'Earth Sheltered' houses

[Stones]

Several members have by virtue of their site, ended up building quite substantial structural retaining walls, and in some cases have had to tank those walls as part of their build.  It is this additional cost that has always put me off building an earth sheltered house, but I am aware of a couple of projects locally where houses are getting built into a hillside, utilising one of the many former stone cuttings / quarries that are dotted around the island.  

 

Having generally only served local communities, the majority of these cuttings are small, and nicely proportioned in terms of putting in a medium sized house. I remember watching a Grand designs many years ago where they used such a cutting / quarry, but again they resorted to expensive retaining walls and tanking systems.

 

In an idle moment, I began thinking about such cuttings and why people go to all the expense of building a new retaining wall, (which they then tank and backfill) when there is already a perfectly sound retaining structure already in place (the quarried rock / stone face).  I began musing on the possibility of building an new structure close to the quarried face, leaving a sizeable cavity (lets say 600mm).  A turf roof would cover the build and extend out to cover the cavity, continuing out until it met the surrounding ground level.  The cavity would be ventilated, either mechanically or passively by chimney effect with a drain at the base, to deal with any water / moisture.  To all intents you would have something that had the appearance of being buried in the ground, without much of the cost normally associated with that type of development.

 

Open to comment...

 

 

[ProDave]

Not all earth sheltered houses have big concrete retaining walls. At least one GD house had a "retaining wall" built of stacks of old tyres rammed full of earth. Vary labour intensive, but virtually zero cost in materials.

 

When we came to the Highlands in 2003, we looked at 3 building plots. One was on a very steep hillside and would have needed some probably expensive under building, and any garden you had would be small and terraced.  The second one had only a small area of ground at the "higher level" before it dropped steeply down to a lower level. Planning dictated the house be built on the upper level as the lower level (beside a river) was prone to flooding. We were put off that one as it appeared someone had recently tipped a load of soil to try and increase the area of the upper level, which left us thinking again of lots of expensive under building. It was therefore a no brainer when we looked at the third plot which was the largest, the flattest, and the cheapest.  One has to wonder how the agents arrived at their pricing for the other more difficult plots.
 

[Stones]

I remember the tyre house (as you say, a lot of very hard work involved).

 

2003, IIRC is when plot prices in particular shot up dramatically.  Certainly in Perthshire their was huge competition for plots, which meant vendors could name their price and get away with it.  House prices seemed to be forging ahead too, which meant would be developers could buy an overpriced site, spend a fortune getting around the difficulties and still make money simply because the market had gone up.

[K78]

My house will be built close to a retaining wall. It's 4m X 12m. 

 

My my bco has no interest in the wall as long as it's not connected to my house foundation. He didn't want to see a design or anything. 

 

I looked at at all the options and prestressed concrete panels are by far the cheapest and quickest option. 

 

Ground anchors and soil nailing are very expensive.