The Fifty Dollar and Up Underground House

[itsybitsy]

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/ ... orkscom-20

[the-gnole]

Looks an interesting idea, but the bit at the bottom of the Amazon page is the review of this book, also interesting reading.

This review is from: The Fifty Dollar and Up Underground House Book (Paperback)
I read through the first chapter on Amazon and was absolutely sold on the idea. Subterranean housing is vastly more ecologically compatible than surface dwellings; it can even be environmentally regenerative. But the book's last chapter was a crushing blow; the designs and methods Oehler suggests are not compliant with the Uniform Building Codes.

If you do your best to play by the rules in life, this book will have to be set aside. It's thought-provoking reading, to be sure -- not to be missed. But before you can set out into the wilderness and build yourself an inexpensive answer to today's housing problems, you'll need to socially-engineer a way around civilization's permit/inspector traps. The author proposes a few far-fetched possibilities, e.g. getting a code variance, getting an underground code amendment. Basically, the only real options are: either move to an area with NO building codes (Oehler himself admits there are almost none left), or hide your construction -- and this entails forgoing utility hook-ups, since meter readers apparently double as spies for the housing board, looking for unauthorized renovation/building projects.

Being an outlaw is not my cup of tea. Nor does it suit the mainstream. So perhaps this book's main function, after showing us how inexpensive housing can be, is to wake us up to a harsh reality. Housing boards, composed largely of members of the building professions, "have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. In other words they are not likely to take a cheerful view of any system which cuts the cost of building from 70% to 90%." The reason houses are so expensive is: the law REQUIRES them to be, and the law is assiduously enforced by the very contractors building those houses. What we need is a uniform building code flexibly oriented around safety and good construction standards, NOT the maximization of revenue to entrenched special interests.

Still it would be worth a read for some ideas anyway.

[Triple_sod]

I read the book a few years ago and while personally I’d prefer to stick to bricks and mortar (better the devil you know) it’s some good food for thought. Certainly I can see the benefit of cheap housing, that’s economically friendly and quite literally blends into the landscape.

You can read the PDF here; http://www.tactical-miscellany.com/

Gnole, or at least whoever wrote the review does however have a fair point, one thing I would add though is that Oehler isn't just 'making things up'. The $50 house he describes is real and he did live in it. Louis Theroux actually spent a night in the deluxe version in that famous/infamous episode of Weird Weekends.

Mod note: Full link removed as it is copyrighted material, and I'm guessing we dont have the authors permission to reproduce his book.

[itsybitsy]

You can read the PDF here; http://www.tactical-miscellany.com/

Is that a legal download?

[Ogre]

Thanks for that. Another site bookmarked for later perusal.

[scoobie]

Gentle reminder folks, please don't paste links to copyrighted material for free download unless you have permission to do so from the author/owner.

It will be *me* who gets it in the neck, so please just be careful.

[Triple_sod]

Ah sorry about that scoobie, probably wasn't a good idea.

Just to clarify though, is it actually illegal to post a link to a site where someone else is breaching the copyright?

[scoobie]

No real difference between that and torrent tracker sites, and many of those have been shut down in the last couple of years because of copyright infringement, and all they do is host links essentially.

So, its not worth the hassle.