My wife and I are living in a home that we built in the woods. We've been in it for about 3 years, and we built small on purpose. We didn't want it to get too comfortable, because we still wanted to build our dream home. We just wanted to build on the property and live there, rather than living in town and having to drive there every weekend.
Anyway, we built the current house (it's actually a quonsit) working mostly weekends, holidays, evenings, etc. It took 2 years.
Now, we've gotten the opportunity to build our dream home sooner than we'd expected, and we've begun. Check it out. http://www.freewebs.com/stocktonunderground It's going to be an earthome, but we built on grade and will berm up afterwards. Being on grade helps with the issues of waterproofing.
If you do visit the website, please leave a comment in the Guestbook so that we know how many people are interested in this sort of thing (both as an earth home, but also for issues related to owner/builders).
Thanks for posting that and welcome to the forum, HockeyFan.
Interesting to see what is involved in doing it with concrete. Seems it would cost a bit more than Oehler's $50 underground house. :)
Definitely. On the other hand, we have termites galore here. We'd never get away with doing what Mike does with his homes, although I have his book and he's done a great job with it.
Glenn,
Thanx for checking the site out. After visiting your site, I realize that I had it in my bookmarks. I've visited that site many times, as a matter of fact. You've done a great job on that house.
I messed up in the guest book -- couldn't put a break between the two url's after it was wrong - hopefully you can or there is always copy and paste. :-/
It is not done by a long shot but that's OK - we use what is and slowly do the rest. It will really never be done. :)
I just have to wait for the right inspired moment. I wish I'd know a bit more about John Haits ideas to but the way this is made it can be repaired or redone relatively easily at any time. Any section could be supported - posts changed - cut into - remodeled or whatever pretty easily without breaking the bank.