Homestead · below the yard
The bunkers
A dry way from the house to the workshop, a cellar under the working yard and a separate tunnel to the greenhouse.
The containers give the rooms their shape. Each is fitted out and sealed before it goes into the hole, then held inside a reinforced-concrete shell. The concrete carries the ground and the loads above; the steel never touches soil. The shell, rather than the thin container walls, makes burial possible.
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The tunnel joins two poured stair shafts. Beside it, three containers open onto a poured passage: the root cellar, the refuge and the store for dry goods and water. A tested shelter door closes the passage off from the tunnel. The heat, water and power come from the hub through the workshop and down the tunnel to the house.
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The house shaft meets the basement wall’s parge. Its 6 risers descend from the basement to the container floor, 4 ft below. The container begins at the stair’s foot, leaving headroom at the top. At the other end, 16 treads rise into the workshop behind a rated enclosure and a self-closing door. The house end was fixed on 2026-10-01 to keep the container clear of the foundation wall and put the steps under their own lid.
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The cellar lies under the working yard. Its lid must carry vehicles; that is the engineer’s design. The separate greenhouse link holds one smaller container between poured ends, its floor 8 ft down and level with the greenhouse pit. It steps down from the wing’s basement; its west end is the wing wall, and its lid lies under the walkway floor.
Built first, before the workshop
The hub comes first, with its covered works. The tunnel and cellar containers are prepared there, set in the deep dig and enclosed in concrete before the workshop is raised. Its slab is poured around the stair shaft. The greenhouse link follows with the wing and greenhouse.
Still to be set
The engineer sizes the shells and lids, resolves the workshop wall’s bearing over the tunnel, and plans the roughly 13-ft dig, sloped or braced. The drawings keep the current geometry: the house shaft’s nominal at-grade lid has a 8-in upstand in the model; the greenhouse link’s one-step level change still needs its stair detail. The openings through the house’s basement walls also need to be carried into its frame model.
Concrete quantities, in cubic yards: tunnel and stair shafts: 100.7; cellar and passage: 83.6; greenhouse tunnel: 38.8. These are planning quantities from the model, including floors, lids and steps, before engineering.