@Nathan_Eames Jhomes don’t have to switch en masse for this to have a huge effect on the market.
Agreed.
All new tech is usually more expensive than existing at first, but first adopters help drive that price down.
This tech also reduces the barriers to entry in the construction field which would lead to greater competition and lower costs.
And well said
@Jasper_Janssen Linear vs exponential thinking. Most people in the construction industry that see that video make a similar comment.
You’d have to manually lay down horizontal crossbars every few layers and insert vertical irons
The thing to remember is much like a CNC machine you can swap out tools. Which mean you can have a tool for laying and wiring rebar together.
@Jasper_Janssen If you watch the video a little closer it isn’t fixated upon a pure 3d printed house, but rather an automated building process. Some of the components could/would be printed whereas other parts might be assembled by robotic arms.
As far as installing steel rebar in structural walls and flooring and using robots to tie the rebar properly this is not new tech. I have seen it. It’s been on the market for about 10 years.
@Nathan_Eames You can make robots to do that, you can probably even make robots that do it all at once – but you can’t make that robot in an afternoon with a bunch of makerfolk, like you might be able to do with a pure-3d-printed thing.
@Jasper_Janssen I never said in an afternoon. It would be designed in a CAD app, modeled then. built and refined as flaws are found. It would take weeks.
@David_Fuchs Price doesn’t scale linearly from 1200ft to 25,000ft. It isn’t the square footage that makes palaces cost like palaces, its the Location-Location-Location factor. 5000sqft house subdivisions are tightly zoned with ridiculous local code compliance issues such as double-thickness drywall to prevent unsightly nail-pops (how gauche!), while inflating the costs with the thicker walls that require non-standard windows and doors. Upscale neighborhoods already make things more expensive than they need to be in order to signal wealth and enforce exclusivity. Those social factors won’t be changed by cheaper McMansions. High rent locations will want to stay high rent locations and continue to exclude cheap looking construction in the same way they already ban asphalt shingles, stucco, and smaller lot sizes. Still, at the low end, displacing a depreciating, disintegrating mobile home with a solid masonry structure for the same cost would be good, but the those effects will operate on timescales on the order of the length of mortgages or depreciations.
Cheaper basic construction will change how the same (~2-3 times the lot price) housing budget
gets spent, but won’t change the affordability much. Reducing the price of the location by increasing the allowable density will do far more for creating affordable housing than shifting people’s housing budget from walls and floors into granite countertops and Jacuzzis.
@David_Forrest The reason I included the picture of the mansion in the article was to show what was possible. It does not seem like a McMansion to me. If you follow the link below you will see some of what is possible with this technology.
https://plus.google.com/u/0/108971911025874242115/posts/esdMHGs12fZ
Roman style columns, domed roofs, archways, contoured walls (ie brick, cobblestone, etc) are all possible. What you probably picture is a cinder block house, in reality you could print out the Taj Mahal. You can also change the color of the material on the fly with ease.
Now going to your argument about in order to signal wealth and enforce exclusivity. That is nothing more than a way of saying forced scarcity. It is not working for the content industry, It will not work here either.
In the housing industry, the land is fundamentally the scarcest thing. People signal wealth by buying the scarcest chunks and excluding other people from it.
I’ve worked on high end houses where the stairs were hand built from recovered ancient french oak with a material cost of nearly $1000/step. We may be able to print something that looks like a natural material, but the highest quality fiberfloor isn’t nearly the same as the materials they imitate. I’m certain some artists and architects will use the process for aesthetic reasons in high end houses, but an extruded Taj Mahal would for the foreseeable future be an easily identifiable copy of the real thing.
I’m not saying it will always be cinderblocks–extruding Corian in all its variations with mirror finishes in situ isn’t far out. That will be cool, but it won’t be used to reduce housing costs. I’m saying people start from their budgets and then try to get the most features they can afford: 4 bedrooms, 3 baths, good schools, good transit, Corian countertops, keep up with the Jonses, etc… At the affordable housing end, a builder with a printer will subdivide a plat into a bunch of contoured houses that fit his build volume.
What would be game-changing would be if the printer could incrementally disassemble and remodel existing houses–move a wall, add a bathroom and kitchen to create a duplex from a single family, upgrade a doublewide to a bungalow, or add a basement–for the cost of the printer and its feedstock. Even in the printer could either re-roof, re-side, or re-insulate and re-build a wall, that will be tremendously disruptive for the industry since folks won’t have to move to upgrade.
@David_Forrest In the long run I do not see an issue with the ability to modify a house. Flow-jet (water cutter) or plasma torch out what you want to remove then expand the house. This will take the next generation of unit, something that is track based (think tank) not rail based. It will also need to self adapt the build to its own motion.
@Nathan_Eames I would like to stay away from ICF plastics and plastics in general. Cement, clay sand, glass, some fibers like fiber glass and loose carbon fiber, etc. Things that do not rely on the oil industry, and are easy to recycle or reuse.
@David_Fuchs seems like that would be a personal preference. I was just illustrating the possibilities.
@Nathan_Eames There are so many possibilities when labor and energy get removed from the equation.
I have seen houses done with the foam plastic sheets out in Arizona. Throw up the structure and spray it with cement after meshing (plastic, chicken wire) both sides. It seemed really cheap to me.
@David_Fuchs to be honest, the biggest hurdle to the adoption of this tech and all it’s possibilities is from governmental interference. In my experience local building inspectors are the worst.
@Nathan_Eames I think that once templates are built ,that include local housing codes, there is not much the local inspectors can do except complain. Video link to follow.
@David_Fuchs I guess that will be the challenge of manufacturer’s to develop methods and tolerances that can be accepted by the ICC.
@Nathan_Eames When you have cement that is several multiple the strength of a wood frame house, and about one and a half time the strength of a cinder block wall, there really is no issue except certification of the technology and printing patterns and widths used.
@David_Fuchs you’re coming at it from a logical perspective. This is not something that building inspectors are accustomed to.
@Nathan_Eames I know a couple people out in Arizona that have built houses that are non-standard. Hay bales (straw), mud brick, shipping containers, old glass coke bottles and cement, red bricks done the old way with arched roofs and arched door ways, oddly shaped welded steel and cement, Wood and peg (no nails), inflated dome cement build, every single one of them got crap from the inspectors. I am just trying to be optimistic.
The main thing I learned from all the crap in AZ is you have to talk to the inspector before you do a build. This way they are at ease with the concept before you start. The whole fish out of water, freak out, out of their comfort zone, thing doesn’t happen.
None of them ever turn down a couple free lunches to discuss new or old style house manufacturing techniques.
I guess my experience with inspectors has been somewhat marred.
@Nathan_Eames Other than electrical and plumbing work. My first encounter with a home inspector at a build sucked. I helped build a hay bale house in AZ, my friend was an ass to the guy. It sucked worse when I helped him build another house out of mud bricks. After the first test house the inspector hated my friend. The word venom comes to mind.
The two thing I took away from the entire experience were, if an inspector is out of his comfort zone they tend to say it is not allowed, even if it is. The second is, if you say it is a research project and explain, they tend to be a little more helpful and understanding.