Rating: 
Summary: Our Housebuilding Course textbook
Review: After offering our course in owner-building at Heartwood for over twenty years, we've found Sam Clark's book to be the ideal textbook. It's not just a carpentry book, not just a design book, not just an engineering book. It's the most concise yet comprehensive guide to all the systems and decisions that go into a home and its creation. In this age of a super-heated economy and opulent excess in trophy homes, it's refreshing to find a resource for building a truly economical and liveable house.
Rating:
Summary: Our Housebuilding Course textbook
Review: After offering our course in owner-building at the Heartwood School for over twenty years, we've found Sam Clark's book to be the ideal textbook. It's not just a carpentry book, not just a design book, not just an engineering book. It's the most concise yet comprehensive guide to all the systems and decisions that go into a home and its creation. In this age of a super-heated economy and opulent excess in trophy homes, it's refreshing to find a resource for building a truly economical and liveable house.
Rating:
Summary: Our Housebuilding Course textbook
Review: After offering our course in owner-building at the Heartwood School for over twenty years, we've found Sam Clark's book to be the ideal textbook. It's not just a carpentry book, not just a design book, not just an engineering book. It's the most concise yet comprehensive guide to all the systems and decisions that go into a home and its creation. In this age of a super-heated economy and opulent excess in trophy homes, it's refreshing to find a resource for building a truly economical and liveable house.
Rating:
Summary: an excellent resource for the builder on a budget
Review: Clark does a great job of taking into consideration the needs of people who want to build a good quality home in the most economical way possible. Unlike most homebuilding books i've read, he manages to explain things thoroughly without talking down to the reader or covering only the most obvious things. He assumes that the reader is interested in energy efficiency and environmental issues along with aesthetics, ergonomics, and accessibility. An extremely helpful and realistic book.Includes useful charts and cross-sections of building systems.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Reference and User-Friendly Text
Review: I am planning to build my own small house on a very small budget and have been doing some fairly extensive reading on the subject, but I find I constantly return to Sam Clark's book as my main reference for overall design and planning and I expect to refer to it during the building process as well. Whether dealing with general design philosophy, costing, or the actual building process, Clark's writing is always clear, informative, stimulating and unpatronizing and the drawings and illustrations are also clear and user-friendly. The book is layed out in a logical progression which guides you through the planning process. I have never built a house before, but this book alone would give me the confidence to do so. It is not a construction technique manual, in that it won't teach you how to hammer in a nail, but it will teach you how to design and plan a house for your budget and lifestyle.
Rating: 
Summary: Strengths of "The Independent Builder"
Review: My book is a comprehensive 500 page treatment on housebuilding, a basic manual useful to owner-buiders, families working with professionals, and to builders. I think its strengths include:A: Technical information, presented clearly, based on underlying principles. For example, along with tables for beam sizes, I give the concepts and formulas so you can figure sizes yourself. Other examples: heat loss, sound isolation, sun angles. I think if you understand the principles, you can design more freely, and are less likely to be swayed by fashion or hype. B. Design methods: site selection, preliminary design, making scale drawings. C. I also emphasize ergonomics, accessibility, small house design, sustainable design, and the Pattern Language idea. I have found these disciplines to be the most powerful additions to my own design skills in recent years. D. Kitchen Design. Probably the strongest chapter in the book, based on my 30 years experience, and my study of kitchen research going back fifty years. I think this chapter will help readers make their kitchens more functional and comfortable, and at the same time, simpler. E. Business. For families and also for pro builders, the most common and most damaging mistakes are business and planning blunders, not construction errors. I think the chapters on cost estimating, making good contracts, and hiring the right people can help readers have more control over their projects, with less stress, confusion, delay, and cost.
Rating:
Summary: An ACCURATE subtitle: as much about design as about building
Review: Sam Clark uses up half the book before he gets into the nitty-gritty of construction methods. This really IS a book about house DESIGN as well as construction. As such, it's an EXCELLENT book for someone who's starting from scratch to create their own house. The approach is extremely methodical, treating mindsets and goals as elements of the design process equal in importance to elevation drawings. The illustrations bear particular attention. The (black and white) photographs are well composed, and have high contrast to clearly delineate the features that are supposed to be of interest. The line drawings are rather funky looking (in part because Clark appears not to own a ruler), but nevertheless do a very good job of illustrating what the text is talking about. This is the case for three reasons: (1) they were created by the author, who knew EXACTLY what part of the text needed visual aids; (2) their rulerless nature means that Clark can emphasize particular features rather than focus on strict scale drawings; and (3) each one is sized independently to take up as much space as is required to depict the subject matter, without worrying about "wasting" some page area. The end result is that the text and illustrations fit together well to make a unified whole. For more detail on the Building part of creating a house, I'd recommend "Do-It-Yourself HOUSEBUILDING" by George Nash. But because Nash's book doesn't come close to Clark's for clarity, I'd first read Clark's book cover-to-cover. Then I'd keep Sam Clark's book open to the same subject area so that you can step back and get a clear overview as you get confused in the details of the Nash book.
Rating:
Summary: An ACCURATE subtitle: as much about design as about building
Review: Sam Clark uses up half the book before he gets into the nitty-gritty of construction methods. This really IS a book about house DESIGN as well as construction. As such, it's an EXCELLENT book for someone who's starting from scratch to create their own house. The approach is extremely methodical, treating mindsets and goals as elements of the design process equal in importance to elevation drawings. The illustrations bear particular attention. The (black and white) photographs are well composed, and have high contrast to clearly delineate the features that are supposed to be of interest. The line drawings are rather funky looking (in part because Clark appears not to own a ruler), but nevertheless do a very good job of illustrating what the text is talking about. This is the case for three reasons: (1) they were created by the author, who knew EXACTLY what part of the text needed visual aids; (2) their rulerless nature means that Clark can emphasize particular features rather than focus on strict scale drawings; and (3) each one is sized independently to take up as much space as is required to depict the subject matter, without worrying about "wasting" some page area. The end result is that the text and illustrations fit together well to make a unified whole. For more detail on the Building part of creating a house, I'd recommend "Do-It-Yourself HOUSEBUILDING" by George Nash. But because Nash's book doesn't come close to Clark's for clarity, I'd first read Clark's book cover-to-cover. Then I'd keep Sam Clark's book open to the same subject area so that you can step back and get a clear overview as you get confused in the details of the Nash book.
Rating:
Summary: Covers every topic you need in a friendly manner
Review: This book covers everything you need to build a house! It's especially useful for country homes and has many practical tips on energy efficiency. The drawings and descriptions are very friendly, letting you enjoy doing one of the most fullfilling things you can do: build your own home! My sister's professor gave it the highest marks by ordering several for his classroom.
Rating:
Summary: Your own way indeed!
Review: This tells you how to design a house for you. Not just a house out of a book, but one that takes your living patterns into account. Don't want a formal living room? Don't put one in! Also reminds you if you want to live in the house a long time, to make room for handicapped access that may be needed later. Design your kitchen and baths the way you live! Have fun! ;-)
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