Steve Baer

Steve Baer (October 13th, 1938 to May 17th, 2024) was an American inventor and pioneer of passive solar technology. Baer pioneered and helped popularize the use of zomes. He took a number of solar power patents, wrote a number of books and publicized his work. Baer served on the board of directors of the U.S. Section of the International Solar Energy Society, and on the board of the New Mexico Solar Energy Association. He was the founder, chairman of the board, president, and director of research at Zomeworks Corporation. He was the creator of Zome architecture as well as one of creators of Zometool, a construction set educational toy or device that had evolved from playground climbers and other structures that had been created by Zomeworks.

Steve Baer in an Albuquerque school's greenhouse that he built.

Quotes

Steve Baer

Zome Primer (1970)

:elements of zonohedra geometry, two and three dimensional growths of stars with five fold symmetry by Steve Baer

• This booklet had first an elementary explanation of the geometry of Zonohedra, then a more difficult account of the growths of the thirty-one zone star. This system, based on the 31 lines that pass through the center of an icosahedron and either a vertex, edge midpoint of face midpoint is new and unusual.
  • Preface

• I have applied for a patent on this structural system. The patent is assigned to Zomeworks Corporation. The predecessors of this system are the octet truss and the MERO space grid system. The relative potentials of these systems are discussed briefly by a comparison of their geometric possibilities.
  • Preface

• The forms possible using this system are limitless; there is no attempt here to explore these possibilities—the examples shown are small probings. The booklet describes the mathematics of the process that creates these limitless forms.
  • Preface

• Zomes can cluster together like soap bubbles. Their zones can be stretched, shrunk, or omitted completely to make the various zomes' different shapes and sizes. The zomes can also pack several layers deep.

• The geodesic dome, because of its shape and the arrangement of its structural members is extremely strong, but its uses are limited because of the inflexibility of its shape. It is always part of a sphere... any variation would destroy the structural properties... It is complicated in structure and simple in shape. Zomes are simple in structure and complicated in shape.

• The regular polyhedra are like seeds from which growths may appear. They are the connecting joints for the zonohedra.

• Zonohedra have bands of parallel edges. Any such band... can be stretched to alter the shape of the zonohedron. Stretching the band... does not alter any angles.

• Stretching zones allows... buildings of different shapes using the same kinds of components.

• The dodecahedron and the icosahedron are duals of each other—the vertices of one match the face midpoints of the other and vice versa.

• The icosahedron and the dodecahedron have five fold symmetry. They cannot occur as crystals.

• Five fold symmetry does appear among other symmetries in nature.

• [R]ecursive growth... In the case of... five fold symmetry there isn't uniformity. ...Instead of reproducing itself... it becomes steadily more intricate.

• The more you examine properties of objects and phenomena the more you find yourself presented with a few terms, usually simple, from a long series of terms. Often you cannot touch the terms which are further or lower in the series, but you can define the properties which they have. One gets the feeling of living in a container—one of an infinite number—to which are shunted objects and phenomena which have passed through one filter but can't pass through another; a great process like that which takes place in a gravel yard, only we are unable to see gravel other than that of our own size but sense that it exists in endless different piles beyond—everything from sand to planet sized boulders.

• The coherence proof demonstrates that if one builds a structure using the A and B lines of the 31 zone star (...C lines ...used only within ...forms defined by ...A and B lines) and always follow the rule... no matter how far or intricately one builds, two extensions of two entirely different limbs of the same structure can always be locked back together in a perfect fit with a combination of our simple parts.

• We have associated the thirty-one zone star throughout with the icosahedron and... dodecahedron. It also fits perfectly with the three smaller regular polyhedra. The tetrahedron, the cube and the octahedron fit inside the icosahedron and... dodecahedron. Their vertices touch a vertex, an edge midpoint or a face midpoint of the larger figure. This regular match... positions the smaller figure so that regular patterns on the large figure project inwards as regular patterns on the small figure. In each case either five or ten small figures fit at once within the larger...

• Each of the regular polyhedra is thus a convenient core from which to define the regular thirty-one zone star. The geometric regularities insure simplicity in the connections. Any one of the regular polyhedra can be used with the same pattern of flanges or holes on each of its faces as a connector for the thirty-one zone structural system.

• The joint must... be strong and inexpensive. If the joint is a ball and the A, B and C connections are... holes which the members screw into... holes of the same type... and the ends of all structural members are identical. ...[Y]ou can't make mistakes...

• There is a mistake-proof flange joint for both A and C connections if one hierarchy is introduced. You must always orient the joint to suit A lines.

Steve Baer and Holly Baer: Dome Home Enthusiasts (1973)

by the Editors, quoting Steve Baer, Mother Earth News (Jul 1, 1973) Please read the original article for quotes from Holly Baer on the comfort and construction of their owner designed and built home.

• I went to Amherst College in Massachusetts for a couple of years and I went to UCLA for a year or two and then I went back to Amherst... I never quite fit... that... college thing. ...I joined the Army in 1960 and got married and Holly and I went to Germany... after I got out of the Army, I went to school in Zurich.

• Holly had... toys made from polyhedra and she built one of these things and... it... blew my mind... I... found some mathematics books that described the geometry of polyhedra and convex figures. This wasn't too difficult since I had always been fascinated by math. It was the subject I had spent the most time on in school and... was studying at the time.

• [W]e left Zurich and... moved to Albuquerque where I worked as a surveyor and... welding trailer frames for Fruehof and Holly had a job and we didn’t spend much... I began to experiment more and more with structures.

• I found out that the people at Drop City were building domes and I went up there and helped... Then they came down and helped me. ...We built the first structures from car tops. We chopped the tops out of over a thousand cars... ...[W]e paid 25 cents apiece for them. ...They’re a good building material ...except that getting stuff from junkyards ...is ...bad for your ...mentality. You... become a parasite on something you criticize... You’re feeding on something you hate.

• We built and did solar heating experiments... solar heated a dome in 1967 with a big chimney—a rock storage bin—down the side of a hill. Many of those first things didn’t... work... well. I didn’t know what I was doing.

• I read this book of Farrington Daniels’, Direct Use of the Sun’s Energy, and it just lit up my brain.

• When you start experimenting with, say, solar heating by covering collectors with glass or plastic and feeling the warm air blow out of them... well, it’s so exciting that you just get hooked and can’t stop.

• [W]e started Zomeworks. Barry Hickman and Ed Heinz and I issued stock like a corporation and got a lawyer... [I]t was quite an abrupt change from just casually working together on a project the way we had before.

• We started making playground climbers–using the 31–zone truss which is... explained in the Zome Primer –and... we were working on solar heating experiments.

• Right after we started Zomeworks, Day Chahroudi came out from California. He’d read the Dome Cookbook and he came walking up the road one afternoon with a rucksack on his back. ...[W]hen he started telling me his ideas about how things worked—physics ...I was so impressed by his ...approach to engineering problems that I persuaded him to stay ...He did and ...soon he developed a solar tracker... very simple and easy to build.

• So many... good ideas... worked... but they couldn’t keep working. Some of the first buildings we put up weren’t good buildings because they leaked. Many of those first solar heaters weren’t... very good...

• Some of our hardware is getting pretty good, but it... doesn’t make economic sense for most people. ...[O]ur zomes and heaters and so forth do not yet compete on a dollar basis with... conventional counterparts. It’s very exciting intellectually to work with these ideas but their validity will not really be proven until they start to replace... things they’re meant to replace.

• [W]e haven’t had the money... to tool up to manufacture the parts for the playground climbers on a competitive basis. The people... simply can’t afford to buy them. ...[T]hey just can’t hold their own in the market and so we’re not building them anymore.

Skylid, internally louvered skylight operates automatically with no external power source.

• The Skylid has no switches or wires or motors... Instead, the unit contains a series of louvers. Each... is supported and balanced so that it hinges easily around its center and... the louvers are connected with a tie rod so they’ll open and close simultaneously. ...[M]ounted on one of the panels are two canisters—one on the outside and one inside ...connected by ...tubing. ...Freon ...with a very low boiling point ...can expand ...in one canister and ...condense in the other with a temperature difference of... 1 degree Fahrenheit. This shifting of the Freon’s weight will open and close the... louvers... and the... sun—even the shade of a cloud—produces... enough temperature variation to boil the Freon from one container to the other. ...[A] locking chain... secure[s] the panels anywhere from full open to full close... to override the automatic mechanism.

• I want to build buildings and design systems that are beautiful and simple and that really work. ...It’s not ...exotic or earthshaking to fill 55-gallon drums with water, paint them black and place them in the walls of a home for use as solar collectors ...but it works.

• [T]he philosophical tactics and... approach taken by the giant corporations and... power groups miss the point... A pencil can break on you and you can sharpen it with your thumbnail and go right on... but if a circuit board or a resistor or condenser quits somewhere inside this recorder, we’re stopped and there’s probably not a lot we can do about it. ...[Y]et we increasingly use tape recorders instead of pencils.

• At one time an individual could fix everything in his life with his thumb nail or his teeth. ...I believe the ground rules can be transformed so that technology simplifies life instead of continually complicating it.

• I don't think that building everything out of stones and living in animal skins is necessarily... healthier... I'm saying... life can be much more satisfying for an individual if he feels that he is in control of his destiny... Society and the tools of society, should be organized to give each one of us that feeling.

• [W]hen I was... 18 I... read... Lewis Mumford and... [saw] that... we could have a science and technology... understood and controlled by the individual instead of the other way around. ...I've been trying to crack the crap in science for 15 or 16 years now.

• Peter Van Dresser... built a solar heater here in New Mexico in 1956 or '58. We published his book, Landscape for Humans. One of the greatest forces... has been Harold Hay from California. ...I ...heard him in ’68 at the Solar Energy Conference. I had... a design and... modest success... Harold showed everyone... dead simple methods of doing the same job. He... completely changed my head around on how to attack these problems. ...[W]e’ve worked together a lot since then trying to bring some reforms into the Solar Society.
  • Response to the question about others who influenced Baer's thinking.

• [W]hen you're experimenting, about 80% of the ideas you try are failures... But we put all these concepts together and they performed the first time. ...[W]e had pretested most of the ideas we incorporated into this [our] home. We'd never used aluminum-skinned, honeycomb-cored structural sandwiches and... no one had... fabricated a complete building from the material... but every architectural and engineering book mentions the possibility... The 55-gallon, water-filled drums... [W]e... knew the amounts of energy... such... could pick up.

• [T]here's Dave Harrison's bead wall. I teach... classes at the University of New Mexico and Dave... one of my students... said. "...I've got this idea of building a wall out of two panes of glass... and you can blow Styrofoam beads between the panes at night to insulate the wall." ...Here's a problem ...nobody has thought of a way to solve. I've tried... and... Harold Hay has... and... a lot of others... Dave Harrison has the answer! ...[A] ...low-tech ...answer ...simple ...easy to understand, that a heating and ventilating man in any town can fix... [W]e’ve made a deal with Dave so that he’ll get a big part of any royalties we realize...

Steve Baer’s Beadwall Insulated Window Panels (1974)

by Steve Baer, Mother Earth News (Sep 1, 1974)

• [T]he beadwall insulated window panels... this wonderful invention of David C. Harrison’s... a kind of super curtain that... transform[s] a clear dual-panel of glass into an opaque, well-insulated wall and back again.

• We’ve built two greenhouses utilizing the beadwall, and our test results show... it will do much of the heating and cooling required by an average office building or home.

• [W]ith its unique construction—there are never any air leaks.

• [I]f folks don’t like the idea once they’ve given it the once-over, we’ll be glad to buy the plans back at the full $15.00 purchase price.

The Clothesline Paradox (1975)

by Steve Baer, CoEvolution Quarterly (Winter 1975)

• A few years ago Peter Van Dresser mentioned the Clothesline Paradox.

• Solar energy advocates are continuously humiliated by being shown "energy pies." Slices are assigned to coal, gas, oil, hydroelectric and even nuclear. but solar energy is evidently too small to appear.

• If you... remove the electric clothes dryer and install a clothesline the consumption of electricity drops slightly, but there is no credit given anywhere on the charts and graphs to solar energy which is now drying clothes.

• [C]oal, oil and natural gas are all solar energy products... and hydroelectric power is solar energy...

• The graphs which demonstrate a huge dependence on fossil fuels are fine in one respect. They are alarming. But they are... [m]isleading... [in] that they blind people to obvious answers and prime them to a frenzy of effort in poor directions. Attention... to such... trains people to attempt to deliver what is shown in these accounting systems rather than what is needed.

• If you... ride and graze a horse... the horse's energy... does not appear on anyone's energy accounting.

• If you install interior greenhouse lights the electricity... is faithfully recorded. If you grow the plants outside no attempt is made at an accounting.

• If you drive to... buy a newspaper the gasoline consumption appears. If you walk—using food energy—the event has disappeared from sight...

• The Ford Foundation's energy study shows the U.S.'s energy consumption in 1968 at... 62 quadrillion BTU ...[T]he average daily caloric intake is... 10,000 BTU/day/person—about 1.2% of the total consumption listed by the Bureau of Mines. But this... doesn't appear... on the graphs. Nuclear energy with 1% does... The food is solar energy. Why is it not included?

• If we use the figure of 0.5% efficiency (Ayres and Scarlott)... we have consumed... 2,000,000 BTU/person/day of sunlight in producing the 10,000 BTU/person consumed. Solar energy then fills over 2/3 of the new energy pie.

• Why wouldn't it be fair to expand the slice—4% (1973—Bureau of Mines) given to hydroelectric power by a similar factor of efficiency—for the solar energy consumed in raising the water to its working head?

• Every time the sun shines on the surface of a house and especially when it shines through a window there is "solar heating"...According to the NSF/NASA Energy Panel of 1972 the percentage of thermal energy for buildings supplied by the sun was too small to be measurable. ...Shouldn't we recalculate the energy consumption of every building assuming it were kept in the shade all day and... attribute the difference to solar energy? ...I would guess the average shaded fuel consumption to be 15% higher...

• [O]ur next concern in heating the building is what keeps the earth warm..? What supplies the United States with the energy to maintain an average temperature of 60 degrees Fahrenheit as it spins in empty space at absolute zero? This is a heating contract that no oil company would be quick to try and fill.

• [I]t is very important to examine what the limits of an accounting system are—to know what the numbers and quantities... really mean.

• The design of houses can be stilted by such graphs.

• Now that the experts have started this infantile accounting system, which evidently finds us... independent of the sun, solar energy will be admitted only so long as it has been properly collected, stored and transferred.

• Legislation aimed at encouraging the use of solar energy equipment by subsidizing... certain hardware must end by being pathetic and blundering.

• It would take an enormous crew of experts to determine the efficiency of different orientations of windows, different arrangements of shade trees, etc... To ignore these efforts and only to reward the purchase of "off the shelf hardware" is to further the disease of narrow minded quantification.

• If you purchase certain kinds of hardware to exploit solar energy it will be accounted for and credit will be given to the sun. If you depend on more customary old-fashioned uses of solar energy, growing food, drying clothes, sun bathing, warming a house with south windows, the sun credit is totally ignored.

• Our present accounting system... can only discourage good house design. If the natural solar contribution to house heating from windows is ignored, then the designer knows this... No tax incentives—no credit to the sun in ERDA's graphs.

• [W]e would be much better informed if alongside every graph showing our use of oil, coal and uranium there were also an indication or the total energy received from the sun. Since we can't do without it, let's not omit it from our accounts.

• In the case of the United States a conservative estimate of the solar energy received in one year might be... Twenty nine thousand three hundred quadrillion Btu as opposed to the 62 quadrillion shown as used during 1968 by the U.S. Bureau of Mines.

• When small children first start paying attention to... their allowances they briefly commit their... minds to their few coins and... chores... without... considering the budget of the family's household. We can't allow our entire civilization to be similarly ignorant for long. We must ask who's keeping score and why they have such peculiar methods.

"Movable Insulation" (1976)

by Steven C. Baer, Passive solar heating and cooling: conference and workshop proceedings, May 18-19, 1976, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico. Sponsored by Energy Research and Development Administration, Division of Solar Energy, Heating and Cooling Research and Development Branch; coordinated by Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, Solar Energy Group; in cooperation with the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers and the New Mexico Solar Energy Association.

• The great problem with movable insulation is cracks. A door, shutter, or curtain is placed... The optimist notes the R value... but does not achieve it.

• The effect of clothes and blankets on heat loss is naturally investigated by everyone.

• A sniper scope or camera... that shows... temperatures as... colors would be an enormous help to the investigator. 30 minutes with such... could be as valuable as a week's work... without it. ...[N]ature ...treats you to such a view of the window or skylight with a pattern of frost. ...[S]eals ...[are] the entire problem.

• A crack... of 2 in²/ft²... can conduct 1/3 Btu/ft²hr°F.

• If you... have cracks... torture the air... by pressing the insulation panel... against the glass... air... must then spread in a thin film... Experimenting with smoke... once this layer is less than 1/16"... it is slowed... and acts almost like a syrup.

• Treat a glass area like a ship—break it into separate compartments so that a leak in one place won't be fatal.

• A [1974] test on conventional window shades showed...
  1) A roller shade inside a casement window with 1/4" gaps at the sides of the shade reduced heat loss through a single glazed window by about 28%.
  2) A drape drawn in front of the... window reduced heat loss by about 6%.
  3) A venetian blind reduced heat loss by 7%.

  During the summer the shading devices reduced heat gain by the following...
  1) white, opaque roller shade 50%
  2) venetian blinds (slats at 45%) 18%
  3) venetian blinds (slats closed) 29%

  • Footnoted Reference: Rollin C. Dix, Zalman Lavan, "Window Shades and Energy Conservation," Illinois Institute of Technology, 1974.

Skylid, internally louvered skylight operates automatically with no external power source.

• Tests done at Zomeworks on 45° sloped skylights with our insulating Skylids installed beneath a single pain of glass show a reduction of heat loss of about 75%... The louvers average 3" thick, have aluminum skins and are filled with figerglass—most of the heat loss occurs through air leaks...

• The Beadwall seems to be the perfect answer for superior insulation against heat loss.

• Tests done by thermal decay of a glass aquarium show a U factor of the naked glass of about 1 1/3 and of the glass covered with Nightwall, of about 1/3.

• Movable insulation can... be used to prevent heat gain. ...[T]he best position ...is outside the glass rather than inside.

• A particularly attractive use of insulating panels is to have them double as reflectors—during the day they bounce additional energy through the same window they will insulate at night. Often it is most cost-effective to have a movable reflector outside a south window or skylight that is changed seasonally... not daily.

• SUMMARY
  1) It is best to have a way to prevent both heat gain and heat loss.
  2) Be skeptical of mechanical seals.
  3) Do not use single glazing unless it is a mild climate or the movable insulation is controlled by a reliable automatic means.
  4) Do not install anything you cannot fix.
  5) Look for two uses for one material.
  6) Break the area to be insulated into pieces so that an air leak in one area will be isolated.
  7) Always use strong, durable materials outside.

"Solar pioneer persists, without federal handout" (Aug 22, 1980)

by Dede Feldman, quoting Steve Baer in High Country News Article first appeared in the Albuquerque News.

• [I]t's more satisfying to develop and manufacture less expensive items which pay for themselves. It makes me sleep better at night.

• The tendency is not to care about spending somebody else's money—so even at this time when we're supposed to be conserving energy we're instituting policies that make people conserve less.

• ZW is a privately owned corporation. We are not supported by federal grants. We depend on your business for support.
  • Sign near the entrance to the Zomeworks showroom.

• You don't need to have a [government energy] policy... there already is a policy—it's each individual's policy. We need the government for some things like the armed forces, but not in the marketplace.

• We don't have a shortage of fuel... gas is still cheap and we have an abundance of coal and uranium. The goals might encourage energy conservation—but it would aid in energy conservation if we all dropped dead, too. Energy conservation is not an end in itself—no one really gives a damn about energy conservation—it's happiness that people are concerned with.

• We've gone too far in letting the government into our affairs...

• I care about the spirit of innovation... I'm an inventor, but it's a bad time for people to do that. Many of us who developed the ideas behind direct gain heating—and have been successful—our ideas have been co-opted by the government, and it's disappointing that the government does not now turn to us for new ideas. ...They're stacking the decks against the little guy ...

Quotes about Baer

Whole Earth Catalog (1968)

"Dome Cookbook"

• Drop City, Colorado, a rural vacant lot full of elegant funky domes and ditto people, has been well photographed and poorly reported in national magazines. Visitors and readers... assumed that the domes were geodesic Fuller domes, which some... are. But most... were designed by another guy who designed by another geometry: Steve Baer.

• This tabloid contains the crystallographic theory and junkyard practice behind Baer's domes: from how to distort a polyhedron without affecting connector angles to how to chop out a car without losing your foot. ...Baer's theory is unique in architecture. So is his practice; instead of dying of dissertation dry rot, his notions stand around in the world bugging the citizens.

• The Dome Cookbook is published by Lama Foundation, an intentional community in New Mexico, built largely of Baer domes.

"Solar pioneer persists, without federal handout" (Aug 22, 1980)

by Dede Feldman, High Country News Article also appeared in the Albuquerque News

• High above the roofs of... Martineztown, one of Albuquerque's oldest barrios... a growing army of... structures...point south to capture sunlight... [for] two large buildings... Zomeworks Corporation, one of the nation's earliest solar energy companies.

• Founded in 1969... some of the buildings were called "zomes"—or "dodecahedral structures"... Others were heated in a simple way with... "passive" solar heating.

• Ten years later Zomeworks has moved to a newly renovated showroom (once the home of Martineztown dance hall)... [P]anels insulate many of the windows at night... attached by small magnetic clips... only one of the passive solar devices developed by Zomeworks...

• Many other Zomeworks ideas... as... black 55 gallon drums behind glass... (the "drumwall") have... become classics...

• [T]he devices are cheap. A thermosyphoning solar water heater... costs less than half as much as most solar water heaters. A solar preheater... is even less.

• The company... manufactures... "skylids" (insulated shutters for skylights that open and close with the sun) and "beadwalls" (double pain windows that fill and drain with styrofoam beads to let the sun in or keep the cold out).

• [T]he company's newest product, "Big Fin" water heaters... can be placed inside a greenhouse or other glass enclosed area. After its copper pipes have been heated by the sun, the water... flows to an elevated heating tank by... natural convection and the cool water at the bottom of the tank flows back... There's no electric pump. The cost... $850.

• According to Baer... the best solar ideas come from people who are taking a chance—"and not just drawing a salary."

• Baer says that solar energy is already supplying a large proportion of our needs through daylight, which makes the use of electric lights during the day unnecessary, and in agriculture, where it enables the production of food. Yet this... "unreclaimed" solar energy is not... counted in the statistics.

See also

• Architecture
• Innovation
• Renewable energy
• Thin-shell structure

External links

• Steve Baer @SolarHouseHistory References
• The Zometool educational construction set company: Our Story.