Engineer s underground dome home blends into desert like living organism

Before moving up here, I just had a tract home down in Phoenix. I didn't think of what it's like to live out amongst nature like this. A lot of animals, what do they do, especially here in the desert? They go underground to survive. They couldn't survive on the surface. So we're just out in the county here. Phoenix is kind of creeping up around us here. So we moved here in 83. The first thing we had to do is put this in so we could actually cross onto our property. And then we had five acres. We parked a mobile home there. And we had a generator, which was quite challenging, running refrigerators and things like that. And we built a garage so we had some space because we had a house previously. So we moved our things into the garage. Then we sold out the front two and a half acres and kept the back half. So that gave us some money to start working with. I wanted to be really energy efficient. And I was originally thinking possibly just kind of a box with, you know, lots of insulation and that sort of thing. And then somehow, maybe a newspaper article or something, I stumbled upon these kit homes from Earth Systems. It was two architect brothers, I believe. And they were selling these kits for these underground homes, which is basically a steel shell structure along with all the rebar needed. And they did the architectural plans and everything like that. Your home really does fit the landscape. I mean, even from here, really, you don't see much house. Yeah. The funny thing is when people look at our house, maybe on Google Maps, and then they come out, they think, your house looks really, really tiny because they see the cupola and nothing else. It's just dirt from a flat above view. And then they walk into the house. It's like, well, this is not a tiny house. So this side, is this the north side? Is that why this is intentionally done buried? Yeah, exactly. So the plan was for energy efficiency is to have most of the windows facing due south. So the sun during the summer almost traces right like this. So it doesn't come into the south facing windows in the summer. But now in the wintertime, as you can see, it's much lower. So that sun just pours right into all the big windows in the front. So we open up the drapes, allow all that solar energy to come in. We usually don't even run the heater. Maybe if we get a lot of cloudy days, we might run the heat for maybe 10, 15 hours in an entire winter. So it's almost just no heat load at all. So is the earth holding in any heat from the sun and then distributing at night? Yeah, the really interesting thing, which I hadn't thought about, is there is a huge thermal mass and a thermal lag. So the sun bakes all of this in the summertime from the outside. And that heat works its way down through the dirt. Dry dirt is an incredible insulator. A lot of people don't realize it. So that sunshine, solar energy is baking this thing all summer. But the inside of the dome in the start of the summer, especially, is cool from the wintertime. And it stays cool. So then when the fall arrives and things start cooling off and people are turning on their heaters, we're actually opening up the windows because the house is too warm during the day. When we open these two windows right here, and we open up the bottom floor, so that just flushes that warm air out very nicely. So yeah, it works amazingly well. So this is just really well insulated because this is the one side that doesn't have earth. Right. So you had to keep this. This is all 2x6 framing with our 19 fiberglass batts. And then on the exterior, I used foil-backed isocyanurate foam, which is the highest insulation value for a one-inch foam. So that covers all this front exterior space. Because it's the only really exposed side. Right. But it's also the southern side, so you're kind of getting the right exposure. In the wintertime, it's great heating. Right. Except for those 16 hours when you turn on the heat. Yeah, yeah, it's... And then in the summer, you're probably not getting as much sun on the side Yeah, the sun basically comes almost directly overhead. In the summer. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so this is not so exposed then. Right, we want that winter sun, and the summer sun really isn't an issue. So yeah, that works out really well. Had you seen one of these before in the area? Or do many people do this? Oddly enough, by coincidence, right over there, our neighbors built one at the same time we built. But they are a complete dome structure. They chose not to go with the south-facing window. So it's not going to be as energy efficient. Yeah, a complete dome. Yeah, they don't get the solar gain in the wintertime that we get here. This is really maximizing now. Yeah, this really does. So this part here, you really see it goes down to ground. Yeah, so we've got one level, basically like a basement level. A lot of these homes are built in the mountains, but of course we have a flat property here. So they came in with this monster front end loader and just started scooping out dirt to create all the lower space. And then they took all that dirt and just made a monster pile here in the yard. It was probably 20-foot tall. And the kids loved playing on it. So it was a kit. Would it come in pieces? Yeah, they actually came up here. Once we ordered the kit, they delivered it. And it was these monster 20-foot steel beams and all the rebar we needed, which was an unbelievable amount of rebar, and this burlap-covered wire mesh, like fencing. And so the structure is basically put up the steel framework like a spider, kind of, then wrap this burlap mesh around it, and that holds back the shotcrete. And then we wire all the rebar crisscrossing up and down onto the, you know, holding onto the wire mesh and onto the frame. And so now we've got this big dome structure that is just like a big brown burlap bag, sort of. Then they come in with shotcrete and, you know, a big boom truck, and they spray the shotcrete like an upside-down swimming pool. So now we have a kind of a weatherproof structure. And then we climb up on top and waterproof that with God knows how many gallons of kind of a polyurethane waterproofing. And then, you know, the dirt gets piled on back on top. So that kind of gave us our starting point of the shell. So how long, was it a long process? I mean, how long did it take to... It was a very long process. I was working full-time along with overtime. So, you know, I would come home from work, grab a quick bite to eat, and run out here and get as much done. And then I would just go at it until maybe 10 or 11 and then climb into bed and do the same thing the next day. The weekends were just, you know, work, work, work on this. So you could do a lot of this work yourself. I did quite a bit. I did all the plumbing and a fair amount of the framing, although I broke my hand in the middle of it and I was kind of stuck for a while. Couldn't do much. I did all the electrical. I did pretty much all the finish work. You know, I did kind of the things that were one person relatively easy to do. I just had to gain knowledge, which was mostly no internet. So I'm just getting books from the library and ordering books and like, okay, you know, this is how a plumbing stack works and that sort of thing. So I just learned as I went. So you built the garage first, but didn't live in it. We moved in a mobile home first and so we stayed in the mobile home and then when we got to the point where the home was livable, that's when we moved in. That was a big day. Now I'm really curious to see all this space that's hidden because it's a full-size home, but you don't see it from down here. Yeah, yeah. It's kind of a surprise. We spent quite a bit of time thinking about the floor plans. We really wanted the natural light to come in, which worked out quite well. The light mainly comes in, if you're not here in the front, the light comes in from the cupola area and I put a skylight in there some time ago to kind of increase, you know, the light going into the back area. It makes a difference. Like you could see it coming all the way back here. Yeah, yeah. We try to keep things open, you know, like the window opening here and the short wall there and so forth to let that light, you know, kind of filter its way into different rooms and things. These stairs are great. Oh yeah, yeah. These stairs are kind of a long story. I originally had the stairs normal. So this step went straight across to the normal stairs. Very steep. Exactly. Okay. So the inspector came in. He said, walk up and down those steps. So I walked up and I walked back down and I was walking kind of like this because the stairs are very shallow. And he said, look at that. Look how you're walking. And it never occurred to me. He said, that's unsafe. I can't approve that. And I said, well, what can I do? And he said, ah, I really don't know because we were ready to final the house. We wanted to get the electricity turned on and everything. So I contacted his supervisor and I said, you know, is there any chance you can come out and give me options here so I can get the house finaled? So the supervisor came out and he walked up there and he said, well, how much space do you have up there? I said, oh, about a hundred square foot or so. And he goes, well, in that case, by code, it can be considered just a loft. You could put a ladder up there if you wanted to and it would be legal. I said, oh, thank you very much. Okay. So we finaled the house. He filed the house at that point and we were ready to move in. And then I hadn't finished any of this and I flipped open a popular science. And what did I find? But an article, space-saving staggered stairs. So space-saving staggered stairs, alternating half treads, let you climb in half the floor space with greater safety. So alternating treads are the important part. Yeah, yeah. What that amounts to, now you got this monstrous step to walk on. It's steep, but it still feels, you know, very comfortable when you walk up. You have to pay attention to which foot you put down first. Some people try this. It's like, oh no, that doesn't work. So you have to start on the right side and then after a while you get so used to it. Some people are kind of, oh, but anyhow, after a while, it's just so natural. You don't even think about it. After I saw that article, I came right home and started designing this and cut the steps in half and finished it in no time. Yeah, that just worked out incredibly well. Oh yeah. It's really nice. Funny, because you wouldn't think that them being farther apart, you think that make it harder, but it makes it easier. It does. Yeah, it just feels comfortable. This is nice up here. You did want to have something that popped up just to get light. It is, yeah. Several of these homes that we've looked at over the years, this was just window space, no flooring at all. And so we just let, you know, a lot of light pour down through the center. But yeah, we figured, well, you know, we've got enough open space here to let the light in. Why don't we go ahead and use that portion, you know, make it useful. So this space feels like almost outdoor, like a decking material. Yeah, yeah. I use redwood around. I was trying to figure out, you know, what happens if I'm absent-minded, if I overfill this or something of that sort. So what I did is I raised it up and put a bathtub type material down there. So if this overflowed or anything, there's a drain that goes all the way down and out. So you can climb out completely wet, you know, and stand here and dry change or whatever. And the water just drips down and exits out. And it's so wonderful to sit in here. And look up at night and see the stars and things. A lot of friends were curious about the house and how it was constructed. So they came out and helped out and things, especially when we put up the dome. One of my buddies nicknamed it the Thunderdome from the Mad Max movie because it was just this big concrete shell. So we started calling it the Thunderdome. And then I think 2000 came around. All the talk was, of course, you know, what's going to happen when 2000 arrives. And some of my buddies are like, Greg, we're coming out here, you know, to this house with all our guns and we're going to, you know, protect you and everything from the thing. I don't think I'm too worried about that. And when we hear something, of course, we run up here and look out. Oh, what's going on? That kind of thing. This is our lookout. Storms and rainbows and everything else. Oh, yeah, you might. I'll catch you. It's really comfortable, actually. Actually do it a couple of times. Yeah, it feels. So this top area is really just a dome, a half dome. Yeah, yeah, it's a kind of a half dome. What I compare it to is kind of like a upside down swimming pool. Because again, this is rebar and then shotcrete. And if you take a swimming pool and flip it, that's kind of what you have here. So from a construction standpoint, what we did was these steel beams that you see were all bolted together down on the concrete slab. And then we built a scaffold so that the big ring was on the ground 20 foot down and we attached come alongs to it. And then we just cranked those come alongs until we lifted it to the height you see here, which, you know, there's no floor here. So it was about 20 foot up. So that was the most fun we had, I think, on the house was all these friends were out here. This thing is dangling up the air. Everybody's yelling at each other. No, we should do it this way. No, put this here. No, do this, do that. Trying to get these, you know, big angling beams stood up. We had a lot of fun because I've got a lot of geeky engineering friends. And, you know, some of the guys were out here in new construction and the geeky engineering friends are, well, you know, if we do this and, well, you know, maybe if we have something here to prop that up. In the meantime, the construction guys are like, boom, boom, boom. Oh, oh, okay. They did it. All right. Well, that worked out great. Okay. We don't have to think about that kind of thing. Now you can see the big metal beams and here's the frame now with some of that fabric put on it. Climbing up and started to tie the rebar and things. That's how I got involved in rock climbing. This guy here liked to climb and he came out. He wanted to help. So he came out. He's like, Greg, you'd probably like to do rock climbing. You like climbing around on this thing. Sounds like fun. So he got me started in that. We were doing some of the framing on the interior before we got the shotcrete applied and things. What people find challenging on dome structures is the partition part. How you manage space in a circular space also. I think you have to be maybe a little more creative, a little more open-minded. So here in the kitchen, we just kind of came in and went, okay, let's see. Kitchen, the stove to a refrigerator has got to be a small triangle. Well, we'll put the sink in the middle and then the sink drain ideally would be against the wall. So it was easy to exit outside the dome because you really had to think about how things were going to exit because once the dome is built, trying to drill through it or whatever would be really, really difficult. One of the interesting things we were talking about using the space in an unusual curvature is that it allowed for extra space back behind here. So there's actually an area where I can take out the dishwasher and crawl back and forth behind there to service like I put my own custom fan in for the vent on the stove there. And I put a couple of five-gallon water jugs back behind there just in case something happened. So I had an emergency food storage and I told my wife, if something really, really crazy happened, we could literally pull this thing out, climb in behind there, push it back and nobody would know we were back there as long as we didn't run out of food or water. How do you access it? You take out two screws from the dishwasher, roll the dishwasher out and then I can just crawl in behind there. That's really hidden. So no one's gonna know unless where those two screws are. Yeah, yeah. So this space goes back. This was closed off and then my wife said, you know, that would be really nice for a drainage rack and things like that to put stuff back there. So what I did is I just cut all this out and pushed it back. She laughs. She says, that looks so childish. Like, oh, I'm not gonna mess it. I'm gonna leave it. So I put lights back there. So I just put in a little touch switches here on either side. So you just touch there and it turns on the light up here and the light there and lights underneath the cabinets and things like that. And then my wife is a foodie. She loves cooking. And to use this space, again, it goes back but it doesn't have much access. So I just built my own lazy Susans here to use all that space and that worked out pretty well. Yeah, it came out pretty nice. So this is just a conventional half bath here. Again, me being kind of a geek, I put a little light here to kind of feature this little vase thing. And then I built this a couple of years ago. The other fixture really didn't look that great. So I just built a little kind of Japanese inspired. Just pops on with a magnet. I probably, there we go. And then I ran a fiber optic bundle down to light up this area. It doesn't, it's not very bright right now. It's fun. You did a lot with lighting. Yeah. I was, one of the things I kind of specialized in was lighting for cockpit displays. I'm an engineer for aerospace. So back here, the den, so I built in some bookshelves and my computer space and things like that. Do you think your experience in aerospace since planes are, of course they're shaped. So you probably used to work with this shape. I took everything as just kind of a challenge and like, well, okay, you know, I've got this little space here. How can I make use of that? And then just, you know, sketch out little things. I had notebooks just full of how I might do different things to make things comfortable and functional. I just put a little opening there. It's actually a fair amount of storage. Of course, it's low height since we didn't really finish it off. So we left the original steel beams exposed there. And that's about the only place, I think in the house where you can actually see what they. So these are structural beams. They were structural until the shotcrete got put on. And then after the shotcrete was put on with all the rebar, they literally didn't do anything. One kind of nice thing back here is you can look up and actually see all the stained glass up on the top. Didn't really know if that was going to work out, but that came out pretty nice. So then it goes down. I see the. Right. Yeah. So these are conventional stairs. They're a little more easy to maneuver. Those you got approved. Get some lights on here. Now you have to have light. There's no light. Well, let me show you with lights off. You might be surprised. This room is very dark, but here right now, you're just looking at natural light coming in from both the skylight and the rest of the cupola windows. It's surprising amount of light. Yeah, this does surprise a lot of people because most people think about underground or earth sheltered homes. Oh, it's dark and it's damp and musty. And but no, they're thinking of basements back East Midwest and things is that old stone wall things dripping off the wall and bugs crawling around. But yeah, it doesn't have to be that way at all. You think the fact that a big part of the house is sheltered by the earth is affecting also your use of electricity? Oh, absolutely. Especially on the bottom floor. A lot of people don't understand that once you get about 10 foot down underneath the grade level, almost anywhere that the temperature is hovering around 50 to 60 degrees. So this floor is absorbing that extra temperature above 60 degrees and all these walls are doing the same thing because they're all exposed to the dirt underground. So yeah, all that helps a lot. And also just in terms of comfort and peace of mind, we get some really strong monsoon storms here. But when you're in this house, you just don't sweat it. It's not like, oh, am I worried about the roof flying off or tornado or anything like that? Like nothing. This is like a bomb shelter in here. It's almost like nature, plants and animals use similar techniques. Yeah, a lot of animals go underground. Every season we get baby bunnies down here. The parents, for whatever reason, find this apparently a safe place to have their babies. So we'll look out the window and we'll see, oh, baby bunny. And then we look, another one, another one, another one. So now we've got this whole bunch of bunnies running around out here. So that's why you see the water bowl there to help out the bunnies. Because when they're really tiny, they can't escape. They're left with whatever food and water they can get down here. So we put water down for them. And then as they start growing, depending on the season, sometimes there isn't all this brittle bush and greenery available. So what we do, we took blocks and old blankets and things, and we would make ramps for them to go up the steps. So every day from breakfast and evening, we would watch their progress. Oh, there's one up on the second level. Oh, one made it to the third level and the three others are on the second level. And then half an hour later, they're all back down here again. It's like, oh no, they're back at the bottom. They can't escape. But eventually they work their way out of the bottom area here. And the same thing happens with baby quail. Mama, for some reason, will lead them all down into this area. Of course, they can hop down here very easily, but then they can't escape. So we bought a bag of bird seed and my wife would go out and throw the bird seed out for the baby quail in the water, and we'd keep them going until we saw an exit. Okay, we did our job. That happens every year. How amazing that the nature and the wildlife just figure it out, how this fits into some natural burrow or something, right, in nature. Yeah. You know, before moving up here, I didn't think of what it's like to live out amongst nature like this, where you have the space to actually see the animals, you know, in kind of their natural habitat. Wow. Going into the courtyard. One time, we looked out the window and I got all excited. I yell at my wife, come here, come here, really quick, really quick. We had a bobcat lounging down in the courtyard and it stayed there about three hours or so. So yeah, it was just, those kinds of things are just priceless. You know, you just can't experience that. Slowly leaving. Oh, another, oh. Oh. Boy, that's been a long time since we've seen two. It's almost, it's blending with the desert, basically. Yeah. Yeah, it is the desert. Yeah, it's just mostly natural. Oh, stop to eat. So what's the temperature in the warm months? And why did you think it was a good idea to have the living space underground? To me, I guess it just kind of made sense that the entry level would be where you spend most of your time. Like kitchen and living room and den and so forth. And the bedrooms are usually, you know, just a couple trips, maybe change clothes or sleep for the night. So it kind of made sense. But it also worked out well in terms of tend to stay cooler in the summer than the upper floors. Of course, the heat just rises up. So that was kind of an added bonus of having the bedrooms down in the lower levels and things. Being almost exactly oriented to south in the winter, we try to take advantage of it. In fact, actually, it's pretty warm in here now, probably close to 80 or something. If it was summertime, it doesn't come in. I actually got out a compass and measured. So I made sure I had the house almost perfectly aligned with the south wall. We go into friends' homes in the summertime and their homes are like 85 degrees. And, you know, everybody's sweating, but we keep our house very, very comfortable in the summertime for next to nothing. The power goes out here occasionally. And most people, the temperature of their houses, when it's 110 outside in the summer, when a monsoon storm kicks out the power, they're dying inside. They're heading to the malls or something like that. And we're in here going, a couple of days. Oh, it's, you know, 84 in here. But yeah, we just keep going and no issue. We don't worry about it. You see that this is like three stories that come straight down. Yeah. I joked with my wife. I said, wouldn't it be cool if I started a climbing wall right here with the pieces and then ran it up the wall? So that would be just a great climbing wall. If you look up on the ceiling there, there's a big hook. Originally, we were going to put the spa back here in the corner. So we had the spa. So then we decided, well, we're going to put it upstairs. Well, how do we get it up there from down here? So again, I started, well, what can I do? So the framing wasn't finished yet. So I put in extra roof joists where you see that hook. And then I put the hook with bolts and things so it would carry, who knows, probably a thousand pounds. And I put a couple of come alongs on that hook. And we roped up the spa right here. And then we just cranked it up until we got up to that height and then laid some two by twelves across, put them underneath the spa, and then just pushed it over until we had it into place. And I was assembling the scaffolding by myself. It was almost kind of scary standing on the scaffolding, looking down at this concrete floor, young and stupid. I was in my 20s at the time. Now I'm old and stupid. Oh, wow. So you were quite young when you built this. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, like I said, we've been here since 83. So this is our playroom here. You know, we have exercise equipment. I used to do martial arts. So we practiced martial arts in here. My wife did yoga in front of the big mirror. The only one with no windows probably, yeah? In that bathroom. So you were strategic, got the windows in everywhere. Yeah. So here's the master bedroom. Again, kind of the same, you know, gently curved walls down here versus upstairs. And then this space here, this was the entry up above us here. So for the master bath here, I just did a walk-in shower. You've never had problems with plumbing or electric that's underground? No, everything's pretty typical. No different than actually most homes. If you took this and raised it up one level, it would pretty much be the same as any conventional home. You know, all the drain lines had to be put underneath the slab. So no, there's nothing different in terms of anything that's underneath the slab that wouldn't be in pretty much any other home. Yeah, so laundry is here in the middle, which is pretty convenient for being close to the bedrooms. So all that is pipes. Have you pre-planned? These go between the floors, so we didn't have to plan that. But we did have to plan the drains very carefully. And then of course, all the drain pipes are underneath the slab. That was the most challenging thing as far as work on the house, because down about four foot, it was all caliche, kind of a desert thing, where it changes from normal soil, where you can just take a shovel and, you know, push in and dig into something where you take a heavy mattock or pickaxe. And I mean, I'm not a strong guy. It's like, boom, like that. And it goes in about two inches and it sticks, because caliche is a calcified mixture with the soil, like halfway between concrete and soil. That was unbelievably difficult to dig through. And dumb me, I chose to literally do it with that mattock. So I had to cut lines like this deep from all the drains everywhere to exit out the front. So I'm digging these big, long trenches. And yeah, that was... So again, all the supply lines go between the floors, which is very convenient. But the drain lines all had to go into the ground, basically, and then out the front because the septic system entry has to be within a certain distance of the ground level because you have to have a leach field and everything. We needed an ejector pump. So all the water from the bottom floor exits out right on the other side of this wall. And it goes into a polyethylene tank. There's a float in there that turns on a motor and it spins and brings everything up to the grade level. And then it shoots across and it goes into the septic system. So this is a continuation of the dome? Yeah, yeah. These are the same beams hidden behind here that you saw on the upper level. And then we're standing, you know, what was just a concrete slab. And those beams, part of the kit was some metal slotted pieces that get embedded into the concrete at very specific locations. And so those things go in and the concrete hardens and then you stand up the beam in those slots and then it gets bolted into the top portion. So the architects did a really good job of thinking through, you know, how to build this structure without a lot of strange things like welding or forming or anything on site. It literally is a kit that you just bring in. Almost no special tools required to do the work. This was kind of their original brochure. Maybe a testament to their planning was that that was 43 years ago and they are still selling the kits. And this is literally the construction manual, the different types of domes. And here's some of the beams that are showing little drawings and pouring the floor and anchor plates. So these get embedded in the concrete during the pour and that's what holds up these big metal beams. Yeah, they kind of designed this for almost someone who knows nothing, which is kind of amazing. This is showing the scaffolding being anchored to lift up the big ring and their spacing and how they tie into the ground and so forth. So yeah, they left nothing to the imagination. Yeah. The color even is matching. You kept the color close to the sand color, not the same, but... Yeah. What I originally did was I took a scoop of dirt and I picked it up and I don't know if I glued it down or something, but I used that as a sample and I would match color cards until I got what I thought was an exact match, as close as I could to the actual original soil color. That faded out over the years. Then I brought home a bunch of samples, show them to my wife. She chose one that she liked and yeah, I painted everything. You're selling the house, not because you don't like it. Right. We're deciding to move to Japan. But interestingly enough is I fell in love with a reinforced concrete home in Japan. My wife, we talk every day and she says, I'm doing everything I can. I'm wearing all these layers. But our electric bill was $500. And the electric bill here in the winter time is like, you know, $70 or something. So I said, well, honey, that's okay. I'm going to bring a lot of solar panels over because I bought a bunch of panels here from a surplus place. I said, we'll get it all figured out. Don't worry. But you do like it. If I could transport this to Japan, yeah, that would be wonderful.