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Comment by galfarragem | Hacker News Reader

While I can agree that living in an "underground house" is not for everybody, this article doesn't make sense in general. Most (if not all) problems are related with bad construction (leaks, floods during heavy rains, constant mold, pests, cracks during earthquakes), bad "fencing" and detail project (limited landscaping, people invade our privacy, difficult and expensive repairs), not with the kind of house itself. Was the house well built and this article wouldn't exist or the conclusion could be more favorable.

The only problem related with this kind of house might be depreciation. It's not mainstream and less liquid so you need to wait for the right buyer or sell it with a discount. However, the construction problems (it was clearly built by unexperienced contractors in this kind of building), certainly contribute a lot to repel possible buyers.

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How the hell does the article "not make sense"? The title specifically says "Our Underground House", and at the end they explicitly say they would consider choosing such a house again, under certain condition.

And pretty much all problems are related to the kind of house itself. That it's not mainstream means not just that you need the right buyer to sell it, but also that you need the right contractor to build it, since most won't have any experience with this kind, leading to bad construction. And while moisture and leaks are a problem for houses in general, they're a bigger problem for this kind. Finally, the basic concept guarantees that any kind of problem with the outer walls will be much more difficult and costly to fix than with a regular house.

The certain conditions they lay out don’t even make sense.

The author says they get nosebleeds at 50% humidity or less. Enjoy that drier climate. Honestly can’t believe they’d consider another underground home.

Real gluttons for punishment.

It's not an indictment of underground structure generally, but it is a cautionary tale about going your own way. "Bad construction" doesn't necessarily mean "bad builders." Even a mediocre builder/architect can erect a normal house without major issues. Even an outstanding builder/architect is likely to have major flaws erecting (does this apply underground) a highly unusual design. Innovation is harder.

The article is worth reading for anyone that wants to do this. Take all their issue. Make sure you have a solution for them all.

Also, I doubt the building regulations around underground structures is terribly well conceived. Especially in Oklahoma, where I imagine most underground "structures" are either basements, or serve as little more than storm shelters.

Most houses are designed and built to the minimum regulatory standards. It's expensive to overbuild structures, so people aren't going to do it unless they have a very specific reason to do so. Without any regulatory framework, or a bunch of experience, it's hard to expect anyone to get it right.

This house is not a basement, but it seems to be built like one. Basements have houses and roofs above them that serve to move water away from the structure and provide a source of dry, conditioned air from above ground.

I disagree. leaks, floods, cracks are all clearly going to be worse. In my conventional house, if I have a leak in the roof I'll get a roofer in and have it fixed in a day or two. I feel for these people - it's a salutory lesson.

I think the lesson is you can't rely on the experience of traditional house builders to build a robust underground one.

Traditional house builders should have no problem building an underground house. It's not much different than building a basement, whoever built their house just did a shoddy job. If those builders made a traditional house with a basement with these same issues, you wouldn't come to the conclusion that traditional houses are bad or difficult to do.

Some friends bought a new house, to be built as part of a new housing site.

They got told by others who had already gotten their their homes built to avoid a certain contractor at all cost.

So they went with a large and reputable contractor, and things seemed to move along well. Then the guy decided to visit the site one day, and when he gets there he sees some slightly confused teenager at the bottom of a pit that was to become the basement. He asked what the teenager was doing there. "I'm here to pour the foundation", was the reply. It was obvious the kid was not in his element and did not really know what he was doing.

My friend was confused. First he confirmed the kid was working at the right place. The kid was. Then he asked how old he was and who he was working for. Well he was 17 and was the son of the contractor they were told to avoid at all cost...

Turned out the large reputable contractor didn't had sub-contracted out the work to the one firm they were trying to avoid.

I was going to say roughly the same thing.. Building bad foundations happens all the time and it seems less critical in a traditional house, but..

I know many houses that had incompetent foundation builders. The repair costs/complexity can be similar to the underground house even though the priority seems low in a traditional house. One of the houses was torn down due to the neglecting the problem. (It was a rental and no one cared about using the basement for the decade before it was inspected and condemned.)

In the underground case you really only have to get one thing right and it is just as stupid to get it wrong in the traditional case, but people are distracted and don't see it's priority.

I should have picked a better word than "traditional", which isn't quite right as you say. Perhaps "unproven", "run-of-the-mill", or "inexperienced". It may entirely within the skills of a good "traditional" contractor to do right, but there is at least a bigger downside with potential mistakes due cost of repair, if not a substantially greater chance of mistakes due to the abnormality of the building. So, it's important to be picky.

>Most (if not all) problems are related with bad construction (leaks, floods during heavy rains, constant mold, pests, cracks during earthquakes), bad "fencing" and detail project (limited landscaping, people invade our privacy, difficult and expensive repairs), not with the kind of house itself. Was the house well built and this article wouldn't exist or the conclusion could be more favorable.

The bad construction is the typical half-assery that homeowners expect to be able to get away with. Sure somebody who's frame of reference floats in the sea of flies through the air will probably not take much issue with it but for everyone else it kind of sucks to have to consider where moisture will go and break out the rotary hammer every time you wanna do something. Underground is basically hard mode and it kind of sucks to play on hard mode when everyone else is on easy mode.

> somebody who's frame of reference floats in the sea of flies through the air will probably not take much issue with it

My lexical parser has encountered a problem.

People who work on boats or planes aren't gonna consider an underground house particularly bad. If your frame of reference is normal houses then underground is really hard.

Oh, I get it, the frame of reference "floats in the sea or flies". I was trying to picture a "sea of flies".

》 not with the kind of house itself

I disagree. Normal house with free dry circulating air is very forgiving. It is also easy to fix, walls are freely accessible.

Underground structures are very difficult. Even most professionals will get it wrong.

That's my point. If that's your frame of reference then underground is hard. If you work on ships or something for a living then it's not so bad.

sorry, i missed initial quote

> Most (if not all) problems are related with bad construction

Underground houses or basements are plagued with this kind of problem because they seem to be really difficult to build properly, and really expensive to fix once they've been built.

I've never met anyone who's been happy with their basement. I've lived in four places that have basements (a mix of newish builds (since 2000) and old (1800s) builds and the basements have always been terrible, even if there had been extensive work making them less horrible.

My grandparents' house had a basement, which was cold but it was never damp. As kids we loved playing in it.

The thing is looking back I realise that the entire "ground floor" of the house was raised a good 6 feet up, so the basement only went a short distance into/under the ground. In fact the basement had a door which led straight out into the rear garden. (The "official" back door of the house was at the top of a flight of stairs). So that's how you build a basement that doesn't get damp :-)

In London this seems to be quite a common design for Victorian-era houses which is why many basement flats have access to the rear garden.

>the basement had a door which led straight out into the rear garden.

This is called, rather descriptively, a "walk-out basement".

One of the key things that led me to buying my house is that the original owner finished the basement in the 1920s shortly after the house was built and there was not a spec of rot on anything or any indication of moisture ingress. That and the walk-in access made it absolutely perfect for my use.

Seems like it's got a lot to do with experience with this kind of house. In Germany most houses have basements, and while yes, some do have problems with wetness as well, that's more of an exception. I currently live in a souterrain flat, that is quite nice.

Where in the world were these places? Our basement is just fine. But we are in Michigan where houses pretty much must have a basement due to frost. I wonder if the builders in areas like this have more experience with them.

I'm not a specialist, but from my experience so far, every earth-covered underground structure (underground parking, subway station etc.) will eventually start leaking (exceptions might apply to really dry locations of course). It might last 40 years instead of 30 with better construction quality, but eventually you will have to dig it out (in part or fully) and repair it - which is obviously costly, especially if you have landscaping at ground level.

Isn't that true of any building though? Where I live most houses have ceramic roof tiles, and even though they are supposedly long-lasting, after 60-80 years they do need replacing (most home-owners replace them much more frequently, every 10-20 years). I've replaced tiles on my grandparents' house which was around 60 years old, because they became brittle and started cracking after hundreds of temperature cycles, hailstorms etc.

It looks like its much harder to do good construction underground.

I wouldn't say it is harder, it just costs more. And an underground house is not the sort of thing to cheap out on because of the difficulty of repairs.

A cheap above ground house can have tons of repairs done, that shouldn't have had to have been done in the first place, but weren't prohibitively expensive to do anyways. An underground house can't just have new vinyl siding slapped on top of the old super garbage shit because you have to dig it up. So you have to spend the money upfront, rather than kick the can down the road.

Its harder because experience is not generally there - people usually don't live in a cave.

It's also harder because of the sheer mechanics of what working on the walls or ceiling looks like.

And much, much harder to fix problems.

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