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What People Are Saying About
Earth Sheltering Wikpedia.com Oak Ridge National
Laboratory: excerpt from a report prepared for the US Dept. of
Energy Keith Beebe, Mesa,
AZ. Do-it yourself builder
U.S. News & World
Report Newsweek
International
Living in an Earth Shelter Home? Please send us pictures of your home and any comments you would like to share for our new "Owners' Homes" section, more coming soon. Your names and location will remain confidential if you desire. A special thank you to Brad and Julia Glasse for their pictures, advice, and for having an open house tour this April! Also a special thank you to Noah Gullickson for his contribution to the new "Owners' Homes" section, please see below. And be sure to visit Noah's Bed & Breakfast web site: www.clovecottages.com
Earth Sheltered Solar Home: For Sale by Noah Gullickson (see also: Construction Pics) I became inspired to research earth sheltered homes because I have always loved the coolness I noticed in basements and caves in the summer and the warmth of a south facing hill in the winter. I wanted to use the temperature of the earth to insulate and moderate the internal temperature of a house. I began keeping my eyes open for land that would lend itself to to this highly efficient type of home so I could build such a house -not for myself, at this time, but to sell. (My family and I currently live in and run our bed and breakfast cottages from a passive solar house that I built in 1998.) Two years ago I was riding my bicycle in Accord, NY and I noticed a piece of land that had the qualities that I was searching for: south facing with a view. The piece was 15 acres on a hill densely forested with white pine trees. I purchased and subdivided the land into 3 pieces. I will keep much of the forest intact. The first piece is 4.2 acres. I began clearing the house site in December of 2005. It has great views of the Domino Farm and Mohonk on the Shawangunk Ridge. I began to search for a way to build this home. I looked online for plans for an earth sheltered home. I discovered Performance Building Systems. They offer several different size kits to build your own earth sheltered home. I ordered the kit for a 32' wide by 28' deep open ended dome. It included a steel frame that supports a rebar reinforced cement dome. After clearing trees, I had the hillside excavated and dug the footings for the foundation. Then, with some help, I erected the steel support structure, covered it with a special burlap fabric (used to hold the cement in place) then shaped and attached a rebar grid that was later embedded within 4 inches of sprayed cement. After curing the shotcrete cement for about one month, the entire structure was waterproofed and covered with earth, which was covered with foam board then a pond liner then more earth then plastic sheets and more earth before being planted with grass seeds. This layering is a method of insulating the earth by surrounding the home to create a larger thermal storage mass, as described by John Hiat on his website. By using his method, I should be able to abolish the need for additional heating once the home reaches core temperature in about two years. The south facing wall was wood framed and contains many windows to allow for passive solar heat to enter. The interior walls are plastered with natural plaster that was fabricated onsite using lime, pigment and gaging plaster. The exterior retaining walls are stuccoed with pigmented cement based stucco. The dome home contains one bedroom, a loft that could be a second bedroom, one bathroom with a jetted tub, a utility room with a washer and dryer, a kitchen and a living room. The kitchen will have cement counter tops and a built in eating area. The stairs to the loft will have custom hand rail and spindles. The floor is a deep red cement slab with radiant heat. The home is about 1100 sq. ft. In an article in the May 2006 Dwell magazine, Frances Anderton writes about house size; "The McMansions that are so popular today provide status in a society that measures worth by wealth and the scale of one's home, but it's not clear that these palatial places provide either comfort or inner security. There is something innately appealing about holing up in a womblike space, a cozy cottage, a petite trailer home, a tent. Small houses have many virtues, ranging from efficiency to a conservation of resources. But in the end, they offer something far more profound: emotional satisfaction." I believe the trend toward extra-large traditionally built homes is a huge waste of resources- not only in building materials but in the heating and cooling that will be required to keep them comforable through the years. In light of our current environmental and energy crises, the fact that this home will ultimately use little or no energy for heating or cooling and therefore will produce little or no green house gases is a decreased burden to the earth and should be an example to home builders around the globe. In addition, the efficient shape of this earth sheltered building system allows less use of concrete compared to other earth sheltered home designs. The intrinsic value (energy for production) of steel and concrete may be higher than some other methods of building, but this building will outlast and outperform other buildings. An earth sheltered home is also be the perfect fit for this particular piece of land due to its sound proofing qualities- we are not far from the Accord Raceway. About the Design My research led me to Performance Building Systems, based in Durango, Colorado. "Earth shelters are very efficient. A well-insulated above-grade home is influenced by outside air temperature, whether the heat of summer or the cold of winter, and is aggravated by wind chill factors. An earth shelter has much less direct, unsheltered, outside exposure, hence less energy requirements. In addition, an earth-sheltered home enjoys the benefits of a large thermal mass. The concrete foundation and shell are surrounded by "free" earth (often the same earth that was excavated for the foundation). This earth provides a very large thermal mass at little added cost. This thermal mass soaks up and stores the energy that stabilizes interior living temperatures at a comfortable level - eliminating temperature swings. A conventional house may be subjected to outside temperatures ranging from the teens or lower, up to 100 degrees over the course of a year. An earth-sheltered home's large thermal mass forms an envelope around the home that will stabilize at about 55 degrees on its own. Imagine a conventional house where it was always 55 degrees outside... How much easier would that house be to heat in the winter? How much easier to cool in the summer?" http://www.earthshelter.com/ This led to my discovery of research by John Hiat of the Rocky Mountain Research Center in Montana. He described what he calls Umbrella Homes. "A simple underground house design uses a novel insulating/water-shedding blanket that covers the structure and surrounding soil. The umbrella creates a huge subterranean thermal reservoir that soaks up the sun’s energy during summertime and stores it for winter heating. In many cases, the clever design makes a heating system unnecessary." http://www.axwoodfarm.com/PAHS/UmbrellaHouse.html
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