John Hait writes;My first earth-sheltered house, an underground geodesic dome was partially complete when the truckload of insulation my colleagues and I had ordered arrived. Right away, we knew we had a problem: How do you put flat, rigid polystyrene insulation on a round house?
We called housing experts all over the country, but no one had any ideas. Finally, Ray Sterling at the University of Minnesota's Underground Space Center suggested that we place a flat, insulating "umbrella" in the earth above the building. This, he said, would keep the domelike house warm by insulating the soil around it.
"What a marvelous idea!" I thought when I heard his advice. After two weeks of rigorous examination, I realized that the concept was even more promising than I'd supposed. By then I was convinced that the dry earth under an insulating/water-shedding umbrella could store enough free solar heat from the summertime to warm the house through the entire winter (see diagrams above). This meant that a house could actually be constructed with an unchanging built-in temperature, which would make heating and cooling equipment unnecessary. Now, five years later, I still think it's a marvelous idea. The Geodome, the house we built in the cold and cloudy climate of western Montana, remains at 66 to 68 degrees F, even through the coldest winters.
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