Houses and where this Topic takes Me

Houses come in all shapes and sizes according to the owners whim and architects ingenuity and the physical ability to build.

From one room homes of colonial days built of wattle & daub, rough timbers frames with canvas walls and stringy bark roofs to modern-day fancies much larger.

I’ve seen on TV homes programs the opulence of some of these homes and wonder why people must build such monuments to themselves for surely they don’t live in all the rooms and they’ve just been built to impress and state “I’m wealthy….” for all the world to see.

Standards have changed over the years and many practices allowed in the past have been banned ‘for our own good’ by local councils. For example when I was growing up in the 1950’s and 60’s we lived in a tent on our land while we built our home in stages as money became available. Borrowing was minimal and dad bought a hundred bricks at a time from money saved from wages and he built a little more ‘til he had a liveable structure to move into with more space and comfort while the process of building continued over time. Finally it reached completion and the family moved in.

That living on the construction site is no longer allowed.

The underground homes in places like Coober Pedy and Lightning Ridge capture my imagination and I sometimes fancy I’d like to have an acreage and build a home on the ridge of a hill. Excavating an area to build all the rooms of the house below ground level and covering the structure over with earth (for constant temperature and bushfire protection) – leaving the valley side open with a picture window view of the panorama beyond.

Above the underground building I’d lay a concrete slab oriented long-side facing north, with an enclosed stair-well down to the house below. On the slab would be a steel frame, open sided for breezes, but with a section enclosed for garage and laundry. The under-covered area would be available for “outdoor” living above-ground and laundry drying. The roof would be calculated to be large enough to mount sufficient solar panels to provide more than enough electricity to meet the entire household needs and guttering to capture water into tanks for our water needs. I’d have an orchard area nearby and ‘hot-house’ garden for growing year-round produce. All of it with the aim towards self-sufficiency and environmentally friendly. The underground construction would need to be engineered to withstand earthquake and any other natural disaster possible.

I shake my head at the world news where areas prone to hurricanes/tornadoes/cyclones are not built underground with only minor structures above-ground subject to the whim of nature. Like-wise areas subject to flooding, the home ought to be built on high ground or at least have high levies built around entire towns or villages to keep the flood-waters out. Money is usually the determining factor of course but the planning is short-sighted and invariably costs lives.