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Home Garden Books:
The Fifty Dollar and Up Underground House Book
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List Price: $19.95
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PRODUCT DESCRIPTIONS:
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 690.8
EAN: 9780442273118
ISBN: 0442273118
Label: Mole Publishing Company
Manufacturer: Mole Publishing Company
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 116
Publication Date: 1981-12-01
Publisher: Mole Publishing Company
Studio: Mole Publishing Company
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CUSTOMER REVIEWS:
Excellent for what it is -
This book is quite interesting and is, as far as I can tell, intended as a primer to the concept rather than a complete recipe. Once you read this book you understand the major concepts at play, can visualize the options available, and understand why some ideas work and others don't. It thoroughly covers major pitfalls, practical lessons from the over 30 years these houses have been actually built (well, centuries if you want to count older methods for building them) and has a good update from the author in the back. I found it VERY useful as I am interested in this method of construction and this book has confirmed my interest while pointing me in very useful directions to get further information.
If you are at all interested in building your own home, take a look at this construction method and understand why there are such huge advantages over standard "clapboard" styles of construction - a high quality earth-structured home will trump a high quality freestanding home in almost every single regard every time.
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A Classic! -
Mike is an original thinker/curmudgeon. Everyone interested in building with natural materials should study his ideas. His DVD set is more complete than this book and incorporates 25 years of experience building this way. Get them both. The only other natural material, owner-builder books of this profundity are: Ken Kern's "The owner built home" and the gorgeous treatise on building with cob, "The hand-sculpted house." Most people would do well to combine techniques and materials to fit your site, materials available and tastes.
Beyond 5 Stars--Inspirational, Valuable, Practical -
20081214 DEPARTED AMAZON WITH OUTRAGE OVER THE MANIPULATION OF VOTES.
This book is phenomenally wise, useful, easy to read, and plain inspiring. I picked it up this morning intending to get back to it tonight and ended up not putting it down at all.
I have bought and read a number of underground building books as well as log cabin books, and would sort them into three categories:
A Expensive log homes for the really rich
B Moderate earth-covered (not quite underground) homes for the middle
C This book, for those who truly want to integrate innovation and low cost with deep Earth comfort and resilience and all the good stuff that goes with it.
This book, in short, is in a class of its own. Most will notice that it was first offered in 1978. As the USA goes through a major financial crisis that proves nothing has changed--Wall Street and the two "parties" it has bought down to their lost souls are still here, still looting the commonwealth--this book proves that it is timeless.
There is indeed a great deal of land across this great country where one can still afford to "dig in," and this could not be a better time to be thinking about renting what you have now in the close in fragile areas, and setting up alternative housing with adjacent land for a basic Life Garden.
As I went through each chapter I found the list of materials, the prices, the diagrams, and the text all coherent, concise, and totally "on target." Black and white photographs throughout, and a handful of color photographs in the middle, round the book out.
The book ends by discreetly recommending a tape series on design as the key element for success, and one that professional architects generally overlook (as we are all learning, the "experts" in finance and other areas are really "credentialed" but NOT experts).
I LIKE THIS BOOK. As an afterthought, it is recommended by just about every major alternative living, green energy, and sanity outpost (Vermont, Oregon, Washington State) reviewer. This book is a "good deal" and inspiring to boot.
Wonderful book! -
This is the best book I have read on alternative buildings. The author is very sensible about the whole project without being to much of a hippie. If my wife hadn't threatened divorce I would be building one of these houses right now. I HIGHLY recommend it!
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Great for the "back to the land" sort. - 
First off, the reason for four stars instead of five. It's because the author was very narrow minded in what he thought you would be reading the book for. The title makes it very clear that it's going to be a cheap house, but it still came as a surprise to me that it is not about making a modern house. The most modern thing in the houses described in this book is a polyethylene layer for waterproofing. He does not describe the use of anything that cannot be found on site (excluding polyethylene). This has its merits, but I quote him out of the book saying "cement has no soul" And his total refusal to see the use in a design he dubbed the "first thought design" which would easily work as well as his own "basic design" if only you use a slanted roof. (a method he chose not to consider mentioning.
Now, what this book did cover I thought it did very well at. It describes with photos and clear instructions how to make a house with natural or easily obtainable supplies at a low cost. He has some very good ideas like his uphill patio which eliminates the force of the hill pushing down on your home and puts the load on a much easier to maintain retaining wall. Also, a feature he calls clerestories (basically windows that are put in a sudden drop of ceiling height) make the interior much brighter.
All in all it's a very good book on how to make your own fallout shelter or summer cabin, but not a good manual on the finer points of making an underground home. The houses in this book exhibit many features that you would need in a modern home, but they are not a replacement for your current house.
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