Earth glide is specifically what earth elemental have that allows them to move through earth/stone. It specifically says it doesn't leave a tunnel. So no, you cannot use them in a way to create a tunnel for you by using earth glide.
Earth Glide for an Earth Elemental is like walking through air to us.
If you look under elemental entries, yes the are immune to their elemental (or at least damage related to their element). Fire elemental are immune to fire, water immune to cold, and earth immune to acid.
No, I don't believe a water elemental could create a bubble within it's body to allow you to have breahtable air. Just use water breathing though, and you could convince it to let you ride inside of it.
Earth Glide (Ex) A burrowing earth elemental can pass through stone, dirt, or almost any other sort of earth except metal as easily as a fish swims through water. If protected against fire damage, it can even glide through lava. Its burrowing leaves behind no tunnel or hole, nor does it create any ripple or other sign of its presence. A move earth spell cast on an area containing a burrowing earth elemental flings the elemental back 30 feet, stunning the creature for 1 round unless it succeeds on a DC 15 Fortitude save.
Also, I can't find in on the PRD, but if you look up burrow on D20pfsrd for burrow under universal monster rules it says, "Most creatures do not leave behind tunnels other creatures can use (either because the material they tunnel through fills in behind them of because they do not actually dislocate any material while burrowing). "
Which leads me to say that when earth elementals burrow, they are actually just eathgliding and they are listed as having a burrow speed so you know more quickly what kind of movement it is, and how far.
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Earth glide is specifically what earth elemental have that allows them to move through earth/stone. It specifically says it doesn't leave a tunnel. So no, you cannot use them in a way to create a tunnel for you by using earth glide.
Earth Glide for an Earth Elemental is like walking through air to us.
If you look under elemental entries, yes the are immune to their elemental (or at least damage related to their element). Fire elemental are immune to fire, water immune to cold, and earth immune to acid.
No, I don't believe a water elemental could create a bubble within it's body to allow you to have breahtable air. Just use water breathing though, and you could convince it to let you ride inside of it.
Just a quick point of order. Water and Earth elementals are /not/ immune to cold and acid respectively.
Nor are air elementals immune to electricity.
Only the fire subtype grants fire immunity (and vulnerability to cold). The elemental traits don't give any particular energy immunities inherently.
I'd argue from a DM perspective that an earth elemental should probably be very effective at burrowing a tunnel for a summoner though (it falls into that 'rules be damned, its what its supposed to do.' thing). Not quite sure on the math. And the material would still need to go somewhere. Dirt doesn't just disappear into the aether.
Just a quick point of order. Water and Earth elementals are /not/ immune to cold and acid respectively.
Nor are air elementals immune to electricity.
Only the fire subtype grants fire immunity (and vulnerability to cold). The elemental traits don't give any particular energy immunities inherently.
I'd argue from a DM perspective that an earth elemental should probably be very effective at burrowing a tunnel for a summoner though (it falls into that 'rules be damned, its what its supposed to do.' thing). Not quite sure on the math. And the material would still need to go somewhere. Dirt doesn't just disappear into the aether.
You know what, you're absolutely right on the elemental immunities. I guess I was just remember fire elemental and extrapolated.
As far as the earth elementals movement, you're supposing that burrow actually means it digs. But the description of the burrow on d20pfsrd seems to say that some creature (like the earth elemental) never displace any material to move through the ground. They just move through it as if it were air to them. Now, you could make it dig a hole for you, but that isn't really going to help since that would be slow and tedious.
Ineed the note on d20pfsrd it says it was copied from d20srd, because Pathfinder did not reprint the rules for burrow. Anywhere. It's not defined. However, it's a very fair assumption to believe they didn't change the definition of burrow from 3.5 to Pathfinder. Without it being further defined we actually have no idea how its suppoed to work unless you use the previous definition. I believe this is mostly a copy and past error when Paizo was writing the CRB.
Now, to be fair you could have bypassed the locked door no matter what, if only by simply attack the rock walls until they gave way around the door.
In any respect, I no longer understand your problem. You convinced the DM to let you do something that you probably shouldn't have done (but you could've probably accomplished anyways) and then something bad happened because you bypassed his super secret uber locked door?
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No, the elemental can't control things beyond what is expressed in its entry in the bestiary.
Earth elemtnals have no special control over earth. They can glide through it, they get a bonus to attack and damage if they and their opponent are touching it. They cannot cast rock to mud, or mud to rock, or magically summon a castle from stone or anything like that.
Ice elementals can pass through ice, spider climb on icy surfaces, can see through snow without penalty, and causes numbing cold with its attack. It does not however magically create snow or ice or create ice sculptures or the like.
The answer to you question of how much does an elemental affect its element? As much as exactly described by its bestiary entry, which in general is not the way you want it to be.
Elementals have no special abilities to control things composed of their element (unless listed in the bestiary entry). So no, earth elementals cannot make stone walls or build you a keep. Unless by this you mean that you have them slowly dig out rocks, slowly shape them into the necessary shapes, and arrange them. And then it's work it likely subpar because it doesn't have knowledge engineering to know how to properly create such things. Earth elementals are no more efficient at creating buildings from stone than humans excepting bonuses that have in size and strength compared to average humans.
Everything is perfectly clear, it's laid out in the bestiary. They have exactly the powers that are listed. The problem is that you imagine elementals are more powerful than they actually are.
Edit: I have been thinking about this post and realize it comes of condescending. Let me pre-apologize for that, and say I'm sorry. However, this post is long, and the points I made are important so I don't want to re-edit everything.
The short answer is, elementals don't really have much control over things composed of the same elemental, and what they do get is listed in the bestiary and they get no more than that.