LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Small Price To Pay

Since housing, insurance, energy and the economy are such huge concerns now, I would like to offer a proven solution that gets very little press due to false, preconceived notions. Why not build a hurricane proof house that also passively heats and cools itself, within limits, and pays for itself in total assets saved over 14 years?

Impossible, you say?

I built one myself more than 20 years ago and still live in it. It's called an earth shelter, using bermed earth to heat and cool by direct contact. In Central Florida, the ground temperature averages 72 degrees, so no insulation is needed under the floor or on walls against earth. Solar heat is not needed here.

Dr. John B. Langley, A.I.A., author of "Sun Belt Earth Sheltered Architecture," says, "All the insulation in the world can neither add heat to nor remove heat from any structure. Sunbelt earth sheltering can do both." Our electric bills average $50 a month without sacrificing comfort.

Cost of purchased materials for our house was less than $10,000 in 1987 dollars. My amateur learn-as-you-go labor was about 3,300 hours, or about equivalent to one year and eight months work at a full-time job. Small price to pay to avoid a mortgage. This labor also includes land clearing, grading, backfill, installing a septic system, logging and operating a one-man sawmill. Your costs will depend on how much you can do yourself.

Interested? Most of what you need to know can be found starting at malcolmwells.com, a great site for resources and education. If not, you may want to go there just to see Bill Gates' house. Remember, if you follow the crowd, you risk suffering the fate of the crowd. You don't even need a college education to do this. I didn't even have the advantage of the Internet when I built. Now, you can take virtual tours of earth shelters all over the world.

Will you be comfortable in your current home through a Category 5 storm and weeks of no power?

Patrick J. Miketinac

Brooksville

Tree-Hugger Mentality

How high must the price of fuel, food and everything else go before simpering tree-huggers in Congress allow drilling for oil in north Alaska? The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or ANWR, covers just 2,000 acres, a raindrop in Alaska's 365-million-acre territory. ANWR's estimated 10.4 billion barrels could match, or replace for 19 years, the 1.5 million of Saudi oil that America imports daily.

New technology permits slant drilling like the Chinese are doing off the coast of Cuba. Slant drilling into our oil reserves is what we should do.

Yet, with all these gestures, the likes of Sens. Joe Lieberman and Ted Kennedy act as if drilling in this remote wilderness would spoil picnic grounds for the multitudes.

Tree-huggers are worried about harm to the caribou, but the herd has increased from 6,000 in 1978 to 32,000 today. Half a century ago, when the Alaskan pipeline project was debated, tree-huggers in Congress predicted that the moose herd would be destroyed. Instead, the herd multiplied because the moose would stand underneath the elevated pipeline to enjoy the warmth it provided.

Congress, do not listen to the Sierra Club or those who just speculate about animal behavior. Bears also walk on top of the pipeline because of its warmth.

I remember an uncle of mine who lived in Chadron, Neb., in the 1950s until his death, showed me 35 wells that are capped by Conoco Oil Co. that they drilled for oil. He said then that they would announce to the public that they were dry. My uncle said that there are many oil wells that are capped. There were lies back then, as there are today.

The U.S. has more oil than it can use up in a 100 years. Besides, most of the Alaskan oil is shipped over to Japan. The government shuts down our oil refineries and Japan gets our oil. Goes to show that our government is so corrupt that it lost all common sense.

We need to vote for Ron Paul, who can turn our nation around. Our constitutional government needs him and so do, We the People.

Vernon Carles

Spring Hill