Home WORLD Family’s Underground Earth-Sheltered Dome House

Family’s Underground Earth-Sheltered Dome House

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Paula and Bill Lishman spent many winters in a poorly-insulated A-frame cabin before realizing they needed to go underground to use the earth’s energy to stay warm, so they knocked the top off a hill, dropped in ferro-cement domes, and covered it up again with dirt.

source/image(PrtSc): Kirsten Dirksen

Thanks to skylights cut into every dome and the white-powdered marble that covers the interior, their earth-sheltered home is naturally well-lit despite being below the frost line. Fifteen feet below ground, the soil temperature remains about equal to the annual average temperature of the area’s surface air so earth-sheltered homes use sod’s constant temperature to stay warmer in winter and cooler in summer./Kirsten Dirksen

Bill Lishman believed in rethinking not just the conventional home, but also how we live. He reimagined his home’s refrigerator by building a round appliance that pops up out of the countertop so the heavier cool air stays inside when opened (via compressed air).

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In 1986, Bill Lishman began training Canada Geese to follow his ultralight aircraft and to “teach” the birds migration routes to avoid a threatened extinction. His work on “Operation Migration” brought him popular recognition with the 1996 movie Fly Away Home starring Jeff Daniels.//via/read more: Kirsten Dirksen

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