[h2odragon]

My house is half dug in to a hill; west TN USA. Summer cooling is a bigger concern here than winter heating; and it wins in the summer.

In the winter, it's still a minor win, the half the house with the dug in brick wall wants to be ground temperature (say 60F), which is still higher than air temperature... but its difficult to get it heated up to temps i can live with (72F).

Much thermal mass that has inertia.

Moisture and mold etc are problems even with some extreme measure against direct water incursion. We've got river rock / french drain type gravel between the house wall and actual dirt, on the buried side. That's in addition to some heavy sealant on that side of that wall. Without that, if the dirt came up to the wall; there'd be constant water seepage on the inside of the brick wall. I know, it happened; we dug the dirt back out and refilled with the river rock. fiddly backhoe work that.

in the summer that wall will collect condensation water if we let the house humidity get too high. in the spring and fall when we open windows and don't run the air conditioner that wall can be moist to the touch.

[doubleg72]

Thanks for sharing.. I love hearing how people deal with overcoming challenges in building science. There are so many unique situations, but they all simplify down to a handful of variables.