[drfritznunkie]

Look up "Earth ships". I have a pretty good book on them, but will have to get back to my library before I could tell you what its title is. I was researching these for awhile and honestly a lot of the reference material is going to be from the 70s. I bought a ton of books about passive solar and such and I think the vast majority were published during the oil crisis.

It's definitely a good option, but you're going to be pushing the boundaries of your local contractors and the materials you can source and or hire a crew to install. If you're motivated, there are any number of ways to construct these dwellings, but the most interesting and appealing method that I saw was one made like a commercial warehouse. It was in Virginia, maybe around Roanoke in the mountains, but the owner used steel warehouse trusses and a dexpan roof (poured concrete over a substrate like corrugated metal). Since it was a known method, he hired a commercial crew to do it and they didn't have a problem iirc other than getting the crane down his driveway. Istr I found this on the break time finehomebuilding forums...