This is what I mentioned in post #11.
For some examples of “Earth Houses” and their pros and cons,
Check out
Certainly not. Oh, underground cities are all fun and engineering challenges in the beginning, I’ll grant you that. But then you dig one inch too deep, awaken a Balrog that had been hibernating for millenia, and then your little shindig’s over, mister.
Terminex has a policy for that.
“As Iluvatar is my witness, I thought Balrogs could Fly!”
Well done sir, well done !
My “laughing” cheeks are aching just thinking about this.
I Googled this to find out wtf you were talking about and the first link is this thread and the second link is another SDMB thread. /slight hijack
The other thread is almost certainly me. I quote myself sometimes. And I used that as a sig line for a while.
“I don’t have a proper question about tree huts yet, but I’d love to talk about them…”
Finally! Tree huts are where we all need to be, peeps. Fresh air and sunshine, not to mention the exercise we’d get building and re-building them after every storm. Why live underground and miss out on the skin cancer and biting insects?
(mmm…biting insects…)
S.A.R.A.H.? Is that you??
That’s because it’s a mash-up of two different memes. On the one hand, you have “As God is my witness, I thought _____ could fly”, where the blank is some creature that has just fallen to its death as a result of said assumption. On the other hand, there’s a long-standing debate amongst Tolkien fans as to whether Balrogs have wings and/or whether they can fly.
For all your underground dwelling needs.
Cave dwellings aren’t uncommon in parts of Andalucia in Spain. Although I believe they are man-made, not natural.
These were not underground houses. It was a theme park gone horribly wrong at $280 sq/ft. Warning, the urge to gouge your eyes out after watching the video should be tempered with the knowledge that the housing bubble killed it. May it rot in architectural hell with the hopes that “This Old House 2050” doesn’t attempt to fix any of it. It’s like Frank Lloyd Wright paid the 7 dwarfs to rape Snow White and these were the bastard children.
My eyes…
Perfect if this is your hobby. Hopefully it doesn’t trigger a war.
Not underground, but definitely Hobbit-ish.
I would argue that that is significantly more hobbitish than full-on underground. Really more of a living roof situation. I wonder to what extent you get the same problems with that kind of setup.
If you go to the “Similar Building” section of that website, there are a whole bunch of other houses that are very cool (including a tree house). The guy who built the one linked is planning to do a whole village of them and will teach you how to build them if you’re willing to help with the construction. You’d have to go to Wales, though.
A very interesting set-up. I’m going to have to go through it thoroughly to see how sound it is. How do you certify a branching tree as a load bearing post? Backing into a hill is always problematic but I’ve always wondered about a true double wall design that would guarantee separation from water and hydrostatic pressure against the wall. I find it hard to believe it was done with such a small budget.
First trip through the site shows the floor is sitting on straw which is sitting on wood pallets. Termites would consume the floor and support beams. I find the idea of plaster over straw an interesting idea as it would be real easy to build and maintain and might be a great way of throwing together emergency housing in the event of a massive disaster using local material.