The Exterior

This is a view of the roof from the back of the house, before it was covered with dirt. The black coating is a liquid tar damp-proofing used on basement walls. It does work, but it is a mess to use. It is almost impossible to clean off of anything it contacts, including shoes, clothes, brushes and rollers. It also remains in a liquid state if it is applied too thickly. It wound up leaking through the tiny cracks between the module cold joints, and it took me several months to figure out how to stop it. I finally filled in the cracks with hydraulic cement and that worked very well. After some additional experimenting with other parts of the house, I have decided I would use the white elastomeric roof coating sold at Home Depot if I were ever to do this again. It creates a better seal, stays flexible, and is much easier to clean up while it is still wet.

I built this house to self regulate it's internal temperature through a technique called Earth Tubes. You can see the white pipes sticking up through the top of each module. I connected these to corrugated black plastic pipes that were over 100 feet each, and wrapped them around the building to stick out of the ground on the sides of the house. There are matching holes in the wall near the floor of each module that were similarly connected and routed. Unfortunately, I should have used the schedule 40 white pipe throughout because it would not have crushed when the dirt was set in place the way the corrugated stuff did. Some day if I have to dig it up for some other reason, or I inherit big bucks, I will try to fix them.
The picture shows the very back of the modules and the road built all the way around the house.
This shows the road as it comes down the left side of the house. Notice the retaining wall jutting out past the roof overhang. I painted the front walls with the same damp-proofing as the roof. I originally bought all of the blue board insulation you see in this picture for covering the roof. I was going to put about a foot of dirt on, then the insulation, then the rest of the dirt. Unfortunately, the contractor got a little ahead of me and I didn't have a chance to put the insulation down before all of the dirt was in place. Another lessen learned, and another change I will try to make in the future. Fortunately, the house is well insulated with the dirt alone and keeps a comfortable temperature with moderate heating/cooling. I spend less in electricity for the 2400 sq ft now, than I did for 1650 sq ft in our previous house, and my heat pump is smaller.
Here is a close-up of the final dirt product. The white pipe sticking up are the same kind you would see sticking through the roof of a regular house. They are for venting the plumbing connections per code.