Here is a collection of some of my favorite underground houses. Underground houses are an environmentally concious way to build a beautiful home that compliments nature. You can have a beautiful garden built on top of your underground house or anything else you desire. The temperature stays quite stable beneath the earths surface so your heating and cooling bills are nothing or close to it. An underground house will quickly pay for itself in heating and cooling costs! My favorite designs are underground monolithic domes. This is essentially a steel reinforced concrete bubble built underground. I will post more about monolithic domes later.
One of the projects that I’ve had my eye on is the sustainable trailer house. This house is built onto a 16ft. flatbed trailer designed to be hauled around by any 1500 size pickup. Now you might think that it would be better to buy a manufactured house but in all reality our design will be more wind and weather resistant than most manufactured campers on the market today. Sure it won’t look like a camper but our design is meant to be a portable house not a recreational camper.
A very similar idea has been developed by the creator of tumbleweed homes but I want to extend the idea a bit further. Not just a sustainable living home but also a solar powered trailer house. I am a webdeveloper by hobby and I need at least minimal electrical resources in order to power my computer, and I am also a night owl so at times a light bulb would be nice. But proper use of fluorescent lighting can lower your power consumption dramatically.
This idea can also be converted to a standard manufactured home (trailer house) by applying a few additions to the current structure. The idea is to create an insulating layer of shade between the trailer house and the suns rays beating down on it’s roof. It’s really quite simple you build a pole frame garage just a little bigger than your trailer home. You can get as creative with this as you like. I suggest building out further on all sides and putting shelves between all of the poles not containing doorways. This allows the breeze to get through but stops the hot summer sun but allows the valuable winter sunshine inside for you to enjoy.
Are you looking for a way to increase the efficiency of your homes housing insulation but don’t want to go through the hassle of removing your walls to re-insulate the way you would like?
Here are three reasons you might want to consider insulating your home.
- Homes built before 1975 were not required to have insulation
- Heating costs will fluctuate and ride with fuel costs
- Insulation helps keep you cool in the summer and warm in the winter
USA Insulation increases the efficiency of your home by increasing insulation in critical areas of your home so that your home can be energy efficient and comfortable for you and your family. By using insulation for houses that has a high R-value, USA reduces the transfer of heat and cold between the extremes of outdoor temperatures and your controlled indoor environment. Allowing you to adjust the heating and cooling of your personal space as you see fit with more efficiency.
In reference to housing insulation the R in R-value stands for resistance. This is in direct referral to resistance to heat transfer through the insulation for houses. The higher the R value the more efficient the housing insulation is. USA insulation uses top quality housing insulation to insulate your family from the elements outdoors and keeps them safe and warm inside your home. R-value is derived from a controlled laboratory test of insulation’s resistance to conductive heat flow. USA Premium Foam has an R-value of 5.1/inch.
Their attic housing insulation is made of 25% recycled materials, and is not just a smart choice for your home but is a smart choice for the environent. USA Insulation can insulate many different kinds of areas in your home. Including existing walls by slowly injecting foam housing insulation into the walls. When insulating attics USA Insulation uses Formaldehyde-Free Fiberglass or Cotton insulation for the drop in attic insulation for houses it is non-corrosive and non-combustible as well. There are many different types of insulation for houses and USA Insulation provides many choices to insulate all types of housing structures.
One of the more interesting methods of insulating the houses in my opinion was injecting hollow masonry with foam housing insulation by drilling a hole in the mortar and slowly injecting the housing insulation into the walls. The spray quickly hardens after being injected and is completely cured after several days. And you can trim the foam easily in case you ever need to install an extra outlet or other fixture into your wall.
They have some really great methods that are all outlined in detail on their website, be sure to check out USA Insulation.
A very well built cob house.
