SEE PASSIVELY HEATED UNDERGROUND HOUSES CAN BE BEAUTIFUL TOO!

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What we need, then—to really get this very important movement off the ground—is for a whole batch of "seniors" to jump on the subterranean dwelling bandwagon. That is: Joe Suburb is going to keep right on turning his nose up at underground houses and all the fantastic advantages they offer . . . until he starts seeing real contractors building prestigious and very expensive below-grade homes in some of the ritzier neighborhoods out by the country club golf course. And then ole Joe is going to start yammering for his very own underground house so loud and so quick that this "revolution in residences" is going to sweep the country overnight.

And that's why we were so happy when we first heard about a new dwelling now being shown off near Columbus, Ohio. Sure, it's underground . . . it's largely passively solar-heated . . . it's quiet and vibration-free and very private inside . . . its interior is also unbelievably bright, and light, and airy . . . its pipes will never freeze . . . its exterior will never need maintenance . . . it will never be blown away by a tornado . . . etc., etc., etc. But far more important than that: This particular underground house is contractor-built, it's plush, it's expensive, it looks great . . . and it's located on the northwest corner of Columbus in the "ultra ultra" suburb of Westerville.

The designers and contractors responsible for the lovely home you see here are extremely serious about passively solar-heated underground housing. So serious, in fact, that they've formed an architectural/construction firm—Solar-Earth Energy, Inc.—expressly for the purpose of designing and building such dwellings. It's also interesting to note that the partners in the company "really get into their work" too: One of those partners (Buck Vaile) and his family have been living in the very house shown on these pages since last November.

Buck reports that his family used no fossil fuels at all, only a few hours of electricity, and a mere 1-1/4 cords of wood (burned in a Jøtul stove) to heat their 2,038-square-foot residence during the past unusually cold winter. Which is exceptional . . . especially when you realize just how many bitterly cold, completely overcast days that Columbus, Ohio suffered through earlier this year.

MOTHER has already covered the basics of good subterranean, passively solar-heated design (build in plenty of drainage around your structure, waterproof the dwelling's exterior wall, put insulation on the outside of the house's mass to turn the whole residence into one gigantic "thermal flywheel" that will coast right through all the high and low temperatures of a year's weather, "point" the building's largest expanses of glass—duo-paned and fitted with insulated shutters or drapes—south for winter solar energy collection, place an overhang over those windows to shade them from the high summer sun, etc.) so often that we won't repeat them again here. (See one of the sidebars with this article if you need a crash course in this subject, which can save your family tens—even hundreds!—of thousands of dollars during the next few decades.)

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