Don’s entire primus is based on the fact that earth tubes work very well to deliver heating and cooling but that the traditional earth tube used in the earth ship model is very prone to dangerous mold. He is recommending sealed tubes where the exchange of temperature is delivered to the surrounding building passively and that fresh air is maintained in the living space via fresh air make up through heat exchangers. You may think that in your dry climate that mold will not grow but I think by the time you find out you are wrong the serious health effects could already have taken place. Having known people who have serious mold sensitivity disease it is not at all pleasant. It is very similar to the sensitivities auto painters used to get from Isocyanides. It can kill you but usually it makes your life a living hell with all sorts of fibromyalga (sp) type symptoms which most doctors don’t recognize for what it really is until it is too late.
Don’s site is not all that well set up so it is difficult to point exactly what to read. I would encourage you to read the entire site and maybe take up some correspondence with him. He has some very interesting history.
All the best
Nick
From:
Sent: Saturday, February 28, 2009 11:31 AM
To:
Subject: Re: [papercreters] UG Dome
Very interesting site. I didn't find anything specifically addressing earth tubes, just a mention in passing on a couple of pages. Do you have a more direct link?
Spaceman
Nick
I would recommend any one thinking of earth tubes to look at Don Stephens work http://www.greeners
helter.org He has a lot of theory on his page and some really good updates on the old technologies of the Seventies. I do wish he would update his site more frequently with new data form his customers that have been using his ideas for more than five years.
Nick
From:
papercreters@ [mailto:yahoogroups. com papercreters@ ] On Behalf Of Greg Houseyahoogroups. com
Sent: Friday, February 27, 2009 11:41 AM
To:papercreters@ yahoogroups. com
Subject: Re: [papercreters] UG Dome
Spaceman wrote:
> I'll run a few earth tubes for the air intake so I stay at ambient more or less.
Do you have any experience with earth tubes? I've found a lot of contradictory information about their effectiveness and am wondering if it's really a viable technology or not. It -seems- like it'd be workable, but nobody seems to have information about how deep they need to be, how long, etc.
I found one website that had all these intense calculations about airflow, ground temps, etc which sounded very positive...but then they went to say they'd never actually BUILT one. Great, that's real helpful. Other sites say the ground around the tubes gets heat saturated and they stop functioning after awhile. So I'm confused. This is something I think I'd like to use, but it's a lot of work and money for all that excavation if it doesn't function.
Greg
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