Here are the top 5 DIY earth sheltered homes found around the internet. Before we get started though; let’s take a look at several benefits of building an earth sheltered home.
- Low energy costs. We use less than a cord of wood a year to heat a 880 sq foot home.
- Low amount of ambient noise. We are in a small town in Maine on a major logging road; we hear nothing from the trucks rumbling by behind us.
- Low Maintenance costs. Three quarters of our home is buried under dirt, I will never have to paint that.
- Low building costs. We spent 59,000 dollars to build our house. I would challenge anyone to build a traditional home for the same cost with our energy saving benefits.
- Easy for the owner/builder to do. Someone on another forum asked about builders of earth sheltered homes in Oklahoma. I made the comment, anyone can build a earth sheltered home, it’s not that difficult. She responded back, I’m a disabled single mother in a electric wheel chair, how am I going to build anything? I felt like an ass for not clarifying. What I meant was, any builder can build one. The construction is not strange, it’s basically a daylight basement with a roof on it, it’s the landscaping that is different than normal.
6 Honorable Mention
This is not earth sheltered, but it is an earthbag home and has been documented well.
5Byll and Cheryl
Byll and Cheryl decided to build an ICF earth sheltered home in NH, other than that, I don’t know much about them, other than the awesome videos they posted of their build on youtube.
4Bishopnight
BishopKnight is a fellow Mainer that built his 30×40 earth sheltered home outside of oxford I believe. You can see his complete build here on Countryplans
3Speedfunk
Speedfunk and his wife are building their home in Upstate NY and are doing it totally on their own. I have great admiration for him. You can see his build at Countryplans
2Our home in Maine.
Our goal was to document the building of a earth sheltered home from start to finish with as much detail as we could. I think we did that. You can see it here.
1Lisa and Mike
Lisa and Mike documented their home build on the citydata forum but they have since moved to a blog. They were an inspiration for me, and for that they are number one.
If you have any specific questions about earth sheltered homes; feel free to ask!
Question: Did you build your home or did you have a contractor? My husband and I are in the research process and would love to know all of that jazz.
We did over 80 percent of it ourselves and contracted out the roof framing, plumbing rough in and a few odds and ends