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The frame and rafters seem solid (as long as you don't stress it too much), but it seems inevitable that the roots of plants will pierce the plastic layer, and rain will drain though the roof.
I know it's heavy duty plastic, but the roots of small plants can crack rock.
It's hard to tell from all these 200x200px pictures, but is the plastic the first thing on the ceiling? If that's the case, you might patch it up as it gets punctured or replace whole sections of it. I'm very curious as to how the house and vegetation will evolve on the long term, because this is pretty much my dream house.
Edit: After looking at the rest of the website, it becomes clear that they know what they're doing. I'm still curious about the details.
Very cool. It looks so easy from the article but I doubt it actually is. (I notice this was the authors second attempt). Side note... the father-in-law in the picture actually looks like a Hobbit in the picture. Coincidence?
Dress for the job you want.
This is one of the most over-shared web pages I know. What on earth is it doing here on HN?
The only thing that concerns me here is the structural soundness, very cool project though.
I agree. From the captions on the construction pictures:
> Lift logs, prop up, nail together and continue until no longer wobbly.
That's not very reassuring.
On the other hand, while structural soundness was much worse in the past than it might be today, this method has served humanity fairly well for a very long time.
The soil is heavy, much more heavy when it rains. It's an accident waiting to happen. I used to have a construction company in Norway where these grass roofs are popular, worked on several of them.
It would be good to know if they got a structural engineer look it over. Because it really doesn't look like a stable structure at all.
When building a house into the side of a hill, I one should consider the durability of the hill as well as the house.
Even if it doesn't collapse under its own weight, it's not much of a hobbit house if you can't walk (or jump) on it.
[Bad things](http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/18/green-roof-collaps...) [can happen](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zolitūde_shopping_centre_roof_c...) when green roofs aren't properly constructed.
If you're interested in this sort of thing, I'd recommend (amongst many other works):
http://www.amazon.com/Shelter-Lloyd-Kahn/dp/0936070110/
http://www.amazon.com/Shelter-II-Lloyd-Kahn/dp/0936070498/
I'm pretty sure this house was featured in one of them.
This looks like a very neat project. I am tremendously curious how this will hold up with time. I have recently finished building a house (as an inexperienced general contractor). A ton of things deal with how things will behave over time as opposed to how they will work right after construction has finished. I am particularly curious about the fairly loosely-packed bales of hay and the plastic used to waterproof the roof.
This has been on the internet, at least, for a few years.
Those are the original project photos--I've not seen any updated ones.
I seem to remember reading about people living in a hobbit-house type thing (I think it may have been this one) leaving after a few years. I don't remember if the house had become unsound or if the local government finally caught wind of their "nail it together until it stops wobbling" building technique and condemned the place.
Love these kinds of houses, however getting a construction permit is hard. First there is the "is it structurally ok ?", but cob houses can be build correctly. And second is getting the "looks" approved, all houses have to look the same and all that :(
Not that this isn't awesome, but aren't hobbit houses underground? With networks of tunnels and hillside windows and entrances? This looks like a rustic country house with a green roof. As much as I like this, I'd prefer something actually underground.
> Not that this isn't awesome, but aren't hobbit houses underground?
IIRC, there's considerable difference based around relative wealth, and many less well-off hobbits lived in above ground homes. Most of the principal hobbits in LOTR (except Sam, I think) lived in large underground mansions, but they were rather well-off hobbits.
Even so, the construction approach here (digging a partial hole, building a frame that extends somewhat above the original ground level, and then taking the dirt from the whole and covering the structure) seems a fairly practical method of building what ends up being an underground home, and the result is visually similar to the art that has accompanied various editions of the books (and the look used in the movies) for hobbit homes, so it seems pretty reasonable.
To do it right you'd have to build the structure with reinforced concrete, able to withstand tonnes of soil while forming a desired shape. You can then decorate it from inside as you want, make an exact copy of Bilbo's house if that's your goal. Such a project would be quite expensive though and well beyond capacity of an amateur.
Sounds more like dwarfs. Pretty confident Bilbo's house did not have any other homes connected to it. It was built into the side of a hill as a standalone home.
I meant that the several rooms of a single home were connected by tunnels, not that multiple homes were connected together.
This is always how I've imagined my dream house to be. Energy efficient, immersed in nature, easy to hide if necessary.
One of the big problems, at least in the overcrowded UK, is getting your hands on a suitable parcel of land in an area sympathetic to this sort of development.
This is a problem in the US as well. There are numerous ecovillages way out in rural areas in counties with relatively lax regulations, places like Dancing Rabbit (http://www.dancingrabbit.org/) and Earthhaven (http://www.earthaven.org/), but there are many more communities where you can't even plant a garden. You have to maintain a perfect lawn or else.
I live in an ecovillage that is attempting this sort of building in a (small) city. It's a city that is generally friendly to our efforts, but city, county and state code still make it pretty much prohibitively expensive. We're still trying to find a way through it, at least to a happy medium.
Getting planning permission is probably more of a problem than finding somewhere that this would fit in - plenty of empty space in Wales and Scotland.
e.g. In the case of Scotland we're mostly all crowded into the rift valley of the Central Belt:
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/resources/chskeystatisticsscotland...
Simply amazing!
Does it, um have a toilet? Or electricity?
Read the article. It has a composting toilet, uses skylights for daylight illumination and has solar panels for electrical needs. Doesn't seem to use it for refrigeration though, which seems limiting.
I live in a similar-ish situation where I live on a narrowboat in London. I have a solar panel for electrical needs and I run the boat engine once every few days during the winter. For refrigeration, I've got a 12v fridge but many people I know use gas fridges. Fridges use up an amazing amount of power. But the fridge is really the only thing I run off electricity - occasionally charge up my laptop and charge my phone off the 12v supply. But yes, my boat batteries are pretty much there only for the fridge.
vacation home, many cabins in the woods I grew up visiting were very basic, you were lucky to have a well let alone electricity.