Many of the projects require basic materials available at your everyday home center, but this book also provides valuable DIY resources for solar, hydro, greenhouse, and gardening needs. This book will help you build security with utility backup systems and become more sustainable, resulting in less dependence on city systems for basic needs. Whether you have a city plot or simply pots, this book includes all of the information needed to plan, build, and succeed with greater self-sufficiency.

    In addition to these cultivated food crops, they also forage for wild edibles, process their own meat, make their own butter, and ferment, dry, and can their own vegetables. Their focus is to produce nutrient-dense foods from vibrant, mineralized soils for themselves and their immediate community.(from Amazon)

    Like the previous editions, this one tells you how you can make maple syrup right in your own backyard without having to build a sap house or buy buckets, holding tanks, evaporators and other expensive paraphernalia. Provides detailed "how-to" information, and makes some new and noteworthy revelations-including tips sugarers across the country have shared with the author.

    Rejecting both end-times hand wringing and dewy-eyed faith that technology will save us from ourselves, urban homesteaders choose instead to act. By growing their own food and harnessing natural energy, they are planting seeds for the future of our cities.If you would like to harvest your own vegetables, raise city chickens, or convert to solar energy, this practical, hands-on book is full of step-by-step projects that will get you started homesteading immediately, whether you live in an apartment or a house. It is also a guidebook to the larger movement and will point you to the best books and Internet resources on self-sufficiency topics.Projects include: How to grow food on a patio or balcony How to clean your house without toxins How to preserve food How to cook with solar energy How to divert your greywater to your garden How to choose the best homestead for you Written by city dwellers for city dwellers, this illustrated, smartly designed, two-color instruction book proposes a paradigm shift that will improve our lives, our community, and our planet. Authors Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen happily farm in Los Angeles and run the urban homestead blog www.homegrownrevolution.org.

    Thousands more see him at his personal appearances and visit his website, looking for advice on renos-gone-wrong. Mike Holmes is Canada's most trusted contractor, a crusader with a mission to expose botched renovations - and now the author of a bestselling book. Mike has taken his professional expertise and tell-it-like-it-is style and turned it into the guide no homeowner should be without. Make It Right walks readers through a renovation from start to finish, from the process of finding a reliable contractor to understanding the legalities of renovation. Mike explains the inner workings of a house, covers the most popular reno projects and describes the most common pitfalls. Packed with informative sidebars, checklists, diagrams and photographs, all showing what to expect from contractors and tradespeople, and how to keep every reno running on time and on budget, Make It Right is the book you need to read before you plan a renovation. Be smart. Take charge. Get it right the first time. About the Author Mike Holmes is the star of the incredibly popular Holmes on Homes program, where, in every episode, he and his trusty renovation crew fix renovation disasters. Mike has more than two decades of construction experience and was schooled by his father, a master plumber, in all aspects of construction and renovation. With a passion for doing things the right way the first time and a deep-seated respect for construction professionals, Mike has worked on hundreds of home and commercial renovation projects, earning a reputation for outstanding craftsmanship and a willingness to stand behind his work.

    To that end, he shares the basics of treehouse construction with his own recent projects as case studies. Using photographs taken especially for this project along with diagrams, he covers the selection and care of trees, and explains the fundamentals of building treehouse platforms. To ignite the imagination, Nelson presents 27 treehouses in the United States, Europe, and Africa. The book will be indispensible to anyone who aspires to have a treehouse, from the armchair dreamer, to the amateur builder, to the professional contractor.

    Stressing the importance of evaluating your goals, planning ahead, and budgeting accordingly, Carol Ekarius helps you determine the best structure for your particular situation and offers expert advice on tools and construction techniques. Build a functional and comfortable house for your animals that they’ll be proud to call home.

    Fresh Food from Small Spaces fills the gap as a practical, comprehensive, and downright fun guide to growing food in small spaces. It provides readers with the knowledge and skills necessary to produce their own fresh vegetables, mushrooms, sprouts, and fermented foods as well as to raise bees and chickens--all without reliance on energy-intensive systems like indoor lighting and hydroponics.Readers will learn how to transform their balconies and windowsills into productive vegetable gardens, their countertops and storage lockers into commercial-quality sprout and mushroom farms, and their outside nooks and crannies into whatever they can imagine, including sustainable nurseries for honeybees and chickens. Free space for the city gardener might be no more than a cramped patio, balcony, rooftop, windowsill, hanging rafter, dark cabinet, garage, or storage area, but no space is too small or too dark to raise food.With this book as a guide, people living in apartments, condominiums, townhouses, and single-family homes will be able to grow up to 20 percent of their own fresh food using a combination of traditional gardening methods and space-saving techniques such as reflected lighting and container "terracing." Those with access to yards can produce even more.Author R. J. Ruppenthal worked on an organic vegetable farm in his youth, but his expertise in urban and indoor gardening has been hard-won through years of trial-and-error experience. In the small city homes where he has lived, often with no more than a balcony, windowsill, and countertop for gardening, Ruppenthal and his family have been able to eat at least some homegrown food 365 days per year. In an era of declining resources and environmental disruption, Ruppenthal shows that even urban dwellers can contribute to a rebirth of local, fresh foods.

    So if we are to address the problems of environmental deterioration and peak oil adequately, the city has to be a major focus of attention.Ecocities is about re-building cities and towns based on ecological principles for the long term sustainability, cultural vitality and health of the Earth’s biosphere. Unique in the literature is the book’s insight that the form of the city really matters – and that it is within our ability to change it, and crucial that we do. Further, that the ecocity within its bioregion is comprehensible and do-able, and can produce a healthy and potentially happy future.Ecocities describes the place of the city in evolution, nature and history. It pays special attention to the key question of accessibility and transportation, and outlines design principles for the ecocity. The reader is encouraged to plunge in to its economics and politics: the kinds of businesses, planning and leadership required. The book then outlines the tools by which a gradual transition to the ecocity could be accomplished. Throughout, this new edition is generously illustrated with the author’s own inspired visions of what such rebuilt cities might actually look like.Richard Register is one of the world's great theorists and authors in ecological city design and planning. The founder of Urban Ecology and Ecocity Builders, he convened the first International Ecocity Conference in 1990, lectures around the world, and has authored two previous books, as well as an earlier edition of Ecocities.

    Packed with clear color photos and easy-to-understand descriptions, the basics of home plumbing systems are clearly explained, and all of the most popular plumbing projects are shown with beautiful step-by-step photos.This new edition has been thoroughly updated to ensure that all information conforms to the most recent codes, including the 2015 Uniform Plumbing Code and the 2014 International Residential Code. New projects include plumbing and tiling a curbless shower. Other features include projects to promote accessibility in the bathroom; updated bathroom ventilation featuring new products; and an expanded section on exterior plumbing, including pools, pumps, and sprinkler systems.

    It also contains the easy to follow instructions on how to analyze and compute the structural design of critical building parts such as: reinforced concrete slabs, beams, columns and footings. There are also simple designs and floor plans for a variety of building types to be found in this book.BUILDING DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION should be of interest to architects, engineers, contractors, developers and allied professionals who are engaged in building design, planning and construction. Students and graduates reviewing for the board examinations for architects and engineers would find in this book valuable practical knowledge to supplement the theories learned in their classrooms.Project owners studying this book would appreciate and get a clear understanding of how their envisioned pet project, which sprang only from a mere idea - is transformed slowly step-by-step - into concrete form.Explanations and instructions in BUILDING DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION are conveyed in direct and simple language for easy understanding even by the layman. Plans and drawings are clearly presented, to be easily interpreted by construction workers.

    Gardeners know it is the best way to feed the soil, while others look to composting as a way to dispose of grass clippings, autumn leaves, and tree trimmings. The Rodale Book of Composting edited by Grace Gershuny and Deborah L. Martin offers:* Easy-to-follow instructions for making and using compost* Helpful tips for apartment dwellers, suburbanites, farmers and community leaders* Ecologically sound solutions to growing waste disposal problems

    Created to both inspire and instruct, it returns readers to an era before power saws and fast food restaurants so they can rediscover the pleasures and challenges of a more self-sufficient, economical, and healthy lifestyle. Packed with hundreds of projects, step-by-step sequences, charts, tables, diagrams, and illustrations, it explains how to dye your own wool with plant pigments, graft trees for propagation, raise chickens, create a hutch table with hand tools, and make treats such as blueberry peach jam and cheddar cheese. The truly ambitious will learn how to build a log cabin or an adobe brick homestead.

    Farming the Woods invites a remarkably different perspective: that a healthy forest can be maintained while growing a wide range of food, medicinal, and other non-timber products. While this concept of "forest farming" may seem like an obscure practice, history indicates that much of humanity lived and sustained itself from tree-based systems in the past; only recently have people traded the forest for the field. The good news is that this is not an either-or scenario; forest farms can be most productive in places where the plow is not: on steep slopes, and in shallow soils. It is an invaluable practice to integrate into any farm or homestead, especially as the need for unique value-added products and supplemental income becomes more and more important for farmers. Many already know that daily indulgences we take for granted such as coffee, chocolate, and many tropical fruits, all originate in forest ecosystems. But few know that such abundance is also available in the cool temperate forests of North America. Farming the Woods is the first in-depth guide for farmers and gardeners who have access to an established woodland and are looking for productive ways to manage it. Authors Ken Mudge and Steve Gabriel describe this process as "productive conservation," guided by the processes and relationships found in natural forest ecosystems. Farming the Woods covers in detail how to cultivate, harvest, and market high-value non-timber forest crops such as American ginseng, shiitake mushrooms, ramps (wild leeks), maple syrup, fruit and nut trees, ornamental ferns, and more. Comprehensive information is also offered on historical perspectives of forest farming; mimicking the forest in a changing climate; cultivation of medicinal crops; creating a forest nursery; harvesting and utilizing wood products; the role of animals in the forest farm; and how to design and manage your forest farm once it's set up. This book is a must-read for farmers and gardeners interested in incorporating aspects of agroforestry, permaculture, forest gardening, and sustainable woodlot management into the concept of a whole-farm organism.