Advertisement Bob and Judy Hoffman, however, are impervious to such concerns. Not only is their earth home incredibly snug, but the fireplace that heats it is incredibly cheap to run.
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From the road, Bob and Judy Hoffman’s home in rural Holmen looks pretty normal, but it’s built into the side of a hill, with soil topping the 127 yards of concrete used to build the earth home. The Hoffmans only spend about $300 per year to heat the house.
Photo by Michael Martin |
“If you figure in the electricity for the blower and the gas for my chainsaw, we probably spend about $300 a year on heat, not counting my labor,” said Bob, a retired science teacher from Holmen High School. The Hoffmans, who live at the end of a road that ascends a coulee north of Holmen, are delighted with the west-facing earth home they began building back in the fall of 1983.
“That was another time where there was an economic crunch. We were being told to turn down our thermostats,” recalled Judy. Back then they lived in a wooden home in Holmen. “It was drafty and I can remember having to watch TV with a blanket around me,” Judy said.
After school let out in the spring of 1983, Bob and Judy got serious about building their retirement home. Bob was 55 at the time. “I remember thinking ‘I’m not getting any younger — we better do this now or not at all,” Bob recalled. “We considered log homes and we looked at least 15 different kinds of earth homes. The particular model we chose was the only one that didn’t have a conventional ceiling (it has two conjoined 24-foot concrete domes instead),” Bob said.
Like many retirees, Bob and Judy were interested in a home that wouldn’t require a lot of work to live in. “We were interested in three things — efficiency, lack of outside maintenance and lack of steps,” Bob said.
Like most earth homes, theirs was going to be built into the side of a hill and they didn’t want it to feel like a cave. “The domed ceilings eliminate the claustrophobic feeling,” Judy said.
The couple slightly increased the size of the home by adding a seven-foot extension along the western facing side of the house. “We also chose this model (from a company called the TerraDome Corporation) because of its structural strength — we had a Caterpillar on the roof while they were building it — and the three to five feet of earth on top gave it the most insulation,” Bob recalled.
The design, as hoped, has proved to be extremely efficient. The entire house is heated by a wood fireplace. A blower then circulates heat through the rest of the house. The Hoffmans own the 60 acres that surround their home and the land is heavily forested.
“As long as Bob can cut, split and haul down wood, our fuel is pretty much free. That’s his exercise program,” Judy said.
Temperatures inside the house remain remarkably steady no matter what time of the year. “I’d say it averages between 68 and 70 degrees almost the whole year,” Bob said.
He also remarked that when he’s in other people’s homes, he’s become much more aware of how the temperature fluctuates as conventional furnaces turn themselves off and on.
“The range of ‘up and down’ is much greater than what we have. This house has 127 yards of concrete. Once that is heated up the temperature isn’t going to change much,” Bob said.
Stability is also apparent during the summer. During the nearly 25 years the Hoffmans have lived in their home, it has never gotten above 78 degrees inside — even on the hottest of summer days.
“We do have to run the dehumidifier a lot, though,” Judy admitted. Another reason the Hoffmans chose the design they did was something the builder told them. “He said ‘I’ll build you two domes — you figure out what you want inside. That gave us a lot of flexibility inside,” Bob recalled.
One design element they are particularly pleased with is that the fireplace can be loaded with wood from the rear. That means that Bob can place wood inside from a room that connects to the garage without tracking through the living room.
“We saw one earth home where the lady had to run a wheelbarrow through her living room to get wood in the fireplace,” Bob said, shaking his head.
The house does have an electric furnace for backup because state code requires it, but the only time it’s ever used is when Bob doesn’t have wood handy and/or doesn’t feel like stoking a fire.
Asked whether they would do anything different, the Hoffmans could think of nothing major. “There’s never any chill from the wind and the house is very quiet — we really like it,” Judy said.
