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

[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.