re: The 3 Laws of Thermodynamics as applied to shotgun houses.
Great point. You brought me back to my thermodynamics classes in Navy Nuclear Power School.
I find it fascinating living in Arizona why every house doesn't have a huge basement. Our water table is way below the ground so little chance of leakage if constructed right. It's fairly easy digging. We'd cut down so much on our air conditioning if we moved underground in the desert.
The simple answer here is that land and energy was always cheap and it was less expensive to just spread a house out above ground. Of course now that land is getting expensive, we're building up instead of down. We're now the land of two story boxes all in a row with electric meters spinning wildly.
Art