When I’m imaging what a design would look like, my mind can often run wild with ideas. I’ve found over the years that it is best to take the most basic design possible and flesh it out as a starting point. Quite often I’ll be happy with the result of that simple exercise, and happy that I didn’t chose to complicated it any further than necessary. If it is still lacking, then I can add a bit of complexity or flair with the comfort of knowing that it is truly enhancing the design in a way that was needed.
To get to what the most basic earth sheltered design looks like, I like what the Universty of Minnesota says on p. 23 of Earth Sheltered Housing Design: guidelines, examples, and references (1979):
A sloping site offers the opportunity to set an earth covered space into the hillside, however, the orientation of the window wall is then determined by the direction of the hillside. It is generally more desirable to work with a site sloping downard to the south, but it may be necessary to compromise maximum solar exposure on some sites. Also a relatively steeply sloping site is more easily adaptable to a design with two levels of earth covered space. There are some significant energy savings with a two level design…
They give some examples of what this looks like:
That is quite straightforward. I have a west-sloping site and it’s quite steep. I should start with a 2 level design with the window wall on the west. There are however a few more constraints to work with however:
- I’d prefer not to block the existing drive unless necessary
- I’d like to have plenty of garage and parking space accessible from the drive
Based on those I think the most straightforward design is to keep the existing drive in roughly the same location, but route it on top of the lower level, right where mini-me is standing in the section below:
Daylight, property limits (boundaries, setbacks, rights of way), and excavation cost are the main limiting factors limiting how deep into the hill it goes. Mainly daylight as we don’t want to get too far away from windows. The design could then run along the drive for as much distance as needed with the additional complication that the drive and the general topography is sloping gradually down to the north.
To keep it simple I could determine how far into the hill to go as mentioned above, then simply extrude this section along the drive (straight line is cheaper, curved to follow the drive and the hillside probably more attractive) until I get the square footage I desire:
Now what I have is good in a number of ways. It is completely and totally nestled into the topography and should blend in very nicely. I get plenty of western view with 2 of U Minn’s “window walls” facing to the left in this sketch. There can be a ton of square footage, and the majority of it is buried in the hillside out of sight. A bit too buried actually, as the biggest downside to this design is the lack of daylight. Both in terms of there being no southern exposure, as well as the fact that the entire portion under the road and below the second level are all completely without windows. That’s rule #1 in earth sheltered design: get as much daylight as possible.
So I’m left with two alternatives. First alternative is I could start over and say that the most basic straightforward design is not suitable as it yields a horrible unlivable structure. The second alternative is to say that I should keep the basic starting point, but that it’s time for some complexity and flair to try to make it better.
A good next step might be to take this basic design… and start carving away pieces of it to allow light in?
