Underground houses are a fun option if you're interested in building your own home from scratch and one of your primary goals is to save money on heating and cooling costs. In the summer, underground homes stay cool without a lot of air conditioning pumping through the vents, and in the winter, they stay warmer than the outside air with less money spent on heating.
How does this work? Anybody who knows anything about dirt and the earth can tell you the ground isn't a very good insulator. It is, however, a great capacitor. As an electrical capacitor stores an electric charge, the ground is a capacitor that stores heat. When the air is well below freezing in winter, the ground will remain warmer. For example a constant 40F degree temperature is normal in the northeast part of the country. So every underground wall pressed up against your home is 40 degrees, which in turn keeps your home close to that temperature, so that means you only need to heat the house 30 degrees to get it up to a comfortable room temperature (whereas you might have to heat the house 70 degrees if you live somewhere where the temperature drops to 0).
And in the summer, the earth acts as a good conductor. The 40F degree earth will suck some of the hot air out of your house and keep it cool.
For a more thorough explanation on how this works, check out The Complete Book Of Underground Houses: How To Build A Low Cost Home
I actually had the chance to tour an underground home here in Eastern Washington. It was 100 degrees out at the time, but nice and cool inside without the air conditioning or anything turned on. I thought it would be really dark inside because this home only had two walls exposed to the world, but it was quite comfortable. I wonder how hard it is to find an architect who can design this kind of home.
Posted by: Freddy | December 08, 2006 at 10:11 AM
We are building an underground garage at our eco-friendly house. This allows us to hide it from the view of our neighbors and gives us a backyard (we are on a steep hill).
Your blog is great! We are blogging about our eco-friendly home project. It will be a small home in the City of Calgary. The project is an environmentally friendly, modern small house that blends into the cultural heritage of urban Calgary. Our site includes research from home building sites, home renovation sites, and Calgary companies involved in our home building project
http://www.ramsayhome.com
Posted by: Ryan and Megan | February 06, 2007 at 03:07 PM
? could this be the worlds answer to heating fuel prices ?
Posted by: ROLAND | April 26, 2008 at 08:12 AM