"E-mailable" House Snaps Together Without Nails (clemson.edu)

MikeChino writes: Your next house could snap together like a jigsaw puzzle without the use of any power tools. Clemson University students designed and built Indigo Pine, a carbon-neutral house that exists largely as a set of digital files that can be e-mailed to a wood shop anywhere in the world, CNC cut, and then assembled on-site in a matter of days. “Indigo Pine has global application,” says the Clemson team. “Because the house exists largely as a set of digital files, the plans can be sent anywhere in the world, constructed using local materials, adapted to the site, and influenced by local culture.”

Comments

Re:How do they know it's "carbon neutral"?

[willworkforbeer]

“Because the house exists largely as a set of digital files, the plans can be sent anywhere in the world, constructed using local materials, adapted to the site, and influenced by local culture.”

Geez, don't know what it's going to be made of yet they still claim it's "carbon neutral".

It just means all the carbon parts are painted beige.

Re:Snap-tite isn't new

[Elfich47]

Paper plans are there for a different reason: Paper plans are stamped and signed by the architect/engineer and are the record/permit/contract set of construction drawings. I can't see any contractor worth his salt saying "I'll build that building based on a computer file that can be updated by remote push down"; there are to many chances of undocumented changes, issues on change orders and lawsuits over undocumented changes. And its not like engineering, architecture and contracting don't have enough of those problems.

I see is that there is plenty of dimensional lumber being used in that structural system. Different areas of the world use different dimensional lumber sizes than the US. Some areas of the world don't have dimensional lumber. Some areas of the world don't have the infrastructure required (dimensional lumber, CNC machines, trucks to ship the lumber).

I have concerns with the long term stability, durability of the structure. Nails and glue have been in use for a while (hundreds, if not thousands of years) because they work.

As a construction experiment in using new technology to find new ways to design and build buildings it is an interesting experiment. I applaud them for trying this. Its like looking at the concept cars that Ford, Nissan, Subaru, etc release every year and are loaded up with all sorts of outlandish features, some of which will obviously never get to production, some need some refinement and some are pretty good. I have no problem with someone deciding to build the equivalent of a concept car. Don't be surprised if your concept takes a long time to be adopted by the building industry. It will take that long to be vetted by architects, engineers, suppliers and contractors. Hell - it took almost twenty years for contractors to adopt Pro-Press pipe fittings as the preferred option over copper sweated fittings (and that is just copper pipe).