From the street the house looked fairly conventional (almost too much so). I wandered through the rooms, surprised by their openness and light. The ceilings were high and perforated with skylights. Even some of the rooms in the back of the house, up against the hillside, enjoyed "windows" that opened into quaint cave-like shafts. And the average monthly electric bills of $75 for 3000 square feet were impressive.
On the downside, while the modular systems allow for less expensive construction costs, they also limit individuality and site specific design. While Smoot contends that his earth-sheltered homes can be built on any site, I don't know. I have a hard time justifying that kind of earth moving in the middle of Hyde Park, for instance, or on a sensitive creekside lot. I also have a hard time with some of Smoot's financial claims in his handout, which assumes things like lower medical expenses and maintenance expenses to arrive at the projected savings of $44,000 over 20 years in a 1200-sq. ft. earth-sheltered home over a conventional one.
But he certainly has licked the damp and the dark. And if you want to build on a south-facing slope and prefer Moorish curves and arches to corners and angles, Smoot's concepts could create the underworld you crave. n I've been chasing designer/builder Michael Langley of Villas Nuevas for months ever since I heard a rumor that he was building an adobe house in Sunset Canyon. The house wasn't hard to find. It's a neon-hued jewel tucked among the cedars in a somewhat conservative neighborhood of limestone and earth-toned homes. Even if the Dreamsicle-orange, cranberry, and forest-green exterior didn't capture your attention, everything else about this home would grab you, too. When I talked to Langley briefly one day when we set up the first of what would be about a zillion potential meetings, he told me the house wasn't adobe, but was made with pressed-soil block that is stacked and "mortared" in such a way to create walls that become solid monoliths. He has other compressed-earth homes going up in Hyde Park and the Homestead.