Solar Heated Homes and Eco-Technology

Enlarge Image Image Gallery This house is made up of recycled and eco-friendly materials. It is designed for low-cost upkeep. ILLUSTRATION: MOTHER EARTH NEWS STAFF

Look at the photo of the model house which accompanies this article. Ain't it a beauty? Well it should be because this is absolutely the latest thing in self-sufficient eco-living.

First off, the residence has walls of solid earth and its doors, windows, and other such accessories are largely recycled from older buildings and wrecking yards. Which means that the dwelling is designed for do-it-yourself, minimum cost, pay-as-you-go, spare time construction. There's not more than a thousand dollars' worth of store bought material in the entire structure, and that means the whole place should be fully paid for the day you move in. No 30-year mortgages here!

And no big heating or cooling bills either. Because the home is almost entirely self-insulated the natural way (with earthen walls 14 inches thick when built in Florida and 27 inches wide if the residence is constructed in Canada). Provisions have also been made to warm the dwelling's interior with solar energy during the winter and to otherwise regulate the climate of its rooms lithospherically — with the constant underground temperatures of the planet itself — throughout all four seasons of the year.

As if that weren't enough, the home shown here is largely food self-sufficient too. It has a greenhouse (solar heated, of course) and other "grow yer own" production facilities incorporated into its design.

Yep. Ain't no doubt about it. This is the house of the future that today's eco-movement pioneers have been trying to design for gosh knows how long. And here it is — finally! — as modern as tomorrow. The latest thing.

Latest, that is, except for one small fact: This particular residence was designed before some of today's "eco-pioneers" were horn! 

Back in November of 1946, you see, John Edward Kirkham — Research Professor of Civil Engineering at Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College — published a little 40-page booklet entitled How to Build Your Own Home of Earth. It was originally issued as Bulletin No. 54 of the Oklahoma Engineering Experiment Station but quickly proved so popular (the "boys" were coming home from World War II and wanted to get married and settle down in a little place of their own and there wasn't enough building material to go around and so earthen construction was enjoying a mini boom) that it was reissued as Publication No. 61. And, I guess, reissued and reissued and reissued.