Green roofs have a huge list of benefits.
- They keep the place better insulated, both warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer.
- They help reduce local air temperature, particularly in cities, by reducing reflected sunlight / radiation.
- You can farm animals on them(see https://oldcountrymarket.com/ )
- You can have a rooftop garden and bee colonies. See the western half of Vancouver BCs Convention Center. Where they maintain a wildflower garden and beehives on the roof of the building and the chefs inside the building harvest honey from the beehives. ( https://www.greenroofs.com/2022/08/18/featured-project-vancouver-convention-centre-west-expansion-project/ )
Only fault of the realtor is they didnt get the place landscaped prior to the photo.
They’ve got drawbacks, too, especially since most examples of them in residential construction are the efforts of, shall we say, enthusiastic amateurs.
- Because soil holds moisture for an extended period of time, they tend to get saturated, and then excess moisture migrates down to the waterproofing system, which will inevitably leak over time. Most amateur-built earth sheltered homes are not using particularly sophisticated waterproofing materials, and rarely take a defense-in-depth approach to them that could mitigate a failure in one layer of the system.
- Maintenance is expensive: once any part of the waterproofing fails you are going to have to dig it up to repair it.
- Soil - especially wet soil - is heavy and the prescriptive structural parts of residential building code aren’t really intended to address this kind of construction. You need an engineer to ensure the house is properly structured for the loads involved, and if you’re building new that extra structure is going to cost money and limit design options.
- Building into a slope to allow roof access for planting, mowing, etc., limits daylighting options, and particularly in the US where bedrooms are required to have an egress window it can be nearly impossible to design a floorplan with the expected gradient of public to private space.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the concept, and I’ve even drawn up plans for one I’d like to build on the lot next door to me once the nigh-derelict rental house currently occupying the space gets condemned… But this is one case where I absolutely do not want to be buying somebody else’s project. I don’t trust the other people who build them to do it right.
The whole point of these types of places is to save on heat/cooling.
I don’t know. I looked at the photos, and I’m pretty sure this place is built for drugs.
I have one of the larger barrels pictured. It’s a 68G that I pump water up from the creek into for bathing, washing up, etc. Throw a couple of the small chlorine tabs in there, good to go. Just don’t drink it.
Mine came from imported Kalamata olives. Kinda greasy to clean out, excellent water storage. Money says that was the intention for those. 300+ gallons of water lasts forever if you have a creek to tap. I fill my 68 every month in the summer, and that’s only because it has a slow leak.
Yeah this was definitely not somebody’s primary living space. It is extremely barebones and industrial looking. Something illicit was happening here.
From the article, the owner died before completion. Just seems like someone who wanted to off-grid at a glance (and didn’t care a ton for permits/beaurocracy)
I can see the value in that, basically nature’s insulation - though I’m not an architect nor an engineer, but that looks like a flat roof - so would overgrown grass or sodden soil put some crazy weight and pressure on the structure?
Very unusual unfinished, unpermitted concrete bermed home with unpermitted septic system and no power on 4.97 secluded, wooded acres. Individual well. 4-1,000 in ground propane tanks, 500 gal water storage tank. Used to be powered by a solar system & a generator, both of which were stolen (and other equipment) but electric nearby. Owner was working on a self-sufficient home but passed during construction having spent over $400K on the project.
They were building a bunker.
You can usually delete the tracking stuff after the question mark in the link
FYI, that’s called the query parameters. They’re usually used for tracking, but also could be used for non SEO optimized links to tell the site what item or article or such you’re linking to.
Most sites are SEO optimized, and their URL is the human readable description. But not all sites are like that. That’s why some break when you remove the query parameters.
Oh interesting thank you for the info, I was dealing with that today while trying to share an article it had a short id number I deleted but then it broke the link. Also it seems like tiktok generates a custom tracking link each time that shows the person who shared it with you and I haven’t found a way to edit the link to get rid of that
Depending on how it’s built and insulated, it might be much cheaper to heat and cool, though.