DIY Survival: Shelter Episode 1: The Plan

Welcome to DIY Survival: Shelter "The Vault Project"

Episode 1: The Plan. We drive around town pricing out how much it will cost to build a 1500-1600 square foot underground survival bunker. The goal is for it to be able to house the wife, 5 kids, and my little brother for an extended period of time and it not be like the Shining where we go psycho and wanna Jack Nicholson the other people. With that being said, we want it to be nice and have plenty (relative term) of space and food/supplies to last several months in case of the zompocalypse.

We first went to price how much an excavator will cost to rent for two days to dig a 35x45 foot hole for the bunker. They estimated that it would be $1,400ish for the excavator, delivery, taxes, and insurance.

After that we went to price concrete for the floors, walls, and ceiling. One square yard of 5,000psi concrete was $169 dollars. Rough math we figure we will need around 90 +/- square yards of concrete for everything. The rebar wasn't as cost prohibitive as I thought it would be but still a significant cost.

Pricing plywood and framing material for a cast to pour the concrete in was daunting. That will cost several thousand dollars as is.

The biggest cost was the Steel I-Beams at $17,000 estimated. We could outfit the whole bunker with 40 foot shipping containers for less than that so that might very well turn into the plan depending how the excavation process and pouring the foundation goes...