Well, it is September already and I am starting to seriously doubt that I will get this house started this year.   Trying to get quotes has just been so frustrating.  I have many quotes in, but not enough to be confident that I can get the house built for what I want to pay .  Obviously, I don’t want to get started before I am sure I can afford to finish (Luke 14:28).  During September, I will get back to pushing for quotes.

In August, my grandmother died, which resulted in a trip to the old country.  I always enjoy the old stone and concrete architecture often found in Europe where many people live in homes older than the United States (the country)…  I even found several modern earth sheltered buildings and, during a layover in Madrid on the way home, I attended a green architecture expo focused on earth sheltering and green walls (featuring the work of Emilio Ambasz).

Found this earth sheltered building (mall with several coffee shops and a sports club) covering a whole block just north of the Torre dos Clerigos in Porto… I took this photo from the tower. Later we had coffee “underground”

But this post is not about that…

I use Chrome and tend to accumulate “tabs” over time.  These are interesting pages that I see.  Once you get interested in something like this, you start to see it everywhere; Google may also be helping.  I always plan to get this material into a post at some point.  For instance, I thought I could do a whole post on Michael Hill or a whole post on how earth sheltering affects insurance rates, but some of these tabs have been open for 6 weeks, so lets just get them down here and you can check them out if you are interested…

1) Michael Hill’s invisible Houses;   First, I think its funny that his name is “Hill” and he wants to build a neighborhood of earth sheltered homes in NewZealand (hobbit land).  I don’t think he started out with an interest in earth sheltered homes, but rather earth sheltering was a solution to his problem of a city council ban on urban sprawl that wouldn’t let him build homes around his rural golf course.  The homes will come with lots of restrictions to prevent them from looking like a suburban neighborhood, such as no swimming pools or trampolines.

2) This is a link to a shallow article on “27 Absolutely Stunning Underground Homes“.  I am not sure all qualify as “Earth sheltered” by my definition, but some were new to me and it did become a good starting point for further searches.

3) This next one is a link to an article about the Traditional Turf Houses of Iceland…  In Iceland, earth sheltering became the norm due to the harsh climate and limited lumber resources.  I thought it was funny that the article bothered mentioning that people there went to the toilet in groups.  Most of the homes use stone to cover the side of the sod, so I thought the picture showing the “herring bone” stacking of the turf was very interesting.

This article doesn’t hint at a downside, but I once read an article written by an Icelandic woman who said the happiest day of her childhood was moving out of the turf house and into a “real wooden house”.  While they may have been great at moderating temperature, they lacked modern insulation, waterproofing, heating, etc.   I expect they were a bit damp also had more than their fair share of bugs.

4) Houzz also had another article about Earth sheltered homes recently…   This one had some detail, plus Houzz provides the ability to link to more photos of each home, get info on the architects, etc.  We have already talked about some of these homes in other posts, but there are some new ones.

5) This next link is a short Weather Channel article about how earth-sheltered homes save energy and money, as well as offer “ultimate protection from extreme weather”.  The article cites the Formworks stat that earth sheltered homes use “80 to 90% less energy to heat and cool”.  It also talks about how insurance companies charge less to insure earth sheltered homes.

Personally, I talked to my State Farm insurance agent and found it would save about 1/3rd of the cost (relative to a similar cost wood home with shingled roof) due to a “safe home rating”.   In my case, with a $2000 deductible, that is about a 500$ savings per year.  I don’t think they are taking the full protection of earth sheltered housing into account, but it is at least some savings.  By comparison, a high end alarm system with active monitoring would save an additional 100$ per year (1/15th) in insurance, but cost much more in fees.

6) Another article on “Underground Houses are Energy efficient, low maintenance and low impact“.  I suspect the people at Formworks are starting to push the media a bit.  Good for them.

7) This last one came from a link on a Popular Science article that caught my eye…  Earth Sheltered buses?  They provided a link to this other site with a lot more information.  Basically, a landscape artist, Marc Grañén, has setup several vehicles (such as the PhytoKinetic bus) with green roofs.   In addition to the somewhat theoretical idea that these green roofs function as CO2 sinks, the garden naturally cools the interior of the bus by 3.5°C giving the air conditioning a break…

The site also shows a  large trailer and small white van with similar green roofs.  I have also seen a transit train.

Here is a close up of the bus…

Thats it for now…  Maybe some eye candy later…