Underground Rock House Construction

Old photos taken during construction, construction tips, look at the finished rock walls inside, exterior views.

A newer video of the Underground Rock House with no music and narrated by the builder exists on YouTube.    • Underground Rock House Narrated  

I started with a 40 foot wide 12 foot deep space between two natural rock walls and proceeded to dig down another 18 feet so it would be a two-story home. Poured in place concrete slab and beams form the ceiling and floors allowing the interior walls to remain natural, beautiful stone.

All of the doors lead out to concrete pathways between other rock formations.

This is a two-story underground rock and concrete house. The house utilizes existing rock bluffs as the walls. It is located on 80 acres of rural timber land. It was designed and built entirely by one person from$28,000. of savings. Construction began in 1975 and took 8 ½ years.

These particular rock bluffs were chosen because of the location of a spring that could be used as a water source. A 3000 gallon spring-fed water cistern supplies water to the house and a 2000 gallon pool.

No air conditioning is required. A wood-burning stove supplies heat during the winter. Water is supplied by gravity from a spring above the house. There is no water bill, no sewer bill, no gas bill, and this house has a smaller electric bill than most homes.

Concrete walls were water proofed by placing a perforated drain pipe at the bottom of the outside trench. It was covered with gravel and rocks to above ground level to keep any water from ever touching the wall. No wall coating or covering of any kind was needed.

The lower floor is waterproofed with perforated drain pipes located in the hand placed rocks beneath the lower concrete floor slab. There are drain openings filled with gravel at the floor edges adjoining the rock walls.

Waterproofing the roof was accomplished by designing the concrete roof beams to slide on metal plates embedded in concrete supports. This design minimizes expansion/contraction cracking. The few cracks that developed during curing were sealed with less than one tube of clear silicone caulk.

The roof was covered with two 6 mil black plastic sheets sandwiching 3 ½” of rigid foam insulation and topped with 1 ½” of concrete and then dirt. The roof still has no leaks after 34 years.

The dimpled concrete ceiling was formed by placing gravel on homemade concrete forms, covering the gravel with a 6 mm black plastic sheet and pouring the concrete on top of that. The concrete forms and gravel were removed and the ceiling painted white.

The music is a YouTube selection entitled "Mario Bava Sleeps in a Little Later Than He Expected To" by Chris Zabriskie.

Here is a link to my previous "Underground Rock House" video:    • Underground Rock House