concepts
78 articles, most recently updated first
Baer's water-based thermosiphon heating-and-cooling system (the 'double play'), traced by Kayatekin's 2025 ICON paper from the 1967–68 stock pond melter through Cool Cell, Andy Sha…
Zomeworks 8'×20' high-boy cargo container retrofitted with a Double Play passive heating/cooling system: 3 south-wall selective-surface absorber panels, 8 rooftop urethane water bl…
52-home solar community in Okotoks, Alberta that achieved 97% solar fraction via seasonal borehole storage over 15+ years — then was decommissioned in 2024 when maintenance costs e…
Portable construction office trailers come standard on wheeled steel I-beam chassis with wood-frame walls (2x4 at 16" OC, R-21), making them better thermal stand-ins for residentia…
Factory production of container and modular buildings saves 10–20% over conventional construction at equivalent quality — a real but modest advantage. The value proposition for a p…
Peer-reviewed studies confirm 54–87% energy reduction in passive container retrofits, but summer overheating remains unsolved in the Passivhaus approach — the gap where Double Play…
Current cost data for the passive thermal competition: heat pumps average $15,393 installed nationally ($4,350/ton), while Passive House construction premiums have collapsed to 3.7…
Selective solar absorber coatings on plastic substrates: polymer-based foils can achieve 0.95 absorptance / ~0.3 emittance, but the real question is emittance — flat black already …
First hard cost data for a Baer-style passive thermal system: Trombe walls cost ~$67/sqft installed with payback of 0.7–12.3 years depending on climate, a 2.1:1 benefit-cost ratio …
An article by Steve Baer in the NMSEA SunPaper (March/April 2003) arguing that removing the glass from a solar collector is not a compromise — it is often an improvement. Baer repo…
Andy Shack is a Zomeworks test building (in use by 1988, monitored 2000-2002) using an 8-inch PVC pipe water-storage bank (250 gallons) connected to a 65 sq ft roof-mounted copper …
Bruce W. Davis's 236 sq ft Albuquerque studio — half of a converted garage at Davis House 2 — cooled from 2004 by a thermosiphon Double Play system: 12 Sky Mat radiator/absorbers (…
A DrumWall is a south-facing wall of water-filled drums positioned behind glazing to absorb solar heat during the day and radiate it back into the room overnight. It is Steve Baer'…
NMSEA is a 501(c)(3) solar-education nonprofit founded at Ghost Ranch in 1972 by Keith Haggard (principal founder and first executive director), Peter Van Dresser, and Steve Baer —…
Zomeworks Corporation is Steve Baer's passive solar engineering and manufacturing company, founded in Albuquerque, New Mexico in the late 1960s. It is the institutional home for ev…
Steve Baer's first book (1968, Lama Foundation cookbook fund, $1.00) — zonohedra geometry, car-top dome construction how-to, Drop City journal entries, and the origin of the word '…
The 1961 United Nations Conference on New Sources of Energy, Rome, is the archive's key institutional milestone in the scientific pre-history of the thermal vision: Bliss reported …
Meeting on solar heating and air conditioning of buildings, Washington DC, March 21-23, 1973, sponsored by NSF and the University of Maryland. Industry panelists (Alcoa, Texas Inst…
Spring 1969 gathering organized by Barry Hickman with Steve and Holly Baer that directly preceded Zomeworks' founding. Baer recalled Alamogordo, but multiple independent sources co…
The Atascadero Skytherm house (Atascadero, California, 1973) is Harold Hay's full-scale 1,100 sq ft demonstration of the Skytherm roof-pond system — plastic waterbed-like bags on t…
Corrales, New Mexico is the village where Steve Baer settled in 1968, built the Baer House zome cluster in 1971-72, and lived for his entire working life. A center of strong 1970s …
Northern New Mexico site at Abiquiu where NMSEA was co-founded in 1972 and the first 'Life Technic' conference was held, and where NMSEA's inaugural Sun-dwellings project built fou…
Libre is a commune in Gardner, Colorado (Huerfano Valley), co-founded in 1968 by Peter Rabbit (Peter Douthit) and Dean Fleming in the direct lineage of Drop City, and described as …
The first 'Life Technic' conference was hosted at Ghost Ranch (Abiquiu, New Mexico) in 1972 by NMSEA's three founders — Keith Haggard, Peter Van Dresser, and Steve Baer — with over…
An Albuquerque school with a 240 sq ft attached passive solar greenhouse designed by Dave Harrison of Zomeworks in 1973 — the earliest documented Beadwall installation in the archi…
Peradam was a three-day gathering staged in fall 1969 in the woods near Santa Barbara by Dave Evans of Engelbart's ARC group at SRI, bringing technologists together with the New Co…
Steve Baer's own house in Corrales, New Mexico is an artifact of his thermal philosophy — a built demonstration of the ideas that appear throughout the archive. Originally construc…
A Golden Thread: 2500 Years of Solar Architecture and Technology (Ken Butti and John Perlin, Cheshire Books, 1980) is the mainstream institutional history of solar energy -- and ce…
This is a Zomeworks technical drawing (DWG: ALUMINUMROLLEDFORMROOF-V2.DWG, dated 01-22-03, drawn by BRT) showing a roof construction method for the Cool Cell system. The aluminum r…
A chapter from Steve Baer's serialized solar energy book in the Tribal Messenger (April 13, 1973, page 13), with drawings by Ellie McGilly. Part technical primer on collector orien…
Davis Energy Group presentation by Dick Bourne on circulating naturally cooled water (evaporative or night-sky) through tubing in concrete slabs — with monitored results from the D…
These six image files document physical structures, projects, and instructional material related to the solar and thermal work. Originally filed without dates, they have been ident…
A presentation by Steve Baer to the Albuquerque Chapter of the AIA on January 15, 2009, titled "Some Passive Solar Buildings with a Focus on Projects in New Mexico." The 23 MB PDF …
The Beadwall is a window insulation system invented by Dave Harrison of Zomeworks. Polystyrene beads are blown into the air cavity between two panes of glass when insulation is nee…
Albuquerque mechanical consulting engineering firm founded 1951 by Frank Bridgers (1922-2005) and Donald Paxton (1912-2007). Engineered the 1956 Solar Building, widely called the w…
"The addition of energy storage to buildings is of utmost importance whether we plan to use power plants or nature, or both, to make those buildings comfortable." — Steve Baer, May…
A short essay by Steve Baer (Zomeworks Corporation) dated January 4, 2004 — perihelion day that year. Baer argues that despite widespread attention to climate and temperature, "few…
Cool Cell™ is Zomeworks Corporation's passive climate-control system: water reservoirs in the ceiling connect to roof-mounted radiator/absorbers. In summer, the water absorbs inter…
"To irrigate we should pump our rivers over again, not pump them dry" — a column by Steve Baer in the Corrales Comment, July 8, 2000. Rather than conserving water by doing without,…
A letter from Steve Baer, President of Zomeworks Corporation, to shareholders dated September 29, 2004. It announces the next stage of the Double Play heating and cooling system: c…
Di-thermal roofs are Zomeworks' unglazed radiator/absorbers that do double duty: collect solar heat during winter days and reject heat to the night sky on summer nights. In some ca…
The US Department of Energy's Solar Decathlon (launched 2002, National Mall) is a biennial student solar-house competition and the largest institutional demonstration-building prog…
John Solso's November 2002 piece generalizing Baer's 'double play' idea from heating-and-cooling hardware to design at large: yurts and Turkish rooms as multifunctional spaces, str…
Drop City was a counterculture commune near Trinidad, Colorado (El Moro area), founded in 1965 and abandoned by 1973. It is the origin point for Steve Baer's zome structures and th…
NREL paper (Burch, Salasovich, Christensen, Thornton, 2003) simulating an unglazed 'triple play' collector system for water heating, space heating, and space cooling across the U.S…
Steve Baer's 1974 CoEvolution Quarterly article surveying gravity-driven heat engines and presenting his own regenerator-based 'diving engine' — a Stirling/Ericsson-adjacent design…
A series of experiments by Bristol Stickney and Steve Baer (October 2002) using matched 12″ × 12″ aluminum plates — one powered by a 9.5-watt heating pad, the other unpowered — to …
An intentional spiritual community near San Cristobal, New Mexico (north of Taos), founded 1967 by Barbara and Steve Durkee and Jonathan Altman. Published the Dome Cookbook (Steve …
Does the Double Play thermosiphon principle still work at doghouse scale (roughly 2.5 cubic feet)? The physics of night-sky radiation still applies, but passive circulation is marg…
A 2006 state-funded report by Mark Chalom Architect (with Bristol Stickney and Kate Snider) for Governor Richardson's Water Innovation Fund, quantifying the potential of night sky …
The foundational physical principle behind the entire archive: surfaces with a clear sky view cool below ambient air temperature by radiating heat directly to space. Covers Baer's …
Bare aluminum shutters below ceiling water storage, tested in the Andy Shack (March 2001). They control radiant heat flow from 8″ PVC pipes on 12″ centers to the room below — open …
"There are tens of thousands of candidates for radiant cooling where a big part of the system is already paid for. The designer has a running start. He's getting something for noth…
An Energy Design Resources design brief (prepared by Financial Times Energy for the California utilities) arguing that radiant cooling is more efficient, more comfortable, more att…
Roof integrated solar absorbers (RISA) are "invisible" collectors mounted under the weatherable roof surface rather than bolted on as separate hardware — an FSEC/NREL concept with …
The Skylid® is Zomeworks' insulated skylight louver that opens and closes by itself in response to sunlight — no electricity, no thermostat, no motor. It is the archive's clearest …
Four scanned pages from a "Solar Energy" photo insert in The Tribal Messenger, dated March 12, 1973 — Mel Buffington's photographs of the Baer drum-wall house in Corrales and a nei…
Solar Fools is an open-source community continuing Steve Baer's passive heating and cooling work under the "CoolSky" brand. The group coalesced around Baer's radiative sky cooling …
The Sunbender® is Zomeworks' reflector and shade panel system for south-facing collectors and skylights. It directs additional winter sun into the building and provides summer shad…
Two short essays by Steve Baer, both from mid-2000, written from his Corrales address. They are companion pieces in tone — each uses irony and provocation to challenge the dominant…
Steve Baer — Zomeworks Corporation, Albuquerque, New Mexico — June 1975* Illustrated by Criss-Cross Art Workshop. Library of Congress: 75-20779. Dedicated to Theodore Baird.
An essay by Steve Baer contrasting "sunshine" — free, natural, available to everyone — with "tax shine," the distortions created by solar tax credits and subsidies.
The archive's "Night and Day" piece argues that night is not empty or passive; it is full of thermal exchange that our eyes mostly miss. If we could see in infrared, the scene woul…
A thermosiphon is a passive circulation loop for water or other fluids driven by temperature-induced density differences — no pump, no moving parts. Warmer water is less dense and …
From March through late October 1973, Steve Baer serialized a first draft of a solar energy book in The Tribal Messenger. Each issue carried a chapter or installment, and the hand-…
A 5-volume US Air Force passive solar design handbook (c.1985, Architectural Energy Corp for USAF/LEEDE), representing the mid-1980s institutional canon of passive solar engineerin…
The archive's consistent preference for water over air as a thermal medium is not stated in one place — it is the cumulative conclusion of the Cool Cell brochure, the building ther…
The Whole Earth Catalog (WEC), first published fall 1968 by Stewart Brand, is the countercultural reference catalog that triggered the West Coast independent publishing movement. I…
A zome is a man-made structure derived from zonohedra — convex polyhedra whose faces are parallelograms arranged in parallel zones. Baer's word fuses "zone" and "dome." Coined with…
Steve Baer and Dave Harrison filed 21 patents and applications between 1969 and 2010, spanning osmotic heat transfer, zonohedra geometry, passive solar collection, night-sky radiat…
"Cool pipes chill room naturally" — a staff article by John W. Flores in the Albuquerque Journal (August 21, 2000) describing Zomeworks Corporation's Cool Cell climate-control syst…
The Dover Sun House (1948, Dover MA) -- built by engineer Maria Telkes, architect Eleanor Raymond, and sculptor/funder Amelia Peabody -- is the earliest heavily-publicized American…
"E and the Builder" (February 2000) is Steve Baer's essay on the constant e and the fraction 1/e = 0.37 — what he calls "the share not done, at the deadline we ignorantly count on.…
The information deficit model is the theory that public skepticism or inaction stems purely from missing facts -- the formal name for 'if we just explain the physics well enough, p…
The Passive House Institute and its national affiliates (ZEPHIR/Italy, Passivhaus Trust/UK, OeAD/Austria, Massachusetts community groups) run this archive's clearest documented sca…
A manifesto by Steve Baer (May 2004) imagining a practice called "sun work" and the people who do it — Sunmen. Part vision statement, part polemic, it is the archive's clearest art…
Yakhchal are ancient Persian domed ice-storage buildings, in use by 400 BC: qanat-fed water froze overnight in shaded channels, was cut into blocks, and stored year-round in 2m-thi…
The Karen Terry House (Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1974) was the second passive solar house built in New Mexico and became one of the most widely publicized homes in the state.