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Building Your Own Hobbit Hole
Alien54 writes "Sometimes people go too far in being a fan of a great movie or of a great book. Now you can be the proud owner of a Hobbit Hole. The site offers basic plans, as well as technical resources. For example, one thing you might want to consider in your planning is Large Elliptical Precast Concrete Pipe."
Definitly need the concrete pipe here in Florida. In FL you can't dig more than a few feet before you hit water!
And remember: it's not realistic unless you make the chandelier so low that wizards bump their heads on it.
"Einstein argued that [...] God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software engineer." ~ Brooks
...you happen to be taller than the average hobbit.
Which most human adults are.
Now, I like the concept, but it seemed like the pipe they were using wouldn't accomodate anybody larger than a child.
Might be a tad bit of a problem getting a building permit.
Do not build hobbit holes in large metropolises with pre-existing transit systems. Cohabitation may occur.
"Sometimes people go too far in being a fan of a great movie or of a great book."
Case in point:
"After seeing The Fellowship of the Ring, you have probably fantasized about living in a Hobbit Hole and lazing about in the shade."
Um... not sure how to break this to you, but NO I HAVEN'T.
*shakes head*
Too far gone, this one is.
My other sig is also a
The circular pipe is available in diameters (OD or ID, doesn't state) up to 144 inches. Now, I'm taller than average (6'2") but with a floorspace of, say, 1 ft for plumbing, electrical, and the obligatory Cat5. That would leave 11 ft of height. That would feel like being hobbit size walking around in Bag End.
Now, the other thing to deal with is your local building code. Would they let you live in what is, essentially, sewer pipe?
It would make a pretty cool bomb shelter/computer room.
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
Simply by supplying these plans as a package with a Thoreau's Walden, you too can be rid of the biggest smelliest most-hardcore tolkien geeks in your neighborhood. :)
Great. Just what a Geek needs. Something the promotes sunlight deprivation all teh more. *shakes head*
Really though, half of what makes Bag End from the movie so damn kewl was the woodwork and *THAT* isn't cheap. My uncle did it for a living (before going back to school again and becoming a newspaper editor) and the cost of godly woodwork of the Hobbit or Elf is enough to buy another whole house...
Do you know why the road less traveled by is littered with the bones of the unwary?
Build a monolithic dome and cover it with sod. Should work just as well. Monolithic domes are cool.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Malcom Wells wrote seriously about this in the 70's. Check out The Earth-Sheltered House, a real classic.
There is no need to use a SlashDot sig for SEO...
My uncle built a rammed earth barn that's half underground and located in a part of the country where the theme music to Deliverance is still on the top 40. He's "off the grid" and lives with his horses like a wild man torn between the Gratefull Dead and his LOTR books.
If his generator powered Mac Classic could see pictures of that hobbit hole he would be on his backhoe tonight, digging pits all over perfectly good hills.
Fear the pot smoking LOTR fanatics.
Low overhead, my boy! We pass the savings onto you!
... someone is reading a logfile and saying "wtf???"
Smart move keeping the site simple - serve it up, IIS!
"Consider yourself a member of a virtual corporation with Mr. Torvalds as your Chief Executive Officer." - Linux Advocac
You are definitely right that it's not very practical. Even in the book (The Lord of the Rings) Tolkien mentions that most modern hobbits do not live in holes.
Only the very poor and the very rich hobbits live in holes. The poor hobbits live in holes because they can't afford to build a house, and the rich live in elaborate holes because it is traditional, and because they can afford to make them luxurious.
... anyway, that's what I remember reading. If anyone can confirm that I'm not just pulling this out of my ass, please do. (I can't find it in the book at the moment.)
You know, a lot of people were way ahead of the curve on this business of living in sewer pipes. Ironically, they are known as the homeless.
So when yuppies want to abandon their nice cozy frame houses for sewer pipes, may I propose they kill two birds with one stone and just trade?
Y2K bunker--> hobbit hole conversion kit.
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
Just imagine a beowulf cluster of these ... no, wait. That'd be Hobbiton, wouldn't it?
i am a soviet space shuttle
...when the Internet would have a guide on how to "build" a hole.
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
The building codes in most states in the US require a window large enough to be used as a fire escape in EVERY bedroom. This is difficult to do in a berm house. Also, berm houses in general have a problem with moisture condensation on the interior walls, so they're not for people who don't enjoy mold and mildew.
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
I have to say, it does sound somewhat cool (if slightly OTT) to have someone build a habitable hobbit hole. Yet when I looked at your floor plans, I gave up on it.
Your fantastic elliptical tubing is still leaves you with the problem of curved floors. There are 3 solutions to this. 1) fill the room with enough dirt/concrete/whatever so that you make a flat floor. But this severely reduces you headroom, which is already at a premium. 2) Cut open the tubes and only use the top half + some square walls. But here you loose all of the advantages of prefab that you mentioned. 3) live with curved floors. While you might be able to live comfortably, the only place with enough headroom will be in the middle of the room. As well, anyone who has ever had to pick out furniture for a curved wall can tell you what a pain it is; furnature for a curved floor would be a nightmare, it would all have to be custom and wouldn't be easily relocatable within the room.
One other thing, do you have an entrance/exit othe than the garage?
However, calling it a hobbit hole turns it into a time and money consuming quest to prove to everyone in the neighborhood that you'll never breed.
The only reason I keep my Windows partition is so I can mount it like the bitch that it is.
A hobbit hole! Now THAT would help me woo the ladies!
I do security
Maybe I shouldn't do this, but all that sewer pipe housing idea just makes me want to go...
COWABUNGA!
-- Tino Didriksen / projectjj.dk
My boyfriend always calls me a Hobbit, and says I live in a Hobbit Hole (even though I live in the dorms). It's nice to see that I'm not the only one out there who lives in one! My boyfriend even made me a foam sword and told me to name it "Sting."
Troll?! They aren't supposed to appear until page 32! (Hobbit, Methuen edition) CUT! CUT! Everyone get back in your places please. Ready, camera! Action!
I'd rather have my own dark tower. It impresses the neighbors and strikes fear into the hearts of travelling mormons.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
Judging by the Yoda-speak
"Yoda-speak" you can call it, but the technical term is "OSV typology", for "Object Subject Verb".
J.R.R. Tolkien's hobby was building fictional worlds and languages. The Lord of the Rings began as his back-story for a book about Elvish tongues. Some of his languages might have been OSV, but most were SVO like English.
Will I retire or break 10K?
- But when a grown adult man daydreams about living in an underground wizard cave instead of about girls, money, and cars, I believe that there is a problem.
WowDeeK
I saw the history channel show about this and I thought it was one of the coolest things I had seen in a long time. But now it's for sale... check it out...
underground fortress
Um, as geometry would dictate, if you run a floor down a pipe, a large subfloor space is formed, more than enough for any duct, fiber, wire, or plumbing you can imagine. It'd be good for a lot of storage room, too.
Just remember to reserve the lowest point of the subfloor for the emergency drain pipe you will need in a heavy flood, or if those bored neighborhood geek kids drop a garden hose into your chimney and crank up the water.
But when a grown adult man daydreams about living in an underground wizard cave instead of about girls, money, and cars, I believe that there is a problem.
I don't doubt he dreams about girls; but some of us need other, more realistic dreams. Cars just aren't everyone's thing. He who truely dreams about money is lost; they get to spend their life in the cold and heartless chase of cash.
I doubt any of us live on grounds that are vast and mountainous enough to actually build one of these holes.
You doubt that any one of the tens of thousands of slashdot readers lives near a hill? Go back to geography class; just because you live in Kansas, doesn't mean we all do.
being a hero and saving everyone from a death by drowning. [...]imagine that you're a sexy, long-haired Mel Gibson.
Because these are such realistic goals. Instead of dreaming we're a hero in the ancient past, let's dream we're a seductive commoner in the recent past (who, IIRC, only saved one person) or a sleazebag who lies, and steals his way to the top and is a complete cad, but it's all right, because he has charisma and is Mel Gibson.
You offer us the sad myths of the modern world instead of the great myths of fantasy. Sorry, not interested. I'll try and take my modern world straight, and let my fantasies go where they may.
You, sir, are a fucking idiot.
mstyne: real name, no gimmicks
There are technical solutions to all the other problems. You can insulate or even heat your walls to avoid moisture problems. If you put a moiture barrier and insulation between your walls and the the air inside you should not have condensation. Who wants to look at concrete walls anyway? Fire, flood and proper ventilation and lighting are real design concerns, but they are balanced by thermal insulation safety from storms and man made hazards. The author's design had large windows or doors on every large room.
I'll admit, I want to live in a bomb shelter. The author's design was not roomy or sturdy enough for me. Culvert is not cheap either. Still, it's a nice effort.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The way to go is tunnel liner, bolt-together segments used for making tunnels and small underpasses. Diameters to 6 meters are available standard, and to 36 meters by special order. Various cross sections are possible by mixing curved sections of different radii. You can get a nearly flat floor if desired.
Armtec's tunnel liner system isn't particularly good looking inside, but there are nicer ones, such as the ones used in newer Jubilee Line stations of the London Underground. The Tube is a good place to look for ideas on how to use curved underground spaces.
"All Hobbits had originally lived in holes in the ground, or so they believed, and in such dwellings they still felt most at home; but in the course of time they had been obliged to adopt other forms of abode. Actually in the Shire in Bilbo's days it was, as a rule, only the richest and the poorest Hobbits that maintained the old custom. The poorest went on living in burrows of the most primitive kind, mere holes indeed, with only one window or none; while the well-to-do still constructed more luxurious versions of the simple diggings of old. But suitable sites for these large and ramifying tunnels (or smials as they called them) were not everywhere to be found; and in the flats and the low-lying districts the Hobbits, as they multiplied, began to build above ground. Indeed, even in the hilly regions and the older villages, such as Hobbiton or Tuckborough, or in the chief township of the Shire, Michel Delvig on the White Downs, there were now many houses of wood, brick, or stone. These were specially favoured by millers, smiths, ropers, and cartwrights, and others of that sort; for even when they had holes to live in, Hobbits had long been accustomed to build sheds and workshops."
That's from the prologue in the fellowship of the rings.
actually, if you go here and go into my Photo Album, the pic is in there
The full size one is still available per request
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
Ma and Pa drive by, "Look Pa, there must be a nest of Geeks movin in." "Git ma gun from the rack Ma!"
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I want to make it clear that this is extremely clever, and now I want one! But, here's a few ideas I have.
I don't think ceiling ductwork is optimal for the application - in fact, placing everything subfloor may be more optimal for aesthetic value, especially for the CAT5 and electrical. (Rather than have things plug into the ceiling or have the wall outlets run down from there, wire them up from the floor. Less intrusive.) It might help to raise the floor a couple of inches to accomodate everything, but the impact if you remove the ceiling (as it were) should be trivial. on the other hand, if you are required to install sprinklers by your local building code...well, still drop everything else below, but keep a trivial ceiling to accomodate the sprinkler system.
For acoustic purposes, the builder would be advised to place some kind of padding on the walls. Yes, I know, acoustic tiling is expensive and carpeted walls went out when the The Gobbler was torn down, but something should be done, or you won't be able to discreetly make love on the opposite end of the house from your guests with your SO.
Furnace and water should be placed centrally to all used utilities. In the floor plan, you will notice that the builder has the utility closet placed between the pantry and the secondary bath. I think if I were me, I would place the utility closet off of that unused corridor, facing into the center of the oblong there. It takes it a bit farther from the kitchen, but it puts it significantly closer to the master bedroom, and unless you heavily insulate the pipes, heat lossage will be cut down significantly by doing this. The problem can be countered of course by installing secondary heaters as appropriate.
The chimney in the kitchen is a very smart touch, but an exhaust system in the bathrooms would be very optimal to keep those after-use odors down. =O.o=.
Take that secondary bath away from that side corridor. Put another attached to the bedroom/study/zen room branch, and another on that other corridor that is not used in the floorplan. It may seem redundant, but you don't (for one thing) want bathrooms *too* close to the kitchen or pantry, and you'll find a bathroom closer to the bedrooms and common areas of the home to be of significant convenience.
And where's that fireplace in the living room, hmm? =^_^=
As mentioned in another post of mine, make sure you install an electro-osmotic pulse system to keep those walls dry and intact.
This sig no verb.
Fiberglass is the way to go. Concrete in the ground isn't too good. My dad works for a fiberglass company, mainly in the area of manholes. He's shown me a lot of pictures of concrete manholes that basically rot out of the ground. Sure it'll be good for a few years, but you want to protect your investment! Fiberglass tanks can come just as big. Just need to put something on the inside so you don't get the itches.
here!
If you drive along Highway 280 from SJ to SF, a few miles past the intersection of 280 and 92, if you look to the right, you'll see a curious white hill-looking house made out of foamlike material. A almost identical replica to the "Hobbit Hole" described therein (in form, not in color, I mean).
My high school bio teacher's parents live (or lived) in there, IIRC.
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
I grew up in an underground house. My parents weren't hippies, just environmentally conscious and interested in alternative building and heating methods. The house was designed in the late '70's. It is built into the side of a hill, so one side is fully exposed. The house is made mostly out of concrete. The floors and walls were poured, and the roof is made of precast beams (about 3' wide apiece). There is a large atrium in the middle of the house, covered by an A-frame that sticks up above the ground. The roof of the A-frame is made of passive solar panels, which lets in lots of light and heats the room fairly well in the colder months.
Some answers to common questions:
- Isn't it dark in the house?
A: Not at all. In fact, it's much lighter than most normal houses. The entire front of the house is open to the side of the hill, and is mostly windows. Each room on that side has probably 12' to 15' of windows in it. Furthermore, the atrium in the center of the house provides much more light than even the biggest skylight could.
- Isn't it cold and damp?
A: No. The exterior of the house was well-sealed when we built it, so moisture isn't a big problem. (There have been leaks over the years, but for the most part they've been easy to fix.) As for being cold, the fact that the house is underground helps regulate the temperature. It is easier to heat in the winter, and easier to cool in the summer because there is less house exposed to the outside conditions than with a normal house.
--Josh
Hi all! /. I have gotten a lot of good feedback and ideas on how to make the structure better.
First I wanted to thank whoever posted this to
But allow me to make a few observations and corrections.
There are eight fire exits and they are listed on the site.
Six rooms, the ones most used, have direct sunlight. You may not be able to see the windows in the pictures, but you have windows in the master bath, master bedroom, living room, foyer, kitchen and dining room. Plus you have skylights in the zen room and the study.
The space under the floors is at least 18 inches deep which can leave you up to 9 feet of headroom. I think that is enough. The curved walls can also be used to build closets and trunks without taking up floor space or clog the halls.
I have some concerns with other building methods because of the crushing weight of soil that would need to be dumped on the structure. The plan would not be to excavate, but to find a somewaht flat ground, lay the pipe, apply several layers of moisture barrier and then cover with many feet of soil and landscape. Rain itself would add several TONS of roof loading in a matter of minutes. Also, the point of this is to have a LOW amount of labor-hours. Most rammed earth structures takes years of spare time to build.
The use of pipe means you can configure the dwelling anyway you want; ringed, linear or multilevel. for example, if you build it as a ringed structure, you can have an open-air garden in the middle with all rooms being open to it. My example is just ONE example.
My goal for this site was to simply come up with yet ANOTHER idea for home construction that is not based on the traditional house. Who knows if anyone ever builds it? As I said on the site, I am just "expressing my inner architect."
Storm Bear Williams