Grand Designs (1999–…): Season 3, Episode 7 - The Underground House, Cumbria - full transcript
Helen Gould and Phil Reddy wanted their home to make the most of spectacular views, but they also wanted it to be ecologically friendly. Their solution was to build an earth-sheltered home, with most of the house built into the hi...
They look at it and
think, can we really
fit a whole house
into a space this big?
Some people would think, wow, you
know, Phil and Helena have got to be
slightly mad living in a hole
in the middle of Cumbria.
It looks terribly dark and pokey.
It's just black.
Cumbria is a wild and
beautiful part of Britain.
And to live out in this rugged place
would be, well, it would be wonderful.
And surely a brand new
house would stick out
like a sore thumb
here and spoil the view
for everybody.
Well, this week's
couple aren't going to
build their dream
home in this landscape.
They're going to build under it.
And this is where the house will be going.
A disused sandstone quarry in the
Eden Valley with a house-sized gap
conveniently quarried
out over 100 years ago.
The plot has spectacular views.
And it's been
bought by a local vet,
Helen Gould, and her
partner, Phil Reddy.
Both are keen
environmentalists, so they're
planning to slot an
earth-sheltered eco-house.
into the hole.
Is there an emotional reason for
building here into the side of a hill, into
the earth?
Well, there is, yes.
There's something really appealing
to me about being within, held by the
earth, I guess,
being buried away.
We'll get this wonderful,
peaceful nature
of the buildings, but
we're also hiding away
in the sense that we're not imposing
ourselves on the landscape in a way
that all too often buildings do.
Yeah, that's true, yes.
But is it for you important
to feel rooted in this way?
Not as important, no.
Because I feel quite rooted in the
community anyway, with being a local vet.
Because of your job?
Yes, yes.
In fact, I didn't really quite fancy
the idea of an earth-sheltered house,
first of all.
I wanted an eco-house,
and I didn't really
mind what sort of
eco-house it was, as long
as it was.
And we looked at the various performance
of different types of eco-house,
and earth-sheltered houses
come just way above the others.
So does this fortress go, then?
Yeah, it does.
Yes.
And they got to come out, and the
walls have got to be taken back a little
bit to straighten them off.
OK.
Even so, it doesn't seem
like a huge sight, this.
No, it's not really.
That's a slight concern.
We look at it and
think, can we really
fit a whole house
into a space this big?
The three-bedroomed eco-house will
be slotted into the hillside and buried
under tons of insulating earth.
To gain as much
light as possible, the
south-facing elevation
will be entirely glass.
The house will be upside down, so
the bedrooms will be on the ground floor
behind a large
conservatory area.
The living rooms will be upstairs.
The back of the
house, which potentially
will be very dark,
will be lit by sun pipes.
The layout means
that from the main living
area, you get to see
those glorious views.
The build also includes a
separate one-room veterinary space.
This element was crucial in
getting planning permission.
The budget for the build is 220,000.
The half-acre site
costs 23 grand, and it'll
be paid for with
capital from the sale of
Phil's previous house and an
Ecology Building Society mortgage.
The schedule is an economical 22 weeks.
It's going to be a challenging year
because Helen's expecting a baby.
You're having a baby, aren't you?
Yes, I am.
As well as giving birth to a house.
The baby's slightly easier than the house.
South to south, the man!
I'm not building this.
Due in August.
Yes, the beginning of August.
But your house won't be ready
for... The end of the four weeks.
Oh, it will be.
It'll be ready.
Everybody says that.
It's generally accepted in the
building trade that once you've got your
foundations built, from then
on, the build's straightforward.
You're out of the ground.
The trouble, of
course, with this
build is that they
never really do get out.
of the ground.
It's April the 3rd and
the build's starting.
This idealistic eco-friendly project
kicks off with a bit of destruction.
The first thing to do
is dig out and enlarge
the hole where the
house is going to go.
They need to lose up to seven
metres off the side of the rock face
and dig at least three metres
down to position the house.
Because of all the heavy machinery,
this phase of ground working is costing
Phil and Helen
almost £4,000 a week.
So, the pressure's on.
There's a lot of enthusiasm and
goodwill on this unusual project, but not a
lot of experience.
Neither the architect nor the project
manager nor the structural engineer
has ever built an underground house.
The architect, rather
ominously, is called John Bodger.
Phil and Helen have
got to be slightly mad
living in a hole in the
middle of Cumbria,
designed by an architect
with a surname like mine.
You might say that was the kiss of
death, but in fact I think they're very
switched on.
The notion of living in holes
in the ground, it's nothing new.
A caveman did it and in ancient
Turkey there were underground cities
with hundreds of thousands
of people living underground.
One way that I like to think of it
is that in days of the caveman,
man lived in caves to protect
himself from the environment,
whereas now Phil
and Helen are going
to live in a hole in
the middle of Cumbria.
Phil and Helen are going to live
in a hole in the ground, in a sense,
to protect the environment
from the effects of man.
It's a nicely gone full circle.
I have to say the first part of the
build was a bit frightening in a way,
because it was worrying to see
how quickly our beautiful bit of hillside
was transformed into a
building site, really, which it is.
But you can see it from miles away.
You can see the red soil
from miles and miles away
and it's quite a blot on the
landscape at the moment.
They're only a week in and
there's a problem at the vet space.
They've discovered an
enormous underground hole,
three and a half metres
across and three metres deep.
It poses a real problem for the
project manager, John Trengrove.
Quite a serious problem.
It's going to delay the project,
I would think, a
week or two weeks on
here before we can
do anything to decide.
The options that
we've got are to fill it
up with concrete or
to move the building.
And then obviously
there are concerns of
whether there may be
other holes in the area.
Later that day, they unearth another
hole on the other side of the site.
It's very similar to the other.
There's this surly clay.
It's about two, three, three
and a half metres along,
about two and a half metres
deep, but very, very similar.
It's been formed
in the same manner
as the hole that we've
seen across there.
These are naturally occurring
voids, solution holes formed by water
where sandstone and limestone overlap.
Wouldn't mind betting
that there are some more.
Yeah.
But they need to be dealt with.
Work on the vet space
is halted while John
Trengrove and John
Bodger scratch their heads.
Whilst that was worrying in a way,
and it's going to cost us a bit more,
it was also kind of quite
nice in a way as well,
because it's like the earth is
still exerting its own character,
whatever we're going to do
to it, which is comforting really.
With nothing
happening on the vet
space, manpower is
redirected to the house.
Insulation is going down on top of
a base layer of concrete blinding.
Phil and Helen will have no heating
in this house. They won't need it.
The house will be super insulated
both by the earth, which covers the
concrete blockwork,
and 300mm of blown foam insulation,
which will envelop the whole structure.
This is six times the insulation
used in a normal house.
Next, a waterproofing layer
goes down on top of the insulation.
The first rule of an underground
house is that it must be watertight.
Any leak could be catastrophic,
because there's just no way of repairing it
once the building's buried.
The layers need to be
meticulously measured
and overlapped
by a specialist firm.
After much debate, they've
found a solution for the vet space.
And we're going
to have to move the
veterinary bed, this
part of the building.
We're going to have to
move it down the side.
And probably, what
I don't want to do
is, if we move it too
far down the side,
we're going to run into problems with
the amount of parking space we've got.
Right.
And we're going to have
to move it down the side.
And probably, what
I don't want to do
is, if we move it too
far down the side,
we're going to run into problems with
the amount of parking space we've got.
So what we'll do, we'll
move it a metre down,
and we're going to actually cut
the corner off the building inside.
So instead of having a square
corner, it'll have an angled corner.
Right.
And I think that way,
we'll get around each other.
With the vet space repositioned, the
hole can be backfilled with earth taken
from elsewhere on site.
A neat, cheap and
environmentally friendly solution.
It's gone.
That's amazing, isn't it?
There's nothing left.
You wouldn't think there was a
hole there, would you actually?
No, you wouldn't, if you could stand on it.
Hey, that's great.
That's really good to
get that sorted, isn't it?
Because that was going
to be a real problem.
It's a shadow, you think?
What, losing that hole?
Yes.
You needed to go.
Yes.
Potentially, there was
quite a lot of expense
involved in getting
that sorted, so...
That's true.
I think we've
managed to deal with it
fairly, fairly cheaply,
relatively cheaply,
which is much better
as far as I'm concerned.
And it means we can get on. I mean,
that was the danger, that it was just.
going to delay things, so...
I'm glad to have got it sorted.
Phil and Helen are ploughing
all their resources into this build.
Since they both work full time,
Phil with the Cumbrian tourist board,
they're often only able to
get to site in the evening.
Oh, she's white.
Is this the waterproofing?
This must be the waterproofing, mustn't it?
What is this stuff?
It's amazing, isn't it?
Actually, it's not what I was expecting.
I was expecting something more like
a rubber material. This is like plastic.
It's kind of plastic, isn't it?
It's probably not very ankle.
No, I guess we don't have too much choice.
Yeah.
So... It lookes like a big
paddling pool, doesn't it?
Let's hope it doesn't
rain overnight and fill up.
From nothing to this in two weeks.
Yeah, I know.
There's still a long way to go,
and the house Phil and Helen are
building couldn't be more experimental or
challenging.
Cumbria's first underground
house is in its fourth week.
The steels that will form
the floor are in place,
and the major element of this
build is coming on site - concrete.
76 tonnes of it will form
the solid 300mm base layer.
This house will need
a few more years
of work, and it's a
very small building.
It'll weigh in at 500 tonnes when
built, around two and a half times more
than a normal house.
Considering the
complexity of the ground
works, the house is
surprisingly on schedule,
but the vet space is still slightly behind.
It's week five, and up at the house,
they're starting to build the walls.
These look incredibly
heavy, these, aren't they?
Yes, they are.
Well, they... In fact,
how much do they weigh?
Oh!
Oh, I don't know.
They're not quite as heavy as they are.
They're not quite as heavy as they are.
They're not quite as heavy as they are.
I think they're a little bit
more heavy than they are.
They're a bit more heavy than they are.
How much do they weigh?
They weigh probably about two stone.
Good Lord.
How many can you lift in a day?
Two to 300.
Tiring work.
Very.
With four and a half thousand of
them to manhandle into position,
this looks like it could be a long build.
The walls for this building
have to be impregnable.
They start with
these steel reinforcing
rods, which are
buried into the floor.
They, in turn, are connected
together with even more steel,
and then again, even more.
They're encased with these very
heavy top spec concrete blocks,
which, in turn, are filled
with even more concrete.
So the whole thing, in
the end, is a... bunker.
And let's face it, it needs to be.
These walls will have to resist the
horizontal pressure of the tons of earth
that'll be pressed up against them.
So now, are you pleased?
Yeah, the progress has been really good.
It's been very rapid so far.
It's been a month on site,
just over a month, I think.
And what started as
a smallish hole in the
ground is now a bigger
hole in the ground.
- It's actually bigger.
- It is, that's right.
These have turned out
really kind of very strong.
Pretty massive stuff, hasn't it?
Lots of structural engineers dream, really.
They like to do all this stuff,
but it's very much for a purpose.
We know it's structural.
There's also this heat sink.
All the warmth, the sunlight, the
daylight that comes into this building,
it's going to go into there.
And were you perturbed at the idea of
designing a building which nobody was
going to see?
So it's all about quietness and
losing the structure and hiding it away.
Absolutely.
It's got to sit very, very
quietly in the environment.
And it will do. It's very discreet.
There were some interesting
things to wrestle with.
How do we get daylight into the back
of the house and so on and so forth?
Well, that's not a big issue.
People think automatically that
this is, because it's covered with earth
and it's got sides to it.
It's only got one elevation.
It's going to be really dark.
And it's not a toy. It's going to
be a really, really light house.
Week eight, and the
internal walls are going up,
made like the rest of
the house of concrete.
Here lies the contradiction
at the heart of this build.
It's an eco-house, but made from
one of the environmental bad guys.
Concrete's a mix of aggregate,
sand, water and cement.
The problem, environmentally speaking,
is that cement needs phenomenal
amounts of energy to make it.
It's the biggest
manufacturing source of CO2,
releasing a tonne
of carbon into the
atmosphere for every
tonne of cement produced.
That's two billion
tonnes globally every
year, more than all
the world's aircraft.
You are building a house out of concrete.
Yes.
But concrete is maligned.
I've finished, yeah. Hang on.
And you're using
very modern, very
synthetic, very
high-performing materials.
I agree, there's compromises to be made.
And they haven't been made lightly.
It seems to be a fairly
major compromise, isn't it?
Yes, there is quite high-embodied energy.
There are issues about
it, and yet as a material,
a great deal of the mass
in there is simply stone.
And it's local stone, as Helen said.
It's not coming a long distance away.
So we're using material
that's from the local landscape,
and we're using material that's
got a tremendously long life.
So you go to Rome and you
look at some of the structures
that the Romans built of poured concrete.
The Pantheon.
Yes, they did.
You know, this wonderful
building in the middle of Rome
is still standing, you know,
2,000 years since that was created.
This building will... We hope
it will last a few hundred years.
And to be fair, if
you want to build
underground, concrete's
the only way to do it.
This build is something of an
adventure into the unknown.
But fingers crossed, so far, so good.
Nice.
Isn't this funny, how they're
using this different brick?
This is Tom's room.
It's quite nice.
A shower room.
A shower.
Not all felt about the space.
Going to our bedroom now.
So which side of the bed
are you going to sleep?
All the way to the other room.
It's amazing because
it's now a house and
not a box, or becoming
a house, isn't it?
These internal walls have
come up quite fast, haven't they?
Yeah.
Which is good.
I do like this curved wall.
Yeah.
Because it makes the space look smaller,
so the rooms are not that big,
and you think, "Oh, goodness me."
I know.
And... And there I was, I think.
And cluttered up with
all this stuff as well.
But no, it's going to be a small,
neat, tidy, cosy house, I think, isn't it?
Nature isn't exactly helping
this eco-project along.
The weather's been awful.
Cumbria's had 60% more rain than usual.
I'm about nearly two weeks behind
programme, I think, at the moment,
which I need to call back.
Part of that is due to the
block work with the steel work
and the concrete infill
is taking a little bit longer
than perhaps when I programme
the work several months ago.
That I'd anticipated.
We've had a little bit of inclement
weather as well, which hasn't helped.
Building an
underground house is a
bit like building a
swimming pool, really.
The basic box has to be strong
enough not to collapse or to crack.
And it has to be waterproof.
The difference is,
really, of course, that
a swimming pool has
to keep the water in,
whereas this has to keep
the water out of the water.
It has to keep the water
out permanently and totally,
which I think is a nigh-on impossibility.
The same waterproofing
company that did the base
have come back to cover
the sides of the house.
The first thing to go
on is a layer of bitumen.
What is this stuff that you make?
Bichthene is a
self-adhesive membrane
which comprises a
modified bitumen compound
with rubber for flexibility,
tack and adhesion.
Married to a plastic cross-laminated
carrier film to give stability
when applied to the wall
to allow for movement.
No, look, it's a layer of plastic
sheet with a thick glue on the back.
Essentially, yes.
It's like sticking back
plastic, this, isn't it, really?
Don't forget, once this is
buried under tonnes of earth,
there won't be any chance
of accessing this stuff again.
Now, this sticks really, really
well to this block, but it's dry.
I can imagine in the damp,
and it gets very damp up here,
very damp, that it would be
difficult to get this to really stick.
Yes, well, you must
prime the substrate first,
and the primer is damp surface
tolerant to overcome exactly that scenario.
You mean you can stick it in the wet?
You can stick it in the wet.
Once it's buried and underground,
is it then stable forever?
Yes, it should be, barring an earthquake.
We would not envisage a problem.
We would expect the
waterproofing membrane
to survive for the
life of the structure.
Right, well, that's it, isn't it?
We've got him on tape saying that.
I checked that before, OK?
Week 12, and the first
floor concrete is down,
so at last we can see what
the ground floor rooms look like.
Or can we?
Ever since this project began,
I've had two little niggling doubts.
One is that this building isn't going
to be able to keep the water out.
And the other is that it's
going to be very, very dark.
And I just can't seem to
shake those doubts off.
OK.
Underground houses are unusual.
There are only 29 in the UK, but
living underground is as old as the hills,
as old as humankind itself.
It's not just about
primitive cave dwelling.
These rock houses at
Kimver edge in Staffordshire
date from the mid-16th century
and were in use up until the 1960s.
Hewn out of the sandstone Ridge,
the houses were very dry and cheap.
Some of them have
been restored and
are now maintained
by the National Trust.
There's been a handful
of underground houses
built in Britain in
the last 20 years.
They're very underground.
I don't mean just built into a cliff.
I mean built into a whole
dugout of the ground.
So surely they must be cold, clammy, dark.
This holiday home in
Pembrokeshire by Future Systems
actually shows just
how light and comfortable
a modern underground
house can be.
Built in 1998, its organic
shape both echoes and fits
within the contours of
the surrounding landscape.
And one of the reasons it is so
light is that it's only one room deep.
Whereas Phil and Helen's square
house will be three rooms deep.
So does it feel, although
the building's going up,
that it's also getting smaller inside?
In some ways it does and in
other ways it's kind of expanding.
Is this your bedroom?
This is our bedroom,
which seems quite small.
I brought a tape measure up the other
day, didn't I, just to check the size.
You did?
Just to make sure it wasn't.
Doesn't trust his life.
No, I do trust you.
Everything's three feet
smaller than it should be.
Yeah.
And then what's through it?
This is your stairwell, isn't it?
Yeah, that's the stairwell.
And then there are small
rooms behind as well.
So there'll be quite a lot
of light coming down there.
Ah, nice. I'm glad you said
that, because looking that way...
It looks terribly dark and pokey.
It's just black.
Yeah, yeah.
Stygian gloom.
I mean, those rooms
have got no light, other
than artificial
lighting, haven't they?
No, they haven't.
And what about back here?
But it's only a bathroom and a shower room.
You know.
And this room, what's
this room going to be?
This is Tom's room.
Ah, baby's room.
Yes.
This is a bit lighter, but
again, no sun pipe in here.
No, but we'll have glass in that wall,
and we'll cut into that space
and create long, narrow windows.
Right.
I don't think I'm ever so
worried about the level of light.
We are a little bit.
You're a little bit.
I'm a little bit.
This water that's in here,
how's that got here? Is that...?
That's here from before
the roof went on, I think.
Really? It's not coming through the walls?
No, absolutely not. Definitely not.
Outside, work presses on.
It's mid-June now, and next comes
yet more man-made insulation.
Massive, unwieldy 300mm thick blocks,
which need to be wrapped
around the house to insulate it
and cushion it from the soil and rock.
Stop swearing.
Stop swearing?
So having built your concrete bunker,
there are four things you need to do to it.
You need to waterproof
it with a layer of
high-tech, sticky-back
plastic, like that.
You then need to insulate
it with polystyrene blocks.
You then need to put
a layer on top of that,
which carries all
the excess water in
the soil down and
away from the building.
And, fourthly, you need to
add a layer of Mother Earth.
And lots of it.
300 tonnes, in fact.
The house gets buried
back into the rock face.
It's being backfilled in stages,
just up to the first floor for now.
Soft, Sandy earth
excavated on site is
tipped back in and
packed around the house.
This deep, it'll act like a
store for the sun's heat,
warming up slowly in the Autumn
and only cooling in the spring.
It's this delayed effect that'll help
to keep the house at a comfortable,
constant temperature.
The vet space is pretty much finished now.
It's very basic, but that's what we wanted.
At the moment, it's fairly
ugly, particularly this structure.
I mean, it's just a box, a box
covered with waterproofing,
which, you know, is not
very aesthetically pleasing.
But, of course, it's
going to be covered over,
and that will be...
it'll be nice when it is,
and we can start to feel like
we're becoming the quarry again.
A local firm of
stonewallers have the task
of covering up the
plastic waterproofing
with rather more aesthetically
pleasing Cumbrian stone.
At the house, the whole laborious
process of concrete block laying
starts all over again on the first floor.
John Trengrove, the
builder, isn't a main contractor.
He's what's called a management contractor.
He takes a fixed fee for this build
and passes on all the subcontractor's
bills to Phil and Helen at cost.
He was closely involved in the
early design and planning stages,
but with all that experience,
even he couldn't know
that the block laying would take
so long they'd be five weeks behind.
There has been a certain amount of unknown.
We're dealing with works in the ground,
and until you start excavating
into the ground, you're not sure.
It is a new type of project for
me as an underground house.
There's a lot of structural
concrete and steel.
And you are learning as you go.
Once we've got the structure completed
and the major earthworks completed,
we're moving closer towards
a traditional type of house.
Then you can estimate slightly better.
I don't really know
what to make of
the rather large
concrete struts we've got.
Yeah, I feel I'm quite
imposing at the moment.
But I'm fairly
confident it'll all soften
up with the hillside
and the ground.
Hillside and the grass.
I hope so.
I think it will do.
As part of their
eco-philosophy, Phil and
Helen want to minimise
their use of power,
and so they're
putting in sunpipes to
lighten the gloom in
the upstairs rooms.
These sunpipes are a bit of a
DIY challenge, it has to be said.
But all they are simply is a
stainless steel tubular mirror.
And on top of that sits a cover
to protect it from the elements.
And at the bottom is a diffuser
to spread the light in the room.
And they work simply by collecting
sunlight and bouncing it down the tube.
The manufacturers claim
that in the middle of summer,
one of these produces the same
amount of light as a 500-watt bulb.
And, boy, they're going to need it here.
The sunpipes, another
new technology for
John, are proving to
be a bit of a headache.
This is clear as mud.
He's trying to install the
first one at the vet space,
but the top parts aren't
designed for turf roofs.
I want to go home.
Whilst John tries to get
different collars for above ground,
the reflective tubes can at
least be installed up at the house.
They're having only three.
I would have gone for
five times that number.
They will make a vast difference
without any shadow of a doubt.
Once you've taken that film off
and you've got all that reflective area,
it takes away from the
total darkness, which
I think continuously,
if you lived here,
could be a little bit overpowering, really.
Today's the day the house
finally goes underground.
The roof gets buried under
the last of 1,000 tonnes of earth.
It's late July, and it's taken just
three and a half months to get here.
Sadly, Phil and Helen both miss
this symbolic moment of their build.
They've got another pressing commitment.
I was a bit disappointed not
actually to see the earth go on top,
cos I really wanted to.
That was kind of one
of the defining moments.
But, anyway, that wasn't going to happen.
It's nice now that we've got the...
Now that Tom's here, because,
of course, it is our family house,
but you always have
worries when you're pregnant
and things that...
Maybe things won't go quite right,
in which case it would be awful
to have the house, in a way.
But he's here.
So how does it feel,
though, to be stood on top?
It's tremendous. Of your house?
It's astonishing, actually,
to think, you know,
I've got photographs and you're
looking at half-buried and you think,
"Is there really a house down there?"
And then you look at this now and
you just go, "No, it is, it's excellent."
Does having Tom make
better sense of all of this?
That's an interesting question,
and I suppose one of the ideas
that we had in
building the house from
scratch was really to
get a sense of place,
and to create a sense of belonging,
create a place in which to belong.
And Tom, I guess,
compliments that, doesn't he?
You know, it's like the icing on the cake.
That's where you're going to
be playing when you grow up.
Later that day, Tom gets
introduced to his new home.
What the heck?
It's a truly underground house now.
What do you think, Tom?
Good as me, Phil.
It's completely different.
I know, I know.
It's stunning, isn't it, actually?
It's a bit scary, really, isn't it?
Here we go, Tom, this is
where you're going to be.
This is your bedroom. What do you think?
Eh? What do you think?
Viewed from above, the house has vanished.
Unfortunately, from the
front, it looks massive.
A concrete gun emplacement,
you can sure see it from the outside.
But will you be able to see
anything when you're inside?
It's early August.
The stonewalling on
the vet space is complete,
as is the main structural
workup at the house.
The upstairs rooms, thank goodness,
are considerably lighter,
drier and more beautiful.
Drier and more spacious
than the murky ground floor.
Are you happy about the size of rooms?
Yes, I think so. Yes, yes.
I mean, it's always
nice to have more space,
but I think they're
generously enough sized.
So for round here, what
can you buy for 250?
Hmm, nothing like this.
No?
You can buy some
interesting properties for 250,
but we've got a very
special place here in
terms of its position,
the view that we get
and the amount of land that we've got.
It's going to be quite unique.
There's still plenty to be done.
Phil and Helen have
decided to have sandstone
from a local quarry around
the outside of the house.
The massive eight-ton
boulders are cut in the quarry
and each one takes four hours to slice up.
But on site, there's a problem
with the conservatory glass.
It's the 5th of
September and Phil and
Helen had really
hoped to be in by now.
However, the
glazing company have
changed their delivery
date again and again
and they are now seriously
holding up this build.
So what does that mean
in terms of you getting in?
Well, it's just delaying it all the time.
So the date we've got
now is the 11th of October,
which is a Spanish date, which is a Friday,
and I'm due back at work on Monday
the 14th, which isn't the best timing.
The sandstone has been cut
and set around the outside of the house.
That pink sandstone is very appropriate.
Yes, lovely. I'm really pleased about that.
And you've still managed to
glaze the front of the building?
Yes. So you're sort of watertight here?
Yes, that's right.
That's why, one of the reasons it was done.
So that the plaster could get working.
You put the staircase in?
Yes, it's great, isn't it?
To have a connection now between the...
Well, it makes sense
of the building, actually,
because there was just
a huge shaft here before.
Yes.
That's just gone on this morning.
Be careful what you do.
Don't pull it up again.
Blimey, this is all plastered
out up here, isn't it?
It's great.
It's lovely.
It's light, spacious.
You wanted to say that?
It's light.
It is light. Up here it's nice and light.
Downstairs it's a bit dingy.
At the back, isn't it?
Yes, it is, yes.
But it's not been plastered yet.
OK.
If the first rule of
building underground
is that you have to
waterproof everything,
the second rule is that you
need some sort of fresh air.
This house only has windows on one side,
which means that stale air can
collect in the rooms at the back,
and that needs to be extracted.
But this house also
has no boiler, which
means that that stale
air has warmth in it,
which is very precious.
So how do you recover it with one of these?
This is a heat exchanger,
and what it does is it sucks in
the warm stale air on one side,
and over here it sucks in cool fresh air,
and it mixes the airflow
through these plastic plates
so that they don't
actually touch, but the
heat is transferred
from one to the other,
with the result that you get cold
stale air out there to the outside
and fresh warm air into
the living space this way.
It's 90% efficient, incredibly efficient,
and it does it all for 30p a week.
Four days later, and with
its aluminium frame up,
the conservatory
glass is finally getting
fitted, nearly three
weeks later than hoped.
Things aren't going smoothly.
Seven panes got broken in transit.
The architect, John
Bodger, has turned
up to see this final
part of the build.
We want to get the roof glazing on,
because yesterday it was
absolutely sheeting down with rain,
and it's just, again, it's
holding things back a bit now.
If we can get the roof glazing on,
get the atrium bit dry, then
things will move on again.
We like the colour,
we like the way it looks.
It really does give the
building its shape at last,
because we haven't seen that at all yet.
This is a major part of
the build, costing £18,000.
These massive
double-glazed panes are
made of top-spec,
highly insulating glass.
The inner leaf is coated K glass, which
reflects warmth back into the house.
It's completely
different now, isn't it?
I just think it looked great,
now it's kind of enclosed.
It does.
The colour of it, I think
the colour works well.
I like the colour, and
I like the formality.
It's sort of strong without
being too strong, isn't it?
I'm surprised at just how
thick the aluminium is, actually.
The penicillin.
I thought it was going to be...
Thinner than that...much
thinner than that, yeah.
I think it looks good. Do you?
We'll be looking through a
lot of stuff to look outside.
I can't believe it, really.
It's just everything's
so different, isn't it?
It's just... You know,
we've made a room here.
It wasn't a room before,
and now suddenly
it is, and it's
just... It's great.
It's looking like the house that we want.
It's just going to be such
a wonderful space to have.
'Phil and Helen
finally moved into their
fully glazed house
'on the 14th of October,
'eight weeks later than they originally
planned, 'but still not bad going.
'They've now been in
residence for three weeks.'
Evan, hi, coming in at the rain.
Nice to see you again.
How are you doing?
I'm all right. How are you?
Fine, thank you. How are you?
Very well, yeah.
This is quite something.
It's huge, isn't it? It is, really.
It's very exciting, quite impressive.
You walk in the door, it's... It's lovely.
There's a sort of
freshness, isn't there, about?
And there's a lightness and
an airiness about this space.
All of these windows are triple glazed,
and the idea is that that's
the heart of the house,
that we want to keep the
warmth in and hold the heat inside,
and that this is an intermediate space,
and it has that real feel of
halfway between inside and outside.
So do you use it? Have you sat in
here in the daytime and looked up...
We haven't sat in here.
Phil's been building
wardrobes in here
for the last two weeks.
I'll tell you what I do for example.
I get my breakfast and
I come and sit up there.
You have to go upstairs to
the sitting room, don't you?
Yeah, that's right.
So do you use this deck much out here?
I can use it for drying
and washing, actually.
Well, it doesn't sound
very romantic at all.
This is a nice big room, isn't it?
Lovely, isn't it?
Yeah.
Works well, doesn't it?
It's very comfortable.
You've still got a pink ceiling.
We have, and once that's painted
white, that's going to make it brighter.
Yeah.
This floor's nice, isn't it?
It's reclaimed
maple floor from a
tobacco factory in
Glasgow that Phil found.
It's beautiful.
We're really pleased with this.
It's got real character, hasn't it?
It's got a really nice, beautiful,
beautiful, beautiful, beautiful,
beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.
It's got real character, hasn't it?
As well as being a beautiful surface.
It's fantastic.
Yeah.
This space is not,
how shall I say, the
most designed of
contemporary spaces.
It's just full of your furniture, isn't it?
Your stuff you've brought here.
We grew up with
this house, like, from
nothing, if you like,
and it gradually changed.
So we had no idea what it was
going to be like when it was finished.
You need time, it seems to me,
to sort of live in it and experience it
before you can really make
good decisions about how to fill it.
To be quite honest,
from an environmental
point of view, you
don't, you know,
it's not really very environmentally
friendly to buy lots of new furniture.
And just throw away old stuff.
And throw away your old stuff, really.
So how's your kitchen?
It's great, as new.
That's all part and parcel,
isn't it, this big open plan space?
It is, yeah.
The kitchen's worked really well, I think.
Yeah, it's very nice, isn't it?
Yeah, and I love the
whole open plan aspect of it.
So you pinch a bit of light
from that window over there.
You get a bit of... We do.
But I notice that here
you've got the lights on.
We could turn it on.
We have, yeah, to the wall.
It's a very dark day today.
Yes, it is.
All right, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But this...
Well, have looked.
It does bring some light in, doesn't it?
This suddenly works, doesn't it?
There's quite a bit of
condensation in that.
It's just the building's drying out.
Yeah.
This is all right, actually.
Yeah.
I'm considering it's absolutely free.
I mean, that light doesn't
cost anything, does it?
No, it doesn't.
It's just coming from the
big light up in the yard.
So that's nice and light.
Yes.
This is reasonably light.
Yeah.
But downstairs must be what?
Really, really dark.
No, it isn't.
Come on down and have a look.
It isn't bad at all.
Isn't it?
No, it isn't.
The stairwell's actually quite
light, isn't it, with that sun pipe?
It is, yes.
It's abuttingly.
I'm keeping the treads open, so
you get a bit of light down here.
You can see through things.
Mind you, it is still
very gloomy, isn't it?
But you do get, on a bright day,
it's quite... It does flood down.
Yeah, but today isn't a bright day.
That's the point, you know.
It's not a bright every day.
But that doesn't matter.
I think one of the nice things about it
is the drama that you get from these
different light conditions.
And it's good to have those variations.
Drama.
And gloom.
No, I don't mean gloom.
I actually like gloom.
And then you're at this
end with Tom, are you now?
Are we going into Tom's room?
Oh, he's just waking up.
Hello.
Hello, Thomas.
Oh, can we get you up?
So Tom's room connects to yours now?
Yes, it does.
We decided to use this one, yeah.
Right, because your room was
going to be next door, is that right?
It was.
It was.
And you swapped.
Well, certainly we'd be near
Tom and then we could hear him.
It was easy for me to get up
in the middle of the night to him.
And this is altogether
much more light, isn't it?
It is a small room, though, isn't it?
Well, it's quite small, but it's adequate.
And you don't really feel that
it's small, because if you've got...
especially if you've
got the blinds up
here, you look out
there and you've got...
you know, you just see the whole thing.
But don't you think,
looking out there,
that huge conservatory
area, that you think,
"Mm, it would have been nice
to Rob some of that space."
Maybe, I don't know, stagger this
building so that the lower story projected
a bit more out into it, you see
could have bigger rooms down here.
Well, I don't know.
It depends on how
you choose to live
in the rooms that
you've got, doesn't it?
And, you know, this is
very much a sleeping space.
It's a storage space.
It works very well in that sense.
And, you know, if we ate away at
some of the space out there, then it would
change the feel of that.
And the reality is that you sleep in here.
You don't live in here.
We live out there, and that's what we want.
Inside, this is a fairly
conventional medium-sized house.
Outside, it's architecturally striking.
Thanks to the sheer glass
walls sliced into the hillside.
The build went over budget by £20,000,
but only because Phil and Helen
decided on a few more eco-editions.
Photovoltaic tiles to generate
some of their own electricity,
and a Reed bed sewage system.
In only 15 years, the
energy-saving features
of this self-sufficient
underground house
would have made up for the
environmental impact of all that concrete.
Do you feel enclosed here,
like the earth is sheltering you?
I don't really know whether I feel
that when we're inside that we have got
earth all the way round.
I don't. You know,
it doesn't feel
underground, I suppose,
in a negative sense.
You know, it is very much open and
light and airy and flooded with light.
And it's fresh and it's clean
and it's warm and things.
So in all of that sense,
it's very, very positive.
Those bars on the outside glazing
are quite substantial, aren't they?
You see beyond them, you know,
the light comes in, the view is out there.
That's where you're looking, your
eyes are looking on the things that are of
interest to you that matter to you.
So do you love your house?
Yes, I do love our house.
Yes, I do. I love the feel of it.
I love the air in it.
I like being particularly in this room.
We own every little bit of this house.
It's part of us, we're part of it.
We have got a building that
has a poetic nature to it, I think.
And part of the poetry is simply to
do with, you know, the house living and
breathing and not impacting
upon the environment.
Being able to exist
in much a greater
sense of Harmony
with things, if you like.
So its emotional resonance is there
rather than necessarily in its looks or
its surfaces or its decorative features.
It's in its ethos.
If an Englishman's home is his
castle, then this is a fortress, an
underground bunker, not
everybody's first choice.
But then theirs is an unusual
dream, not one filled with the modern
obsession for design statement.
In fact, this house isn't really
about design at all. It's about all this.
It's about the great
outdoors, about nature.
This house allows them to shelter
under the earth, allows them to gaze out
on this beautiful landscape, allows
them to care for the environment.
So for them, it works.
think, can we really
fit a whole house
into a space this big?
Some people would think, wow, you
know, Phil and Helena have got to be
slightly mad living in a hole
in the middle of Cumbria.
It looks terribly dark and pokey.
It's just black.
Cumbria is a wild and
beautiful part of Britain.
And to live out in this rugged place
would be, well, it would be wonderful.
And surely a brand new
house would stick out
like a sore thumb
here and spoil the view
for everybody.
Well, this week's
couple aren't going to
build their dream
home in this landscape.
They're going to build under it.
And this is where the house will be going.
A disused sandstone quarry in the
Eden Valley with a house-sized gap
conveniently quarried
out over 100 years ago.
The plot has spectacular views.
And it's been
bought by a local vet,
Helen Gould, and her
partner, Phil Reddy.
Both are keen
environmentalists, so they're
planning to slot an
earth-sheltered eco-house.
into the hole.
Is there an emotional reason for
building here into the side of a hill, into
the earth?
Well, there is, yes.
There's something really appealing
to me about being within, held by the
earth, I guess,
being buried away.
We'll get this wonderful,
peaceful nature
of the buildings, but
we're also hiding away
in the sense that we're not imposing
ourselves on the landscape in a way
that all too often buildings do.
Yeah, that's true, yes.
But is it for you important
to feel rooted in this way?
Not as important, no.
Because I feel quite rooted in the
community anyway, with being a local vet.
Because of your job?
Yes, yes.
In fact, I didn't really quite fancy
the idea of an earth-sheltered house,
first of all.
I wanted an eco-house,
and I didn't really
mind what sort of
eco-house it was, as long
as it was.
And we looked at the various performance
of different types of eco-house,
and earth-sheltered houses
come just way above the others.
So does this fortress go, then?
Yeah, it does.
Yes.
And they got to come out, and the
walls have got to be taken back a little
bit to straighten them off.
OK.
Even so, it doesn't seem
like a huge sight, this.
No, it's not really.
That's a slight concern.
We look at it and
think, can we really
fit a whole house
into a space this big?
The three-bedroomed eco-house will
be slotted into the hillside and buried
under tons of insulating earth.
To gain as much
light as possible, the
south-facing elevation
will be entirely glass.
The house will be upside down, so
the bedrooms will be on the ground floor
behind a large
conservatory area.
The living rooms will be upstairs.
The back of the
house, which potentially
will be very dark,
will be lit by sun pipes.
The layout means
that from the main living
area, you get to see
those glorious views.
The build also includes a
separate one-room veterinary space.
This element was crucial in
getting planning permission.
The budget for the build is 220,000.
The half-acre site
costs 23 grand, and it'll
be paid for with
capital from the sale of
Phil's previous house and an
Ecology Building Society mortgage.
The schedule is an economical 22 weeks.
It's going to be a challenging year
because Helen's expecting a baby.
You're having a baby, aren't you?
Yes, I am.
As well as giving birth to a house.
The baby's slightly easier than the house.
South to south, the man!
I'm not building this.
Due in August.
Yes, the beginning of August.
But your house won't be ready
for... The end of the four weeks.
Oh, it will be.
It'll be ready.
Everybody says that.
It's generally accepted in the
building trade that once you've got your
foundations built, from then
on, the build's straightforward.
You're out of the ground.
The trouble, of
course, with this
build is that they
never really do get out.
of the ground.
It's April the 3rd and
the build's starting.
This idealistic eco-friendly project
kicks off with a bit of destruction.
The first thing to do
is dig out and enlarge
the hole where the
house is going to go.
They need to lose up to seven
metres off the side of the rock face
and dig at least three metres
down to position the house.
Because of all the heavy machinery,
this phase of ground working is costing
Phil and Helen
almost £4,000 a week.
So, the pressure's on.
There's a lot of enthusiasm and
goodwill on this unusual project, but not a
lot of experience.
Neither the architect nor the project
manager nor the structural engineer
has ever built an underground house.
The architect, rather
ominously, is called John Bodger.
Phil and Helen have
got to be slightly mad
living in a hole in the
middle of Cumbria,
designed by an architect
with a surname like mine.
You might say that was the kiss of
death, but in fact I think they're very
switched on.
The notion of living in holes
in the ground, it's nothing new.
A caveman did it and in ancient
Turkey there were underground cities
with hundreds of thousands
of people living underground.
One way that I like to think of it
is that in days of the caveman,
man lived in caves to protect
himself from the environment,
whereas now Phil
and Helen are going
to live in a hole in
the middle of Cumbria.
Phil and Helen are going to live
in a hole in the ground, in a sense,
to protect the environment
from the effects of man.
It's a nicely gone full circle.
I have to say the first part of the
build was a bit frightening in a way,
because it was worrying to see
how quickly our beautiful bit of hillside
was transformed into a
building site, really, which it is.
But you can see it from miles away.
You can see the red soil
from miles and miles away
and it's quite a blot on the
landscape at the moment.
They're only a week in and
there's a problem at the vet space.
They've discovered an
enormous underground hole,
three and a half metres
across and three metres deep.
It poses a real problem for the
project manager, John Trengrove.
Quite a serious problem.
It's going to delay the project,
I would think, a
week or two weeks on
here before we can
do anything to decide.
The options that
we've got are to fill it
up with concrete or
to move the building.
And then obviously
there are concerns of
whether there may be
other holes in the area.
Later that day, they unearth another
hole on the other side of the site.
It's very similar to the other.
There's this surly clay.
It's about two, three, three
and a half metres along,
about two and a half metres
deep, but very, very similar.
It's been formed
in the same manner
as the hole that we've
seen across there.
These are naturally occurring
voids, solution holes formed by water
where sandstone and limestone overlap.
Wouldn't mind betting
that there are some more.
Yeah.
But they need to be dealt with.
Work on the vet space
is halted while John
Trengrove and John
Bodger scratch their heads.
Whilst that was worrying in a way,
and it's going to cost us a bit more,
it was also kind of quite
nice in a way as well,
because it's like the earth is
still exerting its own character,
whatever we're going to do
to it, which is comforting really.
With nothing
happening on the vet
space, manpower is
redirected to the house.
Insulation is going down on top of
a base layer of concrete blinding.
Phil and Helen will have no heating
in this house. They won't need it.
The house will be super insulated
both by the earth, which covers the
concrete blockwork,
and 300mm of blown foam insulation,
which will envelop the whole structure.
This is six times the insulation
used in a normal house.
Next, a waterproofing layer
goes down on top of the insulation.
The first rule of an underground
house is that it must be watertight.
Any leak could be catastrophic,
because there's just no way of repairing it
once the building's buried.
The layers need to be
meticulously measured
and overlapped
by a specialist firm.
After much debate, they've
found a solution for the vet space.
And we're going
to have to move the
veterinary bed, this
part of the building.
We're going to have to
move it down the side.
And probably, what
I don't want to do
is, if we move it too
far down the side,
we're going to run into problems with
the amount of parking space we've got.
Right.
And we're going to have
to move it down the side.
And probably, what
I don't want to do
is, if we move it too
far down the side,
we're going to run into problems with
the amount of parking space we've got.
So what we'll do, we'll
move it a metre down,
and we're going to actually cut
the corner off the building inside.
So instead of having a square
corner, it'll have an angled corner.
Right.
And I think that way,
we'll get around each other.
With the vet space repositioned, the
hole can be backfilled with earth taken
from elsewhere on site.
A neat, cheap and
environmentally friendly solution.
It's gone.
That's amazing, isn't it?
There's nothing left.
You wouldn't think there was a
hole there, would you actually?
No, you wouldn't, if you could stand on it.
Hey, that's great.
That's really good to
get that sorted, isn't it?
Because that was going
to be a real problem.
It's a shadow, you think?
What, losing that hole?
Yes.
You needed to go.
Yes.
Potentially, there was
quite a lot of expense
involved in getting
that sorted, so...
That's true.
I think we've
managed to deal with it
fairly, fairly cheaply,
relatively cheaply,
which is much better
as far as I'm concerned.
And it means we can get on. I mean,
that was the danger, that it was just.
going to delay things, so...
I'm glad to have got it sorted.
Phil and Helen are ploughing
all their resources into this build.
Since they both work full time,
Phil with the Cumbrian tourist board,
they're often only able to
get to site in the evening.
Oh, she's white.
Is this the waterproofing?
This must be the waterproofing, mustn't it?
What is this stuff?
It's amazing, isn't it?
Actually, it's not what I was expecting.
I was expecting something more like
a rubber material. This is like plastic.
It's kind of plastic, isn't it?
It's probably not very ankle.
No, I guess we don't have too much choice.
Yeah.
So... It lookes like a big
paddling pool, doesn't it?
Let's hope it doesn't
rain overnight and fill up.
From nothing to this in two weeks.
Yeah, I know.
There's still a long way to go,
and the house Phil and Helen are
building couldn't be more experimental or
challenging.
Cumbria's first underground
house is in its fourth week.
The steels that will form
the floor are in place,
and the major element of this
build is coming on site - concrete.
76 tonnes of it will form
the solid 300mm base layer.
This house will need
a few more years
of work, and it's a
very small building.
It'll weigh in at 500 tonnes when
built, around two and a half times more
than a normal house.
Considering the
complexity of the ground
works, the house is
surprisingly on schedule,
but the vet space is still slightly behind.
It's week five, and up at the house,
they're starting to build the walls.
These look incredibly
heavy, these, aren't they?
Yes, they are.
Well, they... In fact,
how much do they weigh?
Oh!
Oh, I don't know.
They're not quite as heavy as they are.
They're not quite as heavy as they are.
They're not quite as heavy as they are.
I think they're a little bit
more heavy than they are.
They're a bit more heavy than they are.
How much do they weigh?
They weigh probably about two stone.
Good Lord.
How many can you lift in a day?
Two to 300.
Tiring work.
Very.
With four and a half thousand of
them to manhandle into position,
this looks like it could be a long build.
The walls for this building
have to be impregnable.
They start with
these steel reinforcing
rods, which are
buried into the floor.
They, in turn, are connected
together with even more steel,
and then again, even more.
They're encased with these very
heavy top spec concrete blocks,
which, in turn, are filled
with even more concrete.
So the whole thing, in
the end, is a... bunker.
And let's face it, it needs to be.
These walls will have to resist the
horizontal pressure of the tons of earth
that'll be pressed up against them.
So now, are you pleased?
Yeah, the progress has been really good.
It's been very rapid so far.
It's been a month on site,
just over a month, I think.
And what started as
a smallish hole in the
ground is now a bigger
hole in the ground.
- It's actually bigger.
- It is, that's right.
These have turned out
really kind of very strong.
Pretty massive stuff, hasn't it?
Lots of structural engineers dream, really.
They like to do all this stuff,
but it's very much for a purpose.
We know it's structural.
There's also this heat sink.
All the warmth, the sunlight, the
daylight that comes into this building,
it's going to go into there.
And were you perturbed at the idea of
designing a building which nobody was
going to see?
So it's all about quietness and
losing the structure and hiding it away.
Absolutely.
It's got to sit very, very
quietly in the environment.
And it will do. It's very discreet.
There were some interesting
things to wrestle with.
How do we get daylight into the back
of the house and so on and so forth?
Well, that's not a big issue.
People think automatically that
this is, because it's covered with earth
and it's got sides to it.
It's only got one elevation.
It's going to be really dark.
And it's not a toy. It's going to
be a really, really light house.
Week eight, and the
internal walls are going up,
made like the rest of
the house of concrete.
Here lies the contradiction
at the heart of this build.
It's an eco-house, but made from
one of the environmental bad guys.
Concrete's a mix of aggregate,
sand, water and cement.
The problem, environmentally speaking,
is that cement needs phenomenal
amounts of energy to make it.
It's the biggest
manufacturing source of CO2,
releasing a tonne
of carbon into the
atmosphere for every
tonne of cement produced.
That's two billion
tonnes globally every
year, more than all
the world's aircraft.
You are building a house out of concrete.
Yes.
But concrete is maligned.
I've finished, yeah. Hang on.
And you're using
very modern, very
synthetic, very
high-performing materials.
I agree, there's compromises to be made.
And they haven't been made lightly.
It seems to be a fairly
major compromise, isn't it?
Yes, there is quite high-embodied energy.
There are issues about
it, and yet as a material,
a great deal of the mass
in there is simply stone.
And it's local stone, as Helen said.
It's not coming a long distance away.
So we're using material
that's from the local landscape,
and we're using material that's
got a tremendously long life.
So you go to Rome and you
look at some of the structures
that the Romans built of poured concrete.
The Pantheon.
Yes, they did.
You know, this wonderful
building in the middle of Rome
is still standing, you know,
2,000 years since that was created.
This building will... We hope
it will last a few hundred years.
And to be fair, if
you want to build
underground, concrete's
the only way to do it.
This build is something of an
adventure into the unknown.
But fingers crossed, so far, so good.
Nice.
Isn't this funny, how they're
using this different brick?
This is Tom's room.
It's quite nice.
A shower room.
A shower.
Not all felt about the space.
Going to our bedroom now.
So which side of the bed
are you going to sleep?
All the way to the other room.
It's amazing because
it's now a house and
not a box, or becoming
a house, isn't it?
These internal walls have
come up quite fast, haven't they?
Yeah.
Which is good.
I do like this curved wall.
Yeah.
Because it makes the space look smaller,
so the rooms are not that big,
and you think, "Oh, goodness me."
I know.
And... And there I was, I think.
And cluttered up with
all this stuff as well.
But no, it's going to be a small,
neat, tidy, cosy house, I think, isn't it?
Nature isn't exactly helping
this eco-project along.
The weather's been awful.
Cumbria's had 60% more rain than usual.
I'm about nearly two weeks behind
programme, I think, at the moment,
which I need to call back.
Part of that is due to the
block work with the steel work
and the concrete infill
is taking a little bit longer
than perhaps when I programme
the work several months ago.
That I'd anticipated.
We've had a little bit of inclement
weather as well, which hasn't helped.
Building an
underground house is a
bit like building a
swimming pool, really.
The basic box has to be strong
enough not to collapse or to crack.
And it has to be waterproof.
The difference is,
really, of course, that
a swimming pool has
to keep the water in,
whereas this has to keep
the water out of the water.
It has to keep the water
out permanently and totally,
which I think is a nigh-on impossibility.
The same waterproofing
company that did the base
have come back to cover
the sides of the house.
The first thing to go
on is a layer of bitumen.
What is this stuff that you make?
Bichthene is a
self-adhesive membrane
which comprises a
modified bitumen compound
with rubber for flexibility,
tack and adhesion.
Married to a plastic cross-laminated
carrier film to give stability
when applied to the wall
to allow for movement.
No, look, it's a layer of plastic
sheet with a thick glue on the back.
Essentially, yes.
It's like sticking back
plastic, this, isn't it, really?
Don't forget, once this is
buried under tonnes of earth,
there won't be any chance
of accessing this stuff again.
Now, this sticks really, really
well to this block, but it's dry.
I can imagine in the damp,
and it gets very damp up here,
very damp, that it would be
difficult to get this to really stick.
Yes, well, you must
prime the substrate first,
and the primer is damp surface
tolerant to overcome exactly that scenario.
You mean you can stick it in the wet?
You can stick it in the wet.
Once it's buried and underground,
is it then stable forever?
Yes, it should be, barring an earthquake.
We would not envisage a problem.
We would expect the
waterproofing membrane
to survive for the
life of the structure.
Right, well, that's it, isn't it?
We've got him on tape saying that.
I checked that before, OK?
Week 12, and the first
floor concrete is down,
so at last we can see what
the ground floor rooms look like.
Or can we?
Ever since this project began,
I've had two little niggling doubts.
One is that this building isn't going
to be able to keep the water out.
And the other is that it's
going to be very, very dark.
And I just can't seem to
shake those doubts off.
OK.
Underground houses are unusual.
There are only 29 in the UK, but
living underground is as old as the hills,
as old as humankind itself.
It's not just about
primitive cave dwelling.
These rock houses at
Kimver edge in Staffordshire
date from the mid-16th century
and were in use up until the 1960s.
Hewn out of the sandstone Ridge,
the houses were very dry and cheap.
Some of them have
been restored and
are now maintained
by the National Trust.
There's been a handful
of underground houses
built in Britain in
the last 20 years.
They're very underground.
I don't mean just built into a cliff.
I mean built into a whole
dugout of the ground.
So surely they must be cold, clammy, dark.
This holiday home in
Pembrokeshire by Future Systems
actually shows just
how light and comfortable
a modern underground
house can be.
Built in 1998, its organic
shape both echoes and fits
within the contours of
the surrounding landscape.
And one of the reasons it is so
light is that it's only one room deep.
Whereas Phil and Helen's square
house will be three rooms deep.
So does it feel, although
the building's going up,
that it's also getting smaller inside?
In some ways it does and in
other ways it's kind of expanding.
Is this your bedroom?
This is our bedroom,
which seems quite small.
I brought a tape measure up the other
day, didn't I, just to check the size.
You did?
Just to make sure it wasn't.
Doesn't trust his life.
No, I do trust you.
Everything's three feet
smaller than it should be.
Yeah.
And then what's through it?
This is your stairwell, isn't it?
Yeah, that's the stairwell.
And then there are small
rooms behind as well.
So there'll be quite a lot
of light coming down there.
Ah, nice. I'm glad you said
that, because looking that way...
It looks terribly dark and pokey.
It's just black.
Yeah, yeah.
Stygian gloom.
I mean, those rooms
have got no light, other
than artificial
lighting, haven't they?
No, they haven't.
And what about back here?
But it's only a bathroom and a shower room.
You know.
And this room, what's
this room going to be?
This is Tom's room.
Ah, baby's room.
Yes.
This is a bit lighter, but
again, no sun pipe in here.
No, but we'll have glass in that wall,
and we'll cut into that space
and create long, narrow windows.
Right.
I don't think I'm ever so
worried about the level of light.
We are a little bit.
You're a little bit.
I'm a little bit.
This water that's in here,
how's that got here? Is that...?
That's here from before
the roof went on, I think.
Really? It's not coming through the walls?
No, absolutely not. Definitely not.
Outside, work presses on.
It's mid-June now, and next comes
yet more man-made insulation.
Massive, unwieldy 300mm thick blocks,
which need to be wrapped
around the house to insulate it
and cushion it from the soil and rock.
Stop swearing.
Stop swearing?
So having built your concrete bunker,
there are four things you need to do to it.
You need to waterproof
it with a layer of
high-tech, sticky-back
plastic, like that.
You then need to insulate
it with polystyrene blocks.
You then need to put
a layer on top of that,
which carries all
the excess water in
the soil down and
away from the building.
And, fourthly, you need to
add a layer of Mother Earth.
And lots of it.
300 tonnes, in fact.
The house gets buried
back into the rock face.
It's being backfilled in stages,
just up to the first floor for now.
Soft, Sandy earth
excavated on site is
tipped back in and
packed around the house.
This deep, it'll act like a
store for the sun's heat,
warming up slowly in the Autumn
and only cooling in the spring.
It's this delayed effect that'll help
to keep the house at a comfortable,
constant temperature.
The vet space is pretty much finished now.
It's very basic, but that's what we wanted.
At the moment, it's fairly
ugly, particularly this structure.
I mean, it's just a box, a box
covered with waterproofing,
which, you know, is not
very aesthetically pleasing.
But, of course, it's
going to be covered over,
and that will be...
it'll be nice when it is,
and we can start to feel like
we're becoming the quarry again.
A local firm of
stonewallers have the task
of covering up the
plastic waterproofing
with rather more aesthetically
pleasing Cumbrian stone.
At the house, the whole laborious
process of concrete block laying
starts all over again on the first floor.
John Trengrove, the
builder, isn't a main contractor.
He's what's called a management contractor.
He takes a fixed fee for this build
and passes on all the subcontractor's
bills to Phil and Helen at cost.
He was closely involved in the
early design and planning stages,
but with all that experience,
even he couldn't know
that the block laying would take
so long they'd be five weeks behind.
There has been a certain amount of unknown.
We're dealing with works in the ground,
and until you start excavating
into the ground, you're not sure.
It is a new type of project for
me as an underground house.
There's a lot of structural
concrete and steel.
And you are learning as you go.
Once we've got the structure completed
and the major earthworks completed,
we're moving closer towards
a traditional type of house.
Then you can estimate slightly better.
I don't really know
what to make of
the rather large
concrete struts we've got.
Yeah, I feel I'm quite
imposing at the moment.
But I'm fairly
confident it'll all soften
up with the hillside
and the ground.
Hillside and the grass.
I hope so.
I think it will do.
As part of their
eco-philosophy, Phil and
Helen want to minimise
their use of power,
and so they're
putting in sunpipes to
lighten the gloom in
the upstairs rooms.
These sunpipes are a bit of a
DIY challenge, it has to be said.
But all they are simply is a
stainless steel tubular mirror.
And on top of that sits a cover
to protect it from the elements.
And at the bottom is a diffuser
to spread the light in the room.
And they work simply by collecting
sunlight and bouncing it down the tube.
The manufacturers claim
that in the middle of summer,
one of these produces the same
amount of light as a 500-watt bulb.
And, boy, they're going to need it here.
The sunpipes, another
new technology for
John, are proving to
be a bit of a headache.
This is clear as mud.
He's trying to install the
first one at the vet space,
but the top parts aren't
designed for turf roofs.
I want to go home.
Whilst John tries to get
different collars for above ground,
the reflective tubes can at
least be installed up at the house.
They're having only three.
I would have gone for
five times that number.
They will make a vast difference
without any shadow of a doubt.
Once you've taken that film off
and you've got all that reflective area,
it takes away from the
total darkness, which
I think continuously,
if you lived here,
could be a little bit overpowering, really.
Today's the day the house
finally goes underground.
The roof gets buried under
the last of 1,000 tonnes of earth.
It's late July, and it's taken just
three and a half months to get here.
Sadly, Phil and Helen both miss
this symbolic moment of their build.
They've got another pressing commitment.
I was a bit disappointed not
actually to see the earth go on top,
cos I really wanted to.
That was kind of one
of the defining moments.
But, anyway, that wasn't going to happen.
It's nice now that we've got the...
Now that Tom's here, because,
of course, it is our family house,
but you always have
worries when you're pregnant
and things that...
Maybe things won't go quite right,
in which case it would be awful
to have the house, in a way.
But he's here.
So how does it feel,
though, to be stood on top?
It's tremendous. Of your house?
It's astonishing, actually,
to think, you know,
I've got photographs and you're
looking at half-buried and you think,
"Is there really a house down there?"
And then you look at this now and
you just go, "No, it is, it's excellent."
Does having Tom make
better sense of all of this?
That's an interesting question,
and I suppose one of the ideas
that we had in
building the house from
scratch was really to
get a sense of place,
and to create a sense of belonging,
create a place in which to belong.
And Tom, I guess,
compliments that, doesn't he?
You know, it's like the icing on the cake.
That's where you're going to
be playing when you grow up.
Later that day, Tom gets
introduced to his new home.
What the heck?
It's a truly underground house now.
What do you think, Tom?
Good as me, Phil.
It's completely different.
I know, I know.
It's stunning, isn't it, actually?
It's a bit scary, really, isn't it?
Here we go, Tom, this is
where you're going to be.
This is your bedroom. What do you think?
Eh? What do you think?
Viewed from above, the house has vanished.
Unfortunately, from the
front, it looks massive.
A concrete gun emplacement,
you can sure see it from the outside.
But will you be able to see
anything when you're inside?
It's early August.
The stonewalling on
the vet space is complete,
as is the main structural
workup at the house.
The upstairs rooms, thank goodness,
are considerably lighter,
drier and more beautiful.
Drier and more spacious
than the murky ground floor.
Are you happy about the size of rooms?
Yes, I think so. Yes, yes.
I mean, it's always
nice to have more space,
but I think they're
generously enough sized.
So for round here, what
can you buy for 250?
Hmm, nothing like this.
No?
You can buy some
interesting properties for 250,
but we've got a very
special place here in
terms of its position,
the view that we get
and the amount of land that we've got.
It's going to be quite unique.
There's still plenty to be done.
Phil and Helen have
decided to have sandstone
from a local quarry around
the outside of the house.
The massive eight-ton
boulders are cut in the quarry
and each one takes four hours to slice up.
But on site, there's a problem
with the conservatory glass.
It's the 5th of
September and Phil and
Helen had really
hoped to be in by now.
However, the
glazing company have
changed their delivery
date again and again
and they are now seriously
holding up this build.
So what does that mean
in terms of you getting in?
Well, it's just delaying it all the time.
So the date we've got
now is the 11th of October,
which is a Spanish date, which is a Friday,
and I'm due back at work on Monday
the 14th, which isn't the best timing.
The sandstone has been cut
and set around the outside of the house.
That pink sandstone is very appropriate.
Yes, lovely. I'm really pleased about that.
And you've still managed to
glaze the front of the building?
Yes. So you're sort of watertight here?
Yes, that's right.
That's why, one of the reasons it was done.
So that the plaster could get working.
You put the staircase in?
Yes, it's great, isn't it?
To have a connection now between the...
Well, it makes sense
of the building, actually,
because there was just
a huge shaft here before.
Yes.
That's just gone on this morning.
Be careful what you do.
Don't pull it up again.
Blimey, this is all plastered
out up here, isn't it?
It's great.
It's lovely.
It's light, spacious.
You wanted to say that?
It's light.
It is light. Up here it's nice and light.
Downstairs it's a bit dingy.
At the back, isn't it?
Yes, it is, yes.
But it's not been plastered yet.
OK.
If the first rule of
building underground
is that you have to
waterproof everything,
the second rule is that you
need some sort of fresh air.
This house only has windows on one side,
which means that stale air can
collect in the rooms at the back,
and that needs to be extracted.
But this house also
has no boiler, which
means that that stale
air has warmth in it,
which is very precious.
So how do you recover it with one of these?
This is a heat exchanger,
and what it does is it sucks in
the warm stale air on one side,
and over here it sucks in cool fresh air,
and it mixes the airflow
through these plastic plates
so that they don't
actually touch, but the
heat is transferred
from one to the other,
with the result that you get cold
stale air out there to the outside
and fresh warm air into
the living space this way.
It's 90% efficient, incredibly efficient,
and it does it all for 30p a week.
Four days later, and with
its aluminium frame up,
the conservatory
glass is finally getting
fitted, nearly three
weeks later than hoped.
Things aren't going smoothly.
Seven panes got broken in transit.
The architect, John
Bodger, has turned
up to see this final
part of the build.
We want to get the roof glazing on,
because yesterday it was
absolutely sheeting down with rain,
and it's just, again, it's
holding things back a bit now.
If we can get the roof glazing on,
get the atrium bit dry, then
things will move on again.
We like the colour,
we like the way it looks.
It really does give the
building its shape at last,
because we haven't seen that at all yet.
This is a major part of
the build, costing £18,000.
These massive
double-glazed panes are
made of top-spec,
highly insulating glass.
The inner leaf is coated K glass, which
reflects warmth back into the house.
It's completely
different now, isn't it?
I just think it looked great,
now it's kind of enclosed.
It does.
The colour of it, I think
the colour works well.
I like the colour, and
I like the formality.
It's sort of strong without
being too strong, isn't it?
I'm surprised at just how
thick the aluminium is, actually.
The penicillin.
I thought it was going to be...
Thinner than that...much
thinner than that, yeah.
I think it looks good. Do you?
We'll be looking through a
lot of stuff to look outside.
I can't believe it, really.
It's just everything's
so different, isn't it?
It's just... You know,
we've made a room here.
It wasn't a room before,
and now suddenly
it is, and it's
just... It's great.
It's looking like the house that we want.
It's just going to be such
a wonderful space to have.
'Phil and Helen
finally moved into their
fully glazed house
'on the 14th of October,
'eight weeks later than they originally
planned, 'but still not bad going.
'They've now been in
residence for three weeks.'
Evan, hi, coming in at the rain.
Nice to see you again.
How are you doing?
I'm all right. How are you?
Fine, thank you. How are you?
Very well, yeah.
This is quite something.
It's huge, isn't it? It is, really.
It's very exciting, quite impressive.
You walk in the door, it's... It's lovely.
There's a sort of
freshness, isn't there, about?
And there's a lightness and
an airiness about this space.
All of these windows are triple glazed,
and the idea is that that's
the heart of the house,
that we want to keep the
warmth in and hold the heat inside,
and that this is an intermediate space,
and it has that real feel of
halfway between inside and outside.
So do you use it? Have you sat in
here in the daytime and looked up...
We haven't sat in here.
Phil's been building
wardrobes in here
for the last two weeks.
I'll tell you what I do for example.
I get my breakfast and
I come and sit up there.
You have to go upstairs to
the sitting room, don't you?
Yeah, that's right.
So do you use this deck much out here?
I can use it for drying
and washing, actually.
Well, it doesn't sound
very romantic at all.
This is a nice big room, isn't it?
Lovely, isn't it?
Yeah.
Works well, doesn't it?
It's very comfortable.
You've still got a pink ceiling.
We have, and once that's painted
white, that's going to make it brighter.
Yeah.
This floor's nice, isn't it?
It's reclaimed
maple floor from a
tobacco factory in
Glasgow that Phil found.
It's beautiful.
We're really pleased with this.
It's got real character, hasn't it?
It's got a really nice, beautiful,
beautiful, beautiful, beautiful,
beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.
It's got real character, hasn't it?
As well as being a beautiful surface.
It's fantastic.
Yeah.
This space is not,
how shall I say, the
most designed of
contemporary spaces.
It's just full of your furniture, isn't it?
Your stuff you've brought here.
We grew up with
this house, like, from
nothing, if you like,
and it gradually changed.
So we had no idea what it was
going to be like when it was finished.
You need time, it seems to me,
to sort of live in it and experience it
before you can really make
good decisions about how to fill it.
To be quite honest,
from an environmental
point of view, you
don't, you know,
it's not really very environmentally
friendly to buy lots of new furniture.
And just throw away old stuff.
And throw away your old stuff, really.
So how's your kitchen?
It's great, as new.
That's all part and parcel,
isn't it, this big open plan space?
It is, yeah.
The kitchen's worked really well, I think.
Yeah, it's very nice, isn't it?
Yeah, and I love the
whole open plan aspect of it.
So you pinch a bit of light
from that window over there.
You get a bit of... We do.
But I notice that here
you've got the lights on.
We could turn it on.
We have, yeah, to the wall.
It's a very dark day today.
Yes, it is.
All right, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But this...
Well, have looked.
It does bring some light in, doesn't it?
This suddenly works, doesn't it?
There's quite a bit of
condensation in that.
It's just the building's drying out.
Yeah.
This is all right, actually.
Yeah.
I'm considering it's absolutely free.
I mean, that light doesn't
cost anything, does it?
No, it doesn't.
It's just coming from the
big light up in the yard.
So that's nice and light.
Yes.
This is reasonably light.
Yeah.
But downstairs must be what?
Really, really dark.
No, it isn't.
Come on down and have a look.
It isn't bad at all.
Isn't it?
No, it isn't.
The stairwell's actually quite
light, isn't it, with that sun pipe?
It is, yes.
It's abuttingly.
I'm keeping the treads open, so
you get a bit of light down here.
You can see through things.
Mind you, it is still
very gloomy, isn't it?
But you do get, on a bright day,
it's quite... It does flood down.
Yeah, but today isn't a bright day.
That's the point, you know.
It's not a bright every day.
But that doesn't matter.
I think one of the nice things about it
is the drama that you get from these
different light conditions.
And it's good to have those variations.
Drama.
And gloom.
No, I don't mean gloom.
I actually like gloom.
And then you're at this
end with Tom, are you now?
Are we going into Tom's room?
Oh, he's just waking up.
Hello.
Hello, Thomas.
Oh, can we get you up?
So Tom's room connects to yours now?
Yes, it does.
We decided to use this one, yeah.
Right, because your room was
going to be next door, is that right?
It was.
It was.
And you swapped.
Well, certainly we'd be near
Tom and then we could hear him.
It was easy for me to get up
in the middle of the night to him.
And this is altogether
much more light, isn't it?
It is a small room, though, isn't it?
Well, it's quite small, but it's adequate.
And you don't really feel that
it's small, because if you've got...
especially if you've
got the blinds up
here, you look out
there and you've got...
you know, you just see the whole thing.
But don't you think,
looking out there,
that huge conservatory
area, that you think,
"Mm, it would have been nice
to Rob some of that space."
Maybe, I don't know, stagger this
building so that the lower story projected
a bit more out into it, you see
could have bigger rooms down here.
Well, I don't know.
It depends on how
you choose to live
in the rooms that
you've got, doesn't it?
And, you know, this is
very much a sleeping space.
It's a storage space.
It works very well in that sense.
And, you know, if we ate away at
some of the space out there, then it would
change the feel of that.
And the reality is that you sleep in here.
You don't live in here.
We live out there, and that's what we want.
Inside, this is a fairly
conventional medium-sized house.
Outside, it's architecturally striking.
Thanks to the sheer glass
walls sliced into the hillside.
The build went over budget by £20,000,
but only because Phil and Helen
decided on a few more eco-editions.
Photovoltaic tiles to generate
some of their own electricity,
and a Reed bed sewage system.
In only 15 years, the
energy-saving features
of this self-sufficient
underground house
would have made up for the
environmental impact of all that concrete.
Do you feel enclosed here,
like the earth is sheltering you?
I don't really know whether I feel
that when we're inside that we have got
earth all the way round.
I don't. You know,
it doesn't feel
underground, I suppose,
in a negative sense.
You know, it is very much open and
light and airy and flooded with light.
And it's fresh and it's clean
and it's warm and things.
So in all of that sense,
it's very, very positive.
Those bars on the outside glazing
are quite substantial, aren't they?
You see beyond them, you know,
the light comes in, the view is out there.
That's where you're looking, your
eyes are looking on the things that are of
interest to you that matter to you.
So do you love your house?
Yes, I do love our house.
Yes, I do. I love the feel of it.
I love the air in it.
I like being particularly in this room.
We own every little bit of this house.
It's part of us, we're part of it.
We have got a building that
has a poetic nature to it, I think.
And part of the poetry is simply to
do with, you know, the house living and
breathing and not impacting
upon the environment.
Being able to exist
in much a greater
sense of Harmony
with things, if you like.
So its emotional resonance is there
rather than necessarily in its looks or
its surfaces or its decorative features.
It's in its ethos.
If an Englishman's home is his
castle, then this is a fortress, an
underground bunker, not
everybody's first choice.
But then theirs is an unusual
dream, not one filled with the modern
obsession for design statement.
In fact, this house isn't really
about design at all. It's about all this.
It's about the great
outdoors, about nature.
This house allows them to shelter
under the earth, allows them to gaze out
on this beautiful landscape, allows
them to care for the environment.
So for them, it works.