I am looking at getting into a new house with in a year and my brother is closing on an interesting house right now which has me thinking. Its an underground home, very efficient, less $$ to build then a conventional home and something different. The house he is purchasing stays 54° year round with no heat or air conditioning, you, of course may want a little extra heat in winter around here so it has a wood stove and a back up of electric heat - which the owner claims has never been used. I have been doing a little research and it seems the "smart" way to build a new house, in particular in the climate I live in up here.

To clarify, its not "underground" like a mole's hole, but rather built into the side of a hill and only has one front wall with window's the rest of the house is underground. There is very little wood used other then trim work inside, so yes concrete is expensive, but it still works out to be cheaper then a normal stick built home of the same size and needs very little maintnance once built. Some rooms don't have window's but with lighting being as great as it is today I don't think that's a problem to me.

Does anyone have experience with this type of house? or any thoughts in general?

 

Sounds like a Hobbit hole..

A friend of the family lives in a former missile silo, with the right touches you can make the place very efficient and stylish.

 

I've done a little more research and the only down fall seems to be that most banks will not finance this type of structure as a regular house and it will cost more in financing. I've also discovered that Bill Gates lives in one, there known as Earth Homes, he has a 66,000 sq. ft. home as his primary residence on Washington Lake.

 

I don't think Bill Gate's compound really counts as an underground house... http://www.flickr.com/photos/amit-ag...eshousephotos/


But the underground idea sounds cool. I've always had in the back of my head that if I got some $$ I'd buy a cave and furnish it.

Ken, where is the silo this friend of yours owns? I've heard about a few in Arizona that were sold to private owners...pretty cool idea.



and why the difference in financing an underground home?

 

It seems there are cult like followers of underground homes, and as they would want you to believe perhaps, Gates home started as an underground home that was built out to what you see now do to changes and additions. If there's any truth to this or not I don't know, but it could make sense.

I don't fully understand why the difference in financing, I have a good friend who is a senior mortgage broker at Wells Fargo and thinks it will be "fun", which to me sounds like a lot of creative work to make it happen. The little bit I have learned so far about this, it seems the problem is finding a value for this type of dwelling, finding a real world market value. Obviously this type of house is not the home for everyone, a bank would not want to have a defunct mortgage of $300k to find out they can't sell it for $200k - banks are very sketchy about loans for odd items. I think the solution is to put more down, some where in the neighbor hood of 40% and I think it would be smooth sailing.

Here's more of what I am looking at doing

here's what the main hallway would look like

 

the thing i have seen about them is the values dont tend to go up like typical homes due to the low demand.