Andrew Welser

Buy (outright, or large down payment on) some acreage.

Supplies and equipment to build infrastructure and an underground house on the land.

Invest for a monthly income to be able to lower hours worked and eventually quit my current job, and build on and raise my own food from the land full time.

I got a free dehydrator a month or 2 back, did bananas, and had issues with them sticking even after spraying the trays with oil. In searching for a solution I discovered Amazon has a large variety of sizes of "silicone dehydrator sheets" with many options priced around $1 per square foot, which could be used as the food contact surface on top of any sort of mesh trays or racking.

John C Daley wrote:Andrew, are there any such homes built in your area?

I know there are a few underground/earth sheltered homes in the area around me; I use to live just a couple miles from this one, and know of at least 2 others.

As for Oehler-style, Passive Annual Solar, underground Ferrocement, or any combination thereof, if there are any around me, I don't know of them.

The Monolithic Dome Institute headquarters is less than an hour from me, they build above-ground domes out of shotcrete, I believe I've read that while they don't feel the need for their domes to be buried, they structurally could be. And if I'm remembering correctly (without re watching the above video) the shell for the underground home in the above youtube may have been built by them.

Few houses in this area of Texas have basements, whether due to shallow rock shelves underground, high water table, high clay content in the soil, or for other reasons, I am thinking less of digging into the ground, and more building at/slightly under ground level, and covering with a thin layer of soil.

While this is all theoretical for me since I don’t have land yet, I am in north Texas and have been dreaming of building my own underground house for many years. My inclination right now, is to do a combination of an Oehler-style and a John Hait passive annual solar. Instead of the post and shoring I am leaning towards ferrocement, to minimize long term maintenance issues with termites and posts rotting. I figure I will need to run a dehumidifier of some kind, and would run pex tubing in floor and/or ceiling to be able to run radiant heat and cooling as a backup to the passive mass if needed.

If the exterior walls are well insulated, and/or have a good thickness of earth sheltering, I would think there shouldn’t be issues with condensation even with wide daily temperature swings.

It probably would be better to have an inpermeable envelope with an ERV or HRV fresh air system and a dehumidifier, unless you were planning to be so off grid you’re not running any electric at all.

A couple winters back I was by myself in a poorly insulated mobile home, heated only by space heaters.  What worked for me was keeping room temperature very low (but well above freezing for the sake of the plumbing), which ended up around 45*f.

Extra layers of clothing: wearing similar clothing inside as I would for working outside; I'm a big fan of insulated coveralls and long underwear: people who don't work in the elements will wear coats, but often don't add leg layers. Electric blanket to pre-warm the bed. Run a space heater at a high temperature only when changing and showering.

Most of the time that I was inside and not in bed I was on the couch with micro-heaters: a electric heating pad at my back, electric throw blanket in my lap, heat emitter "bulb" in a swing arm lamp over my hands. Depending on what different things you do/places you are inside you could set up different "workstations" with different micro-heaters, or have a space heater that you only run when you're in the kitchen (for example).

All the above will help regardless of what is done to the building: better insulation, weatherstripping, etc will keep the heat inside better so the heater(s) don't have to work as long/hard to maintain the 45* (or whatever you set). The lower the temperature differential (between conditioned and unconditioned space) the less heating is required: so keeping the room temperature low, and just heating the occupant(s) will use less energy.

Caleb Mayfield wrote:I have a 40 foot High Cube shipping container on my property that has my shop in 15 feet of one end and storage in the rest.

For storage I built shelves on one side and install 24" deep pallet racking style shelves on the other side with a 48" aisle down the middle. You can also drill through the walls and bolt on boards like 2x6's to attach hooks or do a french cleat system.

I have the same container set up; what I did for shelving was built to fit and hung by chain from the upper tie-down eyes of the container (my container had eyes every 44", I think). That allowed me to have upper shelves the entire length of the container even over the shop/workbench area, and add additional shelves in the storage area, but still leave the floor free for things to large/heavy to go on a shelf, and not make any exterior penetrations.

It's only 30' or so from the house so I ran a couple electric circuits to it (ran conduit underground, elbowed up and drilled through the wood floor); for lighting I initially ran some exterior string lights I had on hand, but ended up running LED shop lights over the workbench and spaced down the storage area.

Depends on the type of "truck stuff" that needs doing, there are some different options:

Mini vans, station wagons, and hatchbacks can swallow a lot of stuff with seats folded down, with the benefit of lighter items not blowing out on the highway. Tarping may still be needed: I moved hay bales in my Vibe one time, and was still finding pieces up until I sold it close to 10 years later.

I put hitches on both that Vibe and the Corolla that replaced it, each was rated to tow 2000lb. I've moved a lot of furniture and other large items with those cars and a harbor freight 4x8 trailer.

A larger truck based SUV will have a larger towing rating, allowing for larger sized trailers.

I now have a mini van and so rarely use my trailer; adding a trailer covers 95%+ of my need, so the few occasions I need something larger (I.E. moving house) I rent a U-Haul. If I needed something larger more often, depending on the frequency and size of what I'm hauling I'd probably get an SUV and a larger trailer.

That being said, I don't have any land, so I don't have livestock or tractors to haul.

Kevin Olson wrote:If you decide you really do need a truck, sometimes there are crazy good deals on medium duty trucks versus pickup truck prices, as well, especially if a bit of a project doesn't spook you.

Especially after driving semi-trucks for a few years, I've thought if I needed to do some regular hauling, I'd rather get a medium or heavy duty truck (and trailer), for both the lower cost, and the higher weight capacity: 80K of semi felt much less sketchy then maybe 10K of pickup.

Half of successful trailer backing happens before you back: the more you can set yourself up beforehand so you are backing straight &/or minimally turning to the drivers side instead of sharp turns &/or turns to the passenger side (i.e. blind side) the better.

Once you have a good setup, then look in your drivers mirror &/or over your shoulder out the drivers window at the trailer tire.
Visualize the line or curve the trailer tire would follow to get where you're wanting to back it to.
Begin backing slowly, move the bottom of the steering wheel in the direction you want the trailer to move: i.e. need to make a sharper turn to the drivers side, turn the wheel clockwise (for left hand drive vehicle)
Continue backing, continually making steering corrections to keep the trailer tire on the desired line/curve.
If you get too far off, pull forward and steer to get the vehicle and trailer back onto the desired path.
Repeat until you arrive at your destination.

The shorter the hitch to trailer tire distance, the faster it will swing, so go slower, and turn the steering wheel less, but try to catch deviations from the line sooner.

The more you can practice, the easier it will become, and the more comfortable you will be.

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When loading the trailer you will want at least 10% of the total weight as tongue weight (I.E. trailer and load is 1000lb, minimum tongue weight should be 100lb). Max tongue weight might be 15-20%, this becomes more important the heavier the load: your 5000lb towing rated hitch is probably only rated for 500-650lb tongue weight. Too heavy on the tongue also sags the rear of your tow vehicle; you can get helper springs or air bags; that's not nearly as bad as too little tongue weight: that causes trailer fishtailing:

Miles Teg wrote:
I haven't heard of anyone running air duct work through one of these things before though, which makes me wonder why.... I have either thought of something new, or something someone else has tried and it didn't work, that is the biggest worry at the moment.

While I haven't looked to see what other people have tried, as someone currently working in the HVAC field my initial thought is that, while it might be less efficient then a rocket mass heater with the mass inside the house, I think it has potential, if the large potential hazard is properly addressed: you need to be absolutely sure there is no way now or in the future you will be pumping exhaust from the rocket into your house!

To give an example of one way this is addressed in the commercial market that I see: older gas furnaces had natural draft chimneys and the fan on the household ducted air is before the heat exchanger and creates positive pressure in the heat exchanger, so if/when it rusts out or leaks in some way the household air leaks out through the chimney, and not the other way around. Newer furnaces have fan driven chimneys, but that fan is placed after the heat exchanger so it gives negative pressure to the exhaust side, which increases the pressure difference between the two sides of the heat exchanger.

In addition to putting your household blower before the rocket heater so if there's a leak you blow air out instead of sucking exhaust in, I would recommend separating your exhaust and ventilation pipes in the mass (rather then running ventilation pipes through a stratification chamber, or doing a tube in tube exchanger), even just by a few centimeters, so you can surround all the ducting with a layer of clay, cement, or similar, to minimize air cross contamination long into the future, even if/when the ducting rusts through; similar to what you would want to do to all the piping if the rocket mass heater were inside your house.

A few other potential downsides I see, and ways to address them:
-I would suggest adding some kind of temperature sensor in the ducting or the mass, so that you can keep the indoor blower from running if the mass is cooler then inside your house, to prevent sucking heat out of the house to warm the mass.
-Since the mass is going to be outside the insulation envelope of your house I would recommend insulating the mass, to minimize heat loss to the outside.
-Your heat will be dependent on electricity to run the indoor blower, but that is a minimal power draw compared to electric heat or a heat pump and could be set up to run off a battery with inverter or generator.
-You'll have to go outside into the cold to start/tend the fire. I don't have any suggestions of how to address this other than good winter clothing, but you can at least take warmth in the mess of the firewood staying outside and heating your house for only pennies! :)

I can't speak to the design of the rocket heater, having not built one myself yet, but the more I think about your design the more potential I see; with the heater outside you also eliminate the issue of a backdraft down the chimney or a cold plug/hard start dumping smoke into your house.

Looking forward to seeing the finished product in action!

Since I currently (and for the foreseeable future) am living in north Texas, and hope to one day build myself an off-grid wofati/underground house this is something I've been wondering too. The best answer I've come up with so far is John Hait's book "Passive Annual Heat Storage." While I think he is more northern/heating focused, a similar approach should be effective for us down south; and possibly more effective, or less work/construction may be required for the same result, since our unmodified constant ground temperature is much closer to our desired indoor temperature (I seem to recall seeing numbers in the 70-75 deg range for constant underground temperatures in the Dallas area).

A form of de-humidification may likely be required still; some type of moisture absorbent that gets recharged in the sun or with a fire might be possible; but even if not, a dehumidifier would be much more practical to run off-grid then an AC of any decent size.