I'm Cool, Connected and Living in a Cave.

Nowadays you can make a living anywhere you can get
connected to the Internet. You too can live in the oldest
home known to mankind and reach the newest market - the
world wide web.

I have been living in a cave for five years and I wouldn't
live anywhere else! My cool cave can be found in the
beautiful village of Galera in the Granada Province of
Spain.I can almost guess what you are thinking – he lives
in a dark, damp, smelly hole in the ground so why tell the
world about it! WRONG, my unique rural property in Spain is
a cave house, it has three bedrooms, is comfortable and
very modern in all but appearance - imagine a whitewashed
English country cottage.

Just to show you how modern a cave house can be, we have
satellite TV, ADSL internet, telephone, mains electric,
water and sewerage. The rooms are dry, many have large
windows providing natural light and, importantly, in this
extreme climate of hot dry summers and cold mid-winter
nights my cave home keeps an even temperature all year
round thanks to it's natural geothermal temperature control.

Because, like most others, my cave house is built into the
side of a hill I have the most spectacular views stretching
many miles to the Sagra Mountains and for three hundred
days of the year I can watch the sun rise as I eat my
breakfast.

Cave houses in some parts of Spain have been home to man
for thousands of years. Their popularity has risen and
fallen as the centuries passed, today demand is soaring.
Many people, both Spanish and other nationalities, are
looking for a different lifestyle and homes that are
affordable and eco-friendly.

Most modernised cave houses consist of two parts, part cave
built into the side of a hill and part conventional with
rooms built onto the front. In this way you get the best of
both worlds. As such, cave houses have light, airy living
rooms to the front and cooler cave bedrooms further back.
Almost everyone loves to sleep in the cave rooms, they are
quiet, cool, dark and natural. Many people swear that their
cave bedrooms have a calming effect, connecting with
inherited memories from our earliest creation. This sense
of tranquillity induces a deeper sleep resulting in
improvements in both physical and mental health.

Cave houses have a number of distinct advantages compared
to conventionally built houses:

o They are significantly cheaper. Cave houses are 20 to 40%
cheaper than an equivalent bricks and mortar property. As
examples, it is still possible to buy a three bedroom cave
house, fully modernised for under 100,000€ and four
bedrooms for 115,000€.

o Each cave home is unique in its design. Almost all the
modernised cave homes have been rebuild from much older
dwellings, originally hewn out by hand hundreds of ago, as
a result no two caves homes are alike. There is no danger
of ending up with a home exactly like that of your
neighbours.

o Because the cave rooms are sunk into the rock they
maintain roughly the same temperature summer and winter,
between 13 and 18°C. There is absolutely no need for air
conditioning in the summer and winter heating requirements
are much lower.

o Recently renovated cave houses come with double block
cavity insulated external walls, double glazed windows and
extra roof insulation making them beautifully cool in the
summer and cosily warm during those winter nights.

o They have a quaintness and charm rarely found in so
called "modern properties", yet they have all the
facilities you expect from a new home. Electricity, mains
water, mains sewerage, telephone, satellite TV and
broadband Internet are all available enabling you to have
the best of both worlds.

o Low maintenance is another benefit. With few external
walls and often no roof to worry about, maintenance costs
can be kept to a minimum. I can easily sleep at night,
close to nature and knowing my eco-home didn't cost the
earth.

oThey are very cheap to run. In addition to the saving on
power for air conditioning and heating their rateable value
is unbelievably low. Often between one and two hundred
Euros a year!

So why not come and experience this unique lifestyle in an
undiscovered area of Spain. Life doesn't get much better.

----------------------------------------------------
Les Edwards runs a niche real estate business in Andalusia.
He specialises in the rebuilding and sale of cave-houses,
eco-homes and other rural property in Spain.
http://www.spanish-inland-properties.com