Viewers are getting an unusual glimpse inside a home tunneled by hand into a Missouri hillside and a look into its low-energy design.
Half a century after an engineer began cutting into an Ozarks hillside, the underground home remains leak-free.
What's happening?
An unconventional homes expert, Kirsten Dirksen, toured the property in a YouTube video with Zane Conway, the son of the home's builder. Zane shared how his father spent years building the unusual home in the St. Francois Mountains of southeast Missouri.
Zane said the project began after his father bought the land in 1970, then he slowly built the house into the hillside without an architect and with very little outside assistance.
The home combines foot-thick, steel-reinforced concrete with a ventilation setup that sends incoming air through the surrounding earth before it reaches the interior, helping ease summer heat and winter cold.
Zane noted his father wanted the place to feel like a cave and disappear into the scenery.
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"Everything fitting into nature, not overwhelming nature, but living in a symbiotic relation with nature," he said.
Heavy oak beams, lanterns, and handmade steel details give the interior a feel somewhere between a railroad depot and a mine shaft. But as Dirksen explained while exploring the home, "It does feel like we're entering a mining shaft."
Why does it matter?
For many households, heating and cooling are among the biggest home energy expenses. But for this house, the setting itself serves as part of the temperature-control system.
While few people are likely to excavate a mountainside and pour massive concrete walls, passive design choices, such as natural insulation, careful ventilation, shade, and durable building materials, can all help make homes more comfortable and less expensive to run.
A well-built, sheltered home can offer protection from temperature swings and severe weather exposure, though it also requires extensive planning for drainage, structure, and airflow.
Since Zane's father, Conway, died in 2018, Zane has been restoring the underground home room by room while also caring for the rest of the 225-acre property.
One commenter wrote, "The main thing that I got from this documentary is that this man really loved his parents. For me it's not about the build, but the love that transferred."
Another commenter summed up the reaction many viewers had, writing, "A genuine labor of love. Incredible."
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