I've spent a fair amount of time learning about earth-sheltered habitat. They've been a favorite of mine ever since finding Gideon Golany's book at work back when I was 16. I also grew up in The Land Of Earthships so it was kind of second-nature. It's fair to say that I spent my 20s wanting to live semi-underground.

"semi" because you need some sort of window. The ideal earth-sheltered habitat is cut into a south-facing hillside where it's cold and a north-facing hillside where it's hot. They're very siting-dependent. And that's where, if you start getting serious about it, you understand that earth-sheltered habitat is a specialty adaptation for places where habitability is greatly impacted. It makes a lot of sense in places like Coober Pedy and Cappadocia. Not so much anywhere standard stick construction works.

Subterranean dwellings have severe humidity problems. They have severe water ingress problems. And they're really difficult to remodel, expand, or otherwise augment/modify the way anyone else's construction can be altered. On the face of it you wonder why they aren't adapted more, and then you realize that they used to be incredibly common - they're called root cellars and every farm had one. Nobody lived in them, though, because when your whole world is a basement you're a long way from living in a castle.

I used to be big into geodesic domes, too, until I started looking at them for real. Lloyd Kahn wrote the two books most responsible for adoption of the geodome back in the '70s and 20 years later he recanted. The statistic Paul Wheaton likes to quote (without sourcing) is that 80% of all geodesic homes ever built have been abandoned (not sold). After a while you start to get all Occam's Razor on it - "if it's such a great idea, why don't more people do it?"

Cob has its own problems. It's drafty, stinky and structurally transparent. A cob home is a bitch to permit (most stinky hippies don't). The actual construction costs also end up coming in about where stick-built houses do, as well, but without the resale value or longevity. Yeah, a thatched roof works but very few people continue to use thatch when they can get shingles.

Which is sort of a long way of saying that I've stopped thinking in terms of "no financial or geographic constraints?" I've come to terms with the fact that I spent 2 years living in Bellingham, WA and have spent the past 20 trying to get back. I've started focusing on what I can build or buy for the money that I can reasonably expect to wrangle, not the money that will never be mine. And I've started to focus on optimizing what is within my reach while drawing inspiration from that which is truly impractical.

So my ideas of "large castle-like.JPG) dwelling on an island with parapets and shit" has been tempered by the needs of having it close to town with enough land to build a clinic on it so that my wife can set up her birth center without having to commute close enough that her clients can get there quickly and comfortably. My dreams of a hundred acres upon which to practice permaculture have been tempered by the realization that I could feed myself on 5 acres and would probably spend 80% of my day doing so if I went that way. And what I've ended up with is "somewhere close to Bellingham with enough land to grow crops on close enough to town that people don't think it's that much of a drive."

And somehow, the fact that the dream has been vetted makes the dream more exciting. Knowing all the steps on the ladder to the castle in the sky somehow brings it closer. Understanding the minute advantages and disadvantages of that I seek makes it more realistic to hold in my head.

My cousin bought a bus. He traded it up for a motor home. He bailed on the motor home and got a house as soon as he could. There's a certain lifestyle that a bus conversion affords, but even when I lived that lifestyle I much preferred other approaches.