Underground dome house of the family who led geese to fly home

people don't even know there's a house here because it's like a hill and you really can't see it unless you know where the door is and stuff Kathy so it's kind of integrated into the earth right we call it earth integrated yeah some people build a square box and they shove it into a hill but that's not really the same thing like this is a whole different shape right we call this house Earth integrated rather than underground as underground connotes dark and no lights and this one is integrated into the earth [Music] now it's like a birdcage so you need it needs to be you know down in a little bit so earth integrated Paris integrated so it's kind of integrated into the earth and as long as it's you know twelve to fourteen inches which is what the neck on all these rulers are then it's below the frost line so so well we took the top off a hill and we built this house and then we covered it up again hundred people up there yes yeah the shape itself it's like an eggshell you know you can't break an egg huh it shan't break a whole egg we're squeezing it so we're walking on the roof yeah and you can look down into all the rooms actually oh really yeah so you are all skylights then these are all skylights yes there's six thousand acres here that were bought in the 30s by a group of friends so we we were expropriated we had to find someplace to live my parents wanted to invest in some property with a view so my dad got topographical maps and he followed the ridge because he figured on the ridge this is like the last push of the glacier it's called the terminal moraine so he figured any place on the ridge would have a good view my feet aren't very hardened up yet and he said oh you got to come and check this out you can't afford it but it's amazing just imagining the rest I mean this the part I can see is beautiful yeah these are big wind ventilators when it's really windy they you know bring fresh air into the house well when we bought the property we lived in a little Chalet that's just down the driveway which is a prefab and the only thing that got hot in the winter was the hydrometer going around and bill said we gotta get underground is this the only place that has windows exterior windows okay Kathy it's so cool in here that's the point right like once you're once you're below the frost line which is just 12 to 14 inches it's a constant temperature oh you know 58 59 degrees so it's it feels cool in the summer and warm in the winter you only have to heat that differential if it's 40 below it doesn't matter like this room gets more exposure to outside but these rooms are really this is where your feet were yeah so this is where you look down wow this feels so nice this that's so rounded it feels so good yeah it feels like you want to stand up straight because it's it's not a box right it's more cathedral-like or whatever I mean it's just the feeling of high-tech gives you and so light for being underground well that was the point we wanted to make sure that it was you know not because people say you live underground or dirt but it's the building of course is made with what we call feral concrete so the shell was done in steel and then they put on this expanded metal which is like not as wide a space it's like a mesh and then started blowing on concrete so the walls are like 2 to 4 inches thick and then we put this white powdered marble it's natural marble you buy it as a powder as a dust and put in that piece of in it and then we travel that or the whole thing so it's quite human essent but also bright and you know you do get a lot more light from above then from a side window because that's where the Sun in the sky is and these windows on the side getting bounced kind of reflected light so it's the sky light is much more effective than a side I yeah you do more like for sure you know so it's not at all dark in here in fact you know my bedroom you can see through there is darker because I've got a skylight cover on it we built all these domes and then put a rubber membrane over the whole thing and you do the work ourselves bill and the kids basically and then here we had to cut out the membrane to let light in I mean you know we had good advisors plumbers and you know because everything's in the walls right it's not like the heating system is in the floor so it's warm floors in the winter so it's radiant heat because it rises so there's no blowers and fans and even move it up higher if you want to do trapeze so is it difficult to build it around because you have it mean all the furniture is just built in everything has to be built in like you can't buy anything right like these these the bottom shelf is really deep and the top shelf gets progressively narrower because you're following the contour of the wall you didn't want to put a square fridge in here so he designed us refrigerator which I mean refrigerators have never been redesigned since the icebox right there's still a box but cold air is heavy and it sinks and every time you open a fridge door the cold air spills out and when you want the stuff that's way at the back the fridge runs for a long time after close the door to get back to the temperature this way you can lift up the contents and the cold air stays down there the cold air is not gonna be able to get up here now we're we're getting a little bit of chill just from the you know the crockery and stuff but so it's a much more efficient refrigeration actually and then of course it's narrower he says so you can find stuffs like oh I can find the mayonnaise you guys are gone don't have to get out on your hands and knees traitor right so I always see see how are you able to we get happened down its pneumatic yeah he redesigned it with a different kind of a drive like some kind of a gear thing but this was the prototype and this is what we have so guess where the refrigerator is game volume guess now right this push a button step on leave her actually and the fridge pops up that cool yeah and you can feel it's cold and then if you look down there well that that's the cool like that the coils are around the outside better Tabasco sauce leaked I have to get my scooper in my department so once everyday or depend how much you use it the compressor just fills up with here again to be able to lift the fridge up it doesn't seem to ever frost up so good like you defrost it this is what's supposed to be the freezer but really it's just garbage and then this is the compost so you just you know make your salad wash it here just compost finished product and we had to think about putting the chimney in here and you know I had to think it all in it and then this is what used to be the guest room now Jordy my son is moving in here so he's he's moved in a couple of car loads already and there's a poster there of a concept bill had it's a self-sufficient living system with 36 housing units and then there's one acre in the middle that's communal but it's all covered so in the Arctic it's perfect this is a little dining dome we have to that's you know he had a concept to make these buildings you need to get a building permit for anything over 100 square feet so this is just exactly 100 square feet or a 99 point whatever nothing square anyway it's all around so this is another dining area that we have that's it's all screened in but it's you know around tables nice because everybody can talk to each other and can pass the food around easily so if you want it to be outdoors or it's only for summer yeah yeah it's not usable in the winter I love this you do manage to find a rounded couch and that's can't be easy actually usually both of those halves are facing the little fireplace in the winter and that fireplace is so great because it gets like blue with this really really you just emanates heat around the fireplace you never remember nice so this is like the main living room when I realized that we weren't gonna travel the winter that he died I suggested we put a fireplace in here I can't take it down in the summer we need the space for a big dance or something but it just clicks out and then we have a big fireplace out here so this is like the equivalent to the front entranceway so it does have windows that look out but it's also we can block it off in the winter if we you know Christmas when people are coming we'll get the fire going in here and but if we don't have to heat it then it just saves a bunch of energy because that's plenty of living space on the other side yeah I just closed that big door yeah right I mean you know that wall is and in behind here is but this is certainly more open you can see it so it's another dining go how does the house behave all along the years so is he able to give you comfort no matter what whether you have outside yeah if it's you know if there's a big storm or anything we don't you know the only thing is if we get a big snowfall and then it gets warm sometimes the snow will stick on the skylights but very rarely because it's it just blows off right but you don't mind you miss having conventional windows or something that you come here and no I mean actually from every room in the house except the bathroom you can see outside I mean there's my bedroom I can lie in there that's a glass door I can look out if those blinds are drawn so we can see outside from every room is this a little bit like a summer well it's the dining room this is the major dining room at Christmas we turn up and put on the fireplace and warm it up and you know people sleep on the couches cuz there's room to sleep lots of people here this is the only room that we do have an air conditioner if it gets really super hot like when my dad stayed with us one summer he was just complaining so we put in this air conditioner it would close off all these blinds close that door we can put the air conditioner on and then it will get cooler than the other rooms we had a little fashion show up my party of old stuff I'd made so I work with four it's knitted and it makes a fabric that has firmed both sides when you knit it right I mean I was raised in Labrador in Goose Bay where it's cold and people wear fur next to their skin so when I saw a lady with a fur coat with a fur on the outside I said to my brother at least get a coat on inside out and I started knitting with leather like this is knitted leather mostly I work with beaver I'm a beaver weaver because it's very Canadian I did a lot of export in the time that I was really active in the fur trade use what you got right renewable resource and beaver is a rodent there's plenty of Beaver around and it is the softest so let me just show you this range shawl and I won the Canadian women Entrepreneur of the Year award in 1995 for international competitiveness because we brought so much money into the country this is crocheted it's called a hands-free shawl so it's like a shawl right you put it on you can do whatever you're doing wash dishes drive the car and it keeps you really warm and you can turn it into a big shawl collar and a coat or you can make it into a skinny scarf you know it can be a hood just wear like a big accessory piece how cool does it get here we're in Celsius so I don't know - 20 - 25 Celsius so that's pretty cold but inside here it's yeah you just close that door and you know I mean there is heat in the floors as I explained so it's a radiant heat so it's very nice it's just the big bathroom he said I didn't know how bigger was gonna be he was drawing circles on a piece of paper so we do have like all of the negative spaces he was gonna fill them in with gravel for you know to make it more solid I mean are you kidding where am I gonna put all my towels so all these negative spaces now you know in between all these domes so they've all got weird shaped walls and everything but it's perfect for you know storing stuff was the shower just bolted in yeah and the bathtub too really and all these cupboards right so we just shaped it in wire and set the table in and then covered it with expanded metal and some concrete and Nadiya marble do you need can you repair you can't hurt him we do have like where the light is it's hotter so it gathers dust like that's really the biggest problem right so once a year we go through around with some tsp and scrub where the lights are you can't chip it you know you can't put your fist through it like you could through gyproc you definitely break your fist and then there's another bedroom in here if we have two mattresses here so we can pull one down depends on that how many people show up to sleep over or so yeah he's just gonna carved into the walls yeah the cupboards you know the little closet they're taken out of the space no the two boys who helped build it grew up in the chalet we lived there and then Carmen came quite a bit later she's 11 years younger than the eldest so she grew up here this was her room but you know at the time that we moved in here the boys were teenagers they're just a couple years apart so we left them in the chalet so they were perfectly happy though that worked out quite well for them they were happy and then we have the swing it's just totally adjustable right so you can yeah so this is a pretty big space the thing is you know the temperature like we don't do anything in the summer as I said we have that room that we can cool down but 31 degrees out and it feels really nice in here yeah it's like a basement right look at my daughter's house they sleep in the basement cuz it's so cool in the summer and you go upstairs and it's like oh man it's hot but this is really a basement because you know our feet were up there right so it's it's all integrated into the earth and the earth is once you're below that 12 to 14 inches it stays cool and and in the winter how much you heating well not much we only have to heat up you know maybe 16 18 degrees and of course there's no drafts like that's where you lose a lot of heat in houses is through drafty windows and vents and things coming in so there's nothing and it also feels really nice there's something cathedral-like about the shape right it's not it's not over your head it makes you want to stand up taller the white was important probably right well yeah because it's very reflective and a white card you know light colored carpets and yeah we wanted it to be you know to be bright we feel helped because there are no lights on no no no you have much more natural light from the sky if you have a window here you're just getting bounced light right because Sun shines down in so you're getting reflected like more whereas the skylight you're getting pure light that's with these circles you can you can watch them fall follow them around during the day because as the Sun moves out of the circles there's a certain time of day you can't watch TV because it's got the circles on it Cassie come on everybody doesn't want you to jump on them all the time no they don't I never thought about sky lights only would be enough oh yeah but it really is yeah it's caves but it's bright caves you think of as dark but it's shelters you in such a way there he's for you it's like going back to the womb so your husband also did a lot of work with airplanes well he is most famous actually for flying with birds they made a movie about it Columbia Pictures called fly way home he flies ultralights he got lonely so he trained some birds to fly with him and then he thought I'll take him on migration so it's little across the lake Canada geese right and then scientists approached him and said you know there's problems with whooping crane the whooping crane is hiding endangered and they used to be have an easterly migrating flock and so he wanted to reestablish the easterly migrating flock of the whooping cranes he was only a Nardo I mean the man could build anything fly anything derive anything build anything I mean he built this house and he built all kinds of things in his career at one point he got all inspired me built a slight size replica of a lunar module he just wanted to build it cuz you know man I just landed on the moon and so we went to the bank and borrowed money to buy build a life scale replica of the lunar module yeah we were gonna make a little guest suite out of it you know and I was earning lots of money I mean my business was really taking off because it was new I mean I really changed the whole fur trade so and it was great you know we were a great team I got to work in the soft stuff and he's out there hammering metal in the anvil and you know so we were for a good contrast this big tower was one of the themed sculptures for Expo 86 it was transportation the one in Vancouver this was the land transportation Plaza yeah so this is the self-portrait that was done for the IMAX movie good old bill he's supposed to look up in shock hmm and the in the house is just covered in wildflowers yeah there's lots of grapes on the top and you don't see the home from this side at all no not even that no just you can see the ventilator there but this is the chalet this is where we this was on the property when we first bought it and we lived here with the two boys and then we built that house how this is Cadence's painting on my oil tank bills father goose that people know about him flying with the geese and I'm the beaver Weaver is my first shop okay yeah so it's just a short walk to work now that's great at one point we tried to put gardens up there but you know I got enough gardening already lots of vetch and and actually I harvest the grapes on the roof and make jelly in the ball yeah and then there's a door here so you know if I'm working in the garden I can sleep right in here and go to the bathroom is that taking my boots off well I have a pretty big vegetable garden this is really this is cool because it doesn't leave a scar like you know a little lower smaller so this is the temperature if there was nothing right yeah we do have to have square stuff so we hide it in this room washer/dryer finding having it yep back up fridge freezer [Music] all around is the base it's called Earth integrated there is no basement it's all basement if you want to look at it that way we call it earth integrated yeah do you guys want name water or nuts and then rin ago it's just the feeling of this different shape getting out of the box and really you know the advantages in this country where the temperature can vary you know easily a hundred degrees fahrenheit from the hottest day to the coldest day and but once you're below the frost line this constant temperature and it's very easy to deal with it's easy to bring it up if you don't lose any heat from drafts and then the summer you don't have to do anything just enjoy it [Music]

Channel: Kirsten Dirksen

Views: 457,626

Rating: 4.9049487 out of 5

Keywords: underground home, subterranean home, earth shelter, earth sheltered home, bioclimatic house, underground architecture, hobbit house, simple living, passive solar house, earth homes, natural building, earth building, sunken home, thermal mass, owner built home, DIY home, fly away home, bill lishman, a frame home, polymath

Id: RoGuvvzHY1A

Length: 23min 33sec (1413 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 17 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/BeryBnice]

So you’re telling me that it’s earth integrated?

[u/MeetMeInValhalla]

The movie was called Fly Away Home.

[u/GhostOfTimBrewster]

Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru?

[u/KibaK29]

When I watched this as a 4 year old I put chicken eggs in my pajama drawer because of this movie lol

[u/durgadurgadurg]

Everything looks very integrated into the earth

[u/chiupacabra]

"You can't break a whole egg by squeezing it."

Hmm..?

[u/TheCityWest]

I'm not sure if it shows, but it's really a pretty junky property. It's on beautiful land, but a lot of junk and it's not aging well. It's eventually going to have to be filled in.

[u/Jadencallaway]

I had a huge crush on that girl in 1996

[u/Vuz]

I think it being earth integrated makes it earth integrated which is how they built it so it can be earth integrated