4 ms·

This comment won't do well right now but I suspect in the future we may come back to this idea. I believe more work needs to go into automation of forming/weld

This comment won't do well right now but I suspect in the future we may come back to this idea. I believe more work needs to go into automation of forming/welding frames for underground homes as the temperature is rather constant under ground. 3D printed/molded? Some locations will need specially built units that can handle moisture. I have probably binge-watched too many mining/tunneling videos but I could see this technology becoming affordable to the consumer through technological optimizations, maybe? Anyway moving the home under ground could provide additional room above ground for a garden or parking spots. Underground homes would also be tornado resistant. Another advantage is energy efficiency or moving towards being carbon neutral. There are concrete / shotcrete companies making carbon absorbing material now. I am thinking of the real world example of Coober Pedy, AU [1] They have subterranea hotels, mines, homes, recreation facilities and more. If I ever went to AU that would be my first stop. Anecdotally my home is partially earth bermed and even on hot days hot being around 101F it is cool in my home and I do not even own a HVAC unit. One of the many reasons I moved was due to heat and sleep issues. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coober_Pedy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coober_Pedy

DoreenMichele 4y ago
Partially earth beamed falls under passive solar design. That's actually got real potential for helping us meaningfully mitigate these issues.
ekianjo 4y ago
> Underground homes would also be tornado resistant earthquakes are another problem though
- LinuxBender 4y ago
  True, though it appears to be the same liquefaction risk that above homes are subject to. [1] Geological surveys would be more important and I suspect compensatory insurance would be harder to acquire. That said if the automation brought the cost of these units down far enough then perhaps only liability insurance would be required as the unit could potentially be recycled if it were designed with that in mind. One could rent an excavator at $150 to $400/hr depending on size required to remove the top soil. If the rooms were modular then the excavator could lift or maybe even drag out the damaged room to be swapped out. If not modular then a crane would be required. There are bomb shelter companies designing underground facilities that can withstand earth movement and allow the occupants to escape harm. I won't link to those companies as I feel they are over-priced and this could be done much more efficiently with advancements in automation and recycled materials. For small facilities like homes I believe this is a mostly solved problem. A harder problem in my opinion would be a commercial mine due to the size/scale. Steel I-Beams and steel plates throughout a lengthy/deep mine would be very expensive as opposed to the wire mesh and 8' anchor bolts and shotcrete used today. A modular home would be far less likely to cross liquefaction and plate fault boundaries. [1] - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2467967417300053 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S246796741...
clajiness 4y ago
Time to start a radon mitigation company!
- LinuxBender 4y ago
  I suspect that if a subterranea home were built so poorly that radon gas is infiltrating the walls then so would water. Both would have to be factored into the design. Modern bunkers are designed to keep radon gas out and are equipped with high flow ventilation systems. High pressure shotcrete or some similar material should more than suffice to keep gasses and water out. Radon is a problem in traditional brick and mortar basements as those walls are typically just one layer of brick and mortar. Water and radon can easily penetrate through micro-cracks that develop over the years in traditional basements.
  - twothamendment 4y ago
    "I suspect that if a subterranea home were built so poorly that radon gas is infiltrating the walls then so would water." I'm no expert, but your statement makes me ask... Why then do we have homes with basements that have radon problems, but not water problems? I don't think the two problems are always related.
    - LinuxBender 4y ago
      Water infiltration depends on the amount of water and type of soil and the drainage designed into the basement. e.g. layers of concrete and rows of shale/rocks for drainage. Not all basements are equal. The amount of radon depends on the quantity of uranium and thorium in the soil/dirt. So you are right they are not always related but the mitigating controls can be potentially related. Some construction companies just focus on maximizing profits in my opinion and some individual home builders will use construction dirt that contains low or no uranium or thorium.
lm28469 4y ago
Reading things like that really makes me think that we'll literally do _anything_ rather than tackle the root cause. Soon enough people will work on de orbiting earth further away from the sun rather than stopping living unsustainable
- LinuxBender 4y ago
  I fully support tackling the root causes. That said I can not do that by myself and my experience interacting with governments has unfortunately made me a bit cynical. What I as an individual can most certainly do is install a modular home under ground if a company were inclined to make one, preferably out of recycled material. I could rent an excavator tomorrow as they are closed on Sunday. I have a theory that if enough homes were underground that would substantially reduce the load on the power grid from a lack of HVAC use, freeing more capacity for EV vehicles and buying more time for power companies to upgrade the power grid and reducing overall carbon emissions world wide. Perhaps power companies could lobby governments to make under ground homes affordable, modular, carbon neutral and most importantly safe. The wealthier and more influential people could even have underground garages to protect their expensive toys from the environment and theft.
- forgotusername6 4y ago
  Living underground tackles the one issue that no green revolution is going to fix - space. Above ground space is fixed and the population will continue to rise. We can build upwards or downwards but upwards blocks light, which is also a fixed quantity.
  - micromacrofoot 4y ago
    living space isn’t remotely a concern, if we all (the whole world) lived in a single mega-city as dense as NYC it would be about the size of Texas light also isn’t much of an issue, we could power the world with a solar array the size of New Mexico fertile farm land, stable temperature, and distribution are much much much larger issues living underground might be good for reducing electricity needs for heating and cooling, or avoiding certain natural disasters… but probably isn’t very useful for much else
kortex 4y ago
Underground construction is really hard to do correctly. Partial earth bermed foundations as you mentioned are a good compromise, especially if the earth is built up. But even then, drainage and soil pressure are big engineering concerns. Also you have no control over how much thermal interface you have. My office is on the first floor on a slab. It's great in the summer and freezing in the winter, despite a carpet. Digging down becomes increasingly expensive vs equivalent volume building up. Why not just use ground source heat pumps? It's much easier to bury some tubes than habitable spaces. It's easier to move heat/cold where you need it. You aren't forced into a fixed thermal flux.
- LinuxBender 4y ago
  Underground construction is really hard to do correctly. I agree it is harder to do correctly and costs more. It's an investment that if done right could outlast any above ground home. But that is quite a loaded caveat on my part, done right. That's why I envision this being done in a factory and very specific instructions and compliance requirements that if adhered to should produce more predictable results. The bunkers I see people building today are all custom one-off designs and I think that is where they get into trouble. I do like the idea of heat pumps. That would be a balanced trade-off for those that do not want to mess with putting in a home under ground.
  - shrimp_emoji 4y ago
    >It's an investment that if done right could outlast any above ground home. I would think this was true, but what I've learned so far suggests it's not... Underground, you're not finding refuge from harmful forces on your structure; they exists there too. Things shift, things crack, things leak, humidity causes problems, the whole exterior now endures a chemical interface with the surroundings (and all your Vault-Tec steel will corrode at some speed determined by the nature of the local media). If you're lucky enough to have near-surface bedrock where you are, digging into that is probably your best bet, but, even then, it seems like an uphill battle.
- blip54321 4y ago
  I'm really not sold on the costs of digging down being all that high, long-term. I'm 100% sold on it being expensive today, but I can come up with ways to drive them /way/ down with automation. The critical thing is: 1) You don't need materials. 2) You don't need to transport anything other than a digger I agree it's hard, like engineering a CPU was hard, but I think Elon's got the right idea with the Boring Company. It's not /fundamentally/ expensive. Fundamentally, building in-place with available materials should, some day, be cheap.
fy20 4y ago
In the summer you'll want the surrounding ground to take away the heat, but in the winter that will be too cold, so you'll need to heat your home. There will be some (well quite a lot actually, as you don't have any insulation if you want ground cooling in the summer) waste heat transfering into the surrounding earth. Over time that will heat it up, so in the summer it'll be less effective at cooling. This is actually why the London Underground is so hot in the summer. It wasn't always like this, but over time the ground surrounding the tunnels has heated up. https://citymonitor.ai/transport/londons-tube-has-been-running-so-long-its-literally-raising-temperature-earth-around-it https://citymonitor.ai/transport/londons-tube-has-been-runni...
- proto-n 4y ago
  Well, when you reach the ~23c sweetspot, can't you just stop heating in the winter?
t-3 4y ago
Underground houses are really cool, but we can get the same effect by building above ground with thicker walls. No AC needed when building with adobe.

DoreenMichele 4y ago

Partially earth beamed falls under passive solar design. That's actually got real potential for helping us meaningfully mitigate these issues.

ekianjo 4y ago

> Underground homes would also be tornado resistant earthquakes are another problem though

LinuxBender 4y ago
True, though it appears to be the same liquefaction risk that above homes are subject to. [1] Geological surveys would be more important and I suspect compensatory insurance would be harder to acquire. That said if the automation brought the cost of these units down far enough then perhaps only liability insurance would be required as the unit could potentially be recycled if it were designed with that in mind. One could rent an excavator at $150 to $400/hr depending on size required to remove the top soil. If the rooms were modular then the excavator could lift or maybe even drag out the damaged room to be swapped out. If not modular then a crane would be required. There are bomb shelter companies designing underground facilities that can withstand earth movement and allow the occupants to escape harm. I won't link to those companies as I feel they are over-priced and this could be done much more efficiently with advancements in automation and recycled materials. For small facilities like homes I believe this is a mostly solved problem. A harder problem in my opinion would be a commercial mine due to the size/scale. Steel I-Beams and steel plates throughout a lengthy/deep mine would be very expensive as opposed to the wire mesh and 8' anchor bolts and shotcrete used today. A modular home would be far less likely to cross liquefaction and plate fault boundaries. [1] - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2467967417300053 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S246796741...

clajiness 4y ago

Time to start a radon mitigation company!

LinuxBender 4y ago
I suspect that if a subterranea home were built so poorly that radon gas is infiltrating the walls then so would water. Both would have to be factored into the design. Modern bunkers are designed to keep radon gas out and are equipped with high flow ventilation systems. High pressure shotcrete or some similar material should more than suffice to keep gasses and water out. Radon is a problem in traditional brick and mortar basements as those walls are typically just one layer of brick and mortar. Water and radon can easily penetrate through micro-cracks that develop over the years in traditional basements.
- twothamendment 4y ago
  "I suspect that if a subterranea home were built so poorly that radon gas is infiltrating the walls then so would water." I'm no expert, but your statement makes me ask... Why then do we have homes with basements that have radon problems, but not water problems? I don't think the two problems are always related.
  - LinuxBender 4y ago
    Water infiltration depends on the amount of water and type of soil and the drainage designed into the basement. e.g. layers of concrete and rows of shale/rocks for drainage. Not all basements are equal. The amount of radon depends on the quantity of uranium and thorium in the soil/dirt. So you are right they are not always related but the mitigating controls can be potentially related. Some construction companies just focus on maximizing profits in my opinion and some individual home builders will use construction dirt that contains low or no uranium or thorium.

lm28469 4y ago

Reading things like that really makes me think that we'll literally do _anything_ rather than tackle the root cause. Soon enough people will work on de orbiting earth further away from the sun rather than stopping living unsustainable

LinuxBender 4y ago
I fully support tackling the root causes. That said I can not do that by myself and my experience interacting with governments has unfortunately made me a bit cynical. What I as an individual can most certainly do is install a modular home under ground if a company were inclined to make one, preferably out of recycled material. I could rent an excavator tomorrow as they are closed on Sunday. I have a theory that if enough homes were underground that would substantially reduce the load on the power grid from a lack of HVAC use, freeing more capacity for EV vehicles and buying more time for power companies to upgrade the power grid and reducing overall carbon emissions world wide. Perhaps power companies could lobby governments to make under ground homes affordable, modular, carbon neutral and most importantly safe. The wealthier and more influential people could even have underground garages to protect their expensive toys from the environment and theft.
forgotusername6 4y ago
Living underground tackles the one issue that no green revolution is going to fix - space. Above ground space is fixed and the population will continue to rise. We can build upwards or downwards but upwards blocks light, which is also a fixed quantity.
- micromacrofoot 4y ago
  living space isn’t remotely a concern, if we all (the whole world) lived in a single mega-city as dense as NYC it would be about the size of Texas light also isn’t much of an issue, we could power the world with a solar array the size of New Mexico fertile farm land, stable temperature, and distribution are much much much larger issues living underground might be good for reducing electricity needs for heating and cooling, or avoiding certain natural disasters… but probably isn’t very useful for much else

kortex 4y ago

Underground construction is really hard to do correctly. Partial earth bermed foundations as you mentioned are a good compromise, especially if the earth is built up. But even then, drainage and soil pressure are big engineering concerns. Also you have no control over how much thermal interface you have. My office is on the first floor on a slab. It's great in the summer and freezing in the winter, despite a carpet. Digging down becomes increasingly expensive vs equivalent volume building up. Why not just use ground source heat pumps? It's much easier to bury some tubes than habitable spaces. It's easier to move heat/cold where you need it. You aren't forced into a fixed thermal flux.

LinuxBender 4y ago
Underground construction is really hard to do correctly. I agree it is harder to do correctly and costs more. It's an investment that if done right could outlast any above ground home. But that is quite a loaded caveat on my part, done right. That's why I envision this being done in a factory and very specific instructions and compliance requirements that if adhered to should produce more predictable results. The bunkers I see people building today are all custom one-off designs and I think that is where they get into trouble. I do like the idea of heat pumps. That would be a balanced trade-off for those that do not want to mess with putting in a home under ground.
- shrimp_emoji 4y ago
  >It's an investment that if done right could outlast any above ground home. I would think this was true, but what I've learned so far suggests it's not... Underground, you're not finding refuge from harmful forces on your structure; they exists there too. Things shift, things crack, things leak, humidity causes problems, the whole exterior now endures a chemical interface with the surroundings (and all your Vault-Tec steel will corrode at some speed determined by the nature of the local media). If you're lucky enough to have near-surface bedrock where you are, digging into that is probably your best bet, but, even then, it seems like an uphill battle.
blip54321 4y ago
I'm really not sold on the costs of digging down being all that high, long-term. I'm 100% sold on it being expensive today, but I can come up with ways to drive them /way/ down with automation. The critical thing is: 1) You don't need materials. 2) You don't need to transport anything other than a digger I agree it's hard, like engineering a CPU was hard, but I think Elon's got the right idea with the Boring Company. It's not /fundamentally/ expensive. Fundamentally, building in-place with available materials should, some day, be cheap.

fy20 4y ago

In the summer you'll want the surrounding ground to take away the heat, but in the winter that will be too cold, so you'll need to heat your home. There will be some (well quite a lot actually, as you don't have any insulation if you want ground cooling in the summer) waste heat transfering into the surrounding earth. Over time that will heat it up, so in the summer it'll be less effective at cooling. This is actually why the London Underground is so hot in the summer. It wasn't always like this, but over time the ground surrounding the tunnels has heated up. https://citymonitor.ai/transport/londons-tube-has-been-running-so-long-its-literally-raising-temperature-earth-around-it https://citymonitor.ai/transport/londons-tube-has-been-runni...

proto-n 4y ago
Well, when you reach the ~23c sweetspot, can't you just stop heating in the winter?

t-3 4y ago

Underground houses are really cool, but we can get the same effect by building above ground with thicker walls. No AC needed when building with adobe.