The Earth-Sheltered Solar Greenhouse Book is the first to promote the benefits of both passive solar energy and earth sheltering in greenhouse design. This combination results in greenhouses which need no additional heating. The captured sun s energy and that which is stored in the earth is enough for successful year round harvest. Gone are costly heating bills. Gone is the squander of non-renewable energy resources. This is because above-ground greenhouses get natural heat at night from only one side, the floor. They lose heat from the other five sides. The properly designed earth-sheltered greenhouse is naturally warmed at night -- and in the winter -- from five sides and loses heat from only one. The ratio is exactly reversed. This book has it all. It takes you step by step through the construction of an inexpensive greenhouse which may be built with either newly purchased or salvaged building materials for pennies on the dollar. It explains the author s unique Post/Shoring/Polyethylene construction methods and design techniques which Countryside Magazine called Revolutionary... innovative and ingenious...a totally different concept. In its way it is both as simple and as amazingly ingenious as a paperclip. The book deals heavily with design so that you may custom build your own greenhouse perfect for your particular climate and needs. It tells you how to use gravity to warm your winter plants; how to effectively capture and store the sun s heat; how to make up for poor sunlight free of cost; how to automatically vent without power; how to choose the best glazing for your project; where to find free building materials; when to use heat tubes and when not to; how to use a root cellar in tandem with the greenhouse; where to use insulation with wonderful effect (and where to absolutely avoid it); how to deal with plant pests organically; what animals should be living in your greenhouse; and hundreds of more tips. The Earth-Sheltered Solar Greenhouse Book has 230 pages with nearly 200 illustrations, photos, diagrams, lists, charts and drawings. It contains all the information you need to free you from the pesticide, herbicide, fungicide, waxed, and E-coli laden, genetically modified and irradiated supermarket produce.
Author Mike Oehler built his first underground house in 1971 for $50. He published an article on it in '72 and began the first of several winters hitchhiking around to American universities lecturing on underground housing and the back-to-the-land movement, sponsored by architecture departments and student environmental groups. In 1975, with the internship help of architecture student Chris Royer, he tripled the size of his home for $500 including wall-to-wall carpeting. It would increase to $2,000 when the $500 wood burning stove and solar electrical system were later added.
In 1978 he published "The $50 & Up Underground House Book" (illustrated by Royer) to instant acclaim including more than 45 enthusiastic print reviews. One was in the Dutch magazine, De Twaalf Ambachten, which led to a Dutch TV crew flying in to shoot a national program of his work (he was building internationally also for clients through his company Hobbit Housing). In 1982 the magazine sponsored Oehler for a lecture/workshop tour of the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, England and Scotland.
All during this period Oehler was inventing and building the highly successful earth-sheltered solar greenhouses which require no heat, plus two more small underground houses, a small root cellar and an underground sauna - all dug and built with hand tools by Oehler and volunteers on his 40 acre homestead. His international projects built for clients were all dug and constructed with machinery and power tools.
In 1992 Oehler brought out a three volume video set on underground design and building. In 1997 the BBC shot the first of two episodes about him, and in 2001 HGTV, the American Home and Garden Television Network did a segment on him, which still is occasionally shown periodically.
In 2007 Oehler published "The Earth-Sheltered Solar Greenhouse Book" which has so far garnered nine enthusiastic reviews and is scheduled for a second printing. The "$50 and Up Underground House Book" (14 printings) is sold internationally on Amazon.com and undergroundhousing.com, nationally through several distributors and catalogues, in the UK by Eco-Logic Books and in the Netherlands by De Twaalf Ambachten.
Oehler has four books altogether in print, three DVD's, one video, and one CD. He at present is writing two more books, completing three more underground structures on his land and is brining out a web television site, "Hipnet.TV".
Oehler has co-published with both Van Norstrand Reinhold Company, Inc. and Keokee Co. Publishing, Inc.
Oehler has been interviewed live on numerous radio and television programs, has been written up nationally by the Associated Press, and twice by the New York Times.
Oehler has been a longshoreman, teamster union construction worker, landscaper, busboy, bartender, warehouseman, oil refinery laborer, cotton picker, apple picker, cannery worker, Alaskan commercial salmon fisherman, Alaskan gold miner, camp consular, lifeguard, soldier, dishwasher, firefighter, tree planter, mill hand, rail splitter, beach bum and ski bum.
