frugal living 12

FRUGAL LIVING 12

SHELTER

UNDERGROUND

Not only is living underground cheap ( the bible is “The $50 & Up Underground House” ), it is a great way to avoid paying out of your rectum for heating and cooling.  Not only is it cheaper, if one day you discover that your kilowatt hour cost just went from fifteen cents to sixty-five ( as happened recently in Alaska ), that accompanied by brownouts, or anything at all disrupts overseas oil imports ( as happened in the 70’s more than once and can easily happen again with today’s political turbulence ), not needing much in the way of utilities can literally save your life.  Plus, as is more pertinent to this present conversation, it makes for a nice companion to frugal living.  I used five gallons of propane for December and January combined for both cooking and heating ( mostly because one compliments the other ) in my underground hovel.  Granted, a mild winter here in eastern Nevada as it only got below zero once, but even in far more severe conditions, in one of those “storm of the century” events two years ago when it was minus fifteen every day for two weeks, AND at a time prior to the most current wife leaving me heat was needed while I was at work instead of just a few hours in the evening, even then I only used double that amount.  Living underground makes winters far more tolerable.

*

Of course, I won’t blow sunshine up your ass even though that seems to be what most readers demand of their authors.  Living underground is claustrophobic, damp and dusty.  But it ain’t cold and it ain’t hot.  If you are living in Florida or California, underground living is stupid.  You gain far more by living in the breeze.  But in any area where winter sucks, it will be near mandatory.  My hole in the ground cost around $1200, mainly because I dug it out by hand rather than hire a backhoe ( the costs were primarily lumber, with $200 being nails and plastic, another $200 in insulation, give or take ).  It took a year, near every day after work and on the weekends, but it cost me a Mattock pick and a shovel-$30.  I did need a wheelbarrow once I could no longer throw the dirt up far enough, but that was only about $35 on clearance ( for once, a Wal-Mart item lasted past a single job ).  Everyone acts shocked and surprised I chose to forego renting a piece of equipment-these are same people who get in their car to go a block- but for po’ folk, manual labor is cheaper than machines ( Mexican Backhoe is a guy with a shovel ).  This isn’t your traditional underground hovel.  I don’t have three feet of dirt on the roof that requires far more material for its weight.  I just insulated the roof well, threw on some thick plastic sheeting and covered that with an inch of dirt to keep the plastic out of the sunlight which would degrade it.  So, no, I don’t have a year round 55 degrees.  My summers see 70 downstairs, my winters 40-45.  Without heating or cooling ( cooling is pretty easy, even NOT underground, but really only with a backhoe.  You need to go down near ten feet and a hundred feet long to get a buried pipe [ the wide sewer pipe] to draw cool air through, and it only takes a small 12v car fan to draw the air up and in ).  Which as you can see means a very small amount of propane keeps the place much warmer than if you were aboveground ( still only around fifty degrees for that small amount of fuel, so you will need to keep wearing sweaters- and showers are a bit brisk.  But remember, these are bare bones budget figures.  I’m sure you can afford more propane to keep the wife happy ).

*

Now, this is for a very small underground structure.  I dug a ten by twenty pit six feet down, but the wooden structure inside that is only six by twelve.  It is a room, not a house.  In the day I move upstairs to the trailer which I use as a sunroom, primarily.  I also bath up there as much as possible as doing so downstairs is a big pain ( I was on a limited budget building downstairs and have no bathroom ), mostly being a messy sponge bath.  Upstairs is also where all but the basics in food and clothing are stored so that downstairs stays uncluttered.  On cold and overcast days I’m stuck downstairs, reading by a small LED book light since I can’t drain the main battery with almost no solar charging it.  It does at times get dreary ( and when the ex was still here, we got on one anothers nerves although that was less to do with the condition of the shelter than our relationship ).  Yet, having spent so much time in the RV in winter prior to the underground shelter, where conditions were simply Depression Era unemployed primitive and miserable, in comparison the problems are trivial.  You are still not perfect, but you are less imperfect. 

END 

Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon ad graphics at the top of the page. You can purchase anything, not just the linked item. Enter Amazon through my item link and then go to whatever other item you desire. As long as you don’t leave Amazon until after the order is placed, I get credit for your purchase.  For those that can’t get the ads because they are blocked by your software, just PayPal me occasionally or buy me something from my Amazon Wish List once a year.
*

The Old Bison Blog on CD 
Over five years of work and nearly two million words of pure brilliance. Here is the link to order:
http://kunaki.com/sales.asp?PID=PX00KX7Z1I

*
Contact Information

 Links To Others,

 Top 20 Survivalist Fiction,

 Land In Elko,

 Lord Bison,

 my bio & biblio
*
My books on PDF ( ALL free!!  If you like it, most are available for sale in paper versions )  available at
http://www.lulu.com/shop/search.ep?keyWords=james++dakin&sorter=relevance-desc
*
By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there.