Making Better Buildings: A Comparative Guide to Sustainable Construction for Homeowners and Contractors

Sustainable building from the ground up – the pros and cons of the latest green and natural building materials and technologies

"…Chris Magwood’s delight and mastery of the subject hums in every page. Whether you just want a broad overview, or access to high quality practical information on specific subjects, this is the book for you."
Bruce King , Director, Ecological Building Network

"… an objective source of information on all aspects of home building from the foundation to the roof to the energy to the waste water systems. It’s the ultimate guide on building energy-efficient, environmentally friendly, and healthy green homes—quite possibly the most valuable book ever published on green building!"—Dan Chiras, Ph.D., Director of The Evergreen Institute and author of The Natural House, The New Ecological Home, The Solar House and many more

From foundation to finish, Making Better Buildings provides the unbiased facts about the upsides and downsides of the most widely discussed materials and technologies. Drawing on the real-world experiences of professional designers and builders, this comparative guide systematically and comprehensively examines green and natural building approaches in terms of:

• Cost, sourcing, labor intensity, and ease of construction
• Energy efficiency, embodied energy, and environmental impacts
• Availability/accessibility and code compliance
• Viable applications and future potential.

Whether you are an owner preparing to build a green or natural home, or a conventional contractor determined to integrate sustainable alternatives into your existing construction practices, this up-to-the minute resource will help you to quickly and objectively compare the merits of each system for your particular project, allowing you to make the best decisions while meeting your energy, efficiency, budgetary, and site-specific needs.

"Chris Magwood has saved us all thousands and thousands of research hours with Making Better Buildings. This book is not only a tool for the builders of today, but is a marvelous textbook for the young, emerging building professionals of tomorrow." —
Emily Niehaus, Founding Director of Community Rebuilds

"Stripping away the hype, [this] book provides a rational and balanced assessment of alternative options for the major components of a building. It is particularly valuable since it includes a wide range of criteria such as cost, durability, code compliance and labor intensiveness together with environmental criteria, which make it a highly useful decision support tool for many sustainable building projects…"
—Professor Mark Gorgolewski, head of Masters of Building Science MSc program, Ryerson University

Chris Magwood is a sustainable builder and designer specializing in green and natural building techniques, and the founder and director of the Endeavour Centre for Innovative Building, Learning and Living. He is also the author of 3 previous books on sustainable building including Straw Bale Details and More Straw Bale Building .