Earth Homes

It is a well known fact that the construction and operation of buildings consume the majority of the world's natural resources and energy, and contribute the bulk of landfill waste. Close to this fact is the issue of housing affordability to which majority of the worlds citizens fall victim to. Many housing problems could be traced to this issue of home affordability while in the backdrop, lies alternative ideas and means of providing less complex shelters that are more economical and sustainable, by the use of renewable and subsistent materials and techniques that are less tasking than the modern techniques of our present day'Construction technology'.Nature on its own has presented man with its abundant resources of Air, Land and Water, to which its management solely lies in the hands of man. Recent developments especially in the areas of Ecology and Architecture have identified unhealthy relationship between the built environment and nature. The breakthroughs in science and technology through the later 18th centuries saw an explosion in the trends/types of architectures that are presently characterized by their polluted, machine-dominated, dehumanizing, and environmentally unfriendly natures. This trend which in collaboration with other environmental defiant practices also contribute in the fast depleting, explosion-threatened world that is even now disintegrating and disappearing before our eyes. Hence it is left for our society to rethink the way we plan for development of the remaining open spaces. The need for an alternative idea towards providing affordable and more ecologically friendly Homes and Home designs has become a challenge to all that care about nature, thence the major target of this research and study is to identify the means and ideas that will aim towards this challenge.Therefore, the main objective here is to confer ideas aimed at creating environmentally friendly, energy efficient and more economical buildings and building designs, developed by effectively managing natural resources. This entails passively and actively harnessing solar energy and using materials which, in their manufacture, application, and disposal, do the least possible damage to nature's 'free resources'; water, ground, and air.As the population of the world continues to grow, so does the need for housing, thus cheap, easy to build accommodation for the thriving masses is a big problem in the developing world. Soil or Earth as it may be called, has been used in building homes for thousands of years and since Basic home ownership has become a thing too expensive for most people in developing countries, a possible solution to this would be the Earth-supported shelter, Earth-habitat, Earthen-material houses or Earth homes as the name may suit the case. This thesis provides ideas on the effective management of nature in building design and the process of integration with nature through the Earth home concept. Such ideas as ecological replacement scheme or ecology integration using traditional concepts of natural landform integration, natural orientation and effective methods of harnessing the climatic resources like the sun and winds, and a breakdown on the modes of building material selection and application to suit geographical and climatic conditions are among the issues discussed in this paper. The major emphasis here is to utilize these natural resources integrated effectively in design and building in order to achieve sustainability, energy efficiency and most importantly an ecological and healthy living environment devoid of waste and with minimized environmental pollution as would be discovered in the case of the Earth homes.This Thesis discussed in details the characteristics and functions of the Earth Homes among its many features. Also discussed in detail includes the structural analysis, analysis and application of suggested materials and most importantly the Ecological values of Earth Homes which among many values include its function as:a unit used to collect free solar heat all summer.cooling passively, while heating the earth around it, without machinery or commercial energy.keeping cozy all winter by retrieving heat from the soil.a unit for utilizing the free solar heat stored throughout the summer as a year-round natural thermal resource.a unit that can power a convection ventilation system using stored heat that provides warm air all winter and cool air all summer.a way of limiting Visual Impact by Blending with nature, earth-sheltered homes and buildings preserve the character of the land and become part of the natural landscape...promoting, rather than disturbing, wildlife.a means of preservation of Green-spaces, an earth-sheltered home allows the roof to remain as a park, plaza area, or someone's front yard, thus resulting in no loss of green-space. In a broader sense, agricultural land as well as wilderness may be preserved.an efficient Land Use programme, by the use of Sloping terrain that may otherwise would have been destroyed or unsuitable for conventional construction, here is easily utilized for an earth-sheltered home.