Founders

"[C]oal, oil and natural gas are all solar energy products... and hydroelectric power is solar energy..."

"The graphs which demonstrate a huge dependence on fossil fuels are fine in one respect. They are alarming. But they are... [m]isleading... [in] that they blind people to obvious answers and prime them to a frenzy of effort in poor directions. Attention... to such... trains people to attempt to deliver what is shown in these accounting systems rather than what is needed."

"If you... ride and graze a horse... the horse's energy... does not appear on anyone's energy accounting."

"If you install interior greenhouse lights the electricity... is faithfully recorded. If you grow the plants outside no attempt is made at an accounting."

"If you drive to... buy a newspaper the gasoline consumption appears. If you walk—using food energy—the event has disappeared from sight..."

"The 's energy study shows the U.S.'s energy consumption in 1968 at... 62 quadrillion BTU ...[T]he average daily caloric intake is... 10,000 BTU/day/person—about 1.2% of the total consumption listed by the Bureau of Mines. But this... doesn't appear... on the graphs. Nuclear energy with 1% does... The food is solar energy. Why is it not included?"

"If we use the figure of 0.5% efficiency (Ayres and Scarlott)... we have consumed... 2,000,000 BTU/person/day of sunlight in producing the 10,000 BTU/person consumed. Solar energy then fills over 2/3 of the new energy pie."

"Why wouldn't it be fair to expand the slice—4% (1973—Bureau of Mines) given to hydroelectric power by a similar factor of efficiency—for the solar energy consumed in raising the water to its working head?"

"Every time the sun shines on the surface of a house and especially when it shines through a window there is "solar heating"...According to the NSF/NASA Energy Panel of 1972 the percentage of thermal energy for buildings supplied by the sun was too small to be measurable. ...Shouldn't we recalculate the energy consumption of every building assuming it were kept in the shade all day and... attribute the difference to solar energy? ...I would guess the average shaded fuel consumption to be 15% higher..."

"[O]ur next concern in heating the building is what keeps the earth warm..? What supplies the United States with the energy to maintain an average temperature of 60 degrees Fahrenheit as it spins in empty space at absolute zero? This is a heating contract that no oil company would be quick to try and fill."

"[I]t is very important to examine what the limits of an accounting system are—to know what the numbers and quantities... really mean."

"The design of houses can be stilted by such graphs."

"Now that the experts have started this infantile accounting system, which evidently finds us... independent of the sun, solar energy will be admitted only so long as it has been properly collected, stored and transferred."

"Legislation aimed at encouraging the use of solar energy equipment by subsidizing... certain hardware must end by being pathetic and blundering."

"It would take an enormous crew of experts to determine the efficiency of different orientations of windows, different arrangements of shade trees, etc... To ignore these efforts and only to reward the purchase of "off the shelf hardware" is to further the disease of narrow minded quantification."

"If you purchase certain kinds of hardware to exploit solar energy it will be accounted for and credit will be given to the sun. If you depend on more customary old-fashioned uses of solar energy, growing food, drying clothes, sun bathing, warming a house with south windows, the sun credit is totally ignored."

"Our present accounting system... can only discourage good house design. If the natural solar contribution to house heating from windows is ignored, then the designer knows this... No tax incentives—no credit to the sun in ERDA's graphs."

"[W]e would be much better informed if alongside every graph showing our use of oil, coal and uranium there were also an indication or the total energy received from the sun. Since we can't do without it, let's not omit it from our accounts."

"In the case of the United States a conservative estimate of the solar energy received in one year might be... Twenty nine thousand three hundred quadrillion Btu as opposed to the 62 quadrillion shown as used during 1968 by the U.S. Bureau of Mines."

"When small children first start paying attention to... their allowances they briefly commit their... minds to their few coins and... chores... without... considering the budget of the family's household. We can't allow our entire civilization to be similarly ignorant for long. We must ask who's keeping score and why they have such peculiar methods."

"The great problem with movable insulation is cracks. A door, shutter, or curtain is placed... The optimist notes the R value... but does not achieve it."

"The effect of clothes and blankets on heat loss is naturally investigated by everyone."

"A sniper scope or camera... that shows... temperatures as... colors would be an enormous help to the investigator. 30 minutes with such... could be as valuable as a week's work... without it. ...[N]ature ...treats you to such a view of the window or skylight with a pattern of frost. ...[S]eals ...[are] the entire problem."

"A crack... of 2 in2/ft2... can conduct 1/3 Btu/ft2hr°F."

"If you... have cracks... torture the air... by pressing the insulation panel... against the glass... air... must then spread in a thin film... Experimenting with smoke... once this layer is less than 1/16"... it is slowed... and acts almost like a syrup."

"Treat a glass area like a ship—break it into separate compartments so that a leak in one place won't be fatal."

"A [1974] test on conventional window shades showed... 1) A roller shade inside a with 1/4" gaps at the sides of the shade reduced heat loss through a single glazed window by about 28%. 2) A drape drawn in front of the... window reduced heat loss by about 6%. 3) A venetian blind reduced heat loss by 7%.During the summer the shading devices reduced heat gain by the following... 1) white, opaque roller shade 50% 2) venetian blinds (slats at 45%) 18% 3) venetian blinds (slats closed) 29%"

"Tests done at Zomeworks on 45° sloped skylights with our insulating Skylids installed beneath a single pain of glass show a reduction of heat loss of about 75%... The louvers average 3" thick, have aluminum skins and are filled with figerglass—most of the heat loss occurs through air leaks..."

"The Beadwall seems to be the perfect answer for superior insulation against heat loss."

"Tests done by thermal decay of a glass aquarium show a U factor of the naked glass of about 1 1/3 and of the glass covered with Nightwall, of about 1/3."

"Movable insulation can... be used to prevent heat gain. ...[T]he best position ...is outside the glass rather than inside."

"A particularly attractive use of insulating panels is to have them double as reflectors—during the day they bounce additional energy through the same window they will insulate at night. Often it is most cost-effective to have a movable reflector outside a south window or skylight that is changed seasonally... not daily."

"SUMMARY 1) It is best to have a way to prevent both heat gain and heat loss. 2) Be skeptical of mechanical seals. 3) Do not use single glazing unless it is a mild climate or the movable insulation is controlled by a reliable automatic means. 4) Do not install anything you cannot fix. 5) Look for two uses for one material. 6) Break the area to be insulated into pieces so that an air leak in one area will be isolated. 7) Always use strong, durable materials outside."

"[I]t's more satisfying to develop and manufacture less expensive items which pay for themselves. It makes me sleep better at night."

"The tendency is not to care about spending somebody else's money—so even at this time when we're supposed to be conserving energy we're instituting policies that make people conserve less."

"ZW is a privately owned corporation. We are not supported by federal grants. We depend on your business for support."

"You don't need to have a [government energy] policy... there already is a policy—it's each individual's policy. We need the government for some things like the armed forces, but not in the marketplace."

"We don't have a shortage of fuel... gas is still cheap and we have an abundance of coal and uranium. The goals might encourage energy conservation—but it would aid in energy conservation if we all dropped dead, too. Energy conservation is not an end in itself—no one really gives a damn about energy conservation—it's happiness that people are concerned with."

"We've gone too far in letting the government into our affairs..."

"I care about the spirit of innovation... I'm an inventor, but it's a bad time for people to do that. Many of us who developed the ideas behind direct gain heating—and have been successful—our ideas have been co-opted by the government, and it's disappointing that the government does not now turn to us for new ideas. ...They're stacking the decks against the little guy ..."

"Drop City, Colorado, a rural vacant lot full of elegant funky domes and ditto people, has been well photographed and poorly reported in national magazines. Visitors and readers... assumed that the domes were geodesic Fuller domes, which some... are. But most... were designed by another guy who designed by another geometry: Steve Baer."

"This tabloid contains the crystallographic theory and junkyard practice behind Baer's domes: from how to distort a polyhedron without affecting connector angles to how to chop out a car without losing your foot. ...Baer's theory is unique in architecture. So is his practice; instead of dying of dissertation dry rot, his notions stand around in the world bugging the citizens."

"The Dome Cookbook is published by Lama Foundation, an intentional community in New Mexico, built largely of Baer domes."

"High above the roofs of... Martineztown, one of Albuquerque's oldest s... a growing army of... structures...point south to capture sunlight... [for] two large buildings... Zomeworks Corporation, one of the nation's earliest companies."

"Founded in 1969... some of the buildings were called "zomes"—or "dodecahedral structures"... Others were heated in a simple way with... "passive" solar heating."

"Ten years later Zomeworks has moved to a newly renovated showroom (once the home of Martineztown dance hall)... [P]anels insulate many of the windows at night... attached by small magnetic clips... only one of the passive solar devices developed by Zomeworks..."

"Many other Zomeworks ideas... as... black 55 gallon drums behind glass... (the "drumwall") have... become classics..."

"[T]he devices are cheap. A thermosyphoning solar water heater... costs less than half as much as most solar water heaters. A solar preheater... is even less."

"The company... manufactures... "skylids" (insulated shutters for skylights that open and close with the sun) and "beadwalls" (double pain windows that fill and drain with beads to let the sun in or keep the cold out)."

"[T]he company's newest product, "Big Fin" water heaters... can be placed inside a greenhouse or other glass enclosed area. After its copper pipes have been heated by the sun, the water... flows to an elevated heating tank by... natural convection and the cool water at the bottom of the tank flows back... There's no electric pump. The cost... $850."