A house for sale...
I knew
it was around here but the address has always been kept confidential.
Turns out it is in Blaine, WA, about 40 miles from us and near the I-5 connection with Canada. A nice unassuming house on a decent size city lot. A nice place for the $595K asking.
What isn't evident is what the previous owner did for a hobby. From the website:
The Fortress
The Underground Fortress is an 8th wonder of the world! It is an unbelievable feet of engineering. The Fortress goes a total of 45 feet under the house! That is below sea level! The fortress has over 1600 sq. ft. of living area, plus hundreds of more square feet of passages and secrets rooms. It was all hand dug over a 20 year period, and all the walls were constructed with a small electric hand cement mixer. There are 3 ft concrete walls, using 5-bag cement (20% denser than regular cement). Not only are the walls thick and dense, but the finishing work is amazing quality. These walls keep it a constant 60F degrees year round. It is so well insulated that even one small space heater can heat all 1600+ sqft of fortress space in a few hours. The fortress has amazingly fresh air in it with an incredible air ventilation system that pulls air outside and brings fresh air in, leaving no moldy or musty smell that you commonly smell in basements. Because of the walls and systems, there are very few bugs/spiders down in the fortress and we have never seen any signs of rodents. The fortress also has 4 sump pumps that keep the ground water from being an issue. The sump pumps are on float valves that make them come on automatically when they fill up with water. 3 of the pumps are for ground water and the other one is for sewage of the bathroom/kitchenette area. The fortress is also fully wired with electrical/phone/plumbing/drains. It also has many secret doors, and a 1-ton blast door at the entrance and a 3-ton motorized door to seal you in and close the fortress to the outside world. There are at least 5 ways to get in/out of the fortress back into the house!
The fortress comes with almost everything needed to still be a fully functional “bomb shelter”, it comes with everything needed to survive almost any situation. Everything having to do with the survival gear is being left behind for the new owner. All these items are worth in the many thousands of $$$. After you experience this underground fortress, you will be awe struck with amazement, there is no other home like this anywhere on Earth! The producers of the History Channel show Secret passages of the Cold War, claimed that this was the best civilian made bomb shelter in all of North America! You still will not believe it once you see it.
That would be an "interesting" house to insure given that parts are below the water table in a port city and that the work was done without apparent engineering or building permits but sheesh -- what a monument to a person's persistence. Would be fun to tour but I bet the $595K is just the tip of the iceberg.
Posted by DaveH at September 8, 2006 8:07 PM