Re: Building homes deep underground...

In sci.physics, Brablo
<gestureofrespect@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote
on 7 Dec 2005 09:58:33 -0800
<1133978313.136854.194420@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
> I heard the temp about 10+ feet below the surface of the earth is much
> cooler than the ambient, or it's warmer if it's very cold outside. Why
> aren't more homes in the desert built 10-20 feet underground to take
> advantage of the cool temperature there?
>
> If lighting is an issue, than fiber optics can passively introduce
> lighting down there.
>

There's a fair number of issues here, which I for one would
have to analyze. For starters, if one takes an average
subdivision and digs all of the houses into the rock,
one is changing the density of the rock, which among other
things changes its heat conduction properties. There are
also issues on how one effectively manages the air problem;
the incoming air is going to be hot no matter what one
does, unless the air gives up its heat to something,
most likely the surrounding rock, thereby warming it.
(One interesting side issue, though; the air can be
cooled and humidified by passing it through water sprays.
Whether this is desirable may depend on how much water
one has to throw at the problem, and what else is in said
water, such as E. coli and carbamic acid -- urine.)

You are correct that daytime lighting could be done using
fiber optics or light tubes; such are even now being
contemplated or used for some energy-smart buildings,
as I understand it. However, at night, one has to fall
back on that old standby, the electrically-powered light
bulb or perhaps flashlights with LEDs (though one rather
humorous episode of _Who's Line Is It Anyway_ suggested a
solar-powered torch with a lightfeed thousands of miles
long).

The obvious question now arises as to where one gets
the electric power in that case. (The answers are the
standard ones: coal, some oil, natural gas, and if one's
lucky, hydroelectric, wind, solar, geothermal, or tidal
flow power. Fission power is an option for a few places --
but in the US everyone thinks "atom bomb" and "poisonous
radioactive solid remnants" [never mind that coal fly ash
is rather radioactive], and nowadays, the new boogeyman,
the dreaded evil terrorist plutonium pilferer, ready to
make a deadly dirty bomb by waltzing up to a nuclear power
plant and nipping a few pounds. At least here in the US,
though, he'd have to get by the guards first.)

--
#191, ewill3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
It's still legal to go .sigless.
.

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