This assertion, hmmm. It wood be an interesting analysis if it had concrete results.
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I too am curious about this. Are the pipes are embedded during printing? Getting through concrete to fix a busted pipe would be a whole lot harder than getting through drywall. Is the interiror of the house finished in a more traditonal way to allow for wall caveties to fit all the plumbing and electric?
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The article says it leaves utility conduits, which I gather are channels for plumbing and wiring. You would have to decide where you wanted the outlets very early in the design stage and remodeling is pretty much right out, since the walls are all solid concrete. Fairly low available fire load even when completely furnished I would bet.
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I did read that, but it still left me wondering if thise channels are fully enclosed. I live in Texas. The state recently froze and millions of us had no power. A lot of people have pipes that burst when they froze, so I’m left wondering how an owner of one of these 3d printed houses could fix something like that, if the conduit is entirely enclosed.
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That isn’t true for everyone, though. There are plenty of people who are still doing hard labor in dangerous conditions for the comfort of the first world.
One of the reasons that I bought the Honda hybrid is that it doesn’t look like as hybrid. Last time gas approached 5 dollars a gallon, the monster truck crowd decided that economical cars were the cause of all of their money woes. There was an increased amount of vandalism and aggressive driving toward easily identified hybrids. In the event of a repeat of really high gas prices, I will remove all hybrid labeling and hopefully avoid what I refer to as Redneck Rage.
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I like that they left it in its raw, “unsanded” condition to make it look just like some plastic doohickey you extruded at low resolution from your local makerspace printer.
I mean, it’s a demo, so I get it. But I really hope that look doesn’t catch on.
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Is it just me or do the photos in the Zillow listing all look rendered?
I sort of like that look, but not for this bland home design. If a more interesting design had been used, the textural artifacts created by the process might look more acceptable. I do sort of wonder how the cement will look after a few years of dirt and mildew accumulation (think of all those Brutalist buildings from the 1970s). I’m guessing regular pressure washing is in the homeowner’s future.
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I question how long a life this house will have. Plastic items left out in the sun tend to degrade quickly.
Im assuming the material cost they are referrring to is the concrete/soil mixture they used.
How does that compare to the cost of CMU? (concrete modular units) (commonly referred to as cinder blocks)
A quick look through the zillow has the building at 1400sf, a estimate from the elevation puts one side at 25’ long, math proves the other one at 56’ feet long- for a total of 162’ linear feat of wall at approx. 8’ tall. (this wont include openings) -Total area of exterior wall is 1296 square feet. (I am not clear as to how much of the interior walls were made using the printing method - none of the photos of the build show interior wall - i am assuming none for this calculation as a roof could easily span 25’, and most residential interior walls in current builds are not load bearing)
A quick google search puts average national cost of CMU at $2.49 per square foot. This number does not include labor, but note that neither does the 3D printed house.
SO- total cost of CMU = $3227, and that’s just for the exterior walls. Say we double that number in case the printed house did use ‘the printer’ for interior walls and our total material cost for CMU is $6450- essentially the same price.
BUT Building out of CMU would not require specialized training, specialized equipment and would go up in a comparable amount of time.
TLDR? this is an expensive overly complicated technology which does not actually outperform a simpler easier technology.
Im not even sure if all the walls were 3d printed- the exterior ones sure.
(see my post downstream)
It’s layered concrete, not plastic.
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My guess is that most of the houses built for actual sale will have siding slapped up on them and be outwardly indistinguishable from other houses. For better or for worse, most people don’t want to live in an “interesting” house.
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Unfortunately, there is a huge percentage of dullards who won’t recognize a structure as being a house if it isn’t a box with a pointy roof. And anything that deviates from that formula might be hard to finance.
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Hm … adding siding would seem to defeat the purpose, as well as adding cost … though you may be right. I had assumed the cement part was replacing the brick or stucco or siding veneer on most homes. My question is … what’s on the inside of the cement shell? How do you hang a picture on the wall without getting out your masonry drill? I would think any veneer (drywall) on a home made like this would be on the inside.
Mind you, there’s a lot of plastic we can’t recycle, that we might fuse and extrude through a nozzle. I also wonder how solid the walls are - the thing about 3D printing is that it can make shapes that you can’t mould. The car industry was looking at plastic bumpers with a 3D structure inside that would take a lot of energy to crush. This is not appropriate here, but they could make walls with complex cavities, and honeycomb walls.
Yes, it is bitter that they have to make a ranch-style four-square house, and not a flying saucer; but tech is nothing if people won’t buy, and there are a lot of dull people out there.
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Which in turn encourages more building, which even if it doesn’t lower prices (something that would require a lot of building very quickly, and which homeowners often go to great lengths to prevent in their communities), will slow the growth rate in prices for a while.
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Don’t forget the roof. Just re-roofing an existing house that size can easily cost over $6k.
Take a look at communities of people who own interesting and revolutionary houses from the 50s or later, like geodesic domes, A-frames, etc. Domes seemed revolutionary at one point, but the biggest complaint is that they leak, and the second biggest complaint is they cannot get a contractor who will even try to fix it. A-frames are beautiful, but people get tired of hitting their head on the wall. A ton about housing is about conforming to possibly unpopular norms—many people don’t really care about having a perfect lawn, but if we don’t have one, it will drive the property price down and our neighbor will hate us, so we cut the grass and hire a landscaper. We might love the idea of living in a hobbit-hole, but will you really spend 500K on a house you might have trouble selling in 10 years when you get that great job across the country? There is nothing that makes a radical into a capitalist faster than having a little capital to protect, and so square houses it is for everyone.
