Earth TubesJune 20th, 2009 at 19:55 The house is designed to
have as much passive thermal management as possible. The massive
slab you see about to be poured will be a heat sink that will
minimize the temperature swings inside the house (more about
that later). The main air inlets will be through earth tubes. In
the heat of the summer, when we come home, rather than turning
on air conditioning (we won’t have any), we will instead turn on
a “whole house” fan. These fans are designed to pull the heated
air in the house out through the roof and draw (hopefully
cooler) outside air in. In a leaky house with poor insulation,
this air generally comes in from cracks and gaps all over, but
in a very well insulated (“tight”) house, you need to provide an
air inlet for the fan to draw air in, or you will just suck a
vacuum on your house, and not move any air. To provide air, we
have an air inlet plenum in the center of the house fed by earth
tubes. The earth tubes are long, large diameter tubes which run
all around the