#passive-solar

"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…

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…

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 …

A chapter from Steve Baer's serialized solar energy book in the Tribal Messenger (April 1973, page 13), with drawings by Ellie McGilly. Part technical primer on collector orientati…

This source applies natural cooling to slab floors as a building strategy. The point is to use the floor as a thermal mass that can participate in daily heat exchange, instead of t…

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 …

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…

Co-founder of Zomeworks Corporation with Steve Baer and Ed Heinz, c.1969-70. Co-organized the 1969 Alloy Conference with Steve and Holly Baer, the event that directly preceded Zome…

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…

Current sole owner of Zomeworks Corporation per Wikipedia (an uncited claim there, most recently edited 2026-07-06 by an account named 'JoseBaer'). Grew up in Corrales, NM; Cornell…

Suggested overhead 8-inch PVC ceiling tanks to Steve Baer, a key Cool Cell development step (combined with the August 1999 switch to rooftop radiators). Also credited, as William M…

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…

Collaborator on Steve Baer's October 2002 heated-vs-unheated-plates experiments (proving night-sky radiation can exceed 9.5 W/ft²) and co-author of the 2006 New Mexico night-sky ra…

Bruce W. Davis is an American architect based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and a member of the Solar Fools group. He has worked in passive solar and earth-building design since 1975…

R. Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) was an American architect, systems theorist, and inventor best known for the geodesic dome. His work is a recurring background presence in the arc…

"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…

Assistant Professor of Architecture (urbanism) at IE University, Segovia, Spain, since 2018. Author of "Steve Baer and the Double-Play Thermosiphon" (ICON, 2025), the archive's mos…

Clark Richert (1941–2021) was a painter, pattern theorist, and educator born in Wichita, Kansas. He is most relevant to this archive as co-founder of Drop City and as the figure wh…

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,…

Zomeworks Vice President (12+ years) and engineer-inventor. Held three patents (Beadwall, Integral Roof Cooling Container, passive ventilation). Designed Frank's House / Beadwall i…

David A. Bainbridge is a passive-solar practitioner and author who worked in Steve Baer's Living Systems design circle in the 1970s, wrote 'A Water Wall Solar Design Manual' (1981,…

Vice President at Zomeworks Corporation per Wikipedia and LinkedIn/ZoomInfo listings. The thinnest-documented of the company's current leadership figures — no independent career or…

David Wright is a Californian architect described in the 1980 Rocky Mountain News profile of Karen Terry as one of the leading passive solar architects in the country. While living…

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…

This piece compares a yurt and a Turkish room as "double play" spaces: one place serves multiple functions, rather than assigning a separate room to each activity. The archive uses…

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…

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…

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'…

"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.…

Co-founder of Zomeworks Corporation with Steve Baer and Barry Hickman, c.1969-70. Dome Cookbook (1968) records him working on new zome designs at Drop City before the founding. No …

Chemist and solar energy scientist at the University of Wisconsin (Solar Energy Laboratory, Engineering Experiment Station). Author of Direct Use of the Sun's Energy (Yale Universi…

Fred Turner is a Stanford communication professor and historian whose book From Counterculture to Cyberculture (University of Chicago Press, 2006) documents Steve Baer's direct pla…

This paper studies how an unglazed solar system performs across the U.S. for water heating, space heating, and space cooling. The important point is that unglazed collectors are no…

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…

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…

Harold Hay (1909–2009) was an American chemist and inventor who developed the Skytherm roof pond passive cooling system — the earliest documented large-scale application of night-s…

American solar pioneer and inventor of the "Solaris" solar heating system. Presented "Solar Space Heating, Water Heating, Cooling in the Thomason Home" at the 1961 United Nations C…

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 …

Steve Baer's wife and collaborator. Died February 23, 2026, after battling Alzheimer's disease, per a message from her son Jose Baer to Solar Fool members (private communication, n…

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…

Zomeworks spokesman and Architectural Cool Cell division figure. Quoted in a 2000 Albuquerque Journal article explaining the Cool Cell's water-pipe ceiling system, and credited in …

Coined the term 'boogie valve' for the floating plastic check valves used in Zomeworks' di-thermal wall prototypes — named because the plastic balls could be seen boogieing through…

Solar engineer (1908-1986) at Arizona State University. Manhattan Project consultant and locomotive gas-turbine researcher who switched to solar energy in 1955; co-developed Harold…

Son of Steve and Holly Baer. Estate executor following Steve Baer's death on May 17, 2024. Solar Fools member.

Karen Terry is a Santa Fe–based builder and contractor, best known for her own 1974 passive solar house in Santa Fe — the second passive solar house built in New Mexico and, by t

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.

Kenneth L. Haggard (b. 1935) — Cal Poly San Luis Obispo architecture professor (1967-1988) and passive solar architect. HUD-funded researcher on the Atascadero Skytherm roof-pond p…

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 …

Lloyd Kahn is a builder, writer, and publisher based in Big Sur, California. A decade older than the core counterculture cohort, he arrived at the same convergence — dropping out o…

Principal of Mark Chalom Architect. Lead author, with Bristol Stickney and Kate Snider, of the 2006 New Mexico state-funded report quantifying night-sky radiant cooling (NSRC) pote…

Director at Zomeworks Corporation per Wikipedia and LinkedIn. Prior roles at Elliston Development Inc., Carrizo Solar Corp., and Grant Thornton LLP; MBA from the University of Chic…

Michael E. Reynolds (b. 1945), architect and founder of Earthship Biotecture in Taos, New Mexico. Developed the Earthship — a sustainable, thermal-mass, off-grid building type usin…

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…

Nick Pine (Villanova University) is a solar-DIY correspondent who, in a July 1995 Usenet post, transcribed and preserved extensive passages of Steve Baer's Sunspots air-loop rock-s…

The foundational physical principle behind the entire archive. Baer's "Night and Day" essay opens with the reversal that makes it all work:

NMSEA is a 501(c)(3) solar-education nonprofit co-founded by Steve Baer, Peter Van Dresser, and Ken Haggard at Ghost Ranch in 1972 — one of the earliest regional solar organization…

A 2006 state-funded report by Mark Chalom Architect (with Bristol Stickney and Kate Snider) for Governor Richardson's Water Innovation Fund. The report quantifies the potential of …

Oscar Tuazon is a California-based artist working in architecture, installation, and sustainability. His Water School exhibition (MSU Broad Museum, 2019) placed Steve Baer explicit…

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 …

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…

Paul Hildebrandt is the founder and CEO of Zometool Inc., an educational geometry toy company that commercialized Steve Baer's 31-zone zonohedra system. He describes himself as a 4…

Commune name of Peter Douthit (1936-2012). Drop City member (1966-1968); co-founder of the Libre commune in Colorado; author of Drop City (Olympia Press, 1971); later co-founder of…

Writer and solar pioneer (1908/09-1983) based in New Mexico. Former American Rocket Society researcher and Decentralist-movement essayist who built early solar houses in El Rito an…

Architect who co-founded a passive-solar practice with Ken Haggard at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in 1976 (later the San Luis Sustainability Group). Cal Poly Architecture faculty 1974…

"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…

This design brief argues that radiant cooling is more efficient, more comfortable, more attractive, and more healthful than air-circulating systems. It also explains why the idea h…

Roof integrated solar absorbers are "invisible" collectors built into the roof rather than bolted on as separate hardware. The archive emphasizes measured performance, which is imp…

Passive solar experimenter who directly influenced Zomeworks' di-thermal wall development. Baer names him in the Cool Cell brochure's "Past Work" section (2002) alongside Harold Ha…

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" insert in The Tribal Messenger, dated March 12, 1973 (Page 9 of that issue). The insert runs alongside the Tribal Messenger serialization a…

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 …

Steve Baer (born 1938, died May 17, 2024, age 85) was an engineer, inventor, and writer based in Corrales and Albuquerque, New Mexico, and the co-founder of Zomeworks Corporation. …

This 2025 academic paper by Cem S. Kayatekin, published in ICON: Journal of the International Committee for the History of Technology (vol. 30, no. 2, pp. 120–153), traces the deve…

Counterculture artist and founding member of the Lama Foundation. Co-coined the word "zome" with Steve Baer.

Stewart Brand is the founder of the Whole Earth Catalog (fall 1968) and the central broker between the counterculture commune movement and the Bay Area computer research establishm…

The Sunbender® is Zomeworks' mirrored reflector and shade panel system for south-facing collectors and skylights. It directs additional winter sun into the building and provides su…

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…

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 …

Zomeworks employee who installed the Double Play thermosiphon system at Bruce W. Davis's Albuquerque studio in 2004 — plumbing 42 vertical 4-inch PVC drain pipes holding 200 gallon…

Inventor and founder of One Design Inc. Developed rotationally-molded water-wall modules for passive heating and cooling starting in 1974, evolving over four generations. Baer name…

From March through October 1973, Steve Baer serialized a book on solar energy in the Tribal Messenger, a small local newsletter. Each issue carried a chapter, and the companion tri…

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…

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

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…

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." The definit…

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…

Four photographs (March and July 2026) plus a hand-drawn Zomeworks schematic document a shipping container prototype at the Zomeworks facility in Albuquerque, showing the radiant c…

Steve Baer and Dave Harrison filed 20 patents and applications between 1969 and 2010, spanning osmotic heat transfer, zonohedra geometry, passive solar collection, night-sky radiat…

Practical guide for acquiring and preserving the Baer House in Corrales, NM — estate context, what to preserve, who to approach, acquisition structures, and immediate actions.

Books and articles by Steve Baer, and key works cited by him across the archive.

Books by Steve Baer and Zomeworks, plus the print collection of the Solar Fool library.

Books, articles and other media about passive cooling and heating and related subjects.

A reusable Raspberry Pi Zero sensor/logging methodology for validating small passive-thermal builds in the field, in the spirit of Stickney and Baer's 2002 heated-vs-unheated-plate…

Human-browseable view of the archive. For the machine-readable registry see raw-sources/index.md. Grouped by era and type; links go to the file and to the compiled wiki page where …

Explicit backlog of raw sources not yet cited by any wiki article's sources: field. Not a claim these are unsynthesized — most are already represented through an era-bundle topic p…

This bundle groups the earliest archive material: Antarctic heat-collector notes, the Solar Energy newsletter pages, and the long run of Tribal Messenger / Tribal Notes scans. Take…

This bundle collects the late-1990s and 2000 sources that set up the later archive: natural cooling, roof-integrated solar, radiant cooling, persuasive essays, correspondence, and …

This bundle is the densest part of the archive. It contains the development notes for Cool Cell, Di-thermal roofs, storage, pool-heater cooling, plate testing, double play, and rel…

This bundle is smaller but thematically tight: unglazed solar collectors, geographical variation, and perihelion. It reads like a geometric and seasonal refinement of the earlier c…

This bundle covers the decade between the 2002 engineering peak and the 2025 retrospective — a period of independent validation, public presentation, and continued practice. The fi…

This bundle gathers the 2025 recap material: modern Cool Cell writeups, a pool-heater cooling note, shareholder commentary, Di-thermal roof updates, and a double-play thermosiphon …

Across the archive, the same conclusion keeps reappearing: effective passive climate control is not one trick but a coupled system. Water stores heat, surfaces exchange heat with t…

The archive now spans from 400 BC to 2025 — from ancient Persian ice houses through a Japanese engineer's proposal to combine nocturnal radiation cooling with radiant panels, throu…

The archive is, among other things, a collection of teaching methods. Baer spent five decades explaining radiant energy to non-specialists — newsletter readers, architects, shareho…

Most of the archive is written by Steve Baer or the Zomeworks staff. But a recurring pattern emerges when the wiki pages are read together: people outside Zomeworks keep arriving a…

Can a Double Play-style passive water thermosiphon be shrunk to a 2.5 cubic-foot outdoor cat shelter in South Texas? Scaling physics says use a small pump, not passive circulation.…

Demonstration buildings do measurably drive adoption — but only through local peer-network learning, not press reach, and only when the underlying engineering holds up once the cam…

The archive keeps finding the same deployment strategy: attach passive thermal systems to things that already exist. Existing pool heaters, existing roofs, existing building shells…

The archive's adoption gap has a structural cause: passive thermal systems eliminate ongoing energy purchases, removing the incentive for utilities, HVAC manufacturers, and large b…

Four wiki pages, written between 1999 and 2004, form a single argument: removing the glass cover from a solar collector is not a compromise — it is a design choice that unlocks coo…

Across the archive, one material appears in every thermal system: water. It stores heat, moves heat, bridges heating and cooling loops, and defines the time constants of the buildi…

The archive's passive thermal systems have been independently validated by government engineers, practicing architects, and academic historians. The physics works. The buildings la…