¶ Steve Baer and Holly Baer: Dome Home — Mother Earth News
Publication: Mother Earth News
Date: July 1, 1973
URL: https://www.motherearthnews.com/sustainable-living/nature-and-environment/steve-baer-holly-baer-dome-home-zmaz73jazraw/
This is a different article from the September 1974 MEN Beadwall piece already in the archive. Published 16 months earlier, it is the archive's earliest long-form journalism about Baer and the Baer House.
- Path: Amherst → UCLA → Army (1960) → Germany → Zurich (welder, ETH math) → Albuquerque (welder, surveyor)
- Holly's polyhedra toys: "His fascination with geometric structures emerged when Holly showed him polyhedra toys, sparking years of mathematical exploration." This is the same December 1964 Zurich episode recorded in Dome Cookbook, now confirmed by Holly's own account.
- Drop City work began 1967: "The team constructed numerous experimental solar-heated domes beginning in 1967"
- Baer credited Farrington Daniels' Direct Use of the Sun's Energy as transformative: "It's simply surprising when you take these dead materials...and suddenly! In the middle of winter!–there's warmth."
- Founded 1969 with Barry Hickman and Ed Heinz
- Products named: Zomes, Skylid Ventilators, Playground Climbers (31-zone truss system)
- Skylid described as "sun-activated louver systems using Freon expansion to automatically regulate temperature"
¶ Baer House — construction and specs
- Construction period: May 1971 – August 1972 (~15 months)
- Cost: $20 per square foot
- Size: 2,000 square feet
- Structure: Aluminum-skinned, honeycomb-cored panels (cardboard core with urethane foam and air gaps); pop-riveted aluminum joints; no interior structural framing
- Interior: Adobe interior walls and furnishings; sculptural adobe couch
- Holly's description of floor plan: "Each room is basically hexagonal in floor plan" with parallel zoning throughout
- 90 × 55-gallon drums (actually 52–53 gallons each) stacked in south-facing walls
- Drums painted black externally
- Exterior glass doors lower in winter days to admit sunlight → heat the drums; doors close at night → drums radiate warmth inward
- Summer cooling (Holly): "When the temperature in the rooms is hotter than the water...the water just sops up the difference and the rooms stay cool." — passive thermal flywheel effect
- Honey cans filled with water, heated by skylight exposure and kitchen heat
- Provide nighttime warmth radiating downward
- Minor issue: absorbed excess heat in summer
- Wood-burning fireplaces in children's rooms and north sections
- Two units: one by the windmill, one near bedrooms
- Temperatures: approximately 150°F
¶ Water and energy systems
| System |
Description |
| Well |
Gravity-fed from 5,000-gallon storage tank |
| Pump |
Wind pump; shuts off automatically when tank full |
| Electricity |
Municipal grid; 3 kWh/day summer, 5 kWh/day winter |
| Cooking |
Propane |
Baer described Harrison's Beadwall as solving "a problem that people have lived with for 80 or 100 years" — high praise from a man who rarely endorsed others' work.
On government solar funding: "We just don't smell right to the guys who control the purse strings."
On technology: advocates for systems "that simplify life instead of continually complicating it"; rejects dependency on corporate or government solutions.
On change: "If you want change you have to make it...you have to develop the tools of a new way of life."
- "You can move through the place without opening or closing anything and that's nice."
- High ceilings and geometric design created distinct rooms while maintaining connectivity
- Minor roof leaks; aluminum skin made audible thermal expansion sounds as temperatures changed
- Children participated in home management and understood conservation "through necessity rather than instruction"