PrettyGoodHouseBook

The Graphic Handbook for the Pretty Good House was written to be Building Science for Beginners - and contractors, architects, homeowners. It's written mostly for homes, but the science works for other buildings too. For PGH 2021, I took the 2013 book, and the 2017 book, updated everything, added some stuff, deleted some stuff that is no longer up-to-date. There's backup information at the website: http://helenwattsengineering07.tripod.com/prettygoodhousehandbook/. I updated the links in 2021.
There's a new hardcover chapter book put out by our friends at Fine Homebuilding, and written by my friends Emily Mottram, Mike Maines, Chris Briley, and Dan Kolbert called The Pretty Good House which you can get from Amazon or the Taunton Press which covers this material too - Dan was the guy who came up with the PGH idea, Chris is a really green architect, and Emily and Mike came up with the BS and Beer Show.
ERRATA! The pages on concrete note a problem with fly ash as a Portland Cement reducer. This is wrong, there is no problem with the chemistry of fly ash.

My internet website provider went belly-up on April 24, 2026, so the Helen Watts Engineering website is unavailable until I find a new provider. This means the reference information page for the PGH book isn't available now. If you have questions, send me an email at hcwatts [!at] pm.me.