safe underground

[miriam_e]

I wonder how many structures that were destroyed in the recent Queensland cyclone (hurricane) will be rebuilt exactly the same way again, waiting for the next winds to knock them down.

Whenever there is widespread damage by winds or bushfires or flood or earthquake I mention to people that most of the homes would have survived if they had been built underground. They tend treat that as an absurd statement. I make all the points I've listed below, but somehow people have this facility for not hearing things that depart from "normal" and they brush it all aside. But what I'm saying isn't new or radical. It has all been shown time after time. Heck, some of the world's foremost architects and energy experts have elected to build their own homes underground. Now, why do you suppose they would do that?

There are a lot of advantages to building underground:

• There are enormous energy savings. The house maintains the same temperature year round, regardless of the external temperature. If the top of the underground house is insulated down the sides to about 2 meters below the surface then the whole house acts thermally as if it is at that depth, where the temperature hardly varies all year. Coober Pedy, here in Australia, can be an inhospitably hot place during the day and can be very cold at night, but the buildings remain at a pleasant temperature because they're underground. Heating and cooling are the two greatest costs in a home and they drop to almost nothing in an underground home.
  
  
• The thermal inertia of underground houses means that once they are cooled or warmed to a particular temperature they stay near that temperature for days on end. The fact that there are no daily swings of temperature make them luxurious places to live.
  
  
• Fire, wind, and most natural disasters sweep over the surface, leaving underground buildings untouched. In the USA, in places threatened by tornados they traditionally have storm cellars, but for some reason I've never been able to fathom, they continue to build mostly above ground. After each tornado people come out of the safety of their storm cellars and rebuild their demolished aboveground homes. In bushfire prone places here in Australia, not only do people build their homes above ground in the path of expected fires, but they build them out of wood! -- out of wood!! Then after the guaranteed tragedy they rebuild aboveground in wood again! Unbelievable! Surprisingly, you'd be safer in a properly constructed underground house during a flood. And I seem to recall that underground housing is safer in an earthquake too. Underground houses are safer in times of unnatural disaster too. In times of war people evacuate to the underground bunkers.
  
  
• Exterior maintenance of an underground house reduces to cleaning windows and skylights. There is no exterior painting, roofs to fix, gutter to clean/repair, and no danger of falling off roofs.
  
  
• You get double use of your land if you build underground. This is especially valuable if you live on a small suburban block.
  
  
• Sound insulation in an underground home is superb. No more worrying about noisy neighbors, or conversely you can play music as loud as you like without disturbing others.
  
  
• Security is better in an underground home than an aboveground one. The only points of entry are the windows and doors, and even if undesirables do enter it is possible to have safe rooms that can't be deduced by walking around the exterior as can be done with an aboveground home. (The comedy Burglar starring Whoopie Goldberg makes this last point, though in that film her home is at the top of a building.)
  
  
• Most underground buildings make great use of natural lighting through windows, skylights, and lightpiping, to become well-lit, airy places, unlike most "normal" houses, which are usually dark and badly lit despite being up on the surface.
  
  
• If everybody built underground ugly suburbia would be transformed into beautiful parkland. (I'd like to see roads move underground too -- the horrific annual toll of child, pet, and wildlife deaths would drop to zero. And forcing drivers to breathe their fumes would produce much faster changes in vehicle emissions.)
  

Drawbacks?

• Underground homes are initally more expensive than aboveground homes, but if you lose everything in a disaster you have to rebuild not only your house again, but also repurchase all the other things destroyed too. And if life is lost then what price can you put on that? But it isn't impossibly expensive, and if more people built that way the price would come down.
  
  
• The ultra-conservative nature of town councils can make it difficult to get building approval, even if the house is provably safer, stronger, more aesthetically pleasing, and more energy efficient.
  

Comments

[qu-is.livejournal.com]

Thankyou, this is very informative.
I would defiantly consider building underground if I ever did build.
Would you have any sites that you could suggest on for the technical details?

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Here are some pages to start from:

The British Earth Sheltering Association
http://www.besa-uk.org/index.html

Subsurface Buildings site has lots of interesting info
http://www.subsurfacebuildings.com/default.asp
A particularly interesting article there shows how underground buildings can be designed with lots of natural light -- even if very deeply underground.
http://www.subsurfacebuildings.com/BuildingUndergroundwithaLightTouch.html

A big list of websites and books is at
http://tecno.upc.es/cluster/cdubp/adlist.htm
That site
http://tecno.upc.es/cluster/
seems to be a loose group of architects and engineers involved in underground building, but is one of the most difficult sites to navigate I have ever found.
Most of their information seems to be accessible from
http://tecno.upc.es/cluster/cdubp/index.htm

An article on the real-estate site Find a Property
http://www.findaproperty.com/story.aspx?storyid=0620

An article on underground building on the BBC site
http://www.bbc.co.uk/wiltshire/villages/nettleton_underground_house.shtml

A company that makes single-shell concrete domes has found their product especially useful for underground building:
http://www.monolithic.com/plan_design/belowgrade/

Here is something I didn't know: In Northern China, between 10 and 40 million people live below ground.

Architect Arthur Quarmby is an advocate of underground housing and his home Underhill was the first high profile underground house in England. I'll try to scan in some pictures I have of it. All I can find online is this rather uninformative page:
http://www.ribapix.org/index.php?a=indexes&s=item&key=IYToxOntpOjA7czoxODoiQXJjaGl0ZWN0cycgaG91c2VzIjt9&pg=18

Some years ago New Scientist magazine did a cover article on underground homes and a beautiful picture of his house was the cover picture. I still have it. I'll see if I can find it and scan it in and OCR the article.

Malcolm Wells is another great advocate of underground housing
http://www.malcolmwells.com/index.html

Here are some books:
The Complete Book Of Underground Houses: How To Build A Low Cost Home
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0806907282/103-9223226-4337457?v=glance&n=283155
Underground Buildings: More Than Meets the Eye
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1884956270/103-9223226-4337457?v=glance&n=283155

Check your local library. They are sure to have some books on underground or earth-covered building.

I'll have a look among the books I have and see if any are still published.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

I should have added The Rocky Mountain Institute
http://www.rmi.org/
They are amazing. They are up above the snowline and use passive solar heating techniques. Demonstrating what a success this is they have a banana tree and a tropical iguana lizard indoors.

I should have also pointed you directly to one of the longest lists of underground buildings I've seen:
http://www.malcolmwells.com/resources.html

[qu-is.livejournal.com]

Thanks!! I'll start working my way through these. :)

[elffin.livejournal.com]

Found you via Flemco.

Here in the US, there are some significant barriers to building underground.

Zoning regulations are often not amendable by zoning commissions.

Fire codes require easy access for the firemen to be able to access the structure on fire. In addition, code requires that police be able to access your home in the case of an emergency (which is code for 'Police need to be able to ensure you're not fortifying yourself in a stronghold')

Drug Czars hate the idea of the thermal inertia of underground structures; It'd be impossible to use IR imaging to find people cooking meth or growing marijuana, then.

Neighborhood consistency codes often mean that one cannot make an 'eyesore', and anything that's easily visible to the street is often capable of being officially squelched by neighbors. Anything unusual might 'lower property values'. It's pitched towards mass-produced McMansions and McHomes.

Many of the places vulnerable to tornadoes here in the US are also vulnerable to torrential rains, and some are not very far above flood plain. I know that in Dallas, the only habitation structures underground are the basements of older historic mansion-style homes and some office buildings; Building underground here requires going down and anchoring to bedrock, possibly excavating that bedrock, excavating the sticky black 'clay' soil, and building a structure that withstands that soil expanding and contracting in a massive way. We're in a drought, and two weeks ago we got torrential rains that produced flash floods.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Hi, glad you found me.

I had always felt that local building regulations were a problem, but I was surprised to find while chasing up those links above for qu_is that in some cases building regulations can help, for instance apparently underground building is allowed closer to property edges than aboveground buildings. And there are ways around many of the other regulations -- underground builders are often happy to pool their knowledge and experiences. One thing that surprised me (though it should have occurred to me) is that insurance premiums for underground houses are much lower than on aboveground houses because they are far safer from external disaster.

Flooding would seem at first glance to be a problem, especially in flat low-lying areas, but it isn't necessarily so. Underground houses, by their very nature have to be carefully waterproofed anyway. If the entry to the building is above flood level then such a house is far more suited to flood-prone areas than standard houses. And if it isn't, then you simply need doors and windows to be fully waterproofed and the house can be locked up till the waters recede. Most people would come back to ruined homes. Owners of underground houses would come back to pristine homes. Much better.

There may be some places where underground building really is a bad idea, but there are many, many more where aboveground building is a bad idea -- anywhere prone to fierce storms, fire, noise, excessive heat and/or cold...

Undergound housing is enjoying a quiet boom. In the USA there are now more than 7,000 homes built underground and the number will increase as energy costs rise. As numbers increase communities will embrace them more.

[greylock.livejournal.com]

I've harboured a secret desire for an underground home since I was a toddler flicking through my old Disney encyclopedias, and as such whenever something about it catches my eye (like the underground hotel in Cober Pedy) I usually watch it.

It's a nice idea, but I think even a minor-scale role out of the system in established areas is unfeasible. I'd imagine that there would be all sorts of geotechnical issues for a start.

And building density issues. The trend lately seems to have been for high density developments, which by their very nature have to be above ground.

I like the idea, that said.

{Certainly the costs of sinking roads, all roads, is very much pie-in-the-sky. It's expensive just to sink a few kilometres of train line, much less miles of roads. Plus, IIRC Australian regulations prohibit the carrying of dangerous goods (petrol, chemicals, pretty much anything with a hazard sticker) within tunnels.}

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

I've been interested in it since I was a kid too.

Non-conformity is an real problem. How do we ever advance when there is this incredible pressure to conform? The only answer to that, as far as I can see, is for admired individuals (movie stars, hi-tech gurus, etc) to be early adopters. Soon after that fashion forces all the followers to... ummm... follow.

High density doesn't have to go only upwards. There are major advantages in shifting high density building under the surface. One of the advantages is that it would help to remove ghetto mentality to some degree because people wouldn't be able to point to an ugly concrete tower and say "You live there?" Instead they would live in an unseen multilevel development somewhere under parkland.

I didn't know that about hazardous goods and tunnels, though it does stand to reason. But my wish for underground roads is really pie-in-the-sky. Until we have robotic diggers that can labor day and night at almost no cost there is no way we will have large-scale underground road systems. We might never have them even then... I tend to think the steepening cost of fuel will change society more than we anticipate. I expect telecommuting will become more popular. And add one or more epidemics of very contagious disease and I think people will become reluctant to mix in crowds or workplaces.

[greylock.livejournal.com]

High density doesn't have to go only upwards. There are major advantages in shifting high density building under the surface. One of the advantages is that it would help to remove ghetto mentality to some degree because people wouldn't be able to point to an ugly concrete tower and say "You live there?" Instead they would live in an unseen multilevel development somewhere under parkland.

Could just be me, but people living in close proximity is bad enough as it is. Mix in the obfuscation of an underground development, and a lack of sunlight, and I'd be sure ghetto-style problems would be worse.

Sure, I'm a bit paranoid, but I was raised on bad science fiction.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

High density underground living:
The proposed Alice City in Japan
http://www.gel.civil.nagasaki-u.ac.jp/text/concept/con9/con9.html
Wikipedia - underground cities
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_city

Coober Pedy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coober_Pedy%2C_South_Australia
(A space ship in downtown Coober Pedy???)

[greylock.livejournal.com]

Please click the image to see greatly.

Somethimes, I love Engrish. I don't know how advanced they are with Alice City, but I don't imagine very far. I've heard so many gradiose schemes in my time, and this stikes me as another. I can't imagine the cost/tonne of dirt moved would be extremely cost prohibitive.

Plus, it makes me think of Umbrella Corp.

I find the underground cities article interesting. Obviously at some point it was considerably more cost effective to design and build underground tunnels and subways. What's changed? Lack of slave labour? Workplace regulations? We're having enough trouble over here just digging a few kilometre long rail tunnel.

I wonder what that ship is from. Doesn't look like Pitch Black to me. Time Guardian maybe?

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Engrish... :) Yeah, I used to have a Honda motorbike decades ago and loved the manual. It added much needed humor when faced with the hassle of working on the machine.

What's changed? Perhaps lack of inclusion?

Back in the day, workers earned perhaps 1/20th what the executives did and they had great hopes of a brilliant future for their kids.

Nowadays executive salaries are thousands of times the size of worker salaries and the gap ever-widens. There is a constant feeling of being ripped off every which way, of becoming truly slaves with no future, along with this awful sinking expectation that it is all about to go badly sideways. It's understandably difficult for workers to get enthusiastic about impressive feats of engineering now.

I remember when I was a kid that workers on the Snowy Hydroelectric Scheme felt genuinely proud that they were a part of something truly grand. There was a real feeling of excitement at the gound level.

Seems the spaceship is from Pitch Black. See http://members.cox.net/5barr27/australia/coober/pedy.html for neat pictures and info, and lots of pics of underground Coober Pedy.

[greylock.livejournal.com]

What's changed? Perhaps lack of inclusion?
Back in the day, workers earned perhaps 1/20th what the executives did and they had great hopes of a brilliant future for their kids.

Possibly that's a part of it. Whenever I think of big infrastructure projects I think if things like the London Subway and the like moreso than the Snowy River Hydro, and in terms of those projets I don't believe industrial relations were particularly conducive to getting the best from workers.

Admittedly most of my views are based on documentaries like Industrial Wonders of the Modern World, and various radio doccos I've heard, including one about the Depression-era strikes on the US Waterfront (and the working conditions of that age) which don't instill in me a hot of hope that the workers would be gleeful about building public infrastructure that would serve all.

That said, the Snowy Scheme came later than all that, so maybe there was a golden age of IR.

These days we most often hear about the Perth-Mandurah train line. It's over budget and, while the West beats the story up something chronic, at the heart of it are some dreadful problems.

One 17-year-old working on site gets $900 per week to simply record vehicle movements at the gate. I don't know if that sort of salary disparity with the "average worker" is good for anyone either, much as executive level salaries are good for anyone; or the payscale of wages offered by the mining industry is good for a regional centre like Mackay.

The payscale of executives really bugs me. Even a middling executive of a 2cps resources house can apparently justify a c$300,000 salary.

Seems the spaceship is from Pitch Black. See http://members.cox.net/5barr27/australia/coober/pedy.html for neat pictures and info, and lots of pics of underground Coober Pedy.

If only Chronicles of Riddick hadn't sucked, hordes of geeks might have flocked to Coober Pedy annually.