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concepts · updated 2026-08-01

Dave Harrison

confidence: high volatility: cold verified: 2026-08-01fresh

Zomeworks Vice President (12+ years) and engineer-inventor. Held three patents (Beadwall, Integral Roof Cooling Container, and co-invented passive ventilation). Designed Frank's House / Beadwall in Placitas, NM (1980).

Zomeworks engineer and inventor. Held three patents relevant to the archive:

US 3,903,665 (filed 1973, granted 1975) — Beadwall (“Heat energy transmission control panel”). Assigned personally (not Zomeworks) — Harrison owned the invention; Zomeworks commercialized it. Polystyrene beads pneumatically blown between window panes by an ordinary vacuum cleaner. Sunspots (Ch. 6.5):

“Such elegant inventions as the beadwall indicate that the healthy response of architecture to increasing energy costs may be increased use of glass in building walls rather than a retreat to underground buildings.”

Sunspots also points readers to “Harrison’s forthcoming article in Solar Energy.”

US 5,609,200 (filed 1994, granted 1997) — Integral Roof Cooling Container. Assigned to Zomeworks Corp. Water-filled containers rotationally molded directly onto metal roof sections; cools by night-sky radiation; no separate support structure. Lapsed 2001 — one year before the Cool Cell brochure. Bridges the battery cabinet patents and the Cool Cell.

US 5,603,656 (1997) — Passive Ventilation Device and Method. Co-invented with Steve Baer; the only Baer patent with a co-inventor in the battery-cabinet series. Hydrogen gas venting from battery cabinets using the buoyancy of the hydrogen itself. (The companion patent US 5,660,587, Passive Ventilation System and Method, lists Baer alone.)

Described in Baer’s 2004 “Dear Shareholders” letter as “Vice President of Zomeworks and long time independent contractor,” a believer in the strong local Albuquerque market for the Double Play system: “I’ve worked with this and Cool Cell technology for over 12 years and know it is reliable and really works. We’ve had very few problems with our Cool Cells. It is time to go beyond conditioned cabinets and move into architecture.” See Dear shareholders.

Designed Frank’s House / Beadwall in Placitas, NM (1980), and the Monte Vista School Greenhouse, Albuquerque (1973) — both in the 2009 AIA passive solar slideshow; see Baer AIA passive solar slideshow. The Monte Vista Beadwall Greenhouse is also photographed in Sunspots (filling and emptying).

See also