The Underground House
The Project Team
The Design
The Build
How the House Looks Now
Background Information
Management Contracting
Useful Links
Products & Suppliers
The quarry, before work started
Looking east from the site
Looking south
Harebells on the site, in August 2002
Cumbria’s First Earth-Sheltered House
See
The Build for the pictures from the site...
Last update: 26 September 2003
The Project
We live in an earth-sheltered house that we have built in an old, disused quarry site in the east of Cumbria. The project to build the house started in April 2002 and we moved in just over six months later in the first part of October. The site also includes a farm animal veterinary workspace.
The house has been built into the hole left by the removal of stone from the quarry, making it invisible from behind or the sides. All that can be seen from the front are the double height conservatory and a small array of photo-voltaic tiles above the front door. We are surrounded by 350 million year old sandstone, and is covered with soil. It is a wonderful place in which to live; it is warm and quiet, light floods in from the front, the ventilation system means that the air is always clean and fresh, and we look out onto a beautiful landscape.
The veterinary workspace is adjacent to the road but is cut back into the hillside, and it too is covered with earth, although the wall to the road is conventional in being faced with stone.
Both buildings now have grass starting to grow on their roofs and are beginning to merge back into the softness of this ancient landscape - follow the link to see how the house looks now.
The whole project was filmed for Channel 4's Grand Designs programme and shown on 24 September 2003.
Why Earth-Sheltered
Being underground, sheltered by the earth, means that the house has a far more stable environment than above-ground buildings. Below ground, the temperature remains pretty constant, there are no wind chill factors to worry about, no lashing rain, no baking sun. It also means that the house is very quiet and peaceful.
Combining the shelter of the earth with high levels of insulation means that the house needs no heating whatsoever – all of the heat it needs is available from the sun alone. We have now installed data logging equipment from Campbell Scientific, which constantly monitors and records temperature from a number of places in the house.
Being underground also means that the house disappears into the landscape, making it unobtrusive visually as well as ecologically.
More information about earth sheltering can be found by following the Background Information link.
On Being Green
We cannot continue to use non-renewable sources of energy as if we alone matter, but our children do not. Nor can we keep using the earth’s precious and scarce resources at rates that are far higher than would be the case if they were equally distributed – as if we in the ‘developed’ world had rights that override those of other people in the world.
Our use of oil as an energy source leads us into actions we would not, and should not, contemplate if we were not so addicted to the profligate use of energy.
Cutting our wasteful use of energy should be a priority for us all. Insulating buildings properly and conserving the energy that we do use are principles we should all seek to embrace. Our house aims to put these principles into practice.
The Process of Building
The project is unusual in using a management contract (JCT- MC 98) rather than the normal tendering process adopted for most projects.
Most domestic building contracts are let in a single package to a builder, who will not have been involved in the design at all, who will probably have known little or nothing about the project until a short time before receiving the invitation to tender and who has to prepare a price on a speculative basis. Once appointed, the builder is rarely a true partner, and there can often be pressures either to delay work because of other commitments or to use the almost inevitable need for changes during the build to charge more.
In contrast, a management contractor is appointed early on during the design and planning phase, is rewarded on an agreed basis, works with the architect, a quantity surveyor and the client to agree a carefully worked out project budget, and manages the whole build project. The management contractor has a strong incentive to get the job finished on time, he/she works with the QS to let contracts for the building work to the various trades and passes onto the client any savings made and discounts from suppliers. It is an arrangement that represents productive partnership in action.
A more detailed explanation of management contracting can be found by following the link.
For More Information
Contact us via mail@theundergroundhouse.org.uk