My friends and I are not fans of building a big base, and we're even less fans of having to keep repairing it.
So when we play we:
1) Turn off horde nights.
2) Use a couple of techniques that others would probably call "cheese" or "exploits" but we just call "sensible anti-zombie measures" to make sure that our above-ground base is zombie-proof against wandering hordes without taking damage or needing repairs. We use [REDACTED SO IT DOESN'T GET PATCHED OUT] to make sure that the zombies only ever approach from one direction, and then [REDACTED SO IT DOESN'T GET PATCHED OUT] so that we can kill them without exposing ourselves (or the base itself) to anything other than minimum danger.
That way we can spend our time doing fun stuff (scavenging, killing zombies, doing quests) rather than tedious stuff (resource gathering, base building and repair). We don't get that much time to play the game as it is, so we might as well maximise the amount of that time that we are having fun and minimise the amount doing busywork.