Underground House Project

airloom · April 22, 2011, 06:22:06 PM

I decided to build a house for myself about a year and a half ago and this forum, and Glenn's epic underground thread in particular, was a great resource in my early research. I'd originally planned to write up the whole experience on here once the project was complete and I had some free time but it's taking a lot longer than planned (and it's raining out, no work for me today) so I thought I'd share some pictures of the process up to this point and hopefully it will help someone out.

Once I decided to go for it and actually build a house, the first thing I did was spend 4-5 months researching everything I could about building. I downloaded a pack of 30-40 e-books on different building methods and worked my way through them. When confronted with this kind of information overload, I tend to start with whatever looks most outlandish and what caught my eye first was a little book with the ridiculous title, "The $50 and up Underground House Book."

One thing led to another, I designed a 1000 sq. ft. Oehler-type PSP house and was about to start when I got bitten by the Earthship bug and put things on hold. Ultimately, I settled on a kind of Oehler/Earthship hybrid which has a uphill terrace, sidehill patio, shed rood, interior posts, etc. but I've replaced all of the PSP walls with tire wall construction with all of the minor design tweaks building with tires demands. Well that and the extra 6 months of back breaking labor involved in packing em. But the design made sense to me and I really thought the two styles would complement each other nicely and so far I'm glad I went this route.

We excavated in Feb 2010 and started actually working in March so I'm about a year deep at this point. I was hoping to be finished by last Christmas but that was apparently wildly optimistic. Myself and my s/o have done all of the work ourselves and neither of us have any experience or access to heavy machinery so it's been slow progress but very rewarding. We had to call in the big guns for the initial excavation, getting in a monster trackhoe to dig it all out, but since then it's been just the two of us and our man(/woman) power. She works part time to bring home the $$ and spends the rest of her time on the house and I work full time on the house.

I'm located in the Carolinas on 60 acres of rolling farmland with 2 creeks and a pond (soon to be 2-3 ponds when I can get a hold of some earthmoving equipment). It's about half forested and half fields. I'm very lucky because it's family land so all of our resources can go into financing the house. My house budget was originally $8,000 and it looks like we'll end up spending closer to $10,000 but it's still a bargain to me.

So, with all that said, I thought I'd just post some pics of where we are now and then maybe some pics of the different steps leading up to this point. One day when the house is done maybe I'll have time to write up more of the nuts and bolts details if people are interested. But for now I just wanted to get some pics out there and offer my encouragement and appreciation to anyone else undertaking similar projects. I feel like I've been benefiting from the collective knowledge available online for too long without adding any of my own content.

Thanks!

Here's how the initial excavation looked as it's hard to get a good perspective from our current pics:

Progress as of last week:

When it's all said and done, earth will be bermed up against the curved side wall, back behind the bottom walls and then up over the whole roof. The terrace steps have eroded a lot and will need to be built back up and the rock walls finished but for now I'm focusing on getting a roof on and then building a window wall with tons of glass all the way around the front so we can finally be water tight. Also the extended, taller area on the right with the curved wall next to it will be our loft and sleeping quarters. The entire thing's about 1,150 sq. ft.

glenn kangiser · April 22, 2011, 09:51:23 PM

Very cool, airloom. Thanks for getting the posting started.

The Oehler/earthship hybrid should work fine and Mike mentioned using whatever materials you could to work with his engineered design post and beam modular framing. I don't remember if it was in his book or verbally. He really did not design walls for every case.

Please keep us updated.

April 23, 2011, 09:23:30 AM

Thanks Glenn. I mainly went with tires because it rains a pretty good amount here and we have some cold-hearted termites I was worried about too. Also for some added thermal mass and because I was having trouble finding cheap planking at the time (although I've got a sweet deal set up now for the roof planking).

Mike's engineering tables were a godsend though, he's the only person in any of the books I read who actually gave me the info I was after rather than just saying to consult an engineer. I did try to do the responsible thing and have a family friend who's an engineer come out early on in the process and his advice was to pull down all the tires (I had like 400 up at the time), pour a slab and footings, and go with concrete filled block work

. People are pretty by-the-books around here.

airloom · April 23, 2011, 09:51:42 AM

Some more pics from the beginning.

I wanted to be like Mike, so I tried excavating by hand first...

After a week, I got a trackhoe in which did the job in 3-4 hours!

Dry stacked rock wall along the top terrace step:

French drains at the base of all the walls draining down to the creek

First of many, many tires...

More tires:

Our client's dubious at best...

2 layers of 6mil PE and it's time for backfill...

glenn kangiser · April 23, 2011, 10:12:26 AM

Very nice. Glad to see you went with good French drains.

Engineers like to deal in materials they know and the system is designed to work for them. Everyone makes money. Permit agencies, referrals from them to engineers. Referrals of engineers to block, concrete and steel companies... engineers that will not do a modular system like Mikes where a set of tables covers everything. No money in that.

A small house done "by the book" for a friend was estimated at about $1,500,000 and neither the bank, or county would approve her building it. Another friend started by the book and ran out of by the book money before he could do the roof. Had to go conventional with that - has windows one side only... I would guess near to $500,000 spent there - he didn't want to say.

Lots of work showing there. Dry stacked walls are the right choice. How did you learn about building them? You did an excellent job. Were the rocks local?

April 23, 2011, 11:33:42 AM

I hear you Glenn. I've gotten to the point where any time I want to get into something new, the first thing I do is read up on all the recommend way of going about it and then figure out how it's ripping people off and do just about the exact opposite. It's not even worth asking if you're being taken advantage of anymore, just a matter of how the insiders in a given field are going about exploiting their position at the expense of the avg person coming to them for guidance.

We're at a point in the developed world that those with any money to spend in the first place are far beyond worrying about actual, survival needs. So there's really no where else to turn for continued economic growth other than creating artificial demand for junk we don't need, encouraging population growth, and industry/government cooperating to implement ridiculous fees and hoops to jump through in just about anything you do. Capitalism becomes more about ripping off stupid, trusting rich people with things they don't need than actually supplying real demand. But I digress.

The rocks for the walls are fieldstone from around our land. When I was in my research phase, I got frustrated I couldn't actually do anything hands on and spent a lot of time driving around collecting rocks from the edges of the fields where the farmers used to pile them up when they'd hit them working the land. I read in a book that the best way to start working with rocks walls is just to dry stack a section a few times til you get the feel for it before you actually introduce the mortar. After doing a small section I guess I just decided I didn't really need mortar. It's a year later and has held up real well. The trick I've found is to slope the wall back a decent amount if you're not going to use mortar. You can't really tell from the pic but if you put a level at the bottom of the wall, the top's a good foot back into the hill. Unfortunately I ran out of rocks and haven't touched the walls for about a year but it's first on the list once the house is watertight.

Sassy · April 23, 2011, 01:23:00 PM

Interesting build! Looks like you are doing your homework

Your house should be very sturdy w/all those filled tires. Glenn always does a lot of research on his projects - the internet makes it really easy. Great that Mike Oehler wrote his books & did his videos - especially w/the engineering tables for size of logs & weight loads.

Enjoying reading your thread

glenn kangiser · April 23, 2011, 01:32:08 PM

Looks like you understand the system pretty well.

I found an online book about drystacking rock walls but it was blocked from downloading. Depending on the rocks, about 2" back for 3 feet of wall is good lean but with rougher bigger rocks I find I need more.

I have one I call the Great Wall of China that is about 10 feet tall and has rocks to 10000 lbs or so in it. I backed it with cob and it leans back a couple feet I think. Like Alastair's Scottish Black Houses.

No need for mortar on a good dry stacked wall. It just causes water build up problems. The rocks should be self supporting before going to the next level. Big rocks first then you can go back ang chinke more with small rocks as desired. Your walls look great though. No mortared walls for me except if they are part of a house wall or for some special reason.

A 1860's era bar here has dry stacked slate walls in the basement, that are really supporting the sidewalk next to Hwy 49 through the town... no problem yet...

speedfunk · April 23, 2011, 04:43:11 PM

Welcome...this is great. You made my day by posting this.

One comment you made about adding to the collective was very true for us. The internet links all these great people willing to share their knowledge (or just experiences) so when we were doing all the research it only felt right to do the same.

Nice job on the the price also, that is just amazing. Hats off to both you and your wife , no doubt I can appreicate how much work you both have done. ...

This is great now to show deb..

April 24, 2011, 09:39:22 AM

Thanks for the positive feedback, you guys are the first people with alternative building knowledge to see what we're up to so it's great that it makes sense to yall. Also apologies for the earlier editorializing, I know that turns some people off and I'll try to just stick to house stuff and keep it light. I'm prone to tangents...

Glenn, the cob-backed stone wall idea is brilliant, I'll have to do that with the remaining ones. The biggest problem so far is that I have to weed them as plants come poking through so that would probably help with that. I also have some erosion problems with dirt coming through the walls but I think that will be helped once I get some plants in the terraces. I may have to increase my slope as well, I measured yesterday and it's about 1.5' back on a 3' high wall. (oops, read your post as 2' back, never mind, looks like I'm more than adequate haha).

edit: Thanks for reminding me Sassy, the Oehler videos are a must as far as I'm concerned. They clarified a lot of questions I still had even after reading the book through twice. It's also highly worth it just to see Mr. Oehler in all his live action glory.

airloom · April 24, 2011, 09:51:36 AM

Few more pics...

Logs from a neighbor's land that he was thinning out anyway became our beams (I think Mike calls them girders, the big ones)

Concrete and rebar in tires ready for the sill plate (I dug the tires out off-center so that the concrete would be under the tire rim)

Half tire cut (got my method for this from the ohiolavendarfarm Youtube channel, good instructional vids on tire building)

Half tire in place

Sill plate going on...

Sill plate on (my first carpentry, if you can call it that)

Sassy · April 24, 2011, 10:50:14 PM

Speaking of Mike Oehler, he called today & left a message - we were at a family get-together after church.

And don't worry about editorializing... if you haven't noticed - Glenn is famous for that & I've done my share

And he's probably the main cause for most thread drift

Nice that you were able to get those logs!

muldoon · April 24, 2011, 11:19:47 PM

I'll start by saying this an an awesome project and I cant wait for updates on it.

aside from that, maybe I'll editorialize as well..

QuoteWe're at a point in the developed world that those with any money to spend in the first place are far beyond worrying about actual, survival needs. So there's really no where else to turn for continued economic growth other than creating artificial demand for junk we don't need, encouraging population growth, and industry/government cooperating to implement ridiculous fees and hoops to jump through in just about anything you do. Capitalism becomes more about ripping off stupid, trusting rich people with things they don't need than actually supplying real demand. But I digress.

I call it "One nation under fraud". It has become clear that we are nothing left but the grifting. Pick any tranche of our society and you can see it. From valuations to permitting to insurance to lending to regulations to unions to capitalists to bankers. Everything is about squeezing the last drop out of a corrupt and bankrupt system.

I pretty much railed about corruption and theft for several years, but at the end of the day, no one cares. Really no one. Because fundamentally... everyone contributes to the same perpetualality. No one really wants the corruption removed because in all honestly if you remove the theft and the grifting there is nothing left. There is no manufacturing left in this country. There is no wealth building anymore. It's all lies and BS. But the real kicker is the honest truth that all we have left is this basket of theft.

It is like a cancer, a parasite. But the removal of the parasite would kill the host. If we did indeed root out the lies in our world we would literally be nothing left. So we all tolerate it. People just pop thier pills and soak up the american idol knowing that there is a problem, but refusing to face it. Because facing it would mean addressing the problems they have either ignored or directly benefitted from for decades.

We are on nation under fraud. It's the American way.

glenn kangiser · April 24, 2011, 11:29:23 PM

I love that posting, muldoon. Tell it like it is, eh?

I pioneered thread drift as an alternative means of learning new things....

Weeds help to stabilize the wall too.

I hope I said 2 inches per 3 feet rather than 2 feet per three feet. Two inches is correct on the wall lean with decent rocks well positioned.

April 26, 2011, 08:43:43 AM

Very

Look forward to watching the progress!!!!

airloom · April 27, 2011, 08:02:18 PM

Well with your kind permission to drift...

Muldoon pretty much nailed what I was getting at. It's a tough time to be a recent college graduate, especially when aiming higher than just making some money (although that's hard enough these days in itself). Every field or job I'd get into - from law school, to non-profit work, to the alternative energy field and the related tax credit/carbon credit scamming, to grant writing - just ended up being self-serving, deceitful BS at complete odds to its ostensible reason for being and frankly not worth my effort. I plowed through 17 years of school being told to just shut up and do the work and play the system so that I could put myself in a position to graduate from the right school with the right credentials to move on to things that actually matter. Haha. So now I'm on my way to living in a hole in the ground

.

On that note, been a busy couple of days. Finally got the roof planking done and covered everything with tarps so I can finally breathe a little easier and work on a few pressing things I've been putting off. Today we started putting up a fence around the garden. It's a 200' chain link fence and one of my best Craigslist finds to date (ugly but looks better now that it's painted black and will have climbing flowers and berries growing all in it).

I guess I should mention that the materials for our house are being provided almost exclusively by Craigslist shopping. I'm sure that's no revelation to anyone here but if I need something and it can't be found by poking around in old barns on the land, it's Craigslist time. My best finds to date:

The chain link fence. 200' x 7' tall with 24 big commercial grade posts and all fittings (from an apt complex bball court) - $100
45 10' sticks of really high grade 5" PVC pipe with flared ends for our earthtubes brand new that retail for $20 a pop - $100
Like-new Appalachian Wood Stove company stove that retails for $2,000 - $200
50 pieces of 4x8' 5" thick foam insulation from a warehouse that was being torn down rated at R-30 - $400
Huge all wood, 2 pane, double window, like 6' x 10' - Free (they liked our house idea)

Probably forgetting some but you get the idea, you can find most anything 90%+ off in Craigslist's material section if you keep your eyes open.

airloom · April 27, 2011, 09:07:08 PM

Pic time... At some point I'll actually take some new ones and add them but it takes so long to make enough progress to justify new photo sessions...

Starting the curved loft addition/descending wall that receives the wood beams on that side

I-beams with shoring. This is a solution to our only real disaster on the project so far when I broke some of Mike Reynolds tire building rules and the bottom 4' of my walls came 1/2" off plumb on this high tire wall. Sunk four 12' tall, 8" web i-beams (steel yard quoted $150 per, Craigslist said how's 100 bucks for all 4 sound), wire roped from the top of them into deep concrete anchors 20' back into the hill with big turnbuckles that can be accessed from inside the house if anything goes wrong in the future. I-beams haven't budged off level in 8 months now. Then slotted 4x14" planks of wood cut from a tree that fell on our land into the i-beam flanges with some plastic and osb against the tires and backfilled and tamped the middle area with gravel. Kind of a weird/expensive/time-consuming solution but it's worked.

6x12" heart pine beams that would become our posts. Found on Craigslist from a guy who bought and disassembled a 1934 textile mill to get the lumber for a post and beam house he wants to build. Decided to mill a bunch of it into flooring and sell a bunch more as beams to finance his project.

I don't know a lot about wood so I didn't really feel comfortable making the call on whether I could get away with burying my posts so I decided to make a pier system. What I did was buy a bunch of 6" web i-beams off Craigslist (7' long, $12 a piece) that had been used as a highway guard rail. I cut them in half and buried them in concrete leaving 10" sticking out...

Lined em up with string first

Then made some forms out of free pallets (from guess where)

Finished product:

and

And lest my description come across too cavalier, doing a grid of 13 of these with strings and line levels was maybe the hardest part of the house so far. Weeks of headaches. But what it allowed me to do is simply slot and notch my big heart pine posts and slide them right onto the i-beam and then bolt them through the flanges (put some pieces of 25 mil used pool liner I found between the concrete and wood as vapor barrier). Also, it might seem like thrifty/eco overkill but the concrete is leftover from our local concrete company's jobs. They'd give us a call when they were coming back from a job with a good amount left that hadn't been watered down yet and we'd show up with 12 or so 5 gallon buckets, fill em up, and rush back to pour before it set.

Slimming the heart pine posts down to exactly 6 inches wide (these were from '34, not quite dimensional)

Cut a slit up the middle...

Slowly walk them up a ladder one rung at a disc-slipping time

And before you know it... the project has officially gone 3 dimensional...

glenn kangiser · April 28, 2011, 12:04:31 AM

You did good on the piers rather than burying them. That is the only way to be sure they will not deteriorate.....and

You discovered the truth about the system and progressed on past it to the advanced state of moving into a hole in the ground....Good job.

airloom · May 03, 2011, 07:37:55 PM

Well you share a bit of the credit/blame for my "advanced" state of living. After reading "$50 and Up..." I started googling around to see if anyone had actually made one of these things since the 70's and 9 out of 10 searches led to either your thread or your blog (probably closer to 99/100 really). You got this market cornered.

Very happy with the piers, you don't know how many times in the last couple months after a good rain I've looked down at a swimming pool in our hole with the piers just peeking up an inch or two above water keeping the posts safe and dry.

Also, I just ordered some of that EM-1 from teraganix to try it out on some mold I just noticed on our beams (still not weather tight, wet spring). I'm sure you've covered this but what's the shelf life on the original bottle. I get that once you make a batch of AEM you've got to use it pretty quickly but wasn't sure how long the EM-1 itself lasts and how much I should get. Ended up going with a 32 oz, seemed like a good price break and shipping wasn't worth it for the little bottle.

------------------------------

Some more house pics

Making a form for a concrete bond beam tying all the tires together and making a resting surface for the beams...

Poured (some frenzied clamping going on as it tried to bust up my forms)

Done

First beams going on...

More

Biggest beam (18' by 14" diameter) being muscled across on ladders/scaffolding we rigged up. Hooked up a come-along to pull it across.

Aaaalmost there...

And all the beams up:

Sassy · May 03, 2011, 09:40:07 PM

Lots of work! Great how you took step by step pix.

May 03, 2011, 10:11:26 PM

Edit: Thanks Sassy! I'm scrolling through about 100 similar shots for each one I put up here haha, the blessing and curse of digital cameras.

Been meaning to note that my timbers are in some cases on the smaller side of Mike's scale mainly because of a good deal I found on a ton of foam insulation that I'm going to use on the roof. Gonna have around 5 inches (R-30ish) of light foam up there which means I'm cutting down a bunch on the amount of dirt so the load will be significantly lighter. We also never get more than a few inches of snow down here so I don't have to worry about snow loads much. Not sure yet but thinking 6-8 inches of dirt should do it . Whatever will be enough to resist erosion and get some good roots going.

Also, I currently have about 7 layers in my "roof lasagna" and I'm trying to decide what order to put them in. Any suggestions welcome. Also, bit of a side note but I know there are rules about which side of the insulation to put your vapor barriers on depending on whether you're in a warmer or cooler climate but our winters are about equal to our summers imo. Gets up to the high 90's in the summer and down to the teens in the winter

. I basically have no idea what I'm doing here but this is what I have in my head...

7) Earth (6-8"?)
6) 6mil PE "umbrella" layer extending 10-20' beyond walls (the only layer I'm 100% confident I've got right)
5) Sand drainage layer (1-2" of sand to drain off anything that makes it down to the main membrane and protect main membrane?)
4) Main membrane (maybe that billboard tarp? I've been collecting used 25mil pool liners as a possibility. Bite the bullet and do real EPDM?)
3) 5" Styrofoam insulation panels (best way to secure these in place? Someone mentions duct-taping the seams for thermal reasons, overkill?)
2) Regular old tarp (bought a huge tarp to cover the roof so I could store stuff under, any reason not to just leave it on there as a layer of last defense?)
1) 2" of wood planking that everything goes on

Any input appreciated. Layers to add? Subtract? A better order to put them in? To be honest I'm all researched out at this point and just want to get on with things. Thanks!!

glenn kangiser · May 04, 2011, 07:20:34 AM

Mike told me that there is a good safety factor in the engineering tables so, close is good especially with reduced loading.

I have found the billboard tarps to have some wear and the pvc in them to be a bit brittle leading to cracking at folds so I would prefer using them as a secondary and using real EPDM as a primary.

A friend purchased from this lady and had a good experience. She has drop points in several places and is about half price of many places.

Layers look good other than the EPDM. I think we talked about French Drains - use them.

http://www.direct2usales.com/

Sorry I don't have more time - got the critical ones I think. Got to go to work in the bay area but will try to check in tonight.

speedfunk · May 04, 2011, 10:46:22 AM

Airloom... I second sassys comment great pix of the process. Your sure to help some people out for sure.

I also understand the agonizing your going through with the way the layers are arranged. I think it looks pretty good (as far as my RESEARCH i have done). THE Duct tape i think is overkill and i dont think really improves it any. IWe did it on our project but I had was trying to create another barrier between the 2 layers of insulation. You have one layer so I believe the big thing to get right is the two membranes above and below the insulation. These two membranes should seal any cracks or joints you have in the insulation. The big thing it to make sure there is no way for outside air to get in through the sides. Being that you are completely underground I think that should be fairly easy?

One thing to consider is something like old rugs to protect that top poly layer?

What a great deal you found on those materials..esp insulation....man I am jealous

Glenn: Thanks for mentioning that bit about the pvc getting brittle. I will not go that route either for the insulation skirting.

airloom · May 04, 2011, 12:54:09 PM

Thanks speed! Believe it or not, my mom mentioned the other day that she was throwing out an old area rug and jokingly asked if I needed it for the house (I'm always intercepting things on the way to the dump). Looks like I've got a use for it now though, good call.

Most of the general building research I did stressed on and on about things like roof ventilation and making sure the vapor barriers didn't sweat into the house and it all sounded very intense. But now that I'm here I can't really remember which, if any, of those concerns were pertinent for underground/living roof set-ups. I don't think the ventilation concerns or keeping air out will really be a problem though like you say.

I'm still wondering how well I need to secure down the insulation. If I screw in each corner with a 6" screw and washer that might work but would put holes in the tarp below (maybe not a huge deal since I wasn't even planning on having that layer originally?). I'm guessing with all the weight on top the foam panels aren't really going to want to move around once in place but I'm not really sure.

Thanks for the EPDM link Glenn, confusing site but the prices look great. I do remember now you saying the billboard tarps have brittle corners, that's a shame but thanks for being the guinea pig. French drains are the first thing I did on the house and I will continue to put them in everywhere I can. A lady recently gave me 200' of perf pipe and I've still got several yards of gravel lying around so I'm armed and ready.

Thanks for taking time to respond, I know you're busy so no rush with anything.

glenn kangiser · May 05, 2011, 12:53:05 AM

My pleasure, guys.

I will use the billboard tarps as a secondary vapor barrier - covered up they will not deteriorate more. Worst case would be a gopher directing a flow right over a small hole - not too likely and 99% will be deflected leaving only a little for the EPDM or other barrier to take care of.

No need to secure roof insulation - just lay it from the bottom up having plenty of membrane to get to the top and cover it with a bit of your sand or whatever was the next layer. Start at the bottom and work up as Mike instructed - no problem.