Passive Annual Heat Storage: Improving the Design of Earth Shelters (2013 Revision) Paperback – November 17, 2013

This is one of the top 3 books I have in my collection. ( about 50 books on housing ) and I re-read bits of it fairly often.The chapters on air flow heat exchangers for improving air quality, are better than I have read anywhere, and along with the explanations of how heat moves through earth, have made me completely rethink my housing ideas.Unfortunately, most of us will not have a building site that can take full advantage of all his ideas, which is not really the authors fault, but I feel some of the ideas can still be used in new houses on some suburban blocks.A follow up book on using these energy flow ideas, on a house design for standard town housing blocks, would be nice, This house could have highly insulated, thick, high thermal mass walls, and breath all by itself. I am working on a new house design along these lines at the moment.I highly recommend this book, even if just for the interesting theory, although it might be a little bit “over the top” for some one who just wants a house that is “the same as every one else’s.”Mike.

Way interesting. Love all the pictures in it!

This book has what other books about earth-sheltered buildings do not; a scientific approach, complete with numbers, to how the earth actually helps heat/cool a building. Not surprising as John Hait is a trained Engineer. The only drawback is that his explanations of how things work are sometimes perfunctory and could benefit from proof reading by a 3rd party to see if they make sense.Michael Reynolds' Earthships incorporate the principles described here, but only this book tells you why things should be done the way they are. In fact, some Earthship designs recommend placing insulation in places where John Hait advises not to, such as below floors.

Written in fairly non technical terms, "Passive Annual Heat Storage improving the design of Earth Shelters", doesn't tell you much about how to design your house. It describes a means of heating/cooling the place using nature itself. You'll find about two chapters each on basic principles, moisture control, ventilation, waterproofing, insulation, "earth tubes" to assist in the above- maybe a couple of other things with a page for your own notes at the end of each.I really think it's a pretty good book, I believe the idea will work (not so very different from the thermal mass concept in above ground solar homes). While most of us can't design/ build the earth shelter part, the stuff covered here we could do without a great deal of training or experience.At 200 pages and lots of diagrams (some cartoonish) you'd think everything would be covered, and most of it is well enough, but some details such as how to bring the earth tubes into the house come up a little bit short. I suspect the reader is meant to use the author's website and/or purchase the related materials on page 200, maybe the "missing" detail is there.This one is worth owning, not just checking out at the library.

Storing the excess heat of summer to warm your home in the winter is possible if you can implement the plans in this book.Implementation has some issues, but John Hait addresses as many of them as possible.If you are interested in building or retrofitting for improved energy efficiency this book is useful and enlightening. The book can be summed up in its appendix A but without the background of the rest of the book you might be missing the depth of understanding to properly utilize it.The book is more expensive than I would like but it is worth the money for the DIY builder.

The next time you spend big bucks for heating fuel or machinery, think about how nice it would be to have a home that heated itself. Here is the knowledge on how to make that real. If you're going to build your own home, read this before anything else. Use what you can of it with any type of build to save fuel in the future.

OK, now where are the data? The website provided in the book is dead. The Rocky Mountain Research Center has no website, street address or working phone, ergo no available supporting information for the claims made by this author. The bibliography has less than a dozen citations with nothing cited more recently than 1982. Any fully functioning PAHS homes are secreted away and unavailable for information. Oh right, that would be the non-existent data from the seemingly non-existent RMRC. C'mon guys....I believe that this technology works. BUT, this idea has been available for 30+ years and the author has had plenty of time to collect useful data from all those private homes that don't want visitors. Some hard evidence (that darned data, again) would turn this concept into a viable energy solutions for homeowners instead of a crapshoot based on vague and folksy descriptions. Please, I'm building a house, spending a huge sum of money and don't find buttered popcorn as an analogy the least bit useful. What do I mean?For example, where is the citation for the University of Minnesota study that comprises most of Chpt. 5? Where are the engineering data? For that matter, where are any data that support any of the statements made in this book? Chpt. 5 is a great example of all sorts of claims with zero data. Heck, it's the entire book.Where's the math? Simply supplying the formulas in an appendix without applying them in the discussion of the book is worse than useless. What is the effective insulating value of the earth and the umbrella concept? How are airflow rates affected by tube length, size and placement? What are the rates (more math)?Simply showing/discussing what works/doesn't work with zero data is disingenuous at best. Oh, right, we're supposed to take all of this on faith. Math, please, and mathematical comparisons, i.e. hard evidence for the claims made in this book as well as the math to present to engineers and city planners.If anyone is planning to implement this concept, get really cozy with your engineering friends or a university department interested in this green technology. Why? There's going to be a lot of 'self-help' in order to convince an architect and/or city engineer that this concept is viable for a C of O. Of course, if you plan to build off the grid, you're on your own at any rate.Without any 'good' contact information, citations and supporting data, it's no surprise that so few of these homes have been built. John Hait might just be the Nikola Tesla of passive residential heating and cooling, but Tesla had data.To the author and Amazon - please provide real contact information and supporting evidence (data) on a website. I would like to see the home plans and information sheets that are touted on the last page of the book from a website that doesn't exist - down for maintenance with no future date for a live website. Uh huh....

Someday the rest of humanity will discover this and marvel. Only problem is how to move such an amount of soil.

If I had the money and opportunity to try to get the summer Sun's heat in the winter, I couldn't wait to try. It's all so very exciting and exhilarating. Wemust all want to save our planet if we can. This idea must be a good start. If it really worked, think of all the greenhouse gases we'd save from the air stream. What could anyone do in an ordinary home to save on a heat bill? Wouldn't you want to know if there was any other way than you knew? Maybe you got time to ponder it, maybe not. It is work after all, even if you can't see all the smoke rising. A penny saved is a penny earned.

This 2013 version of what is a classic book in green-building circles is nicely produced, with a wealth of detailing clearly shown. Like the original though, it lacks a detailed analysis of a real project which could be considered a canonical reference. There is reference to a highly instrumented property, it would be really useful to examine Hait's real data.Its hard to see where the original (which I have, but last read more than 2 years ago) and the new version differ, but other reviewers may be able to helpNeither the forward, nor the introduction make the differences obvious - apart from the ubiquitous weblink to the author's website.5 stars, there's nothing else like it.

Interesting concept mostly developed with an educational and practical objective. Worth digging in more scientific references.

While I'm not really one for dramatic proclamations as a rule, I'm proclaiming that the heat storage principles outlined in this book could and even must change the nature of residential construction in heating climates, especially for us here in rural Canada. This construction method does require some space, so maybe doesn't scale well for tight urban lots, but after reading this book, it seems downright irresponsible to build a new house any other way.