The Complete Book of Underground Houses: How to Build a Low Cost Home

by Rob Roy

"According to Roy, underground or earth-sheltered' houses are unexpectedly livable. Judging by his book's attractive pictures, that's easy to believe. The house he bases his point-by-point guide on is indeed a showplace. Its homey touches are just that, though, and Roy's main concern is creating such a house, from drawing up the plans to surveying the site to the actual building. Roy's instruction is insightful and comprehensive....Throughout, he...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0806907282
• ISBN13: 9780806907284
• Release Date: December 1994
• Publisher: Sterling
• Length: 144 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 7.0" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

Great Book

The book gives great details and ideas on building an earth sheltered home from site prep to actual construction. Some of the information is a little out of date but none the less this is a great book and i would recomend it to anyone intrested in earth sheltered or earth bermed homes.

Great ideas, beautiful pictures, simple advice

If you like underground houses, then you should appreciate the images and plans here. However, the 'how-to' part is very general so unless you know your house building, this book will not help you much in the practical issues of home creation. It will give you ideas and suggestions that you can then use to find a good contractor and keep your eyes on the company you hire. It is very difficult to find books about underground or even earth beamed houses now, which is sad because they can be very energy effecient and lovely. This is a good start and Rob Roy is well-known for his work and his workshops on home building.

Rob did it again!

Once again Rob Roy has succeded in producing a quality how to book! This book gives clear concise intructions for every phase of building an underground house. This book covers everything from ground breaking (even a few tips on ground aquiring) to earth sheltering! Foundations, walls, roof and support structure, hvac, waterproofing, insulation, everything! It is accurate, well written, anecdotal and user friendly! I have every confidence that anyone interested in the subject of underground housing will benefit greatly from the ownership of this book. Buy the book and start digging!

The case studies are worth the price

I want to build an underground house. The book is more about mixed underground/earthwood (using stump-like cuts of logs and mortar) construction than strictly underground housing. The homes would not work as bomb shelters; but I don't think that was the intent. Rather, these are low cost (possibly mortgage free), Earth-friendly homes. The author has a website with more information. As a Southerner I was pleased that he included two case studies from the Deep South. One thing I decided after reading his book is that fire ants make a heavier ceiling material desirable because these infernal little beasts can actually chew through materials used in some Northern underground houses.

Not as "underground" as I'd hoped

Based on the title and editorial reviews, I was expecting details on building a house which was entirely underground except maybe some skylights and an entrance from above. Rather the book focuses almost exclusively on earth-sheltered houses. That is, buildings surrounded by dirt on two or three sides.It does provide useful information (and good pictures) for earth sheltered housing as well as a walk through of step-by-step construction of such a house.