Thanks guys, I'll just save up. I've been thinking about getting a second job lately just to suck away some of my energy and make this happen faster cuz I'm so excited!
Anyway, my plans are currently (if I don't find something more affordable/more awesome, emphasis on DIY awesomeness) similar to this:
http://www.undergroundhousing.com/Basically, I want to get a plot of land, preferably quite hilly and thick with trees to hide me from neighbors, and more importantly, inspectors, and then build. I want to use only materials I harvest from the land, with few exceptions. It's almost like, what would we do if we didn't have this giant complex society around us, and we were just here - how would we live, etc., - sort of like what happened when the settlers first came to America. They had to use their ingenuity to get by, and I hear they actually built underground to start out with hah.
So, I'd buy a property with a nice hill, and dig a lot of it out, but do it in a way that allowed plenty of light. No nasty basement feel. Then, add a layer of polyethlene or other waterproofing material, reinforce it, maybe some cob or something for floors/outside wall (not sure yet), and live there. It would provide for some excellent insulation on most sides, i.e. thousands of feet of earth. Should be quite beautiful and natural looking if done right, and the most important part is that I can do most if not all of it myself. There's just something beautiful to that.
And running a close second is the fact that I wouldn't need to spend huge amounts of money. I've always wondered why housing is so expensive. Imo, people don't really need much, or at least I don't. Left parents house (2000 square ft) for one bedroom apartment with two people (600 sq ft) and feel about the same. I could make this underground thing perhaps 400 sq ft, and I shouldn't have any issues.
Lastly, before I drone on too much, I want to do it for the sheer challenge. I've never built much of anything, I don't have a clue how solar energy works, or how I might design a way of collecting rain water and running it through, say, pipes going by a stove or a fire. I have no idea. But I'm extremely willing to find out!
And.. that's the idea, so far. If there are cheaper options, with similar looks and DIY attitude, then I'd def do that. Just seems like building underground is the best option with those parameters.
