Midwest earth sheltered home
 

Anyone here either built and/or lived in one? Not talking about about an earth 'rammed" home, but rather a home built into the side of a hill with either poured concrete or cinder block walls. I'm looking to hear first hand pros and cons of living in this type of home in the midwest/USDA zone 4.

I toured an earth sheltered home in Illinois a few years ago. The builder claimed low heating bills. The home was originally built with hot water radiant heat in the floor, with the heat provided by a gas hot water heater rated at 40,000 BTUH. That was not enough, so they had to add a second hot water heater.

For comparison, my own above ground house is located in Northern Wisconsin. It only needs 13,000 BTUH to heat it in colder weather than is experienced down in Illinois.

Yes you have the giant freezer known as Lake Superior to deal with lol. But maybe it also helps keep you cool in the summer months to??

Kind of surprised there isn't more first hand response to this thread. I understand not everyone likes the looks of a home buried in earth but in theory if built correctly, the energy savings could be much greater (and worth it financially) than a regular stick house.

In an aside, my great grandfather was in construction years ago. He built most of his houses with poured concrete walls. My grandparents lived in one of those houses and they never had air conditioning ever, didn't need it. I remember as a kid we'd go into the basement to cool off where it was always cool even when it was really hot and humid outside. That type of construction is rarely used anymore in my area but the energy savings potential seems to really be there.

If you build underground, insulation is paramount.

While it is warmer down in the ground than in free air in winter, buildings usually don't go deep enough to really gain enough from that heat. So if you're not careful, the heat will still leak away into the ground.

Done properly, a (semi)submerged building can benefit both in winter and summer.
Essentially, it means using the earth as an extra layer of insulation and for thermal inertia - but cold bridges must still be avoided.


Here (50° N, temperate sea climate) rather than build in the ground, people often use tubes sunk around 6-7' in the ground to draw in air : pre-cooled in summer, pre-warmed in winter.

After being used as a style element, poured concrete is now being "re-discovered" for use in passive houses
(houses that don't need heating, or extremely little of it)

The sheer mass of the concrete acts as a thermal buffer, preventing quick heating up or cooling down of the house.

My great grandfather was building his houses out of poured concrete starting right after WW2 and continued this method through the late 1960s.

I'm not sure why this method of construction hasn't been utilized more in my area but there has to be a good reason.

In theory though, could poured concrete be the next best construction method (with future energy savings in mind) over an earth sheltered home?

I should mention 'my area' is the midwest area of the USA. Minnesota, usda zone 4. Yesterday we had temps in the low 60s and today we will be lucky to get out of the 30s. Winter temps can get as low as 30 below zero and summers can see temps into the upper 90s/low 100s.

Dirt is really not a good insulation, r value is about 0.5 per inch, so an r value of 20 need 40 inches of dirt, and and that dirt has to be warmed up.

The earth sheltered house that I toured was a long rectangle shaped concrete box, with one exposed wall that had windows and exterior doors. This forced an inefficient floor plan with a hallway along the back wall.

The roof had about 3 feet of dirt on it. A parapet along the front kept the dirt in place. While the roof and side walls had exterior foam insulation, the parapet was bare. Concrete is thermally conductive, so the parapet acted like a big heat exchanger. That would explain the need to upgrade the heating system.

The roof had 13 penetrations, for plumbing vents, water heater exhaust, and solar tubes. I asked the builder about water leaks. His reply: "No problem, just dig it up, fix, put the dirt back".

I don't know if they insulated underneath the floor. That is also a significant heat loss.

My workshop is heavily insulated, but built on a slab without insulation underneath. I keep it 65 degrees. The highest temperature inside, during a 100 degree heat wave, was 69 degrees. The cool earth was sucking heat out as fast as it came in. And I don't get that heat back in the winter.

My house is on a slab with the forced air vents in the concrete. The air is a lot cooler at the furtherest room from the furnace and the floor is always cold, except in a few spots.

Here is an example of what a realtor has to say about listing an ESH (earth sheltered home):

Earth Sheltered Home Finds a New Steward

Anyone near Indy?:

Indianapolis, IN

And unfortunately here is an example of an ESH build that doesn't appear to have been done correctly:

Mankato MN

I stumbled across this while searching for ESHs. I'll ad this to as its pretty interesting imo.

http://www.missilesitehome.com/

Seems to work pretty good here:

http://www.springfieldunderground.com/

In our area you would also have to deal with natural radon gas. Its not that hard, but it does add another expense, and something else to think about.

That's an old dolomite mine, not an earth covered shelter. If you want to live in a warehouse at 62 degrees year round with truck fumes, go ahead.

This link has lots of specific technical data. This guy really seems to have put alot of work into building his earth home located in Illinois. If he included it, I missed it, but I'd like to know approximately what his total bill was for the finished house (sans the land)and how much (or little:D) his utility costs are per month throughout the year?


House in the Hill

My own house is above ground over a crawlspace, 1320 square feet, has no shade, no solar, and no woodstove. The heating system is a gas water heater that heats both the house and the domestic hot water. Three people living in it.

The utility useage for 2003 was as follows:
8890 heating degree days.
659 therms of natural gas.
3879 KwH electricity.

A high efficiency modulating condensing boiler with indirect hot water heater would reduce the gas useage by 15% or so.

I'd really like to see the numbers for some earth sheltered homes.

Earth Sheltered = hard to find comparables
 

My uncle built an earth sheltered house in St. Paul, MN back in the early 80s and still lives there, but it's hard to find any kind of direct comparison to it for utility usage. Most houses that size that are above ground aren't made of concrete, for instance.

I can send him an email and ask.

Before you fantasize too much on earth sheltered houses, let me warn you that waterproofing gave him fits for the better part of a decade. For a while there, he had a guttering system inside his house and that, believe it or not, was the greatest success he had for quite some time before getting a better handle on it. Ultimately he wound up scraping all the overburden off to completely replace the membrane. I think some other stuff got done too, but I'm not sure.

Small world, thats where I am to but I haven't ever seen one here. Whatever info you care to post would be great or if your uncle is ok with it I can pm you my contact info to give to him. I'd just like to talk to someone thats actually "been there done that lol".

I live in an earth home that was built in the early 80s. There are many pros and a few cons. My house was built 75 percent by professionals and 25 percent by the home owner that was a cobbler of sorts. My house is poured concrete on 3 sides with concrete precast roof that are about 10 inches thick with a 4 inch concrete cap poured on top of that. The structure itself is a tank. This design seems to be prevalent in this area. The south wall is built of 2x4 and insulated with fiber glass batt insulation with 1.5 inch blue board on the exterior of that. The concrete shell is insulated with 2 inch white foam that was placed inside the concrete forms, similar to modern day lite form. I fought water about 2 years after we moved in. I found that the original water proofing membrane was 3 layers of a heavy plastic material which ahd deteriorated after 25 years or so. This was a pretty simple fix. I used a rubber pond liner directly over the white foam insulation. It was cheaper to do than reroofing an equivelent sized asphault roof and it took about 3 days to do. Pond liner is the same stuff as rubber roofing but it is made to be in contact with dirt. I was able to order 2 large sheets and I only had to seam it one time. The house has always been heated with a wood stove and electric baseboard heaters in each of the south rooms. Cooling was provided by a hotel style ptac unit. Over all it is a pretty cozy house. We are in Iowa and the coldest months seem to be Jan and Feb the hottest being July. The biggest problem has alway been humidity. If the house is left unheated during the day the temp has never dipped below 62F. If left un cooled, temps never get above 79F. We are in the process of adding a forced air system right now mainly to help control the humidity levels. I would do many things differently if I were to build one. The house only has 8' ceilings. I would go taller and run the plumbing and electrical over head instead of in the slab. I would install an HVAC system whether you think you will need it or not. We have a toddler now so the wood stove is a saftey concern. Radon could be a problem so consider a mitigation system. For the most part we love the house but it does present certain challenges that must be considered before building. The house is pretty much sound proof. We live a quarter mile from a busy highway and cant hear it. Most of the problems with my house are due to the original owner cutting corners in certain areas. Hope this helps the OP.

this may be old news but I had never seen it before, I saw a program the other day on a house build in Australia where they used hollow styrofoam blocks which they poured concrete into. I took them only a couple of days to put up the blocks and pour a very large foundation. Ended up with it soundproofed and insulated at the same time. Seemed like a very inexpensive way to build. I didn't see any reenforcing steel but maybe I missed some parts.

The product you saw was lite form (or something similar). It is pretty big here in NW Iowa. It is blocks composed of 1.5" styrofoam on each side. It has a skeleton made of plastic and I don't think rebar is required. It is also DIY but I have seen it go terribly wrong when proper prep work is not done. If I were doing an earth home I would do it this way. There are also plastic strips built into the foam that allow for the attachment of drywall directly to the foam. I have wired many houses built with this stuff and routing wires is also pretty easy. We use an electric chainsaw to notch the foam and route the wiring. It is pretty slick stuff.

Despite the lower heating/cooling costs that earth sheltered homes may have, those savings could be offset somewhat by insurance coverage. In a conversation with my insurance agent the other day, he said he thinks the policy would cost more due to possible roof cave ins, etc, and he has never insured an earth sheltered home after being in the insurance business for almost 30 years. Thought that was interesting.

Along the lines of ESH's, I remembered that my grandmother had a basement home built in the 1950s. Eventually she was able to afford to build a main level on top off it, I think Sussel homes built it. She was a school teacher so she was always frugal. The house still stands today. I don't have any pics now but you get the idea here:

Southwest Denver basement home historic district proposal: Kenny Be's Yard Arteology - Denver - News - The Latest Word

About 3/4's of the way down this link, some more info on a basement house:

Side Streets

Probably because they don't have (a lot of?) actuarial data they have to guess and then add a premium to cover the uncertainty.

I would think that in tornado prone areas there would be lower risk of destruction with an earth sheltered home though.

I can't see earth shelters being efficient in any but the hottest regions of the U.S.

The temperature just below the top surface of the soil is lower than comfortable room temperature in nearly all places, and the dirt represents a virtually unlimited heat sink.

So, building into the earth would require plenty of insulation to prevent heat from conducting away. This brings us back to the same problem of conventional houses, except they have more than dirt for a view.

As far as tornado protection goes, earth shelters would almost certainly hold up better. A more likely problem for most people would be water infiltration and mold. Radon might have to be actively managed, too.

So if one lived in an area that had an average temperature around 70 degrees and didn't have to worry about water infiltration, an earth shelter would probably make a lot of sense.