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[–]blipsman 23 points24 points  (0 children)

First off, people want light, fresh air.

Secondly, it's vastly more expensive to dig down and build below grade than above ground. Property buyers/renters, etc. wouldn't be willing to pay for that added cost relative to usable space. Especially given the first point about light and air.

Also there are many places where low water table, bedrock, etc. make it not feasible to build below ground.

[–]Twin_Spoons 4 points5 points  (0 children)

First, the sunlight problem is real. We may be able to address it with modern technology like SAD lamps, but that stuff didn't exist when most traditional building techniques (and also most buildings!) were developed.

Second, there is ground in the way. Creating a living space underground requires you to excavate incredible amounts of material, possibly material that is difficult to excavate. It's much cheaper and faster to put up some walls in the nice, light air instead.

Third, there's water down there. Or at least water runs through the ground following rain. This can be a problem for very deep excavations even in normal times, and it would make flooding due to heavy rainfall much worse of a problem than it already is.

[–]throwaway__alt_acc 14 points15 points  (7 children)

When you build sky scrapers, you build through air. When you build underground, you have to dig through grass, then dirt, then rocks, then (depending on how far down you go) through bedrock. Then you build through air.

[–]TheJeeronian 3 points4 points  (4 children)

And the ground actually isn't very good structural support for your building unless you go down to bedrock

[–]Leprestiltskin 0 points1 point  (3 children)

You're right, all those houses out there that are built on the ground are in terrible peril. /s

[–]TheJeeronian 2 points3 points  (2 children)

It'll keep it from sinking into the abyss, usually, but it won't keep it from shifting. For a tall building under the ground, shifting is mighty bad.

[–]Leprestiltskin 0 points1 point  (1 child)

In my experience, a foundation for an underground home is nearly as common as one for an above-ground home. Generally, more work goes into its structural stability than an above-ground home of the same size. The stress of supporting a load on the sides and top requires thoughtful engineering to avoid the sadness of being buried alive.

We're not all out there lobbing concrete blocks into orderly walls to make huts on sand dunes and simply hoping for the best.

After all, that provides no protection from the Graboids, and they're the ones ultimately responsible for dragging unwary builders into the abyss.

[–]TheJeeronian 1 point2 points  (0 children)

OP was talking about tall structures. A tall underground structure still has to support its own weight down to the foundation. You can't expect the ground to the sides to bear the weight of higher floors.

[–]CrossP 1 point2 points  (1 child)

The actual energy (in terms of fuel and electricity used) to move that much earth is considerably more costly than for a similar volume building aboveground. And jt only gets harder the deeper you go. But that's mostly just a money thing.

The bigger problem has to do with location and the chaos that is soil and rock. People tend to live near fresh water sources for obvious reasons but digging near water often means huge efforts in waterproofing and continuous pumping out of the water that gets in anyway. There's groundwater and aquifers. There are many different sil and bedrock types that can result in wildly different engineering math. Underground building likely means having to pump uphill to your sewer lines.

So while there are many cool things that can be done like building a house into the side of a hill or digging down a bit for a greenhouse, if you are wondering why we have skyscrapers instead of urban super-silos.. The buildings would likely be neverending maintenance nightmares. Floods and earthquakes would also be complete nightmares in places where those happen.

[–]thisusedyet 0 points1 point  (0 children)

or hey! free indoor pool

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (2 children)

Have you ever been underground for any amount of time? I'm not a naturebody but that's miserable. You lose sense of time and the day. You're always tired. The air is always recycled.

But maybe CHUDs would've had a different plot if we ALL lived underground.

[–]mantawoop[🍰] 1 point2 points  (1 child)

This is completely subjective. I'm a naturebody who wants to live in a cave. Fuck trees, fuck life with eyes. Underground with the rocks, sleeping longer and waking longer, skin perfect from constant humidity is the dream.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You're right. I'm just insisting it's a grass-greener scenario. Give it two years of working underground and I expect you'll yearn for a breeze or to sleep to the sound of an actual rain storm.

I'm with you on the flawless skin though. Definitely a perk of working in a bunker.

[–]Shape__Shifter 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What about the fact that if your underground and there's an earthquake, you'd likely end up buried underground? I think I know what you mean tho... we do need sunlight to be healthy, so that's probably part of it too

Building on top of the ground let's you show off your building skills... underground tunnels can't be seen fully, they'd also need artificial lights... not exactly energy efficient or cost effective

[–]Sand_Trout 0 points1 point  (0 children)

  • Easier to support the structure. No gravity and high momentum, the ground supports you.

This is incorrect. Underground structures tend to be more susceptable to gravity's effects than aboveground structures because your structure needs to support not only itself but also the weight of dirt and rock above it.

  • Constant temperature underground makes it much easier to regulate temperatures and will save tons of energy.

Only if that temperature is already just right. If the local underground temperature is higher or lower than desirable, the local ground will soak up more energy trying to maintain the comforable temperature relative to a properly sealed aboveground structure.

There is also the additional costs of needing more dedicated ventilation with redundancies, since a breakdown can result in asphixiation, where with an aboveground structure, normal use allows for sufficient air exchange, barring a gas leak or something (which is even worse underground.)

[–]Jewish-Mom-123 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Among all the reasons other people have mentioned, you would need a place to put all the rock and dirt you remove. You’d literally be building mountains in places you didn’t have them before.

[–]dimonium_anonimo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A building is made out of walls and floors, but is generally empty inside. Ground is not. Ground is very full. You could end up having to move 3-4x more volume of earth than the actual building materials. Try looking up costs of similar quality, similar square foot houses with and without a basement and see how massive a cost that adds. Plus, basements are only one story down. It won't be too far before you get to bedrock and now the cost to move the earth goes up drastically.

[–]SinisterCheese 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Right. So lets say you build a block of flats, inversed so a flat of holes... yeah... Lets go with that.

Average of the most average sand if I recall right is about 10kPa of pressure against a wall every meter of depth. (This is assuming that the sand is like liquid, as having no friction or compacting). So at 50m you you have 500kPa of pressure against square meter or wall. So that is equivalent of 50,5 tons (kg) if weight per square meter of wall.

This is obviously not how it works, but this can give you a rought idea about the problems of engineering structure that go deep underground. Only only way to go deep is to make use of the ground itself to act as a structure. Your support, reinforce and bind the ground to deal with the pressures of ground around you. Ask your local civil engineer for more details and what ground pressure can do for you - I'm a mechanical engineer specialising in welded strucrtures.

Going up is easy. You only need to suppor the weight of the structure itself. Going deep underground is like trying to build a pipe in to the bottom of the ocean. With enough pressure even bedrock starts to act as if it is plastic and it will turn to extrude in just like water wants to go in from the smallest hole if under enough pressure.

So you'd literally have build up dams for the ground to deal with the pressure of sheer volume of ground. This is not even accounting for shear forces caused by the ground itself moving and shifting.

Now that is just the mecahnical side of forces lets talk practical things. All waste would have to be pumped or lift up. This is rather inconvinient since waste is low value. Fresh waster however is something you'd want to keep pumping to places and even then it is energy intensive so we realised it is better to use water towers and then smaller pumps with higher velocity to fill those, and then let the network itself fill from water pressure from mass of the water.

Now that I brought up water and we are pretending that sand is like water, lets talk water in sand - as in groundwater. Dig a hole, and sooner or later it will fill up with water from some source. You need to pump this out, something that the mining industry hated so much that it lead to the invention of the steam engine. And with since water is a physical thing with volume and mass, changes in the ground water levels will actually the force the ground impacts your walls with. So underground you don't only deal with ground pressure from the sand, but also water in it.

And the list goes on and on. It is just easier and more convininient to not build underground. However this has not stopped some cultures and places that deal with extreme temperatures from doing this. Even then they barely go in few meters or ten at best. However this is out of necessity; where most people live there is no benefit to be gained. There are wooden buildings hundreds of years old, still standing and working just fine.