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Comment by _hardwaregeek | Hacker News Reader

I'm kind of amazed that natural temperature management such as geothermal cooling isn't more of a thing. If you were to design a house with the sleeping spaces below ground, wouldn't you save a lot on cooling and heating costs?

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Look at what London has done to their subways. Geothermal cooling only works so much and eventually your geo becomes a thermal battery saturated with heat and won't take any more.

Exactly, even if you have closed loop geothermal heat pumps (which more efficiently exchanges heat from the thermal mass of the ground and the refrigerant pumped through a heat exchanger) you are still limited in the amount of heat the refrigerant can exhaust into the ground before you've heated up the ground where it's not possible. And vice-versa in winter where you can freeze t he ground solid by doing the opposite. Still a good idea, but has scale issues especially for high-density areas.

Have you heard of the town Cooper Pedy in South Australia?

A standard three-bedroom cave home with lounge, kitchen, and bathroom can be excavated out of the rock in the hillside for a similar price to building a house on the surface. However, dugouts remain at a constant temperature, while surface buildings need air conditioning, especially during the summer months, when temperatures often exceed 40 °C (104 °F).

There are several motels offering underground accommodation, ranging from a few rooms to the entire motel being a dug-out.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coober_Pedy

Depends on many factors including soil type, water table height, drainage, etc.

In many instances it would cost you many many times more to build underground than any savings in heating and cooling do to the problems with underground building poses

In my area basements have continual problems with moisture penetration because we have high annual rain fall, soil that holds water, and high water tables making building under ground very very expensive and over 30+ years a continual maintenance problem for the owner

I was just reading that Bill Gates' house is "Earth-sheltered" -- not sure how common that is, though, I live in the desert.

he lives on the side of a cliff overlooking a lake

Right, but his house is built into the cliff specifically to help with thermo/electricity costs. At least according to what I read. Interestingly enough his house is worth something like $150MM and his neighbors are $8M. If you Google map him (boring weekend) the person directly across from him has a fairly normal house with very normal cars (old 4runners, etc.).

Evidently he bought that land in 1988.

The most interesting part of google mapping it was his curious gate. He's got a really weirdly designed entry gate. Couldn't find any info on it, though. My friends usually have their initials or their "crest" as gates.

i went by it in 01 on a boat. there was. an incognito security guard on a wind surf rig out front. he was just sitting on the board with the sail in the water. amusing.

I live in the desert as well. I'd love to have a house with better insulation to spend less on AC. Earth sheltered homes seems like a great way to do that (though there are other problems - e.g. moisture, heavier roof).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0oFJ2jbkDI, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oej6EvxBJkI - here's a couple examples (she has visited others as well.

Short of that I'd settle for a basement. Someday perhaps.

> not sure how common that is, though, I live in the desert.

Google "Rockland Ranch".

That would be illegal most places. Bedrooms have to have an opening window, lest people be trapped in a fire.

Well, you could have a window that leads to a shaft. You probably want some natural light anyways.

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