Solar-Heating a Subterranean House

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PHOTO: MOTHER EARTH NEWS STAFF
Everyone knows that passive solar heating is a viable means of keeping a house warm in Arizona, New Mexico, or California. Not everyone knows that simple passive solar heating can also be used to "cozy up" a dwelling in Athens, Ohio.

Imagine a solar-heated cottage with no collectors, no pumps, no storage tanks, no thermostats, no heat exchangers … none of the trappings of conventional “active” solar heating installations. Then imagine that same dwelling recessed into the side of a hill … and you’ve got a pretty good idea of what William T. Beale’s $6,000 solar-heated guest house is all about.

Last summer, Beale (a heat transfer engineer of 25 years’ experience) set out to design and build a small guest house on his Athens, Ohio farm … a dwelling that would use the sun’s energy for heating, but without the aid of pumps, temperature sensors, and similar high-technology devices. (“I’d helped install an ‘active’ solar heating system on a house in this area some time before,” Beale explains, “and I knew from that experience that a complex, water-carrying system was not the way to go.”)

What Beale ended up building was a 16-by-30 foot one-room (plus lavatory) cottage that absorbs the suns radiant energy directly (like a black car sitting in the sun) and uses the earth itself as the major regulator of its temperature. Beale’s guest cottage is — in effect — a live-in solar collector built into the side of a hill.

And darned if the little “lithospheric solar collector” hasn’t turned out to be quite a comfortable abode! Beale says that there were days last winter when the outside air temperature was a nippy 0 degrees Fahrenheit and the ground was blanketed with snow … while the tiny guest house was so warm inside that — in William Beale’s own words — “we actually had to worry about keeping the place cool!”

Beale’s Secret to His Solar Home Plans

  • Published on May 1, 1977
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