Presenting The Green Home Guide From Popular Science

Our second all-digital Genius Guide shows you 99 ways to save energy— and money— at home this summer

By Mark Jannot, Editor-in-Chief Posted 07.06.2009 at 4:07 pm 8 Comments

The Green Home Guide from Popular Science PopSci.com/GeniusGuide

Did you know you can cut your water use by 10 gallons a day by switching toilets? That a new washer and dryer could save you almost $150 a year? These are just two of the dozens of tips, tricks, facts and projects packed into the free Green Home Guide, the second in our series of digital special issues called Genius Guides, designed to make you an expert on one of the core PopSci topics. You can click through our animated home to see the worst spots for wasting power, air and water. Or explore our interactive map to get energy cost and CO2 stats for each of the 50 states. We’ve also got stories of three ambitious homeowners who have taken energy savings to extremes, heating their house with a room full of sand or powering it with a waterfall.

Our goal is to use this experiment in digital publishing—with Zinio in our case—to both learn something about creating content for an emerging medium and give you far more information than we could in a print issue, in an easy-to-navigate and entertaining manner. As a magazine maker, I love that this format has all the depth and interactivity of a Web page, yet with the immersive quality of a print publication. And I think our design is pushing the envelope for what can be done on a digital page. I’d love to hear your feedback on the Green Home Guide—from the experience of opening it to the navigation inside to the content itself. Help us figure out where this is headed and how we can keep producing both the content and the medium you want to use.

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8 Comments

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Milieunet

07/07/09 at 1:55 am

Great, here are some other ways to save energy:
http://www.stichtingmilieunet.nl/energysavingtips.php

Milieunet Foundation is a non-profit organisation focused on awareness and change of behaviour by means of communication about waste, energy, sustainability, nature, environment, climate, human rights and international development cooperation.

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suzyjenkins

07/08/09 at 7:47 pm

That's great that this is being offered free of charge. Thanks!

http://classicmusclecars.wordpress.com/classic-car-parts/

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ckmapawatt

07/10/09 at 2:07 pm

Chris K
Founder of http://blog.mapawatt.com

I can't wait to look through the guide. I've focused a lot on energy saving products on my blog and Popular Science has given me some great products and technology to write blogs about.

The goal of Mapawatt Blog is the same as the Green Home Guide: getting readers to understand that saving energy, the environment, and money are all related!

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mike1953

07/11/09 at 3:28 pm

I can hardly wait to start building some solar hot water heaters, Ive been rounding up material to build one. Now, all I need is info on building the whole system ! I plan to use it in my cabin in Tennessee, along with solar P.V.s and a new type of wind turbine that's due to come to market later this year.so hopefuly I can not only go Green, but build as much of the system as possible to save some "Green" but with the help of "Pop Sci"D I Y this is do able

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ultimatenerd22

07/11/09 at 8:42 pm

that is something i should try.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=bj3SzOxsLqQ

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justjohn

07/29/09 at 9:01 pm

Thanks to PopSci for putting this guide together! I learned several new things from it, but was particularly interested in the sand bed house. I've been searching for more details on that without too much luck. (most of what I find is about 2' of sand under floors as thermal mass) If anyone has good links, please share them.

Oh, one note on the Zinio format... really not too happy with that. I've forwarded pointers to the guide to two people that haven't been able to read it. One runs OpenBSD, not sure what the issue was for the other. Open standards such as html, Acrobat, jpeg and even ASCII text are much more useful for sharing information. I was even having trouble navigating the guide using the Zinio program - too many buttons to click on to view all the content.

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Plantastic

08/09/09 at 6:50 pm

Another great green activity your readers would enjoy is to grow a TickleMe Plant from seeds and then watching the plant MOVE when Tickled! As a first grade teacher I no longer plant Lima beans, as the growing of this interactive plant, proved to be much more exciting and educational for my student's.
I found my supplies for a classroom kit at www.ticklemeplant.com but they also sell individual greenhouses and even party favors, with everything you need to grow your own TickleMe Plant from seeds. I assure you your kids will be more excited about gardening, and its just fun to watch the expressions of the faces of children (and even adults) when they see the plant close its leaves and droop when tickled,

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shielasmith23

08/26/09 at 11:17 pm

You can really save a lot of money following this guide! I especially like the low flush toilets because that really makes a big impact. I'm a huge advocate of GREEN :)
-sheila, http://organicmattressguide.com