[Greenbuilding] Earth-berming an existing home

[Bob Waldrop]

Or alternatively, what we did in Oklahoma City, insulate your existing 
walls, and build new interior walls inside your existing exterior walls and 
insulate those. Plant enough vegetation outside so that the house is 
completely shaded during the summer.  Make some insulated interior window 
shutters so you have at least R-20 on your windows and doors. Insulate 
underneath the house and of course the attic. Before doing all that, we used 
90 tubes of caulk and 20 cans of foam sealing every thing.

We've done quite well this summer.

Bob Waldrop, Okie City


-----Original Message----- 
From: Kat
Sent: Thursday, August 11, 2011 4:35 PM
To: Green Building
Subject: Re: [Greenbuilding] Earth-berming an existing home

Now that I read your post about the 46 consecutive 100 degree days I'm
understanding why you're thinking earth-berm instead of just insulation,
though!  I think I would tear down the wall on one side and around the
corners and rebuild it as a retaining wall.  Again, insulate it based on
recommendations from buildingscience.com - either with foam on the
outside or foam on the inside.

And I suppose.... I suppose if you built a new retaining wall next to
the outside (per Nick) and you insulated between the brick and the new
wall that you could eliminate the condensation issue.  And if you
drained the space between the walls and the space outside the new wall
using gravel & perf pipe.... maybe that would eliminate the possible
moisture-from-the-exterior problems.  So maybe you can do it, but it
makes me nervous.  At some point basements always get wet, in my
experience.  And if it did get wet you'd be trapping the moisture
between the brick and the wood.

-Kat

Leslie Moyer wrote:
> Can anyone point me to some information on what would be involved in 
> berming an existing above-grade home?  We have a typical 70's era brick 
> ranch home.  About half of the home has high windows and I'm wondering if 
> it would be possible to haul dirt in and berm up around the sides.  But of 
> course, it wasn't originally built for that.  So I'm wondering what might 
> be involved and what considerations should we take into account?  It's 
> built on a masonry block stem wall with a crawl space that is ventilated 
> right now.
> Leslie Moyer
> unschooler at lrec.org
> www.ShadyGroveNaturalFarm.com
>
>
>

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