Since water has a higher specific latent heat than air; if 2 identical houses were built, one on land, one underwater: would the underwater house require less money to be spent on insulation?
- Theoretically speaking.
As Bortz said, theoretically yes, you'd spend way less on insulation, but you'd spend a ton of money on things that the above water house wouldn't need, these expensive things are some things that would need to be heavily altered or replaced altogether for underwater use (some of which I'm not even sure how):
1 - Every door and window being air-tight
2 - A way to constantly get fresh air into the house
NOTE: Just the two things above would
significantly outweigh the cost of likely the entire
above water house by itself.
3 - Electricity
4 - Plumbing - particularly toilets, they rely on a water weight balance to flush properly
5 - (after electricity works) All wireless things that would transmit outside the house (4G/3G, Dish/DirectTV/Cell Phones/etc)
6 - Water pressure buildup on the outside of the house
7 - Glass that can withstand shark/large fish directly ramming them
8 - Foundation problems, big time
There's more I'm sure, that I can't think of. Why did I make this list of faults with a hypothetical idea?
I'm really, really, really, really, really, really bored. I'm being entirely accurate though.