One room even features a secret entrance — hidden inside a rocket by the pool. — Ey — pshhh! :-)
I used to live in the inner city of Leipzig during my university days, and we had a door in the basement that led to wartime tunnels connecting it to other houses. It wasn't like a massive maze, just a hub with three other paths, each leading to another house nearby. From there, however, if they'd unlocked their doors, you could travel farther.
I was on a mission back then to befriend and convince random neighbours across the street to open their access doors and get some kind of network going, but I didn't meet with much enthusiasm.
For Cray, the excavation project is more than a simple diversion. "I work when I'm at home," he recently told a visiting scientist. "I work for three hours, and then I get stumped, and I'm not making progress. So I quit, and I go and work in the tunnel. It takes me an hour or so to dig four inches and put in the 4-by-4s. Now, as you can see, I'm up in the Wisconsin woods, and there are elves in the woods. So when they see me leave, they come into my office and solve all the problems I'm having. Then I go back up and work some more."
Yeah, I though it was 15 meters of length, not that impressive... but it is 15m underground and '... 1,300 square feet of underground space, including tunnels and storage rooms'.
Homes need more whimsey. I recently discovered one of my interior doorways is actually a stone archway that someone had squared off, drywalled and installed a cheap hollow door for no apparent reason. Working with a stonemason to re-point/parge it and bring it back to glory. Will I ever see a return on this investment? Probably not but fuck it it'll make my house just that much cooler.
Anyone interested in this might also be interested in Kala on TikTok. She's been building a tunnel system under her house and documenting it for a couple of years.
I've been following her since the beginning. I'm really skeptical 4 years later whether or not it's real at this point because it feels like it's pretty dangerous and expensive and I find it hard to believe she got the permitting necessary to keep digging below the house like that. But I still follow her.
The weird part is her onlyfans-style alternate account which is kind of strange...
UK money. Still that works out to about $400k in us dollars. You can find better deals in the US, but probably none with tunnels - and unlikely to be places you want to live though not bad places (bad places in the US that would be around $120k)
Check the pictures, this doesn't look like a house to me. 2 levels of workshop areas and an office area.
Also the swimming pool is in the front yard, thats a weird one.
Reminds me how rich people in historic areas of London took on the habit of extending their properties downwards, keeping the above-ground parts intact due to conservation laws.
That's because London is on clay. The Reading guy was mostly on chalk (and was himself an engineer). It sounds like the water table was a long way down as well. Soft clay or waterlogged sand are more like digging a hole in a bowl of custard. There are a lot of things that can go wrong - in the case of clay, even if you don't collapse the hole the clay can expand for years afterwards ("heave").
128sqm below ground level is merely similar to a relatively small apartment: not a lot of area. I think you could get more genuinely usable area from renovating a garage in many cases. That's partly because it's more likely to have fresh air, light, and both level and long item (eg. furniture) access. Not to mention ceiling height and structural stability.
sorry for the capital M … I have fixed in the title to 15m as in metres
that’s ~ 45 ft underground, I believe … perhaps not that impressive, but quite funny since I would hesitate to undermine my own house and surely this makes it worth less
Hm i dont know ,if they were MY tunnels i would be ok with them there.Someone elses tunnels just rub me the wrong way , like stepping in someone elses house with the furniture still there.
Says it’s vacant. Says guy started in the 80s. Going to deduce he is/was older and moving on for any number of normal reasons. Why is the reason so important?
Some people really love tunnels. Personally I always wanted a house with two basements. Or maybe more. Probably inspired by the 2002 movie Resident Evil.
One room even features a secret entrance — hidden inside a rocket by the pool. — Ey — pshhh! :-)
I used to live in the inner city of Leipzig during my university days, and we had a door in the basement that led to wartime tunnels connecting it to other houses. It wasn't like a massive maze, just a hub with three other paths, each leading to another house nearby. From there, however, if they'd unlocked their doors, you could travel farther.
I was on a mission back then to befriend and convince random neighbours across the street to open their access doors and get some kind of network going, but I didn't meet with much enthusiasm.
lol, might be like trying to get the doors between adjacent hotel rooms open with strangers.
> convince random neighbours across the street to open their access doors
Would definitely work with kids. if there were a bunch of 10yo kids there would definitely be an underground kids mischief network.
Reading (the largest town in the UK btw) has other tunnels … for example https://www.readingchronicle.co.uk/news/14492484.sneak-a-pea... and there is a rumour of secret escape tunnels from the (medieval) abbey.
Underground kiez would kill in Berlin
The listing of the property on the auction site:
https://www.btgeddisonspropertyauctions.com/properties/20260...
It includes many more photos than the article, as well as floor plans for the subterranean areas
Don't miss the linked video tour: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Vj6FZZc4SE
I claim 1% commission if anyone on HN buys it
Has the potential for an "EMP resistant server farm"? Is that a common thing that realtors need to find for their clients?
lowercase m. 15 meters, not 15 million tunnels :D
If you're interested in secret tunnels, check out Colin Furze on Youtube!
Relatively secluded and private, Seymour Cray was also a tunneler... he wouldn't have been making videos about it
The story about him in Time at the time: https://web.archive.org/web/20080521163217/http://www.time.c...
And an article someone wrote later... https://michael-starobin.squarespace.com/blogcontent/digging...I wasn't impressed by the 15 metres, but it turns out that is the maximum depth reached, not the length of a tunnel.
Yeah, I though it was 15 meters of length, not that impressive... but it is 15m underground and '... 1,300 square feet of underground space, including tunnels and storage rooms'.
not 15 million tunnels :D
That traditionally would be described as “a maze of twisty little passages, all alike”
And if interested in underground in general, I can recommend Underland by Robert Macfarlane.
Thank you. I definitely read this as million.
If you’re instead interested in a book about a house with 15 million tunnels, read House of Leaves!
I read it as 15 million tunnels too, was very confused. Thank you!
That is still an impressive water table. I wish ours was that low :-)
The most important comment on this article.
oops … sorry … now fixed
I, too, one day dream of using my children as labor for my underground tunnel system. To fight the ant, you must become the ant
I'm joking, but it's heartening to see quirky hobbies by qualified people (he was a civil engineer).
Homes need more whimsey. I recently discovered one of my interior doorways is actually a stone archway that someone had squared off, drywalled and installed a cheap hollow door for no apparent reason. Working with a stonemason to re-point/parge it and bring it back to glory. Will I ever see a return on this investment? Probably not but fuck it it'll make my house just that much cooler.
If I had 6 children, I would probably take up tunnelling.
Researching what the article meant by "rocket" (I assumed it was a Britishism), I found this article that includes more pictures.
https://www.aol.com/articles/unassuming-bungalow-hides-netwo...
aol wtf
Anyone interested in this might also be interested in Kala on TikTok. She's been building a tunnel system under her house and documenting it for a couple of years.
https://www.tiktok.com/@engineer.everything?lang=en
I can't quite put my finger on it, but there's something... odd about her approach.
The OG tunnel influencer is, of course, Colin Furze: https://www.youtube.com/@colinfurze
I've been following her since the beginning. I'm really skeptical 4 years later whether or not it's real at this point because it feels like it's pretty dangerous and expensive and I find it hard to believe she got the permitting necessary to keep digging below the house like that. But I still follow her.
The weird part is her onlyfans-style alternate account which is kind of strange...
Freestanding house with a pool for 300k? That is incredibly cheap. Perhaps I should move there.
Auction pricing.
It'll start out at £300k (to market it attractively) and end up selling for £500k+.
UK money. Still that works out to about $400k in us dollars. You can find better deals in the US, but probably none with tunnels - and unlikely to be places you want to live though not bad places (bad places in the US that would be around $120k)
Check the pictures, this doesn't look like a house to me. 2 levels of workshop areas and an office area. Also the swimming pool is in the front yard, thats a weird one.
It does seem cheap for a house in Reading, even factoring in that it is a bungalow. Maybe they factored in increased subsidence risk?
There's a bunch of potentially unpermitted tunnels under the property. Quite the liability.
Suspiciously cheap. There are no detached (what we call 'freestanding') properties on Right Move in the area under £400k. The cheapest is £450k
EDIT: oops, forgot to select the 'Bungalow' filter too (ugh). 2 properties: £375k and £350k (very small, 60m2). Still...nothing detached around £300k
EDIT2: ohh auction...230m2...yeh won't go for £300k, way more
Cool! Here's another example of a tunnel house: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forestiere_Underground_Gardens
Reminds me how rich people in historic areas of London took on the habit of extending their properties downwards, keeping the above-ground parts intact due to conservation laws.
Then everyone acted surprised when entire streets started sinking, or whole buildings collapsed into the ground: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/nov/03/london-stree...
That's because London is on clay. The Reading guy was mostly on chalk (and was himself an engineer). It sounds like the water table was a long way down as well. Soft clay or waterlogged sand are more like digging a hole in a bowl of custard. There are a lot of things that can go wrong - in the case of clay, even if you don't collapse the hole the clay can expand for years afterwards ("heave").
Doing underground expansion correctly won’t cause streets to sink.
128sqm below ground level is merely similar to a relatively small apartment: not a lot of area. I think you could get more genuinely usable area from renovating a garage in many cases. That's partly because it's more likely to have fresh air, light, and both level and long item (eg. furniture) access. Not to mention ceiling height and structural stability.
300k in Tilehurst for a house with a pool is incredibly cheap.
[Looks at interior photos]
Ah. Anyway.
Curious how he got planning permission. Or if he got planning permission.
That 15 meters underground, not 15 million tunnels.
The title is "not even" clickbait, just very confusing.
"The unique complex contains more than 1,300 square feet of underground space, including tunnels and storage rooms - and even a hand-built railway."
(Edit: I mean the original article, not the submission)
sorry for the capital M … I have fixed in the title to 15m as in metres
that’s ~ 45 ft underground, I believe … perhaps not that impressive, but quite funny since I would hesitate to undermine my own house and surely this makes it worth less
What are those dark brown cylinder shapes in the sides of the roughly hewn tunnel (first image on the right)?
My hunch: Sound-deadening baffles.
Hm i dont know ,if they were MY tunnels i would be ok with them there.Someone elses tunnels just rub me the wrong way , like stepping in someone elses house with the furniture still there.
This misses the most important question.
Why is it for sale?
Looking at the pictures, my best guess is that the maintenance has been an issue for some time.
Says it’s vacant. Says guy started in the 80s. Going to deduce he is/was older and moving on for any number of normal reasons. Why is the reason so important?
15 meters deep underground in 4 levels, not just a 15 meters long tunnel.
>1,300 square feet of underground space, including tunnels and storage rooms - and even a hand-built railway.
So you just go digging under neighbours properties? What about underground infrastructure?
I don’t think it extends beyond property limits.
would love to see the radon measurements in those tunnels/basement.
Is that an issue in the UK?
The masculine urge to dig...
Fans of Wind Rose (the band) maybe?
Some people really love tunnels. Personally I always wanted a house with two basements. Or maybe more. Probably inspired by the 2002 movie Resident Evil.
15m is… almost nothing?
Depth, not length
15 metres? Given that your average two storey house is much less than 10m tall in total I wouldn't say 15m is "nothing".
15 meters is a tragedy. 15 million is a statistic.
It's got a lot of interesting qualities, but it looks like a dungeon… Not quite put the lotion in the basket type.. but close.
Colin Furze has entered the chat.
That was my first thought. Then I wondered why it was talking about Reading rather than Lincolnshire.
Maybe I missed it through all the ads, but it's pretty disappointing that there is no direct link to the listing?
This is the listing. You can click through pictures of it all. The rocket entrance is amazing.
https://www.btgeddisonspropertyauctions.com/properties/20260...
sorry for the ads … but this made me smile
You'd probably be interested in this person's work: https://youtu.be/6CLF4QrYmYg
The online versions of local British Newspapers are almost unreadable now with all the chumbox ads and continual page repainting. Ugh.
Can't access this site - wants me to enable some form of tracking that my DNS doesn't allow. Alternate source?