy efficient as possible during the cold winter months.
It is set out in exactly the same format as the main guide, and is just shorter. It covers such areas as water, plumbing, insulation, drafts, heating, windows, how to get prepared, and is a very useful little guide providing even more info on making sure your home is as energy-efficient as possible.
The only thing you should be aware of is that the company’s GreenHouse Home Audit is plugged a few times in the book, and the idea is clearly that you purchase this from them ($59.95 for the PDF version at the time of writing). I have not done this and cannot therefore endorse it, but what I can say is that the guide on its own gives you plenty to think about if you are keen to make some eco improvements around the home.