From what I have read, the underground house is often considered the holy grail of off-grid living, it’s known to be warm in winter, cool in summer, making life more self sufficient for the occupants of the home. I ran across this video recently about a family creating an underground home, taking advantage of a former sandstone quarry, most of the “hole” their home would go in was already there.
This particular home couldn’t have been cheap though, bringing in heavy equipment, all the building material they used, but the facts are, the lifetime costs will be cheaper considering they aren’t heating or cooling the structure.
The property out there is beautiful, lush green rolling land, few man made structures disrupt the views, once they finished their underground home, it all but vanishes into the landscape. One drawback to building underground is not being able to expand their home, if it was just going to be the 2 of them from now on, the size would have been just fine, but upon the return visit by the production company several years later, they had 2 children and needed some extra space. They were in the process of getting planning permission to build an extension on the outside of their underground home.
The video is nearly an hour long, and honestly I skipped some of the beginning to get past the talk and into the actual building part.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-O2ggn29fI
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These really are some of the best houses out there. We own one in Wyoming. We barely have to heat it in the winter (wood burning stove is our source of heat and south facing windows) and it stays so cool in the summer. There are so many pros about these homes. I admit, when I used to hear about these types of homes I thought “odd”, and “well, won’t it cave in?” etc. When I married a man that lived in one, we quickly became the people in our town known as the couple that lives in the earth home. There are some downfalls and that’s resale value…sadly. We need to move due to my husbands work and people that are interested in the home can’t get financing for it…no one will finance them…there aren’t enough comps and considered risky…for some odd reason. They are sooo soundly and solidly built. With our new President being so eco friendly you would think that this type of home would be easily financeable because of all the different ways its energy efficient. We love our home and wish we could just pick it up and take it with us!