1958: Peter van Dresser remodeled his little house on Canyon Road with two rooftop collectors. Air heated in collectors by the sun was blown by electric fans through pipes buried in heat-absorbing sand and gravel beneath the brick floors and vented into the house.
By Tom Sharpe | The New Mexican
November 16, 2006
Peter van Dresser already had an interesting résumé by the time he turned 50 in 1958, when he retrofitted a Santa Fe adobe into what might be the world's oldest solar house.
That remote mountain property seemed like a steal until you found out you could not drill a well. Four years ago we were approached by a professional couple from a major city, who had just purchased property in the very remote mountains of Idaho. After selecting the perfect site to build their dream retirement home, their well driller came up dry after drilling multiple wells over 500 feet deep.
The town of Rindge, N.H., is just 70 miles from Boston, but to telephone and cable companies it might as well be at the end of the earth. Many of the town’s 5,500 residents cannot get broadband Internet access from the providers in the area, Verizon and Pine Tree Cable, even though communities nearby have had the service for years.
If you said Joe Gora is a man who loves his dome home, you would be right. After completing two Monolithic Dome Workshops, Joe designed and built Free Will, a 42' x 18' dome with 1585 square feet of living space, on a double lot in Marietta, Georgia. That process took 18 months and culminated with Joe celebrating Christmas 2000 in his new dome. Since then, his delight with Free Will has not waned an iota.
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