Folks: Last week [0] I promised to write about our broken-down boiler. Much like our clunker dishwasher [0] – and like most of the appliances providing us with heat and light in our house – our boiler was quite a few decades past its expiration date.

And it completely gave out a couple of months back – just in time for the hemispheric cooling we call "winter." But here's the hard cold fact: It's 4 degrees here in Boulder. (Don't worry, we've got a new boiler installed, and it works like a dedicated devil keeping things warm.) We've had four consecutive Fridays of six-plus inches of snow [1].

So basically, when we haven't been out cross-country skiing with the dogs, we've been inside, crouching by the fire in our wood-burning stove [2]. (Don't worry about that, either: It's quite efficient, an EPA Phase II [3]–approved Lopi [4].) Yeah, it's been tough, especially the skiing part. But while the cold is not exactly conducive to working on major renovation projects, it does give us good reason to sit around and read books and not think about boiler installations and comparative therm usage and fuel utilization efficiency [5] ratings. So in lieu of a post about our old dead boiler, here's the reading list I've been browsing:

- Green Remodeling [6], by David Johnston and Kim Master. A fantastic overview of the steps you can take to green up your living space. While not overly technical (or comprehensive), this is a good guide on where to look for improvements and how to start thinking about them.

- Living Homes [7], by Thomas J. Elpel. If only this book could get picked up by a major publishing house. This one gets down to brass-tacks detail — efficiency rates, BTUs, how to put a roof on a straw-bale structure – all told by a guy who seems to have built it all.

- The Walls Around Us [8], by David Owen. About a tool-ignorant city-dweller's ordeal buying and repairing a 200-year-old farmhouse, and a literary window into home construction in general. Maybe narrative books about houses aren't for everyone. But Owen's got a way with making the story of his sewer pipes really, really compelling.

- The Solar House [9], by Dan Chiras. I haven't actually read this one, but I've leafed through it. But Chiras is a Boulder local, and he gave a killer talk during Boulder's Solar Week about energy efficiency. The most compelling statistic: The average modern American home has the same amount of air leakage – all that freezing air coming through gaps in the door jambs and windows that don't quite shut all the way – as a solid box with a three-foot-by-three-foot hole in one wall, open 365 days a year. Weatherstrip those windows, people.

NEXT WEEK: The boiler, I swear.