Was told not to build underground. Ravaging tornado proved him right

Can we see it? Can you see it? That's beautiful. Then your destination will be on the right. Hi! I wasn't even sure where the house was. I kind of prefer it that way. Yeah, right? Nice to meet you. Hi. Believe it or not, there's not a lot of concrete underground houses, you know, especially not in Springfield, Missouri. So it's just a new experience for us. Yeah, and so many people pass by and have no idea that it's there. It's hard to get packages delivered because, like, where's the house? You know, they're looking for a house. I want, you know, I want a house. And so, yeah, then they kind of realize, you know, after they, you know, maybe make a couple loops that, oh, this might be a house. It doesn't seem house, right? Like Gable, you know, it doesn't. No. But yeah, like, this is the only spot you really see the house from the road or from outside, really, right? Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, that was really kind of part of it is that it's, you know, that the house is part of the land and not sitting on the land, that it nestles away. And, you know, it's inconspicuous. There isn't just a lot of wildlife. We kind of normally burn our pile, you know, in the back, but you have some new neighbors. So we have a family of groundhogs that live there. Oh, inside your burn pile? Yes. Oh, there you go. You see them? So the animals barely see the house. They think of it as kind of part of the hill. Exactly. What do the neighbors think of this? Because there's no other underground homes in Springfield, Missouri, are there? None that we know of, no. But over the years, you know, neighbors would stop by and, you know, they're like, when are you going to build a house on top of that basement? You know, the last time we had some roof repairs, the contractors were like, can we drive on this? I was like, yeah, you can. They, you know, were still a little bit concerned in terms of, you know, their insurance. So they ended up doing the hand digging. But. Did they really? Nobody trusts driving on a roof. It's just not, it's not a natural. No, it's not a very natural feeling. But you can kind of get a sense of the structure from up here. How strong is the structure? Supports 250 pounds per square foot. So, yeah, these are, you know, 16 inch by 24 inch upturn beams. You know, the roof was one of the real key features to it in order to be able to sustain the earth and pull back the land and then bring it back across as a landscape. So you had to dig in to make the house, but it was still the natural slope. It's still here. Correct. It is a north facing site. So, you know, that's a problem sometimes, right? If you want to try to be passive solar on a north facing site. Yeah, it does prevent you from really capturing that south sun, you know, in the winter. But because there's so much earth, I mean, we have five and a half tons of conditioning that can be provided. Everything's cast in place concrete and it's all post stressed. So, you know, that means that they cast the concrete that waited 14 days and then they run cables. So there's a machine that you connect on and then you pull this really tight. And then as that compresses the concrete, it makes it waterproof and extremely strong and extremely durable. There are tornadoes in this area, right? There are. Yeah, we are on Tornado Alley, as they say. So, you know, tornadoes continually coming through. And that was certainly part of the design. In 1990, a tornado, an F4 tornado came right through the subdivision and directly over the house. It really came through the subdivision and just wiped it all the way out. When the government came out, they showed it was just a straight line right across the top of the house. Eye of the storm, right? Eye of the storm took everything. Unfortunately, people did pass. To have a tornado come right over the top, completely wipe out the neighbor's house and damage to 41 trees on the property, had, you know, just a significant wrath. For this to sustain through that is, you know, an incredible feat. There are so many places where, you know, people build the same house that was built for something else. It was designed for another location. And they'll take that design and put it somewhere. And there's a different environment. There's different context. And so the resiliency is, you know, very, very important to the overall concept, given this location. You know the factors. You know what's involved. You know what's at stake. You know where we live. So this is a carport. It doesn't shelter the cars quite like it does people. So both of his cars were totaled during the tornado. So you really see why the house did its work as a shelter. Yes. You know, to protect life. And it did. And it feels that way because you really do feel the sense of comfort, you know, the safety, you know, feeling like you're coming into the land but still having the shelter. At least that's the feel for us, maybe, you know, because it feels like home, you know, because we've been here for some time. But we come into the entryway, really kind of flows, the space flows with the landscape, having a view right at eye level of the land on top. So you kind of reconnect and you know where you are. You have this presence. So then you step into the hill. Yeah. We move into the hill and we see the kind of transition between interior space and exterior space. You're going down the hill. Yeah. Just, you know, yeah, taking a stroll inside the hill. Inside the hill, into the hill. There's a lot of stereotypes out there about living underground. I grew up in Missouri exploring. Every time I came across a cave, I would go in it. I would crawl around, see how far back I could get. There's always something incredible about it. But there's also something that can be scary. It's kind of dark and dreary and that creates a sense of unease. And this house doesn't have that. There's never, you know, a moment where you feel like it's too dark. Am I going to be locked here? So we're now nine steps down to the living level. You know, the living level has the kitchen, dining. And then there's just, you know, four small steps down, you know, into one of the nicer spaces, 10-foot ceilings, you know, a wall of glass that you're just really always having a connection to the outside. Traditional homes may have a small basement, but most part they are just on the site. They're not truly engaged with it. And that was the goal and functionally sometimes for us that's problematic because when you're trying to get a delivery it makes it a little complicated. But for interacting with nature and finding yourself truly blended in with the atmosphere creates these really unique moments where you can capture the wildlife outside just being itself. The wildlife just doesn't see it as a house. It sees it as much a part of nature, as part of the hillside. I do like how this is an underground house, but this is a really light house. Yeah, you're in the ground, but you don't feel like you're in the ground. It's so light-filled. There's natural light flooding from every direction. There's only the restrooms that don't have natural light. And then a space for entertaining where you have this connection to the openness, overseeing it. And then of course one of the bigger highlights is the skylight. This is an overcast day, so on a sunny day it's even more so. We love its presence in day and at night, this kind of calming glow. This always has this really beautiful glow. So the kitchen up here, you're sort of raised above the rest of the house. If you have a view to connect, to oversee, that really helps this space connect to that space, expand into it. The original owner and builder of the home, Dennis Spencer, it was very difficult to secure a loan. You present a set of plans for something so unique, the banks have a little hard time with it. Did he get a loan finally? He actually did. Originally the home was built for $50,000, was the original loan, and then he went back for another $20,000. He built this for $70,000? Yeah, all in. We have some original construction photos. You can see the beams, the upturned beams and the tensioning cables that are slung, and so they sling through the slab. You see Dennis and his wife, you can tell that they had to kind of pool the land in certain areas in order to create it and move it back. The upturned beams, this is a way of having more structural support without as much concrete, by just doing beams of concrete? Yeah, and so there's only three columns within the space, and to get 250 pounds a square foot, that's pretty incredible feet. That allows the space, all of the interior walls to be non-load bearing. And then the tornado. And then trees came down. From what I understand, there was 41 trees that came down, old growth trees. You can see looking back, the neighbor's house, it's almost completely gone. So yeah, trees all over the house. It was more of just a cleanup effort than it was, you know, a repair. It had to have been a really, really incredible and scary experience. You know, he was fortunate to make it through. It really was a deadly tornado. It was a deadly tornado, yeah. Because F4 is? The strongest tornado is an F5. So hopefully, you know, the home could make it through the F5 as well. So this is a north-facing lot, which he had told me before that he was looking for a south-facing lot that he could really dial into the passive design. And he just couldn't find anything, but he decided to use the earth in order to regulate the temperatures and reduce energy consumption. And it really seems to work well. What's it like when it's snowing? Is that a whole other experience? It's hard to suppress the inner kid in you that wants to grab the sled and run up and, you know, scoot down. It's hard to keep the neighboring kids from bringing their sleds over and climbing on top of the roof in order to sled down. It does feel more burrowed in, though, with the hill here. Yeah, it's really, you know, I feel like it's almost like the land's just wrapping its arms around you, you know, that you're getting hugged by the earth and comforting you. And you have this compression and expansion that happens within the house. And so you continue to feel that, you know, with these seven-foot ceilings. You don't see a lot of that in construction now. Everything's big, but the compression moments help emphasize the expansion moments. And so as you, you know, go into the corridor and get compressed into a small space, and then you go into the bedroom. And then we come to this tighter corridor and, you know, this feeling again of compression, you know, that happens. And so you go from the ten-foot ceiling, you know, to a seven-foot ceiling pivot door. So that, yeah, as you get compressed, you know, then the space really feels like it opens up out into the courtyard. This gives protection, you know, from the rain, but the landscape rolls up. I like the bathroom. It sort of steps down, right? Yeah. The shower kind of goes down the hill, which makes sense, right? Because the hill would be going down at this point. Yeah, and, you know, I mean, if there was ever, you know, a very major rain event or something, for some reason the house, you know, having a low point of the house, you know, kind of helps that drop and flow out. And you can fill it up. We've tiled it in the way that you could fill it. It's a bathtub. But on the hill, do you know where you are on the hill? So this is the retaining wall, and then we have the large berm over the top of us. So we're protected from the tornado pathways and everything. This is, yeah, one of the lowest, lowest parts and, you know, safest places and, you know, and hence, you know, why he, you know, found himself here, you know. Oh, so he came in here in the tornado. Yes. You know, you're, you're, it's nestled into the land, you know, as you could. Wow. Continues down, which is the smaller bedroom. Is this a Murphy bed? Yes. So this is a Murphy bed. And, you know, the idea there was that it was also, you know, created a flex space and all pivot doors, you know, and then there is always return air and open return air pathway. So the rooms are not completely private, you know. So, I mean, as, you know, as the rooms closed, you know, there's still enough return air to, you know, to draw the air back. And so these are the supply air grills, you know, that are, that are throwing air across the ceiling, capturing the space, and then it returns back through the hallway door into the unit. You know, so on this one, you know, the air gets pushed in, you know, from, from the space and then it, you know, makes its way back out for the, for the open pathway. Very high quality air is very important to the space. So the air kind of goes, the air is being straight down the hallway. Yes. So this is a door, just again, we have to keep the open free air. So, yeah, for the return air, we have had to keep free air. So as we kind of make our way back up and out of the house, we have indirect lighting. This is the most underground room, because look at the level of the land there. We're right at this level, that eye level, where you see out and you can start to see the top of the grass, you know, see the, the hawk up in the tree and, you know, stay in constant connection to the landscape. You know, this very kind of fascinating perspective that starts to really make you think. And it really seems to work well. I mean, you know, concrete is, it has a thermal mass. And so there's a thermal inertia that happens. Concrete is constantly absorbing heat when it's really hot outside. And then as it cools down, it dissipates that heat. And so, you know, using that to the advantage to just regulate the temperature. But it's, it's of the earth and that passive quality. You could literally live here without having any systems running at all, just opening windows and having the protection and be perfectly safe and comfortable. You not only feel of the land, you know, you're able to self-regulate and stay comfortable within those conditions. Thank you.