A Green Home is a Healthy Home

Living green is often equated with living a healthy lifestyle. What's good for the earth must also be good for you, too, right? Well that's certainly the logic behind the Healthy House Institute's (HHI) latest promotion of ecological living. The green lifestyle publishing company is offering free downloads of its updated The Healthy House Answer Book: Answers to the 133 Most Commonly Asked Questions for anyone with an Amazon Kindle device through April, seemingly in honor of Earth Day.

Your Home and the Green Living Revolution

First published in 1997, authors John and Lynn Bower founded the Healthy House Institute to further their mission to educate people about how to build and remodel-- and live--toxin free. The original 197-page book, updated for the Kindle download, covers topics including, air and water quality, building, remodeling, furnishing, cleaning and housekeeping, ventilation, lighting, energy efficiency, housekeeping and more--laid out in 15 categories ranging from heating and cooling to framing and insulation.

Green Guides

If you don't have a Kindle, you can get the classic volume used in paperback for less than $5 from just about any online bookstore. The Bowers were far ahead of the green curve and sold their consumer publishing company in 2008 to pursue other interests, but their work continues to stands the test of time. And today, it's joined by a host of other "healthy home" reference guides. Amazon.com offers 9,253 results when you search for "healthy home" in the "books" department. Some of the newest include: Dirty Little Secrets: Home Guide for Reducing Pollution, by Diane LeFabre, PreFab Green, by Michelle Kaufman and Cathy Remick, and The Complete Idiot's Guide to Green Cleaning.

If reading a book sounds like too much work, there's really no need. HHI's Web site, among others, offers plenty of free and easy-to-access information on green remodeling. The HHI-pedia, for example, provides entries on LEED, the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Green Building Rating System, insulating concrete forms and central vacuum systems, as well as videos.

Imagine how much "healthy home" information was available in the early Internet days of 1997 when The Healthy House Answer Book was published? Today, you can learn about anything from low-VOC paints to xeriscaping with a quick Google search. But if you're seeking more in-depth information, you can be green and start with a free e-book download.