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We Don’t Like Our Underground House

• jansan 6y ago
  There is a whole city in Australia that has almost exclusively underground houses. Seach for "Coober Pedy" on youtube for one of the many documentaries about that city.
  • dalbasal 6y ago
    There is an ancient city in Jordan called Petra built in similar ways for similar reasons. It's quite amazing to walk around. The "caves" are more cool and pleasant than air conditioned buildings even when the desert outside is baking hot. Worth visiting.
  • goodcanadian 6y ago
    Coober Pedy is more a small town than a city, and it is not the only one. White Cliffs, NSW, is also mostly underground. I suspect there are others.
  • LunaSea 6y ago
    Isn't it also in a desert which would remove all the mould and humidity issues?
    • prawn 6y ago
      Yes, it's incredibly hot and dry, and doesn't get much rain. Going by Wikipedia, they had 30mm (1.2") of rain in 1921. Averages about 21 days a year with >1mm of rain.
• weinzierl 6y ago
  One of the cons of underground living the article doesn't go into is radon exposure. Depending on where your house is located this can be a significant health risk.
  • DoingIsLearning 6y ago
    I thought Radon was mostly an issue with granite bedrock and granite houses with poor ventilation? Is it a universal issue wherever you dig into the soil?
    • stareatgoats 6y ago
      It mostly depends on where your house is located, if the minerals contain uranium, and then type of building material, level of ground air intake and ventilation. "Some types of rocks have higher than average uranium contents. These include light-colored volcanic rocks, granites, dark shales, sedimentary rocks that contain phosphate, and metamorphic rocks derived from these rocks." (https://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/7000018/report.pdf https://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/7000018/report.pdf) See also this map of the areas in the US which documents radon levels, which however doesn't predict radon levels of each house, only points to a general risk. https://www.epa.gov/radon/find-information-about-local-radon-zones-and-state-contact-information#radonmap https://www.epa.gov/radon/find-information-about-local-radon...
• mindwok 6y ago
  Damn, this is a shame but at least they are honest with themselves and can look at this with an objective lens. Personally the idea of an underground house just screams problems to me, but I wonder if that's misplaced and there are people with well constructed underground homes that they've remained happy with long term.
• sails 6y ago
  Images don't load. Or just me?
  • nelblu 6y ago
    Same here, it worked after enabling js.
• philprx 6y ago
  Point 10. Cancer “We replaced all damaged wood with treated timber and soaked it in creosote for good measure.” Please, don’t do that. It’s a high suspect for cancer. Already some paints and most of the wood agglomerate glues are bad for health, but this! Good luck still with your house, it’s vital to have a livable place for balance and creativity.
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  • nwienert 6y ago
    Interesting. Having grown up in the southwest I had only ever been exposed to creosote as in the bush that gives off the incredible smell when it rains in the Sonoran desert. Reading on creosote tar and was interesting to see no citations (on Wikipedia) for the toxicity, and yet a couple studies against it: “A 2005 mortality study of creosote workers found no evidence supporting an increased risk of cancer death, as a result of exposure to creosote. Based on the findings of the largest mortality study to date of workers employed in creosote wood treating plants, there is no evidence that employment at creosote wood-treating plants or exposure to creosote-based preservatives was associated with any significant mortality increase from either site-specific cancers or non-malignant diseases. “
    • lostlogin 6y ago
      This is really surprising. The stuff is horrible to use and if any substance has seemed toxic to me, it’s that.
    • MrBuddyCasino 6y ago
      Creosote is banned in the EU since 2009 (and since 1991 in Germany) for most uses, especially everywhere it might come in contact with humans. There are narrow exceptions for eg railroad ties and utility poles.
• piokoch 6y ago
  Not surprisingly, underground house wasn't such a great idea, our predecessors learned this lesson when they abandoned caves, burrows and mud huts ages ago.
  • dalbasal 6y ago
    Wooden houses are a mistake. They burn. Unless... Unless you're good at making wooden houses that aren't likely to burn. A failure isn't generally a proof that the main idea is wrong. Most failure are execution failures. I imagine that if they built this house again, they'de solve those problems. In any case, the "ancestor" of mine that abandoned the mud hut he was born in was my grandfather, Tom... who (incidentally) was a builder. That specific style of mud hut (dob walls, thatched roof) is now making a comeback, with modern conveniences like floors. It's funny how a 20th century house, a hobbit hole and Denisova cave all fall into the same "ancestral" bucket.
    • lostlogin 6y ago
      > Wooden houses are a mistake Every house in NZ is wooden. They work fine when built right, though we have built them with too little insulation for too long.
      • jbay808 6y ago
        I think that's actually the parent's point. The quoted sentence is rhetorical.
  • sbierwagen 6y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1556_Shaanxi_earthquake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1556_Shaanxi_earthquake >The 1556 Shaanxi earthquake is the deadliest earthquake in recorded history. According to imperial records, approximately 830,000 people lost their lives.[4] >It occurred on the morning of 23 January 1556 in Shaanxi, during the Ming dynasty. More than 97 counties in the provinces of Shaanxi, Shanxi, Henan, Gansu, Hebei, Shandong, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangsu and Anhui were affected. Buildings were damaged slightly in the cities of Beijing, Chengdu and Shanghai.[5] An 840-kilometre-wide (520 mi) area was destroyed,[6] and in some counties as much as 60% of the population was killed.[7] Most of the population in the area at the time lived in yaodongs, artificial caves in loess cliffs; these collapsed in great numbers, causing many casualties.
• dalbasal 6y ago
  This is a lesson in being innovative. Pushing boundaries has costs. You can explore new ideas, rid yourself of legacy assumptions and arrive at some valuable things. But, you forgo the (often hidden) benefits of past mistakes and standard techniques that have all the kinks ironed out. The problem with houses is that iteration is expensive. A lot of architectural innovations are actually a version 2. There's another building where the architect/builder learned from mistakes.
  • jqpabc123 6y ago
    One of the virtues of living in a "cookie cutter" home that has been built hundreds of times --- most of the bugs have already been worked out.
    • glaberficken 6y ago
      Specifically a "cookie cutter" home for the same geography. There is a lot of invaluable and invisible knowledge baked into decades or centuries of building tradition of each specific region. I'm about to embark on a home building project myself. My wife keeps wanting a wood built house. In a country where there are hardly any... ...I just won't do it. no way.
      • arethuza 6y ago
        I'm going on a traditional rubble wall building course next month so I can build some stone walls that are in keeping with our house. Also been looking at sourcing stone from local quarries - which is fortunately quite straightforward as a lot of stone is quarried around here. If anyone is interested here are the charity that is running the course: https://www.scotlime.org/en/ https://www.scotlime.org/en/
    • gwd 6y ago
      Or using traditional architecture. I once lived in an apartment building that was obviously built in the 70's, and was trying to be cool and new by having all flat-angled roofs, rather than normal gabled roofs. (Sorry don't know the technical terms.) Every winter, giant hundred-pound icicles formed, threatening to drop at any time onto people walking in and out. Yeah, those gables over the entrances weren't for looks guys, they were solving a problem. Maybe you should have asked why they were there before getting rid of them.
• aaron695 6y ago
  This blog post is 7+ years old, but they must keep updating it, which is nice to see they are still alive and kicking. https://www.homeintheearth.com/2013/05/11/we-dont-like-our-underground-house/ https://www.homeintheearth.com/2013/05/11/we-dont-like-our-u...
• jqpabc123 6y ago
  The first clue that you're going to have water problems are the steps leading down to your front door. You built a catch basin to live in. Second clue is it is made from concrete. Concrete by itself is not water tight. It can be made water tight but some significant effort is required. Just ask anyone who has ever built a basement.
  • rini17 6y ago
    This was my first thought, too. Even started fantasizing how I would put a moat in front of the top of the stairs to drain the water away (and stop neighbors roaming).
  • xxs 6y ago
    "we were able to purchase the house for $45,000 less than the cost to build it. " It was sold on a massive loss (around 150k to build years earlier). There must be something terribly wrong judging by the price alone.
    • bryanrasmussen 6y ago
      Not necessarily - prices in the region might have depreciated overall, maybe it was built in a market high and sold at a market low point. The people/company selling it might have had other monetary problems and were thus selling because they needed money and couldn't afford to wait. If you build an underground house it is probably because you want an underground house, if you then die your heirs might not want an underground house, but to sell it they have to find someone who wants an underground house, thus to make it more interesting to buy they lower the price because maybe someone on the fence about living in an underground house will be willing to give it a try.
    • goodcanadian 6y ago
      If there is an oversupply of houses in an area, prices will be less than the cost of construction. Some people still build new because they want something in particular. If they then have to sell, well, they are going to sell at a loss no matter how good the house is.
  • 6y ago
• ev1 6y ago
  What is up with all the deaths of people that cross this house? The realtor, the contractor giving an estimate..
  • yreg 6y ago
    Also most of the plants died as well.
  • bluGill 6y ago
    random chance and age. The house was built in the 1980s, that is 40 years for things to happen.
  • smileysteve 6y ago
    Rural area with high average age (plus young brain drain) combined with average life expectancy.
• hengheng 6y ago
  This sounds more like a lack of experience than anything else. If they had found an experienced construction company that would have built these houses in the hundreds, that company would have assigned resources and figured out drainage, sealing and cracking. Once all this work is done, I'd assume it could be just as viable as anything else. (And reading between the lines, the problems seem to be water, water, positioning on a sloped hill, cracks, water, water, quirkiness, water, and quirkiness.) If anything, there's a bigger lesson in here on trusting things that are tried and trusted, instead of doing quirky stuff and trusting it with your livelihood. Why move in right away, why not have this as a weird cabin thing to experiment with? Never do experiments without fallbacks, people ...
  • matthewmacleod 6y ago
    Bear in mind that this wasn't a house that they constructed – it was purchased some years after construction from the previous owner.
• WalterBright 6y ago
  > tried to fix it ourselves by ejecting costly liquid epoxy into the holes and cracks from inside the house Waterproofing has to go on the outside surface to work. > Any wood on the house was a magnet for termites, and they were happily gnawing away all the woodwork that touched the ground and the concrete. We replaced all damaged wood with treated timber and soaked it in creosote for good measure. Never have wood in contact with concrete. For one thing, concrete is a sponge for water, and it will wick into the wood. For another, it becomes a highway for hidden termite infestations, as you've experienced. The solution on my house was to put a stainless steel sill plate between the wood and the concrete. The house has an underground basement, and it's dry (20 years now). I had a wet basement before, and did everything I could think of to keep it dry: 1. gravel under the slab with plastic on top sloping down to a gravity drain. The slap is on top of the plastic. 2. gravity drain, no pumps 3. The exterior concrete walls have a layer of waterproofing, followed by a "drain mat", followed by a foot of gravel wrapped in drain fabric. French gravity drains all around. 4. deep eaves on the roof keep the water away from the ground adjacent to the house. 5. ground slopes away from the house. Driveway slopes away. Deck slopes away. There are cracks in the walls and floor, but no water. Gotta think of defense in depth, like a castle, with layers of defense. If water pools against the house, it will get in, guaranteed. The design has to prevent any pools from forming. > Humidity in an underground house needs to stay at no more than 50%, but I get nosebleeds at that level I got regular nosebleeds from the dry air in Arizona after moving there. Went away after 6 or 9 months.
  • marvin 6y ago
    In very wet climates, such as those in parts of Scandinavia, the tradition is to dig a thin trench all along the concrete basement walls/foundations and put a sheet of reinforced plastic along the outside of the wall. Then fill in outside this sheet with gravel, which doesn't hold moisture in the same way that dirt does. The property still needs to face downhill, to allow gravity to drain away the water so it doesn't sneak in and get stuck against the walls, but this is a nice passive system to greatly reduce the humidity in basements. I don't think it would work well for a basement built in marshland, then you'd probably need pumps or active air circulation. This is basically what you described in your point 3, just pointing out here that this technique works well even in climates that have 200 days of rain per year. Admittedly the temperature figures into it; it probably wouldn't work with both 200 days of rain and average temperatures of 25 celcius.
• didibus 6y ago
  I'm confused, how does it get: "Lots of natural light" if it's underground?
  • cheschire 6y ago
    The article clarifies this multiple times both in the primary article and the Q&A section. There are large windows at the front and the back of the house, in the atrium and on the rear side exposed by the slope of the hill.
    • gauchojs 6y ago
      Still, there isn't a single picture from inside the house. A video showing how is it to live inside a hill etc..
• feralimal 6y ago
  Sounds like a nightmare! There's no way I could consider buying a house like this second hand - how can anyone do any research on it without exposing the structure? Looking inside will only tell you so much. And, if this was a house I'd build myself, again how would I know what would stand the test of time? What good are guarantees if a company goes bust? I love the idea, but would have to be very happy about that this had all the details had been worked out - and I don't see that I would be able to cross that threshold. Maybe if I lived in a dry (not temperate) environment this would have a better chance.
• pkphilip 6y ago
  I would highly recommend a slopped roof over the steps leading to the house such that it directs the water away from the steps and the house.. or as others have pointed out, you will be constantly fighting water entering your house. Second thing I would do is direct water away from other parts of the house by building a bore hole about 5-10 ft deep and about 1.5ft to 2ft diameter, in the lowest corner of the house. Use bricks to line the wall of this hole but with gaps to allow the water to drain into the hole. Have a small, reasonably quiet electric motor which will run about 5-10 minutes every 2 hours or so (use a timer) to clear the water in this hole. This hole can be covered over with a tile(s) so that it is not obvious to those using that section of the house. Water from other parts of the house walls will drain into this hole reducing mold and other issues. Thirdly, build a small slope around the entry into the house such that the water drains away from the house, preferably into a drain.
• supernova87a 6y ago
  I remember an article on HN a couple of years ago about the temptation to build a software system on specialty, "interesting" languages or libraries that seem adapted to your specific needs and desires. But the downside is that it costs a lot to find people who can code in that language, there's little community support, and you run into equally specialized problems that are hard, expensive, and take a long time to fix. It seems there are lessons that parallel this house experience.
  • dundercoder 6y ago
    RethinkDB in 2015.
• Theodores 6y ago
  Conceptually an underground house is like a bungalow version of a house that has a large basement (and a earth roof). In the UK I know basements (that have a house above them, not earth) to be near universally damp and miserable places. In London the rich and famous are known to go down when it comes to house extensions, with ever larger basements. Sure the climate is different, and building tech has advanced, but I wonder if the posh homes with vast basements harbour problems. Particularly when adding features such as pools, deluxe bathrooms and gyms. Every generation comes along to think they will not make the mistakes of their forefathers. It seems to be a game you can't win at. Lead works good under ground when it comes to keeping stuff out for centuries, so maybe you need to spend serious money on making a lead lined tomb and then lining that so there is no danger of getting lead poisoned.
  • KaiserPro 6y ago
    Its perfectly possible to make dry basements. In the same way its perfectly possible to make dry houses (we are used to damp proofing in houses, less so in basements) Put it this way, we've managed to make swimming pools that don't leak, underground houses are basically swimming pools with roofs. Firstly you need to choose your ground and prepare it properly. You then need to choose your materials. With basements you can either put the tanking on the outside, in the material or or on the inside. Each has its own merits. Then you need to think about insulation and ventilation. You will be at a different temperature to the outside world for most of the year. You therefore need to think about how you manage humidity.
    • Theodores 6y ago
      You are proving my point. Everyone knows best and thinks that they won't make the mistakes of the past when it comes to making bone dry basements that will work in perpetuity. The people in the article did not set out to make their home even more damp and the original builders did not set out to make it damp. They thought they knew what they were doing. With British town houses that have basements the original ground dug out for the foundations went into the road which is built up by a storey. The basement faces out into the garden, the sides join with neighbouring houses in the terrace. The front has a gap to the road that has a containing wall. Coal and stuff could be delivered to the basement area with a hatch in the road in some areas. Despite this sophisticated no-digging approach to a basement and dry walls on all sides there is still a damp problem that has to be managed. You can't just hold back water in earth with concrete, plastic or anything else 'waterproof' as it will rot away or prove to get damp in time. Even with clay that prevents oxygen getting to steel, steel will rust away too. We wouldn't have these problems if we had stayed in the trees.
• galfarragem 6y ago
  While I can agree that living in an "underground house" is not for everybody, this article doesn't make sense in general. Most (if not all) problems are related with bad construction (leaks, floods during heavy rains, constant mold, pests, cracks during earthquakes), bad "fencing" and detail project (limited landscaping, people invade our privacy, difficult and expensive repairs), not with the kind of house itself. Was the house well built and this article wouldn't exist or the conclusion could be more favorable. The only problem related with this kind of house might be depreciation. It's not mainstream and less liquid so you need to wait for the right buyer or sell it with a discount. However, the construction problems (it was clearly built by unexperienced contractors in this kind of building), certainly contribute a lot to repel possible buyers.
  • Angostura 6y ago
    I disagree. leaks, floods, cracks are all clearly going to be worse. In my conventional house, if I have a leak in the roof I'll get a roofer in and have it fixed in a day or two. I feel for these people - it's a salutory lesson.
    • smolder 6y ago
      I think the lesson is you can't rely on the experience of traditional house builders to build a robust underground one.
      • hanniabu 6y ago
        Traditional house builders should have no problem building an underground house. It's not much different than building a basement, whoever built their house just did a shoddy job. If those builders made a traditional house with a basement with these same issues, you wouldn't come to the conclusion that traditional houses are bad or difficult to do.
        • foolmeonce 6y ago
          I was going to say roughly the same thing.. Building bad foundations happens all the time and it seems less critical in a traditional house, but.. I know many houses that had incompetent foundation builders. The repair costs/complexity can be similar to the underground house even though the priority seems low in a traditional house. One of the houses was torn down due to the neglecting the problem. (It was a rental and no one cared about using the basement for the decade before it was inspected and condemned.) In the underground case you really only have to get one thing right and it is just as stupid to get it wrong in the traditional case, but people are distracted and don't see it's priority.
• jakuboboza 6y ago
  Maybe the best middle ground is to build "Domes" style homes. But i think brick + concrete is the best solution. Sturdy, repairable and not overly expensive. If caves/underground bunkers or flying homes would be cheaper and more effective it would be tried already ;) Never underestimate super old proven traditional solution. First check if your new solution cover all bases like old one used to :D
• lumberjack 6y ago
  Why not just build a house with very thick stone outer walls? Seems like all the advantages and none of the disadvantages.
  • dsr_ 6y ago
    The article author didn't build the house, they bought it. Somebody built that house because it was their dream project, and then sold it because it turned into a nightmare. If you want a thick stone house, you will need to acquire and move the stone. The usual construction in the US is wood stick framing. It's so ubiquitous that even finding a contractor who will work with steel framing instead of wood is difficult. The material cost isn't awfully different, but the techniques are. Finding a contractor to handle stone would require a much, much larger budget.
• kijin 6y ago
  > I told my husband to either turn off the (expletive) AC or turn on the gas logs. He turned off the AC. In the past, we have found it necessary to run both simultaneously. Running both the AC and the heater is actually standard procedure for reducing humidity as quickly as possible. You should try it more often! It's a useful trick not only for your home but also for your car, when you need to fix foggy windows in cold & damp weather. A heater on its own will not move any H2O from the inside of your home to the outside. It merely lowers the relative humidity, which will go right back up as soon as the air gets cold again. The AC, on the other hand, actually pumps water out by collecting condensate in the evaporator. But this doesn't work very well when the temperature is already lower than the lowest possible setting for your AC. So you use the heater to increase the temperature, kicking the AC into action. The result is the best of both worlds: moderately warm, dry air. Source: I live in a very humid place. Forecast for tomorrow night: 59F with 95% humidity.
  • vaccinator 6y ago
    a dehumidifier would probably be more efficient than heating and cooling the air...
    • bluGill 6y ago
      It is the same thing. A dehumidifier is just an Air conditioner followed by a heat pump. Though I agree more efficient.
      • smileysteve 6y ago
        Said a different way; A dehumidifier is just an air conditioner with the evaporator and condensor in the same air space.
        • vaccinator 6y ago
          air conditioner; does that mean adding a smell to the air?
• AngryData 6y ago
  95% of their problems are due to poor planning and shoddy construction. If they built it right from the start, it would still be great. But because of the nature of being underground, "simple" repairs stop being cheap or simple. So you gotta spend the cash upfront to do it right the first time. This is a lesson in don't cheap out and kick the can down the road. Do it right the first time so you don't gotta redo it a second or third time, especially when redoing it involves digging up your entire house.
  • throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    They bought it in 1994, before everything you ever needed to know about construction was on the internet. Short of having a preexisting familiarity with underground construction or having a buddy who designed missile silos their ability to identify potential future problems was likely quite limited.
    • rlonstein 6y ago
      True but I remember reading books, or collections of articles, on construction as a kid in the 70's and 80's with imprints like Mother Earth News and (iirc) Foxfire and more mainstream ones by Readers Digest, Time-Life, and Sunset. They covered things like this. It wasn't entirely out of reach if you went to a library.
• throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  Seems like their biggest problems are with the Arkansas climate. Like if you said "give me the closest thing you can to Cambodia, but at the 3th parallel" Arkansas would be tough to beat. Building the same home into the side of a hill with proper drainage at a more northerly latitude in a drier climate would likely yield much better results because it would demand so much less ability to shed moisture from the house. Also it seems from the construction details I can infer from the article that the concrete serves as not only the structure keeping the earth out but as the interior walls to which everything that shouldn't get wet is attached. This seems dumb. Floating construction, if only on pressure treated spacers and foam, would likely work much better. If you really wanted to go all out you could have an air gap between the concrete and everything else i.e. Titan 2 silo. Also, why the hell use drywall? Subways and tropical countries tile the crap out of everything for a reason. Sure it's cold but that's a better problem to have than damp drywall.
  • VBprogrammer 6y ago
    The air gap was one of my first thoughts. This is common on woodframed homes, where you have the a vapour barrier, insulation / insulation + framework, a moisture barrier, an air gap and then the water shedding layer (siding, render carrier, brickwork etc). Even in the UK where wood framing is less common it's almost identical to our roof structure where you have insulation, the roof framework (with ventilation in the eves), a water barrier (classically tar paper) and then the water shedding layer (concrete, slate or clay tiles). I guess one challenge is how you would have sufficient ventilation in the gap underground, perhaps you'd have to use some kind of forced air ventilation with all of the problems that would entail. However, by the time you ventilate that space you have now negated any thermal mass advantages you had from building under ground in the first place by introducing ambient air.
    • randcraw 6y ago
      Adding water channels as well were my thought. Just as air gaps allow moist air to exit wall cavities, external drain channels should prevent water from pooling and penetrating. Presumably in an underground house, you'd want your roof to have a big air gap that could serve both purposes -- excess water removal and moist air exhaust. I believe many house foundations routinely add an external air+water drain/gap layer like this.
• kylehotchkiss 6y ago
  Why don't tornado prone areas have more safe home options other than going entirely underground? Like an actual concrete home or more use of steel beams? I know it's more expensive but with the tornados seemingly increasing in intensity due to climate change, they're still less expensive than starting over entirely with a new home.
  • lopmotr 6y ago
    Probably still not economically feasible: "Lloyd’s of London puts the odds of a structure in Tornado Alley ever taking a direct hit from a tornado at 5,000 to 1." [1] [1] https://www.builderonline.com/building/predictable-destruction-building-in-tornado-alley_o https://www.builderonline.com/building/predictable-destructi...
  • thingsgoup 6y ago
    It’s much more reasonable to build/install a storm shelter and - in the unlikely event that you must use it - let insurance bear the cost of repairing/rebuilding the home, putting your family in a hotel, etc.
  • kyuudou 6y ago
    I've recently read about ICF (Insulating Concrete Form) houses fairing well in tornado environments, with an anecdotal report about a neighborhood whose ICF houses mostly stood after being otherwise flattened by a large tornado. Here[1] are some more reports on that. ICF seems like a decent compromise between a typical NA wood+drywall home and a moldy concrete fortress. Basically a lego-like form of blocks is built and a lighter concrete mix is sprayed into it then the blocks removed. I've been tracking Handeeman[2] on youtube since about a year after started their homestead in SE Arizona which is how I first heard about ICF as they just raised a new ICF home on their property. The guy does some great drone and video work tracking his progress and it's honestly quite inspiring to watch them go. They are trying to rely totally on rainwater collected from the brief annual monsoon rains and eventually to be self-sustaining with their vegan lifestyle. 1: https://icfhomesofva.com/2019/02/14/icfs-turn-tornados-into-tornadonts/ https://icfhomesofva.com/2019/02/14/icfs-turn-tornados-into-... 2: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCb0s0qC96lCcx2pO2za6mcw https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCb0s0qC96lCcx2pO2za6mcw
• leakyPipes 6y ago
  It's virtually impossible to water proof concrete, the water pressure is such that it'll force its way through the smallest pinhole/crack. This could be fixed on the inside by stripping everything back and with tanking membrane draining down to a sump with a RAID 1 array of sump pumps.
• blackrock 6y ago
  How do you go about and build your own dream home? Buy a property. Tear it down. Get a contractor. Get a construction loan. After it’s done, then convert that to a normal mortgage. Can anyone share their experiences in going this route?
  • throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    Your question is so general that I'm inclined to say that you need to do more research and refine it more. If you're asking what you're asking you're not yet qualified to oversee the process. The sane way of going about "building one's dream home" is dependent on a bunch of variables that you don't define. Basically you have two options, be rich enough that you can pay for whatever the hell you want or be moderately skilled in just about everything and do it all yourself. Regardless of which path you take you probably also want to do it somewhere that's rural, poor or preferably both so that nobody cares what you do. All the problems involve people. Busybody neighbors, local officials, etc so the more people you can cut out of the equation the better because each of these introduces a whole new set of problems and acts like a stress multiplier. Like everything else in life the faster you want to go from start to finish the more it will cost.
    • blackrock 6y ago
      Thank you Captain Obvious.
  • bluGill 6y ago
    There are plenty of general contractors that will do this for you. For a fee they will buy a property - most have a selection or properties in various subdivisions to choose from or you can bring your own (note that if you want in a subdivision you will probably find that the developers sell all/most of the property to general contractors before starting work - their bank won't finance things without that). If there is tear-down needed they will arrange that. They will help you get a print that can be legally built. They have deals with banks to get you loans. They will deal with sub-contractors to do the other work. Then you just need to get the final loan which again they will help you with (as in they won't start if they don't think you can get one) You can do this yourself. However you will have a hard time getting loans. There are two problems. First you have to pay for the place you are living (and then get rid of it!) while also paying for the new place that you will live. Most people are paying as much to live in one place as they can afford (this is right out of Adam Smith), so it is unlikely. Second, banks don't know if you can actually manage all the details, they don't want to be left when a half built house when you divorce (it is very common for couples to divorce over the stress of building a house). Be very careful about budget if you do this. I know a contractor who can look at a print and estimate the final cost - if he builds the print he will be within a thousand of the final cost. When he builds for someone else the final cost is almost always $30,000 more than his estimates - the floor plan is the same but all the little upgrades added up. This is even though every time someone asks about an upgrade he warns them their price goes up and the house won't be worth any more.
• peter303 6y ago
  "Having a window relaxes your eyes during this era of stay-at-home pandemic and 10+ hours of screen time." I view screens all day for both work and recreation. This much more than when I was in an employers office where I could move about periodically. Opening a window with a distant view really improved my eye hygiene. Gazing out a window every minute or two, focusing the eyes at 20 or 100 feet really helps relax them. I could image a whole new generation of coke-bottle-eyeglass kids who spent two much screen time at home school, then video games afterwards.
• KSteffensen 6y ago
  Isn't it a bad idea to use gas heating if you are worried about humidity?
  • sokoloff 6y ago
    Vented gas heating is fine. We use it and combustion gases (which do have a lot of water vapor in then) are vented outside via a chimney in our case but powered venting in other cases. (In our case, we take in outside air throughout the building but the humidity in the outside air in winter is low anyway. It is also possible to directly supply outside air for combustion and this is the most common arrangement for new installation [for temperature efficiency rather than humidity reasons].) Unvented gas heating (think a construction "torpedo heater" or a camp stove) does dump a lot of humidity into the space of course.
• Gys 6y ago
  The listed pros of living in the underground house: Protection from tornados, Lots of natural light, Great views, No noise from the street or neighbors, Pets seem to love it, Being closer to nature I think only the tornado protection might be an argument. Otherwise the house does not have to be underground? I expected arguments like 'natural insulation' and 'less disturbing to the landscape'
  • bluGill 6y ago
    problem is - as they discovered - the natural insulation isn't very good. It is better than a house built in 1880, but by 1970 builders knew how to do better. Today better insulation is required by code in the US.
• fooblat 6y ago
  I happily lived in an underground house for several years. However, there were some key differences in the design. My house had an above ground A frame roof with a door at ground level. The door opened to stairs going down to a second door to enter the living space. It looked like a house that had sunk 3/4s of the way into the ground. I never had a any problems with pests or flooding and the heating and cooling costs were tiny, even with winters below freezing and summers in the mid 90s. I guess technically it was a "mostly" underground house and in my experience that design worked really well.
• gotts 6y ago
  That was very interesting and informative read. Actually that is my dream - to build an underground house. I'm very sensitive to external noise so I'm ready to bear with cons of underground structure.
  • 293984j29384 6y ago
    It seems like it'd be much much easier to build above ground with adequate sound proofing or even just remoteness, neither of which are very expensive when contrasted with building underground.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • zrobotics 6y ago
    Search for info on insulated concrete form. Really cool stuff, it's essentially styrofoam lego bricks that are filled with concrete. Tons of insulation, and with 6" of concrete in all the outer walls as long as the windows are high quality it does a shockingly good job for noise insulation. No need to deal with the other issues of an underground house if all you want is noise insulation.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• hourislate 6y ago
  Everyday in NA construction companies build underground/below grade without any issues. These folks didn't know what they were doing and afterwards didn't do what they needed to to fix it. Maybe they just didn't have the resources. I would have never buried concrete without proper waterproofing. A possible fix (least expensive) would have been digging up and uncovering the house to apply a closed cell roofing foam (3 lb Foam). It would have not only insulated their entire house but would have waterproofed it and prevented many of the rodents and bugs from entering. They should have had proper drainage also. Looks like the franchise they hired to build their house didn't know what they were doing or was more a fly by night operation.
  • syntheticnature 6y ago
    They weren't the original builders, with the realtor and seller first directly mentioned under point 1 and again later on. This does seem to be something folks miss, given the other comments under the article. That said, it does look like the franchise the original person hired was both incompetent and fly-by-night, given the comments, and then the original person patched things up just enough to pass muster and got out while they could.
• lukevp 6y ago
  I grew up in an underground house, and it was not a good experience at all. It’s effectively like your entire house is a basement.
• tbsmartens 6y ago
  Adjacent related: This guy bought an underground rocket silo and is documenting the repair process: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd50A5qLv8FemVufSvDgkCQ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd50A5qLv8FemVufSvDgkCQ *I remember hearing about it on HN in a similar discussion some time ago and thought it might be relevant for some of the people in this thread.
• jonstewart 6y ago
  Air is a wonderful thing. I bought my dream house a couple years ago, a supposedly passive solar earth berm house, built into the south slope of a hill in southwestern Wisconsin. First, passive solar isn’t. It needs to be so well engineered, and even then you likely need active systems to transfer heat from the storage medium (eg fans and ducts blowing over a rock bed). My house has huge windows, but the sun shines on normal drywall and the wood floor of the upper level. And of course it’s still cool in late spring when the sun stops contributing much gain and it’s still hot in late July when it starts creeping through the windows again. Second, it’s damp. Humidity spikes like hell in the summer. I have to run a dehumidifier to keep things below 60%, and I have no idea what I’d have to do to get things below 50%. All three levels are bermed, with a cinder block wall. With the west-east orientation, we can get some halfway decent ventilation on the upper level, but we aren’t high enough up the hill to be assured of a steady breeze (we’re down in the hollow), maybe 20 or 30 feet in elevation above our creek that mercifully drains heavy rains away. With a normal house above ground, things can dry out from the outside and, especially, you can open enough windows and catch a breeze to air the house out. It is just a far more robust way to go. At a minimum I am going to need to redo the attic insulation, seal all the ceiling joints, and put in an ERV to provide greater ventilation and dehumidification, not to mention new AC/heat pump minisplits. I also think I may need to partially excavate the berm and throw in a proper French drain, and I’m worried that I should just do a full excavation of the back, two levels down, in order to apply proper sealing on the exterior, and perhaps throw some drains under the slab. With building science today, you can build a frame house tight enough, a “pretty good house,” stick some solar panels on it, and use far less energy while maintaining comfort, and it doesn’t take nearly the engineering and careful building that a bermed or underground house does. I love my little hobbit hole with the big windows. I’m fortunate to be a software engineer with good enough prospects and investments to be able to afford a minor folly on a second/eventual retirement home. I wouldn’t recommend it for someone trying to build equity with their primary home.
• ethagknight 6y ago
  Not to armchair quarterback this or anything but.... this sounds like a pretty simple problem to fix, WITHOUT spending a bunch of money. dig up a few feet of soil around the house (they said they have an excavator), put down a geo-membrane sloping away from the house, install a primary and backup drawdown well pumps (I forget the correct term, but its what is normally done around landfills and environmental hazard sites) to pump out water that manages to get through, and cover it all back up with proper surface drainage to remove as much water from the ground cover as possible. Water coming in the front door, may have to think about an above ground roof covering for that, or a removable storm shutter, or additional pumps. Keeping water out, even fixing old water infiltration problems, is civil engineering 101. They called a roofer and a concrete worker to fix a civil problem.
• PaulHoule 6y ago
  The American indifference to architecture has a flip side: build an innovative building and you'll have innovative problems. The authors of "Learning from Las Vegas" once got a contract to design a fancy repair shed for trains in Pittsburg. They picked one out of a catalog and got the remark "If we wanted this, we should have hired an architect." The architects thought that the application deserved a roof that didn't leak, but didn't deserve a custom design. The authors of "Domebook" and "Domebook 2" https://www.worldcat.org/title/domebook-one/oclc/36821926 https://www.worldcat.org/title/domebook-one/oclc/36821926 deliberately took them out of print because they learned the hard way you don't want to live in a geodesic dome. (e.g. for one thing you'll never be able to hang a painting) I know one alternative housing entrepreneur who has left a string of barely livable buildings in his wake. I know another who had more success because he kept building variations on a theme (A-Frame houses with Japanese-looking details) but even there when somebody lives in them for a year they realize that a square foot of space in a rectangular building is worth a square foot, a square foot in some other building is worth less.
  • jiofih 6y ago
    I’m confused about the train shed example. What are you trying to say there? Innovative architecture does not equal problems, it is commonly done all over the world. It’s a matter of good design principles, materials science and factoring the human experience in architecture, which all good architects care for. Maybe the problem comes from people trying to make it on the cheap and cutting corners?
    • PaulHoule 6y ago
      Maybe in Germany an architect can make a flawed building and get away with it, but in America the buyer or resident will have recourse to the courts and will take advantage to the maximum possible. In the case of that train shed, the innovative design is not going to improve the business results, and almost any desire to have a unique image can be pursued at low cost by putting a sign on or around the shed. If you want to keep that image fresh you can replace the sign at 0.01% the cost of replacing the building. The motivation of making a building that impresses other people is dangerous -- the Ancien Regime in France was motivated a lot by that but they found that that "track" leads to losing your head. Ironically, the shed was commissioned by people involved with the notorious Mellon family which did an astonishing amount of damage to the U.S. Economy and Political system circa 1975-2000. For one thing they refused to upgrade US steel production to use the basic oxygen furnace as Germany and Japan were doing -- and they used protectionism to keep their expensive low-quality steal going into U.S. products such as automobiles. Thus they harmed the competitiveness of US industry. After protectionism was discredented, the Mellons then went on to pay this guy https://www.amazon.com/Blinded-Right-Ex-Conservative-David-Brock/dp/1400047285 https://www.amazon.com/Blinded-Right-Ex-Conservative-David-B... to promote fake scandals around Bill Clinton and ultimately maneuver him to get impeached. If somebody got them to listen for once and abandon one vainglorious scheme that would have been remarkable -- because it is just so hard to get people like that to listen! Heck, had somebody showed Louis 14 or 16 some tough love we might be watching "Keeping up with the Louises" on reality TV!
• paulcole 6y ago
  > If we ever get rid of this albatross, would we ever again consider living in an underground house? Definitely. Did the author even read the article they just read? Or do they want to write a follow-up piece on the disaster of the second underground home they bought 15 years from now?
• dundercoder 6y ago
  Does anyone know how the outer shell of underground missile silo bunkers is constructed? Those go very far underground and presumably would be impermeable.
  • driverdan 6y ago
    Missile silos are multiple feet thick and cost millions to build. They're an entirely different category of building. That said, most still have water penetration issues that need to be addressed. I've seen many that have to have sump pumps running 24/7 to keep the water out.
• londons_explore 6y ago
  I have an underground house in the UK. Much of the same issues apply. I too have stalactites coming down from my ceiling! The main issue is damp coming through all the damp membranes from the floor, the ceiling, and the walls. If I wanted to solve it, I would knock all the internals of the house out, and then build a new house inside the current one. The outer house to keep the soil out, and the inner house for waterproofing. I'd have pumped air circulating between the houses to evaporate any water that manages it through the outer house.
  • propter_hoc 6y ago
    This is a fascinating idea but sounds crazy. You would basically have a house in a cave. Would you prefer that over just building your house on open land?
    • londons_explore 6y ago
      In my case, my house can't be more than ~1 foot above ground level or it would block someone elses (legally protected) right to a view. So it has to be 90% underground, and parts of it have ~10 feet of soil above.
  • crispyporkbites 6y ago
    When was your house built?
    • londons_explore 6y ago
      1994
• wycy 6y ago
  A lot of their problems are related to bad construction, but it's important to recognize that this house design is hard to construct well. Water is the most insidious thing to a house, and builders are not particularly great at waterproofing even above grade structures. In the case of an underground structure, that water hangs around and has a lot of time to find its way in.
• blaser-waffle 6y ago
  It appears this house was built during the 80s. Have newer designs mitigated some of those challenges? e.g. better materials and lessons-learned about waterproofing, etc.
• S_A_P 6y ago
  As a PSA to the author- She stated in the sites comments that she wrote the article 10 years ago(2010-12ish) and that was the way she felt at the time it was written. She also acknowledges progress has been made since her home was built long ago and that some/most/all of the problems they have may now be solved. The impression I get from reading this is that: 1) the home was built by a franchisee that was cutting corners. 2) the marketing materials were believed without any additional research, but since the home was purchased in 1994 and this is early internet/AOL internet days at best. 3) They may have gone into it a bit naive. Couple takeaways I have from this: 1) Building in the ground is hard, and doesnt just make the place magically efficient. 2) Be sure you arent stretching yourself financially to buy an 'innovative' home. Have the money or ability to fix the inevitable 'innovative' problems that crop up. 3) No home is maintenance free. 4) Seems to me that they need to scoop all the dirt off their home and do a full refurbishment/rebuild.
  • jasongill 6y ago
    The author wasn't the original owner, the house was built years before they moved in. They purchased it for less than the original owner had paid to have it built, so it doesn't sound like they were stretching themselves too thin - they thought they were getting a good deal and would be able to deal with any issues that came up. The fact that they own their own backhoe, and the pictures that they have shown, indicate that they have tried quite a lot of solutions, and as indicated in the article they are not interested in doing a full rebuild as it would not make financial sense, considering the depreciation of underground houses.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • S_A_P 6y ago
      I dont think that was anything I was implying but you are correct. I was stating that in the big picture dont buy an unusual home if you are at the end of your budget. I think that they absolutely stated in the article that they could not afford to uncover the land and "fix" the home they way that was needed...
• kebman 6y ago
  My mother bought a house next to a bog. Needless to say, with the drainage being almost non-existant, it has started seeping in water, especially during the spring. There has been some exceptionally warm winters in the North of Norway the last few years, but we've also had record snow, so when it thaws, everything goes at once, leading water to saturate the boggy earth, and then to seep into the house. Luckily it can be fixed by digging out new drainage trenches, and filling them with felt and gravel, accordingly, to filter the water out into a small drainage brook nearby. It's still going to cost a fair bit to get it done, though, and proper drainage could have saved us the problem in the first place. Luckily the insurance company will rework the inside, as panels got wet and need dehumidifying and mold-extinction.
• BobBagwill 6y ago
  The temperature of the ground at shallow depths corresponds to the mean annual air temperature (MAAT). If the MAAT in your location is 15.5C/60F, that's the temperature of your underground house. If you let in warm, damp air, it will condense inside. If there are any flaws in the drainage or waterproofing, it will get wet inside. If 15.5C is a little cool for you, you can insulate and install hardware to control the temperature and humidity. At this point, you've decoupled the internal environment from the surrounding environment. You're not 100% underground, so you're still not 100% protected from tornados or fire or bullets or COVID-22 zombies. Underground houses don't seem like a good solution for most situations. Passive House for the win!
• alexggordon 6y ago
  Most of the discussions here are talking about the downsides of alternative home designs. In general, while there's going to be some failures, exploring new home designs should be encouraged--most of the world can't afford the construction style common in NA, and material science and advanced robotics lead to incredibly cheap alternative home construction possibilities. There's a ton of improved life statistics tied to home ownership. Especially with alternative home designs though, home inspections should absolutely be the most important and time consuming thing you do during a purchase. I discovered this by lucky happenstance during my first home purchase, but a good home inspector will save you thousands of dollars, and sometimes more. While any sort of home inspection is not discussed in the article, I believe that an alternative construction building inspector (while costing more than a normal inspector) would have caught some of the more major issues mentioned here. If it's true that the leaks in the concrete were covered up long enough to sell the home, then most leak detection equipment would easily have caught it. Water damage, foundation issues and leaks are standard home inspection protocol. Additionally, it sounds like a fair amount of the termite issues could have been caught before the sale of the home, which is also a standard part of home inspections. In the event of purchasing an alternative home like this, I would not hesitate to even hire multiple home inspectors, especially ones that know the house and the area. Even having a quick conversation with them ahead of time (Are you familiar inspecting concrete roofed homes?).
  • pkrotich 6y ago
    I cannot stress the need to get a good home inspector (my be even multiple) - even for a normal home. It's worth the money - I learned the hard way because I trusted a checklist inspector.
    • alexggordon 6y ago
      My home inspector worked exclusively in my town, with the most common housing construction type that my house was built with. I live in a town with a lot of 19th century homes. Not only was he able to tell me most of the common problems that occur in the homes, but exactly what remodels had been done to the home (like what was cheaply done, and what was done 'right'). He also gave me a fairly extensive list of contractors and maintenance people from around the area that he trusted, and encouraged me to contact him if I had any questions or concerns over the next couple years. Looking back on it, as a first time home buyer, I would pay 10x more for the service he gave me than what he charged.
• djsumdog 6y ago
  I lived in a garden unit in Chicago for a year. I hated it. Luckily it never flooded, but that was always a worry. The bugs though; I hear you on that. I could not get rid of ants no matter how much I cleaned and sprayed. It was a constant battle with those bastards. I remember the basement in my parent's home also having a bug problem when growing up. I would hate to buy a unit like this that's essentially 100% basement.
• lacker 6y ago
  I don't know very much about housing and construction, but this part set off a big red flag to me: We should have been forewarned when we were able to purchase the house for $45,000 less than the cost to build it. Yeah, that should have been a forewarning about everything. Someone else knew that the house was a lemon, and they managed to dump it off on this unfortunate buyer.
  • aidenn0 6y ago
    I don't know about Arkansas real-estate, but my sister has moved a couple of times in Missouri and Kansas and has never paid above the cost of building the house, and once paid much less. Structures are depreciating assets, and in many parts of the US the land does not appreciate enough to cover that up.
    • lacker 6y ago
      Interesting, I guess all my real estate experience is in coastal-type areas where any sale priced below a previous sale is a red flag. TIL
    • seanmcdirmid 6y ago
      Sounds like most of Japan, where I think some structures (condos?) are separated from land appreciation, so this can happen even in a hot area like Tokyo.
• war1025 6y ago
  I grew up in an underground house, though not one as elaborate as this sounds. It was mostly just a concrete house built into the side of a hill so that only the southern face is exposed. When my parents moved in it had four feet of earth on the roof as well. The roof would be dry the day it rained, but would start leaking two or three days after the rain was done. They got tired of that. So they removed all the dirt and exposed the concrete, then just built a second story onto the house. The main peculiar thing about that house from a broader perspective is that we treated the upstairs like most people treat a basement. The main room in the upstairs was I think 20 feet wide by 60 feet long. And it had a concrete floor. Made for a good adolescent play area.
  • oh_sigh 6y ago
    Right...I'm not done the article yet, but I wonder why they didn't just remove all the dirt from the roof, or install an impermeable membrane over the entire hill.
    • randcraw 6y ago
      Budget constraints were why not, I suspect. It sounds like the house value never exceeded $150K, so adding at least $10K to excavate, membrane, and refill/recover probably exceeded available cash-in-hand. What's more, removing tons of fill dirt above a finished space is likely to be a delicate enterprise without over-stressing or penetrating the concrete domes which were already weakened due to cracking and past patching.
• johnwheeler 6y ago
  Puzzling why they didn’t include inside pics with some of the damage.
• w0mbat 6y ago
  Throughout reading the article I kept wondering why they didn't pursue the obvious solution : build a normal house next to it and move in. They have a nice plot of land and cost of conventional construction in Arkansas is low. They could rent out the stupid underground house as a mushroom farm or bat sanctuary or just fill it with concrete and put a garage on top.
• brudgers 6y ago
  If you are building below grade, W.R. Grace Bituthene is what you want: https://gcpat.com/en/solutions/products/bituthene-post-applied-waterproofing https://gcpat.com/en/solutions/products/bituthene-post-appli... On the outside of course so that water pressure presses it more tightly against the surface. It is like Grace Ice and Water Shield but is suitable for vertical application. Unlike liquid membranes, the sheets will always have the required thickness and you can inspect for overlapping joints. As a commercial product there are factory technical reps whose job is to help insure the reputation of the product. However, the real lesson in the article is you can't afford custom construction if there is any question about affordability. The major issues with the house are design issues. A few hundred hours of architectural design work that didn't happen resulting in some thousands of dollars of site work that didn't happen and some thousands of dollars of materials that weren't installed and so on.
• hinkley 6y ago
  I kept trying to pick a thing in that article to call out as a warning here but the hits. Just. Kept. Coming. Instead I will just recommend two things to anyone dreaming of buying a house. Start watching This Old House, [especially] the back catalog. Almost everything that can go wrong on a house has gone wrong there. And remember this while watching it: Intelligent people learn from their own mistakes, while wise people learn from the mistakes of others. The “cat litter” crack about bentonite clay: bentonite is nearly the only way people discuss for building an artificial pond if you don’t want to use a synthetic liner. But you don’t get a pond by sealing half of the hole you dug (and it takes a lot of clay). The water just runs out somewhere else. Or in this case, in. Edit: Old TOH > New TOH
  • war1025 6y ago
    > Start watching This Old House, I feel like I must be missing something about this show, because any time in my entire life that I have watched it, it seems to be just small spots of them using some expensive tool to fix some obscure problem. It never felt deep or cohesive to me. Just random walk throughs of houses that I assume have to be owned by wealthy people to afford all the work being done. I recently learned that I actually really enjoy The Woodwrights Shop, so maybe it's a similar thing of me just not being old enough to appreciate what they're doing?
    • hinkley 6y ago
      I don't know what they've been dealing with the last few years, but it used to be practically a cliche that they'd discover the foundation was cracked or the corner of the house was solid wood rot, and the estimate for the renovation would increase by 50% overnight.
    • quicklyfrozen 6y ago
      There is going to be some of that as part of what they do is demonstrating new technologies and techniques for old problems. The scale of the renovations has definitely grown exponentially over the years, so it might be worth revisiting some of the earlier seasons where their projects were more modest. I remember some of them struggling more with budget then the more recent projects seem to.
• kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
  Given the limited space, the builder should have put a driveway over one wing. That would simplify some of the maintenance problems. The surface space is essentially useless as is anyway. Maybe find a better way to deal with the Sarlacc pit too. That can't be pleasant in heavy downpours. https://www.google.com/maps/@34.812992,-92.3296159,3a,75y,188.73h,68.9t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sPxeZs-stq16xAcpIjen9TQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!5m1!1e4?hl=en https://www.google.com/maps/@34.812992,-92.3296159,3a,75y,18... The neighbor's wheel-less Jeep brought back memories :) Jacks? Who needs jacks? Bonus: Another neighbor's solution to their undrained driveway flooding the garage. Just leave a gap at the bottom to let it flow back out. https://www.google.com/maps/@34.8129841,-92.3292783,3a,59.4y,182.97h,78.39t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1scbbuei2C852uu8_pzXgMEA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!5m1!1e4?hl=en https://www.google.com/maps/@34.8129841,-92.3292783,3a,59.4y...
• fortran77 6y ago
  I'm not sure of underground domes, but I always dream of living in an aboveground dome, like the ones here: https://www.monolithic.org/domes https://www.monolithic.org/domes Could never talk the husband into it, though.
• dekhn 6y ago
  When I was a kid, I dreamed up a whole underground house- a deep cylinder with rooms radiating out from that (kind of like Wool). My dad said "the big problems are getting natural light in, and keeping water out." Over time I've come to realize just how significant that is. The light I feel can be overcome- modern lighting can simulate the sun- but the constant water intrusion will just drive you crazy.
  • samatman 6y ago
    Modern lighting cannot even vaguely simulate the sun. If what you care about is the amount of light, and its temperature, then sure, modern lighting can get you lots of lumens of the appropriate color. Sunlight constantly changes, in a way that connects the inside space to the outside world. There's no way to fake that.
• kbenson 6y ago
  > One particularly stormy night, a torrent poured into the front atrium from the street above the house and flooded the great room. ... Who would have thought to buy flood insurance for a house high upon a hillside? Presumably someone that noticed that the street is above the house, and there are entrances to the house with higher land on all sides of them? Those both seem like red flags to me. I'm not sure how much of the water problems are endemic to the type of house and how much are from poor planning and placement by the original architect and builders, but at least some of it looks to be because of poor planning and building.
• Dahoon 6y ago
  All of those problems would be covered by insurance were I live. Glad I don't have to buy a house with such little buyer protection.
• Tiktaalik 6y ago
  Coincidentally I recently read that a Tsilhqot'in family in the Cariboo area of British Columbia is building a traditional "pit house" of the sort their ancestors would have used for thousands of years. https://www.thefreepress.ca/news/a-pit-house-for-a-tsilhqotin-family/ https://www.thefreepress.ca/news/a-pit-house-for-a-tsilhqoti... I suspect this Tsilhqot'in family will have more success than those in this article because they will be listening to elders, considering traditional proven techniques, and most importantly, their location and environment matches the house style. The lands of the Tsilhqot'in are in the rain shadow of the coast mountains, so dryer than other parts of BC. They will accordingly most likely not suffer mold issues and since Cariboo summers can be very hot, their pit house will most likely be a cool refuge.
• hutzlibu 6y ago
  "By the way, the realtor probably couldn't have cared less about a fraudulent sale charge because he moved to Mexico immediately thereafter and died a year later" "In 2010, I found a roofer who made an estimate of $100,000 to repair the roof, but he said he wasn’t sure he wanted to tackle the job. We told him that we owned a backhoe and would remove the layers of dirt and insulation ourselves. Unfortunately, he died unexpectedly only two weeks after making the estimate." At some point in the beginning they probably should have already consulted an Exorzist, or similar, or alternatively burned it all to the ground.
• omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago
  I feel like the drainage/leaks/flooding is the biggest issue, with difficulty in repairs being second. I've had to deal with leaks, limited landscaping, cracks from earthquakes, difficult and expensive repairs, depreciating home value, pest problems, and people invading my privacy in conventional wood frame homes. I imagine I would also have more experience with mold if I didn't live in a dry region. Ironically enough, the earth-bermed house my mom purchased in 2012 appears seems to be the most durable overall because it's owner built and they spent time/effort/thought on drainage, functionality, maintenance, safety, etc... The only significant downside is earthquake insurance is prohibitively expensive because the lower level is masonry and was built before a certain point in time. I'm fairly certain it's reinforced with rebar, but it wasn't required to be in the building code at that point and insurance treats it as unreinforced masonry because of that.
• alexpotato 6y ago
  If you are curious on some excellent YouTube videos on drainage techniques and various way to install them. I highly recommend the Apple Drains channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/appledrains https://www.youtube.com/user/appledrains For example, I had no idea that there is such a thing as an outdoor sump pump which can be used to pump water uphill if your drainage issues are below street level. That doesn't apply to my case since you can't use these in my town but none of the landscapers I've spoken to even mentioned it. The host is very likeable as well.
• pengaru 6y ago
  Buying a too-large backhoe SIGHT UNSEEN then letting it sit in the yard for 15 YEARS? If they put a similarly nonexistent amount of time and effort into researching fixing their drainage problems as they did selecting and purchasing what's probably their most expensive and difficult to transport tool, I'm going to assume this quite possibly is an easy fix for someone more competent and disciplined. Edit: I wonder if they installed the hot-tub on the deck while the wrong backhoe was rusting nearby.
• footballnate29 6y ago
  I would never get this. what if it snows? you're blocked in for weeks. terrible idea and construct
  • laurent92 6y ago
    And humidity. And light. I have a traversing flat, and even then, the bathroom being a cul-de-sac, I regularly ensure its air gets renewed. In fact, my washing machine leaked, the wall smelled mold, I’ve had hard time getting rid of the smell. In a flat where I can make air circulate! Then about underground. Before opening the article I wondered “How can they build under earth level and not have huge humidity problems?” Earth is surprisingly wet, and humidity hoovers around. Plus rooms are i cul-de-sac, only one opening. But again, I’m asthmatic due to mold in a house when I was a child, so I certainly have developed my senses to avoid places which may put me at risk. Then about light. It’s always been obvious to avoid depression one must flood the spaces in light. In fact, when I watch 007 from 1970, I wonder how people didn’t get depressed with wooden and brown interiors, which are, by all other artistic and craftsmanship considerations, absolutely beautiful. It is perhaps the two first considerations for the house I’m trying to buy: Wide windows, away from streets so I can keep them open and keep the inside dry, and light. But I see one upside for their choice: Environmentalism recommends roof gardens for temperature regulation without AC. If people give weight to an environment criteria, it is legitimate.
• amelius 6y ago
  > The safe, secure feeling during a storm. Unless it causes a flood ...
• Gravityloss 6y ago
  If it touches the ground, it gets moist. So it has to be solid rock or steel. Maybe some plastic might work. A cellar can be built if you surround it with gravel and install drainage pipes everywhere - and protect the outer wall with plastic or tar - and even then it doesn't last very long and problems with moisture are frequent so you have to dig and expose it again every now and then. The best houses sit high on solid granite foundation pieces and are ventilated from below. They have steeply sloping roofs and long eaves. They have the minimal amount of holes in the floor or roof (preferably no cellar or skylights). They are built on a knoll so no water flows towards the building from any direction. Rain water from the roof is directed away with gutters and ditches. All building materials are breathing and can be dried if they get wet (no plastic or glass wool).