A Clearing

I went to the property on Saturday with a mission: find a suitable earth-sheltered retreat location. After two months on the new project at work, I'm bored and when I'm bored I fantasize of giving corporate life the finger and dropping out. My fantasy includes a low maintenance earth-sheltered retreat. I'm not really sure what to call this residence. At about 300 - 400 square feet, it's not a house. Since it's earth-sheltered with a living roof, it's not quite a cabin. It's not a bomb shelter, a bunker, or a cave. Since this is currently only a fantasy, maybe I should call it a hobbit hole.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago I found a great building location on my tree farm just below the highpoint of the ridge. Fantastic view 200+ degree view. But then I considered how much effort is required to haul cement block if I chose to build it with cement block. Each 80lb block would be hauled several hundred feet along a narrow path winding through the timber and brush. If my back survived carrying 300 hundred or so blocks, my thighs and glutes would be the envy of every wrestler. Also, since I could not get any digging equipment other than shovels up there, all digging would be by hand giving my the back of a body builder. I'm not interested in competing in the Mr. America competition; I'm trying to drop out! So I decided to look elsewhere preferably somewhere below the logging road so lugging building materials is aided by gravity.

What I am looking for is a decent size clearing in the timber. The clearing can be filled with brush as I have a good chainsaw and plenty of brush clearing experience. I want to use solar panels for electricity, so the clearing needs to be large enough that a portion of it will be in sunlight all year long. With the trees already 20+ feet tall and growing 3 feet per year, they will be throwing quite a shadow in 15 years. To stay in the sun, especially during the winter, the clearing has to be quite large.

The clearing should have a slope to facilitate earth-sheltered construction. I'm not sure how much slope is best. For the construction techniques outlined by Mike Oehler, a steep slope appears best though he does not cover this topic. With any earth-sheltered house, a lot of digging is required making a location that is accessible by earth-moving equipment, like a Bobcat, a huge plus.

With all that in mind, I went bushwhacking on Saturday. I knew of two areas that might work. I hit gold on the first one. It's a decent size clearing about 400 feet below where I usually park my van. The clearing is filled with brush for if the brush were not there, the tree planting crew would have planted seedlings there 10 years ago. The terrain is moderately sloped with one spot being pretty steep. One house is slightly visible but it'll disappear behind timber in two years. The clearing is probably not large enough to remain in the sun for the next 10 years, but I'm willing to overlook and deal with that limitation. Below the clearing is a good grove of timber. A Bobcat track could be snaked through the grove without much difficulty so digging equipment and materials can be brought in. Unfortunately, the clearing does not have a view, but I can always put a sheltered picnic table at the first location I was considering and go up there when I'm tired of looking a tree trunks.

I'm please with my discovery and am excited to move forward at least a little bit on my fantasy. I immediately started cutting and stacking the brush. In two or three more workdays, the brush will be gone and I'll know exactly how large the clearing is to determine how best to situate the retreat. I'm still weighing options on the size and nature of the construction but part of that depended on the location. Over the last three or four years, I have read and thought a lot about earth-sheltered structures. I'll write in the future a bit about what I'm considering.