Insulation, Radiant and Vapor Barriers - Passive Annual Heat Storage

What can anyone tell me about this technique?

From what I understand, it's multiple sheets of plastic that are used to enclose a portion of earth around the house. This helps to retain heat from the summer, and give it off through the winter.

Any thoughts on it?

Earth temp will be the same temp year road at a certain deep. My area will be about 4 feet. I don't know anything about the plastic. Id say not needed.

Heres some information on the idea.

http://www.earthshelters.com/

I bought the books and papers from Rocky Mountain Research at the link below and elaborated on those concepts. His work was an elaboration on work done at the University of Minnesota's Underground Space Research Center back in the 70's and early 80's.

I'm building a greenhouse in SE MN that uses the concept of seasonal thermal energy storage. Because water is 2.5 times better than dirt, concrete or stone at storing energy, I am burying 55 gallon HDPE drums of water in the storage mass. Water also can move energy by convective currents so it will increase the heat transfer rate between the ventilation air tubes and the earth above and below the drums. I have ~300 55 gal drums and about 125 30 gal drums. They are available free from some users. I put in new bungs and left some room for water expansion. I expect the temperature in storage to cycle between 40 and 90 F over the course of a year. I'll use about 3000 feet of 4" pvc DVW pipe in the air ducting.

It will be instrumented so the temperature changes will be recorded for performance assessment. The cover will be layered plastic sheeting and layers of foam insulation, probably in the range of 3 inches, then topped with a foot or so of dirt. Big experiment!!

Because of the rapid depletion of natural gas reserves in North America and of crude oil globally, we are going to have to get busy figuring out how to utilize solar energy for heating and the earth for storage. Lots of great information about energy at www.peakoil.net and related links. Google peak oil....

Yes you need the plastic. Nothing washes away your heat faster than water. The water shedding umbrella keeps the thermal mass at a stable temperature.