> You can have a cellar by/under a modern house just fine The ease of that depends on where you live. I live in the southern US, so we don't have a frost line

> You can have a cellar by/under a modern house just fine The ease of that depends on where you live. I live in the southern US, so we don't have a frost line in the soil. Accordingly, most homes are built on post-tensioned slabs (newer) or conventional (older) foundations. There's also shrink-swell soil, so a poured concrete basement would crack (the slab floats on this, but walls would be harder to do). Just because of the topography of my lot, it would be hard to have an external cellar (and it definitely would not be as cool as those found in more northern climates).