Why didn't we think of that earlier?
Why aren’t houses built underground?
Short answer: Because we are surface dwellers not Mole People.
I’d like to see underground homes tried in Florida and southern Louisiana.
I don’t know about the rest of the south, but here in Oklahoma, the water table is too high to have basements. And boy, do I miss them! Back in Illinois, you could hardly sell a house without a basement.
Every underground house I’ve been inside felt like it was underground.
Back in the 1800’s and even into the 1900’s many of those across the Plains area lived in Dugout’s and Soddy’s. With solid earth walls and roofs covered in sod the dugouts provided good protection from cold Kansas and Nebraska winters. The Soddy was composed of sod strips overlaying each other leaving walls up to 2 ft thick with heavy beamed ceiling and a sod overlay on that. My grandmother was born in a 600 sq/ft Soddy in Salina Kansas. Lived there for 5 years before my great granddad finally built a wood frame house about 50 yards away. When it really got cold they moved everybody into the little Soddy because it was much easier to keep warm. Solid walls and thick ceilings made great insulation.
Well I live in Middle Tennessee and almost everything is rock, it is a rarity to find anyone with a basement let alone an underground house. It would be hard to find places in Middle Tennessee where you could dig deep enough to have a basement with out blasting rock away.
“Why aren’t houses built underground?”
Have you smelled a basement?
Why didn't we think of that earlier?