earth tunnel house

[LenaBeanNZ]

Good to hear its dried up. 0Yes, we had ALOT of rain this past 6 weeks, I lost a few of my tomatoes to the storm. Well, root rot from the constant wet. Its always a gamble planting out early. Last spring was so gentle I was a bit more confident than usual this year. Lets hope that was the end of the spring storms. I have been watering this week too already. Bring on summer!

[The Greenman]

Hi Richard, how is the water table with our current lot of rain, I have built up the floor on my greenhouse as the water has started to just sit on the surface now and is not soaking away, the farmer down the road a bit has a three paddock wide lake and the water was halfway across the main road near the effluent dumping station. So I guess yours must be fetting high again. Just a thought but have you thought about rendering the inside of your greenhouse with an adobe slurry it wouild help with some heat loss maybe. Thanks to your inspiration I am thinking about something similar but consider tire bricks.

[Medbury Gardens]

Wow blow me down,look who's here welcome to Tomatoville.

Its full...again..,with ground water level at 1/2 meter down there's nothing i can do about it,should be gone in a few weeks i hope that's if doesn't rain again soon.

You'll have to tell me more about this adobe slurry idea,i dont know what it is.

[Medbury Gardens]

Some update news and photos.

Early September my area of NZ was hit by a 7.4 followed 3 sec later by a separate 7.1 shallow earthquake 15km to south of the first one,luckily i live 100km to the north of the quakes center because i dont know how my stone tunnelhouse would have handled that kind of shake.
I used truck loads of reinforcement when i was building it just for this reason and thank goodness i did because there's not a crack to be seen.
Here's how it looks as of yesterday,first tomatoes are just starting,the outside ones have fruit thanks to starting them off in here.

Back end view,you can see how its set in the ground when you compare the front and back shots

The native grass that i planted down the sides has really matured in the last year and its this that acts like a blanket over the earth which i added to the outside of the walls.

[RinTinTin]

Those photos are an inspiration. Some hard work, and utilizing a free resource that most gardeners have a surplus of. Glad to hear that it survived the "Shake and Bake". Good job.

[alamo5000]

Medbury, Kia Ora!!!

I was down in your neck of the woods a little while back... maybe 2 yrs ago now. I was at most 20 minutes away.

I loved NZ. Spent 3 months there. Would have stayed longer but that's all the visa they would give me without flying back to OZ. Your neck of the woods over there is some pretty country. South Island is great.

Your greenhouse looks awesome by the way.

[Medbury Gardens]

Ive made some big changes to the inside of my tunnelhouse,as you can see by the photo posted 29/11/2011 i grew in old baths but i found that rats had dug under the foundations and were living under the baths where our couldn't get at them so i decided to replace them with stone wall raised beds,works out now i have about 40% more growing space and should keep warmer






At the far end ive made a flat area to place pots



Now i'm laying flat rock for the pathway

[gnol]

Wow mate!
That is an inspiration to me.
Love your work.

[salix]

Just lovely, Richard. I should think that added mass would help with temperature moderation - do you keep a min-max thermometer out there?

[Medbury Gardens]

Originally Posted by gnol

Wow mate!
That is an inspiration to me.
Love your work.

Thanks its good that we live on top of an area thats all river out wash from the maintains,so we aren't short of material in making it.

[Medbury Gardens]

Originally Posted by salix

Just lovely, Richard. I should think that added mass would help with temperature moderation - do you keep a min-max thermometer out there?

The lowest its been inside was +2C deg while it was -9C deg outside and the highest was 40C inside at the time it was 41C outside,so it works well and as you say it might help even more so now.

[rockhound]

Looks good.

[meadowyck]

Love that someone brought this thread back to the top again. Your greenhouse is incredible. Gosh with all those rock that is the perfect way to put them to use.

So now that you have the raised beds and working on the walkway, are you worry about what the ground water will do to the underside of the walkway? Too bad there isn't a way to pump the ground water to a hold tank to use to water with....

[Medbury Gardens]

Hi Jan

""are you worry about what the ground water will do to the underside of the walkway""-
No not worried at all because as you can see by the photo (which is right next to the tunnelhouse) our whole area is all river shingle from the maintains so the land is very stable to build on.

"" Too bad there isn't a way to pump the ground water to a hold tank to use to water with.... ""
Water is very abundant around here, even at the most driest time of year there is always water beneath the ground,at the moment because we've had lots of rain lately the water table is high,about one meter below,late summer when the weather is at its driest it goes down to 5 meters,i have another 7 meter deep well which i pump from for the garden,this well is a 250mm pipe which was dug in by a digger 10 years ago but with out power i cant get water so thats half the reason i'm digging the hole in the photo,(1) for a walk in well (one day)and (2) for all the building material for pathways and walls etc

[meadowyck]

Water all the time, that is a blessing for sure. Here on the west coast of FL we have water all the time, we don't have to dig far either before hitting water. Usually Fl is building up land to stay away from the water...LOL

Thanks for replying Richard.