Printing a Home: The Case For Contour Crafting

ambermichelle wrote in with a link to a story about the possibility that the home of the future might be printed instead of built. "It can take anywhere from six weeks to six months to build a 2,800-square-foot, two-story house in the U.S., mostly because human beings do all the work. Within the next five years, chances are that 3D printing (also known by the less catchy but more inclusive term additive manufacturing) will have become so advanced that we will be able to upload design specifications to a massive robot, press print, and watch as it spits out a concrete house in less than a day. Plenty of humans will be there, but just to ogle. Minimizing the time and cost that goes into creating shelters will enable aid workers to address the needs of people in desperate situations. This, at least, is what Behrokh Khoshnevis, a professor of engineering and director of the Center for Rapid Automated Fabrication Technologies, or CRAFT, at the University of Southern California, hopes will come of his inventions."

Comments

Cookie Cutter Concrete

[ColdWetDog]

So this will finish the outside. That goes up pretty fast. The slow part of a custom home is the plumbing, the wiring, the trim and the painting and finishing. I don't see this as a big game changer.

Re:Cookie Cutter Concrete

[trout007]

I work in a machine shop and every time I do finish
carpentry at home I think about what a pain it is
coping all of those joints. It would be nice to have a little CNC surfacing router that can measure the joint and cut the cope.

Re:Cookie Cutter Concrete

[lezerno]

When I used to work as a carpenter, two other carpenters and I could frame out a 3000 square foot house in about 3 days. As you say, the rest took about 3 months.

Re:Cookie Cutter Concrete

[Baron_Yam]

To be fair, the article says mods to install plumbing and wiring are possible. I don't see why not, either. Actually, as concrete can be made waterproof, you could just design the sewer pipes as part of the structure, only the inbound pressurized pipes would need to be something else.

I can also see this being programmed to produce mounting points for exterior insulation - put the insulation panels on the outside then add your siding to cover it up. This would make the concrete part of the thermal mass of the house, helping keep the temperature steady.

You'd also add similar interior points for hanging drywall, no stud walls necessary. That's IF you feel the need. Why not design the walls with channels for central air and wiring, and just paint directly on the concrete?

It's a potential game changer if you can get an architect to embrace it and produce something useful, desirable, and for less than a traditional home.

Re:Cookie Cutter Concrete

[Anonymous Coward]

Er, reinforcing. Won't the concrete structure need steel reinforcing? That will take a lot of labour to erect and the process would have to work around it. Maybe build in a MIG head and lay the reinforcing as you go. Oh and lay steel rod for where there is nothing to add weld to. And .... What I'm saying is good idea but I think it needs a bit more work. Maybe it will be OK for some sort of monolithic concrete construction. Currently flat prefab panels with built-in wiring etc seem to be at least more viable but underused in domestic construction. Well at least in Australia. No doubt countries with their heads in the 21st century will use rapid build techniques like that.

Re:Cookie Cutter Concrete

[cayenne8]

Geez...just what we need...MORE cookie cutter homes that all look the same...neighborhood after neighborhood, not character at all.

Makes me glad I live in New Orleans, with all the great old architecture, where no two houses look the same, and best of all...no fucking Homeowners Association to put up with...

If you like a purple house (and we have them here), feel free to customize.

As much as slash dotters like to customize things, I'm sometimes surprised more people here aren't against stupid HA rules, and such keeping people from individualizing their homes they are supposed to own.

Re:Cookie Cutter Concrete

[jbengt]

Actually, as concrete can be made waterproof, you could just design the sewer pipes as part of the structure, only the inbound pressurized pipes would need to be something else.

Uh, no. Concrete cracks and is porous. It would never be a good idea to use your walls to carry waste waster, not to mention codes not allowing it. I know concrete sewers exist, but those aren't inside your walls when they leak. What if you want to remodel and need to make changes to the plumbing layout? And how are you going to do repairs? In high rises it is not uncommon to have some piping (actual plastic or metal pipes) cast into the concrete floors, but it is a huge pain when those embedded pipes fail, as all things do, eventually.

Re:Cookie Cutter Concrete

[hirundo]

Geez...just what we need...MORE cookie cutter homes that all look the same...

You've got that backwards. Printing homes mean far more customizations. Bespoke your heart out on Sketchup, send it to be validated by a building code / physics model, and off to the printer. A room shaped like Einstein's hollowed out head? A bas-relief tribute to your dog on the living room wall? No problem! Try getting that kind of flexibility from a conventional contractor for conventional prices.

Re:Cookie Cutter Concrete

[quarkscat]

Printed houses? Really?

I've seen poured concrete houses, in Roanoke VA USA, and I don't think they age well. They are inherently cold as an icebox, expensive to make any utility repairs in, even more expensive to expand or modify, and when they do eventually crack due to settling are nearly impossible to maintain wall alignment. "Printed houses" can either be equally problematic to poured concrete houses, or else "disposable".

The longest standing buildings have used post-and-beam construction, with either stone or concrete block walls, or quicklime & straw block walls. Some such constructions are listed in Britain's Domesday Book, nearly 800 years old. The modern equivalent building is made of reinforced concrete and steel beams -- very durable in spite of extreme examples to the contrary seen by the destruction of the NYC WTC Towers & Building 7 -- certainly historical anomalies.

Ideally, houses would be efficiently constructed from local building materials, like the sod dugouts built in the USA Northern Plains. I would rather live in a yurt than a "printed house" -- at least they have been proven to "travel" well. In many "purportedly civilized" regions, building codes that enforce monopoly construction methods outweigh common sense. Bankers' rules. Better a small home wholly owned than a modern palace "rented" from a bank for nearly forever.

Re:Cookie Cutter Concrete

[walshy007]

Houses within a 100km radius of here average between $450k and $800k

With an average wage of about $40k, paying off a home and actually having enough money to.. you know, live. Can be difficult.

Reduce that cost to even $250k, and young people will be able to buy homes again. I'd take a house that looks the same over no house.

Re:Cookie Cutter Concrete

[__aaltlg1547]

In places where the cost of an average home is over 150k, most of the cost is land. You can't print land.

Re:Cookie Cutter Concrete

[ArsonSmith]

I don't know, i heard they were stretching New Mexico.

Re:Cookie Cutter Concrete

[mcgrew]

I would never consider "resale value" whan buying a house. I buy a house to live in. I buy it for ME. I've never once bought or even rented a house I ever planned on moving out of. You buy a house usually with a 20 or 30 year mortgage, that's quite a while in the future for your crystal ball to tell what will and won't sell in twenty years.

That's one reason the housing market crashed -- too damned many people buying houses not to live in or rent out, but to hold for a couple of years until the price rose. Pretty stupid, considering that whatever you make from the price inflation when you sell it, you will have lost when you replace it.

"Starter home" is marketspeak from realitors, whose jobs are to sell houses, and as many as possible. Buy the best house you can afford and stay there!

impractical

[Formalin]

So in addition to shipping in concrete, insulation and wiring, etc, you have to bring in the gigantic robot that runs on rails(it looks like)? and power it?

There's a reason a lot of things are still done by hand, and a lot of the time, the reason is money.
You can make a concrete house in BFE with only concrete, rebar, water, and humans, with some plywood for forms. Doesn't even need electricity, but that would speed it up. Seems to me that would be considerably easier to mobilize during a disaster, than a huge robot... no?

Something like this would be more suited to printing trailers in a factory (but not concrete..), or possibly a whole new subdivision, I'd think. But I'm sure the guys hanging out in front of home depot will do it cheaper.

Re:impractical

[Redbaran]

we may need to explore alternatives to the massive amounts of wood we use for tinderbox McMansions.

I think you're underestimating how fast Southern Yellow Pine that is used for framing grows. I live around many acres of tree farms and it's impressive how fast they grow. Also, this is what wikipedia has to say (emphasis mine):

Green building minimizes the impact or "environmental footprint" of a building. Wood is a major building material that is renewable and uses the sun’s energy to renew itself in a continuous sustainable cycle.[20] Studies show manufacturing wood uses less energy and results in less air and water pollution than steel and concrete.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimensional_lumber#Environmental_benefits_of_lumber

Re:impractical

[aXis100]

You've never lived in country where steel, brick or concrete houses were the norm have you?

Personally I can get over how flimsy the American system of timber frames, pitch and felt waterproofing, and shingles/sidings seems. By comparison, external brick or tilt-up concrete will last for hundreds or years with no maintenance, corrugated zincalume steel or clay tiled rooves last 20 years without any maintenance. Steel frames are termite proof. None of them are expensive.

If you need a way out a a fire I suggest there's better alterntives than cutting holes out of your wall. Maybe like windows?

Re:impractical

[aXis100]

PS - wood has no merits in a fire. It might not bend and twist, instead it just adds to the fuel load and collapses.

Re:impractical

[Fjandr]

There are more trees on earth since the advent of modern forestry than before it.

This is patently untrue. Even the most conservative counts put current forest populations at about half what they were in the 1800s. Globally, there is a loss of roughly 32,000,000 acres of forest per year. The modest modern increases in forest size in North America and Europe are vastly outweighed by deforestation in South America and Africa. Between 1990 and 2005 alone the Earth lost roughly 309,500,000 acres of forest. Adding the next 6 years at the estimated rate brings us to around half a billion acres lost in just the last two decades of modern forestry.

I'd like to see even a single authoritative source claiming the Earth has anywhere near the forest area that existed 200 years ago.

These numbers have been called into question since they don't count areas of selective logging. If there were still trees standing, it was counted as forest:
http://www.fao.org/forestry/32033/en/

There are hundreds of other studies taking into account other time periods, all of which show declines. The only argument is about the extent of the decline, not whether or not one exists.

Why bother printing a home?

[ickleberry]

When you can just come over to Ireland and there are plenty of unused homes to choose from and just as few jobs as there are in the US?

A proper built home will last 100+ years, feck it the one I'm in now lasted about 400 years before it needed to be rebuilt, 6 weeks or humans doing the work is not a big deal, its just that shoddy construction is a big problem or at least was until the recession hit. Now people want things to last and are more careful with resources.

Not that I have anything against 3D printing but I don't think a house is the ideal application for it. I'd much rather print the stuff that currently comes out of China or out of large automated factories. Hopefully one day everyone will be able to print open source objects like engine parts, electronic components and the like. A massive house-printing robot will most likely be owned by some megacorp who will charge you the same and ensure the construction is just as shoddy as a Mexican-built house except they'll make more money from it.

Re:Why bother printing a home?

[0100010001010011]

That's old world thinking. I doubt there's been a house built in the last 20 years that is going to last even 50 years. (Aside from the guys that like the monolithic domes). As fast and as cheap as possible. You're just going to live in it for 10 years and flip it when it starts having major problems, that's the American way.

Hell you guys have pubs that are older than some of our city halls and in much better condition.

Re:Why bother printing a home?

[cusco]

I worked in remodeling with my dad and brother for a long time, and when customers would say to him, "They don't build them like they used to" his retort was, "Thank god!" Until you've ripped open the walls of a couple of 100 year-old houses you really have no idea how poorly constructed they were, slapped together by barely-sober laborers working for $1/day, whose only tools were a hammer and a saw. In comparison a modern stick-built house constructed according to building codes and properly inspected is a marvel of engineering and science. Agreed, there are plenty of schlocky companies doing shit work and paying off inspectors, but you certainly can't say that's all the construction going on, or even the majority.

Re:Why bother printing a home?

[Rakishi]

A proper built home will last 100+ years, feck it the one I'm in now lasted about 400 years before it needed to be rebuilt, 6 weeks or humans doing the work is not a big deal, its just that shoddy construction is a big problem or at least was until the recession hit. Now people want things to last and are more careful with resources.

And all the other shoddy houses built in the last 400 years have long since burned down, collapsed or been torn down.

That's like saying that since all the people born in the 1800s are now over 100, all the people back then used to live to 100.

Never happen here

[Vinegar Joe]

The construction companies are tied into the building licensing/standards agencies. See how easy it is to get a building permit and bank loan for a dome.

And by 1973

[idbeholda]

... We'll be building these houses on the moon.

Prefab home...

[xzvf]

I'm an advocate of 3D printing, but wouldn't it me more effective to build container sized housing components in a factory and ship them to the building site? It seems like a lot of work to ship in the concrete and its printer. A typical 2000 sqft house in the US could be put together from six standard 40' containers, all wired, plumed and finished at the factory.

Re:Prefab home...

[DanielRavenNest]

Check out Broad Air, a Chinese construction company. They can put up a 30 story office building exactly that way: http://www.broad.com:8089/english/product/bsb/bsb.asp

The modules are what fits on a tractor-trailer, and most of the work is done in the factory. The modules bolt together, and the supplies for the finish work are delivered shrink wrapped to the module, so it's all right there without having to haul it up a construction elevator.

Edison tried it.

[Geoffrey.landis]

Concrete houses was Edison's great dream a hundred years ago; cheap and mass producable.

They never caught on then. Why would we think they'd catch on now?

-some of the Edison houses are still around.
http://www.google.com/search?q=edison+concrete+houses

Re:Can it do the plumbing?

[Nethemas the Great]

That's the rub with these 3D printers. People see some form or other of extrusion printing of various objects then jump to irrational ideas. The most common being that it will either scale easily, and/or that adding the ability to print wiring, plumbing, circuits, etc. along side and within the structure is trivial (complete buildings, machines, self-replicating robots and such). Nothing can be further from the truth. Material properties seldom scale, and going from layering plastic/metal/etc. to fashion an object to fashioning a fully functional machine, house, etc. is a bit like discovering flammable liquids for the first time then going on to implement the internal combustion engine. Inventing present day 3D printers was the easy part not the hard part.

In Germany they'll put a house up in 8 hours

[Colin Smith]

Have a look at "fertighaus" builds on youtube.

8 hours:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vexbKmmPw8M

All designed, manufactured, tested in a factory. Built on site on a standard base with facilities in place. This particular one is a passivhause, which means the level of insulation is such that it doesn't need any heating, or cooling.