Backyard Earthship Root Cellar With A Bottle Wall Sunroom On Top

Howdy everyone,

I'm looking into building a root cellar in my backyard to store our canned goods and maybe brew some beer for holidays.

We live in the "free zone" for permitting so it's not a big issue. But, I do want to make sure everything is designed and built super solid, like far past coding concerns, just to be safe.

I couldn't care less what the county thinks - just don't want anything falling down or apart for like maybe 100 years or more. right?

The house: built on a concrete and rebar encircled slab with a radient heat system.

I'm still new to google sketchup. But, I've managed to create a model that is close to exact size. The size and placement of the hole is still just an approximation. I could use some input there.

No jokes about the french door opening into the hole. The roof of the "root cellar" will be a bottle wall and roof sunroom. What kind of floor/ceiling is still in the works. We'd like to find something recyleable instead of building a regular deck.

I'll add that in the model after I get done with the first phase here, the backyard earthship.

So far the wall facing the house will be a tire retaining wall that leans back into the dirt. The other walls could maybe be can and papercrete walls since the dirt here is like sandstone.

Does anyone know how close to the house I can get with the top row of stepped back tires? As the model is, at the bottom of the hole at about 8' the bottom row of tires starts about 4 1/2'-5' from the foundation. That seems like the limit to me. But, could I get a little closer and maybe touch the slab of the house with the top layer of tires in order to get some cooling and heating from the slab into the tire wall?

Thanks!

It looks like I can't upload pics to this forum. Wha...? Okay, here you go.



This seems like a good place to cover the ongoing work too so I'll make this the tread for the whole project if I don't hear any objections.