Cavemen

I really don't care for home maintenance, particularly the exterior. The very purpose of a home is to keep us dry and warm, yet we build our houses out in the open where wind, sun and rain can beat on them mercilessly until they need to be fixed. That means maintenance. That's just plain screwy in my book.

So I've decided on a solution to my problem. I'm going to bury my house.

Well, not my current house. I live in a townhouse, and if I was going to bury a house, it would be a ranch, a single story building. Dig out a basement, then use that dirt to cover the top of the house and to nicely slope down the sides, leaving the house essentially at ground level - just buried under a few feet of dirt. The traditional roof would be replaced by lawn or landscaping, and the top of the house would have to be built to accomodate the massive load of soil that would be up there. There is no siding on at least two sides, but the front and back of the house can still be exposed to whatever degree desired. I'd cover most of it because of the reduced maintenance.

If you want to have higher-density housing, create a house that's 20 feet wide and 60 feet long and place a bunch of them in a row, like townhouses. Keep a few feet of dirt between them and you've got a row of underground homes, nicely packed together. And they all have a 20'x60' yard on top. It'll use a lot more real estate, of course.

Burying a house is not done just so that I don't have to paint the exterior. That three or four feet of dirt on all sides of the house gives some nice advantages. The temperature remains far more uniform than in a house being baked or frozen by mother nature. It'll be easier to heat and cool. Also, other curves that mother nature tends to throw at us, such as hurricanes, hail and perhaps even tornados, will be weathered better by a home that has "dug in". It also makes the house QUIET. Very little noise gets through a few feet of dirt. You can turn up the volume on your home theatre without annoying your neighbors, and get some sleep when the fire department roars by outside.

The most obvious downside to burying a house would likely be light. I figure that's something that can be tackled with judicious use of high tech lighting, such as LEDs, which are very cost-effective and can be snuck into the house pretty much anywhere. It would make for a bright and cheery interior, even permitting color changes such as reddening of the interior at dawn and dusk. The home would still retain two views, out the front and out the back. The rooms of the house that most demand a view would be moved to the open ends of the house. For example, having a view from the kitchen and from the family room would be desireable, while having a view from the bedrooms or a home office - while nice - is definitely not a critical item. After a few more years, we may not even need the windows to get the views. Wall-sized display panels showing a view from a camera anywhere in the world might permit you to wake up to a live view of El Capitan in Yosemite.

A second downside to burying a house is that nobody can see it. Rather, all the glitz and glamour associate with having a fancy home is lost. Nobody can see the thing. You buried it, for pete's sake. Landscaping would have to take over to show off on the exterior of a home. With all that landscaping, a wealthy neighborhood is going to have some wonderful natural views instead of having views of other family's houses. It'll also make a view of a hillside full of homes far more appealing.

Fire in such a home would have to be addressed very seriously because the residents don't just hop out the nearest window. The structure would have to be very carefully designed to ensure that no matter how a fire starts, that everyone can get out safely.

Flooding is something to consider as well. Could a home be made such that it can be made watertight? For all I know, a watertight underground home would lift right out of the ground like a balloon if it was inundated by flood waters. But that watertight sealing might be the best thing going as a way to defeat tornados in the midwest and hurricanes in the southeast. I have no idea how well an underground home would perform in an earthquake.

Another unintended consequence to such a home is that it becomes a kind of bunker. That might sound great if you're a tad paranoid, so you're safely ensconced at home, but what about the poor police when they need to arrest violent criminals that have holed up in their bunker-like home? The police would have to develop new breaching techniques that permit them to get through several feet of dirt quickly and then enter the structure. There's little doubt in my mind that burying a bunch of homes changes the checks and balances of our society.

Consider the trades and businesses that exist because home exteriors are exposed to the weather. All forms of roofing would be unneeded. The industries that support siding, including insulation, decorating facings and sidings would be severely cut back. The industries that permit the construction of the heavier load-bearing roofs would do well, as would researchers trying to figure out how to keep the dirt that is in contact with the structure from doing the same thing that the weather did.

Given the rising cost of oil, the solution of going a little bit subteranean really jumps out at me as a good idea. We started out in caves and we may well end up there by our own choosing.

Now to consider the merits of trading in my truck for a horse.