I ran across a site that describes an underground survival home built in Southwest Colorado, which the owner calls the, “Ultimate Secure Home.” It is a reinforced thin-shelled concrete dome type house, designed by the company Formworks. The house is buried under 6 feet of earth and requires almost no maintenance. It is immune to any weather condition, including tornados. It is also immune to fire, rot, insect infestations, mice, a 7.0 earthquake, and a near atomic blast.
Waterproofing is provided by 3/16″ thick - 18″ wide Bentonite rolls (Bentonite – Wikipedia), and a felt-like drain mat leading down to a French drain system. (How to Create a French Drain System) In addition to the 6 feet of earth, two layers of 1″ thick foam were used for insulation. Its earth shielding gives the home excellent radiation protection, and it has a lifespan of 200 to 1,000 years.
Part of the home’s electrical power is provided by a state of the art solar panel system that is rated at 11.5 Kw hours per day and can produce 240 volts. The 16 Kyocera solar collector modules are mounted on two separate stands with 3-way trackers, so that they follow the sun across the sky. The home has a safe room with a Trace Engineering master power supply control panel, dual 5.01 inverters, and dual C 40 charge controllers. Both the inverters and charge controllers are programmable. Power is stored in 24 two-volt lead acid batteries, which weigh out to 2 tons. A TriMetric meter monitors the batteries for volts, amps, amp-hours, battery percent, how much energy is left, when to shut the chargers off, and how the solar arrays, inverters, and chargers are performing. This system also allows you to determine how much energy any particular device is using. The house has an 11.5 Kw Onan propane generator that automatically charges the batteries when necessary. A Pulse Tech Power Pulse battery maintenance system eliminates sulfation on the battery plates and dramatically extends their life.
The safe room also has a Swiss Luwa air filtering system. This system will filter out all known war chemicals, viruses, bacteriological agents, fallout, and smoke from forest fires. You can shut off power, water, and propane to any part of the house from the safe room.
The radio communications console has multiple communication systems, including a shortwave radio, a two-meter HAM transceiver, a police, fire, and ambulance scanner, two-way radios, an intercom system, and several electronic security devices.
The house features a gravity-fed water supply from a 1,000 gallon underground cistern, along with a back-up of two 55-gallon water barrels. The property has a private water well rated at 15 gallons per minute, along with a 3 hp stainless steel industrial well pump rated for continuous duty. The septic tank and leach field are both oversized. The house has a “Perfect Window” ventilation unit (Perfect Window – Honeywell) and efficient electrical appliances.
The kitchen has a Sun Frost refrigerator/freezer, a Peerless propane range with “no-glow-bar” propane oven, and a Staber 2000 clothes washer. In the garage there is a chest-style freezer.
The house has a propane water heater with a power ventilator such that carbon monoxide won’t back up into the safe room if the exhaust pipe was to become blocked by snow or vandals. Included are a propane wall heater and clothes dryer.
The property has multiple cameras stationed outside, an automatic emergency phone dialer, an in-house intercom system with five stations, an outside PA system, as well as a number of other security systems.
For storage the house has two attics (one of which is 576 sq. ft.) over 24 shelving units, numerous closets, a pantry, cabinetry, two multi-purpose rooms, and various hidden compartments.
The building can never get below 50 degrees F., even during the most extreme winter conditions. The Stanley-Waterton woodstove and range is rated for coal use, has an electric blower that increases its efficiency, and has grate shaker and ash box that allow hot ashes to be removed without having to cool it down. The property has 24 cords of split and stacked firewood, several tons of coal, and 2,000 gallons of stored propane. 1,000 gallons of the propane is in an above ground well hidden protected tank, and the other 1,000 gallons are in an underground tank.
To help attenuate any EMP pulse from an atomic blast, when the house was constructed eight 8 feet long copper grounding rods were driven into the earth underneath it that are wired into the steel I-beams. One indication of the EMP protection provided by the structure is that no radio reception is possible inside of it without an outside antenna.
If you don’t want to go quite this far another option is that you can install an underground “All Hazards Shelter” based on corrugated steel pipe available from Utah Shelter Systems.
