I would recommend any one thinking of earth tubes to look at Don Stephens work http://www.greenershelter.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:
Sent: Friday, February 27, 2009 11:41 AM
To:
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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