Home Bar Designs

Earth-Sheltered Home Design

Earth-sheltered home design is a strategy that is employed to home design to achieve many benefits. Energy-efficiency, natural lighting and minimal impact to the landscape are but a few of the benefits of using Earth-sheltered home design. While the many benefits for sustainable building exist, to me, an Earth-sheltered home design is best described by its stylish modernism architecture combined with earth-friendly building.

Earth-sheltered home design is characterized by being eco-friendly and energy-efficient. To the casual observer, it would appear that an Earth-sheltered home design is energy-efficient due to it being well insulated underground. In fact, that is not true of soil at all. When earth is used as an insulation factor it compares in R-value to that of 1/5th of a concrete block wall. A concrete block that is 8" thick compared to basic wall insulation is 13 times greater. Dirt has very little insulation properties.

The actual benefit from using Earth-sheltered home design is that below the frost line of the soil, a constant temperature of the earths crust can be utilized. Hovering around 50 Fahrenheit throughout the year, this energy flow can be used for heating and cooling. Combine that with the effects of using Southern-Facing Window Solar Designs and your home can save tens of thousands of dollars throughout its lifetime.

Because Earth-sheltered home design is so unique, it can be had to compete with conventional building. However, taking on your own design and building of the project can help lessen the cost to actually making it comparable to conventional prices. Priced around $75-100 a square foot this can even be cheaper than other higher end green homes.

Earth-sheltered home design also requires more structural support than conventional homes due to the heavy earth and sod that constantly bears down on the dwelling.

There are many types of Earth-sheltered home designs. The most commonly mentioned is the completely underground home. Typically built around a central courtyard for light and ventilation with a living roof, this home can be the most expensive to build and maintain and are only suitable for well drained soils.

Partial underground homes or bermed homes are more likely to be used for in Earth-sheltered home design. This design is most often dug into the sides of hills or dirt is piled around the home. High walls with a large bank of southern-facing windows are the typical energy-efficient design seen in Earth-sheltered home design.