Earth-sheltered Homes

By Rob Roy
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Earthwood, the author's home. An earth roof is hands-down the most beautiful roof you can build.
Earthwood, the author's home. An earth roof is hands-down the most beautiful roof you can build.
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Author Rob Roy (right) and an assistant snap a chalk line to guide trim cuts as they install roof decking over radial rafters.
Author Rob Roy (right) and an assistant snap a chalk line to guide trim cuts as they install roof decking over radial rafters.
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A bituminous waterproof membrane goes over the decking.
A bituminous waterproof membrane goes over the decking.
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An earth-sheltered home requires less energy to heat than a conventional home, and no energy to cool.
An earth-sheltered home requires less energy to heat than a conventional home, and no energy to cool.
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Jaki Roy weeds the roof before the wildflowers come into bloom.
Jaki Roy weeds the roof before the wildflowers come into bloom.
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Jim Milstein built
Jim Milstein built "Asterisk" near Pagosa Springs, Colorado. It's an earth-sheltered home composed of three intersecting barrel vaults.

Back in the ’70s, earth-sheltered homes enjoyed great popularity, thanks in part to the energy crisis resulting from the 1973 oil embargo. Adventurous builders and researchers explored various forms of earth-sheltered building, from underground excavated spaces to surface-level buildings with earth piled in berms against their walls. People searching for alternatives to conventional building showed that sheltering a building with earth could reduce energy costs for both heating and cooling by half or more — at little or no increased expense.

Once again, America’s overconsumption of energy has made energy efficiency an important consideration in all facets of our lives, including home design. In addition, there is a new awareness among “green” and “natural” builders that we are “paving and roofing this country to death,” in the words of architect and underground-building guru Malcolm “Mac” Wells.

An earth-bermed house can reap about 95 percent of the energy advantages of a fully underground home, and adding an earth roof, or living roof, further promotes planetary health by “greening” the house’s footprint. Most buildings have a negative impact on the planet. Combining earth-sheltered walls with a living roof has the potential for the least negative impact.

Mac Wells also advocates the reclamation of “marginal” land; he says we should not build on the best, most beautiful property available, but instead take land that has been diminished by human activity and return it to greenscape. At Earthwood, our home in West Chazy, N.Y., my wife, Jaki, and I built our earth-sheltered, earth-roofed home in an abandoned gravel pit, converting almost two acres of near-lifeless moonscape to a living, green, oxygenating earthscape.

How Earth-sheltering Works

  • Published on Oct 1, 2006
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