I worked with him on the planning, designing and implementing of his plans.  I provided consulting/inspections through the process of construction as well as provided my supervision and my crew for various parts of the construction where he needed special professional assistance.

There are a number of special features about this house.  The cupola on the top of the dome provides natural lighting to the main living area of the house but also acts as a convection chimney to bring fresh air into the house and to promote a convection draft to circulate cool ground air through the house and to force hot humid air out of the top of the dome.  The house has a series of ground air tubes that start at a lower part of the mountain where the house is built and come under the foundation slab of the house.  Some of the ground tubes open up as vents in the slab floor while others run up inside the concrete walls of the dome and open up near the top of the structure.  These tubes are the primary source of fresh exterior air as well as thermal air that helps regulate the temperature and circulate air through natural convection through the four seasons of the year.

 Under the concrete slab are hot/cold water tubes to provide radiant floor heating and cooling.  The system is currently heated with a high efficiency water heater, but is also set up for the future augmentation of hot water through an Evacuated Tube Solar Water Heater, when their budget allows.  The existing hot water system provides enormous residual Geo-thermal water storage through a conventional tank that is also under the Earth as well as the water circulated through the water coils under the foundation slab.

There are also a number of passive solar elements built into the system.  At the front of the house which faces directly to the Solar South there is a solarium on the first floor, whose purpose is to bring in natural solar light but to also provide passive solar heating.  The metal roof on the solarium reflects heat into the second story living space, which has windows and doors that open out onto the solarium roof.  These windows and doors in the south face of the house are all Argon filled Low E thermal windows designed to reflect heat out in the warm months and to bring in the solar heat in the cold months.

Furthermore there are air tubes in the vault of the solarium roof that collect the heat of the metal roof and through natural convection translate that heat into the house when needed.  You will also notice in the pictures that there is an integral concrete brow built into the South facing wall over the second story windows and doors, to provide solar shade during the months the sun is high in the sky.

Earth sheltered houses are probably not for everyone, but it is a great choice for those who really want to get serious about building nearly zero HVAC load houses, thus having houses that cost a very miniscule amount to heat and cool.  These houses take advantage of the great natural thermal resource of the Earth to provide a neutralizing effect of the extremes of heat and cool by providing a constant comfortable median temperature that requires most of the time little or no augmentation to heat or cool the interior living space.  Another benefit of an Earth sheltered house is its sound isolation properties.  The living space of these houses is extremely isolated from outside noises.

This particular Earth sheltered house has a steel superstructure that makes up the dome.  This system can be usually assembled in a couple of days.  Another method used for earth sheltered dome structures is a dome system that is shaped by a engineered balloon that is inflated and a network of structural rebar is set up on top of the balloon before the concrete is applied to this reinforcement.  When the concrete is set the balloon is deflated and removed.The solarium walls and many of the interior walls of this particular Earth sheltered house are constructed of Autoclaved Aerated Concrete which are also very energy efficient and have great sound isolation capacity.