Contact us

We are building an Earth Sheltered home in south-east Michigan (Washtenaw County), starting in the spring of 2013/2014/2015.   Even if things don’t go according to plan for us, this website/weblog should still help you if you are contemplating your own build or are just interested in the topic.

a clip of the front elevation “colorized” to give you an idea of the earth cover…

In the mean time, you can contact us by leaving a comment below.

If you include a website with your comment, or make an overly generic statement, I will probably just assume you are spamming me.  But you can leave your email address and it won’t be shown to anyone else.

You can also subscribe to this site and you will get email updates  (top of right side bar), or “like” us on Facebook.

You can also email me at “Simon@HomeInTheEarth.com“.

The Website

This website will try to cover the basics of earth sheltered home design and construction.

“No house should ever be on a hill or on anything. It should be of the hill. Belonging to it. Hill and house should live together each the happier for the other.” ~ Frank Llyod Wright

I am sure Frank wasn’t actually talking about earth sheltering the house, but I think he would have liked the idea.  During Frank’s time, the technology wasn’t right yet.  Even during the 1970’s, when it really took off, many people made lots of basic mistakes.

This site hopes to help by proving information about earth sheltered home design and construction. In includes Tech Notes about Earth Sheltered Basics, Earth Tube Design, Underground Structures, or even more Conventional Systems.  There are Design Tips about how to Layout a home, the pros and cons of curved walls, design philosophy and the importance of sourcing.

It should really get interesting when I actually try to build my own rather overly complicated earth shelter. I will also keep a journal of my own progress on my earth sheltered home project. I have done a ton of research and will use this forum to convert my thoughts and notes to something to share with the rest of you.

Affiliates

In a crazy attempt to recoup some small financial gain for my efforts on this site, I did try to play with some “affiliate” marketing. For instance, if I really liked a book, I provided a link to the Amazon site where you could buy it. I marked these “affiliate links” with an “(a)” in the link title.  If you follow those links, the affiliate partner site creates a short term browser cookie, a tiny piece of data that tells them that you went there from my site.  If you end up buying the book (for example), I would get a small kickback for sending you to the site.  I think that is fair (and so does Amazon).

I tried signing up with the Amazon Affiliate program and the Commission Junction affiliate program (used by companies like Home Depot and Lowes).  But it didn’t work out.  The amazon one kicked me out after several months of no sales and Home Depot and Lowes rejected me off hand ;^)…  Maybe I will try again in the future.