[HN Gopher] 3D-printed neighborhood nears completion in Texas
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       3D-printed neighborhood nears completion in Texas
        
       Author : whoisstan
       Score  : 68 points
       Date   : 2024-12-28 14:24 UTC (4 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.yahoo.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.yahoo.com)
        
       | jqpabc123 wrote:
       | _"...range in price from around $450,000 to close to $600,000. "_
       | 
       | In other words, there is little economic incentive to recommend
       | this construction method. Not much in the way of aesthetics
       | either --- unless you want a ranch box.
        
         | brudgers wrote:
         | 3D printing doesn't relieve any important construction
         | constraints and probably raises costs because unfamiliarity
         | increases risks and increased risk increases price.
         | 
         | Superstructure is about the easiest and fastest part of
         | residential construction. Sitework, finishes, and MEP systems
         | are harder, tend to take longer, and cost more.
         | 
         | Anyway, market rate housing sells at market rates no matter how
         | it is built.
        
           | liontwist wrote:
           | > market rate housing sells at market rates no matter how it
           | is built.
           | 
           | This is true. Do you see any opportunity for efficiencies in
           | rebuilds?
        
             | brudgers wrote:
             | What do you mean by "efficiencies?"
        
               | liontwist wrote:
               | Like you mentioned the market for housing is more about
               | where people want to live, and the actual building on it
               | is less important (up to first order quality and space),
               | so that optimizing construction costs doesn't really save
               | money on housing.
               | 
               | But suppose we have a country of aging housing. Could
               | prefabrication techniques result in lower costs when
               | replacing existing buildings without a land transfer?
        
               | brudgers wrote:
               | 1. In successful businesses, lower costs usually
               | correlate to greater profits not lower prices. This is
               | particularly the case with the narrow section of the
               | real-estate market that is single family housing (single
               | family housing is about the lowest and worst use of real-
               | estate (i.e. the opposite of highest and best use)).
               | 
               | 2. Single family home construction in the US is highly
               | prefabricated. You can go into any Home Depot and get
               | lumber, fasteners, fixtures, appliances, and anything
               | else you need to build a house. All of it movable and
               | installable without much mechanization beyond a truck
               | (and Home Depot will rent you one of those).
               | 
               | 3. Tearing down existing houses for replacement only
               | makes economic sense in two cases. The first is when the
               | value of the land justifies more expensive construction
               | (e.g. MacMansions). The second is when redevelopment is
               | not for the market (e.g. Habitat for Humanity).
               | 
               | 4. It is a mistake to look at construction as
               | inefficient. Construction is just one component of real-
               | estate markets.
               | 
               | 5. We have very efficient prefabricated housing. It tends
               | to look like mobile homes.
               | 
               | 6. Wealth preservation is the primary function of the
               | real-estate industry. Buying and selling for profit is
               | the low end. The real money in real-estate resides in
               | income producing property not single family houses.
        
               | eightysixfour wrote:
               | > 3. Tearing down existing houses for replacement only
               | makes economic sense in two cases. The first is when the
               | value of the land justifies more expensive construction
               | (e.g. MacMansions). The second is when redevelopment is
               | not for the market (e.g. Habitat for Humanity).
               | 
               | Interesting you chose "MacMansions" as the example
               | instead of increased density. In my (very) urban area
               | they tear down single family homes and replace them with
               | 6-9 town homes.
        
               | brudgers wrote:
               | I chose MacMansions because it was clear and ordinary and
               | uncomplicated.
               | 
               | Building a six pack is driven by the same basic economic
               | condition, the existing building is economically
               | obsolescent.
        
             | aleph_minus_one wrote:
             | > This is true. Do you see any opportunity for efficiencies
             | in rebuilds?
             | 
             | When this technology has become much more established, the
             | "risk premium" can be decreased by a lot. _Then_ one can
             | start to find methods to make the process more economic.
             | And I see quite some potential there, because 3D printing
             | can potentially be done in a much more  "automatic" way
             | than other existing house building processes.
        
           | pxmpxm wrote:
           | >Superstructure is about the easiest and fastest part of
           | residential construction.
           | 
           | I'm perpetually confused on that front - interior, especially
           | drywall, is stupid labor and time intensive (have to wait for
           | taped joints to dry). There should be huge econmomies of
           | scale for prefab walls with electric and ducting built in,
           | yet all we see is this sort of 3d printing stuff.
        
             | brudgers wrote:
             | How do you finish the joints between sections of
             | prefabricated walls?
             | 
             | Where do you store hundreds of running feet of
             | prefabricated wall during construction delays?
             | 
             | How do you move sections of prefabricated wall into and
             | within a dryed-in building?
             | 
             | How do you trim a section to fit and extend another when
             | construction is not ideal?
             | 
             | Who is responsible when something is not right?
             | 
             | And of course there's getting UL listings for any
             | proprietary electrical connections and issues of inspection
             | for code compliance.
             | 
             | Prefabricated walls are common and are suitable for cubical
             | farms. They tend to cost more psf than regular construction
             | but can be depreciated as furniture and reconfigured more
             | easily than site built walls and fixtures.
        
               | wombatpm wrote:
               | Standardized wall sections, JIT inventory management,
               | dedicated install teams?
        
               | dhosek wrote:
               | My parents' home, built in the 1950s was built from pre-
               | fabricated components. From what my dad says (his mother
               | was the original owner of the home), the fit of walls was
               | _very_ poor and they had to do a lot of patching to fill
               | in gaps between the walls and the ceilings. There have
               | been numerous attempts at prefabricated building but all
               | have failed to gain any traction.
        
               | teruakohatu wrote:
               | A lot of homes in New Zealand were sent over 150 years
               | ago from Australia and Europe as prefabricated kits.
               | Apart from the abysmal lack of insulation, they are still
               | going strong.
               | 
               | Right now most new houses have the wood framing CNC
               | manufactured based on plans, shipped to the building site
               | and assembled, then modified as needed by the builder.
               | 
               | Our roofs are almost exclusively steel, which are also
               | CNC cut and shipped to the site and installed by roofers.
        
               | brudgers wrote:
               | We have standardized components delivered just in time by
               | ordinary vendors and installed by subcontractors
               | specializing in that work.
               | 
               | It is all commoditized and builders and trades people
               | have choices about who they work with and long standing
               | business relationships.
               | 
               | The inherent complexity of construction is a job shop
               | scheduling problem which is not just in NP it is NP hard.
               | 
               | With a whole additional dimension of human social
               | relationships and woven in. Everyone is trying to solve
               | their own NP hard problem across a different set of
               | projects and under a different set of constraints.
        
               | lowbloodsugar wrote:
               | I feel like you're telling ford how the Model T
               | production line can't work because someone wants a
               | different color.
               | 
               | Yet, it's ironic that we still end up with cookie cutter
               | houses, but they are all built as if they are bespoke.
        
               | brudgers wrote:
               | You cannot build an airplane out of bricks.
        
               | ben_w wrote:
               | I don't understand the metaphor and how it would apply to
               | this.
               | 
               | (But also, this feels like a Mythbusters episode
               | challenge, and they managed to get a lead balloon
               | flying).
        
               | brudgers wrote:
               | Yet successful balloon building businesses don't build
               | balloons from lead because of the fundamental nature of
               | the balloon building problem.
        
               | ben_w wrote:
               | Again, I really don't understand how this metaphor fits
               | with housing getting more or less customisation with more
               | or less 3D printing vs. prefab vs. whatever the other
               | option(s) is/are called at higher or lower costs.
        
               | brudgers wrote:
               | The article describes nearly 100 houses printed at 2-3
               | weeks per house and 25 sold. That is very poor economics
               | for single family development. Working capital tied up,
               | carrying costs for the land, interest on construction
               | loans, etc. are all coming out of the developer's pocket.
               | [1]
               | 
               | There's also the capital cost of the printer, the
               | inherent complexity of pumping concrete, and the material
               | cost of concreter per unit volume.
               | 
               | My opinion is based on my bullshit detector. I worked in
               | a precast plant with its own concrete plant, for a very
               | large home builder, and for and with residential
               | developers as an architect. Sure I might be wrong, but my
               | opinion is formed from directly related experience with
               | the materials and with the industries.
               | 
               | But even on the face the article is talking about
               | moonbases as future projects not suburban Atlanta.
               | 
               | [1] Most likely this project is subsidized with non-
               | commercial resources.
        
             | bilsbie wrote:
             | You're not wrong. That is confusing.
             | 
             | I think of it like the satellite industry. Crazy high
             | launch costs and weight penalties make satellites expensive
             | to build. Maybe there's some rule that the cost of the
             | satellite has to equal to the launch cost?
             | 
             | I think the same things happens to building prices when the
             | land cost and available land is super limited. Construction
             | kind of rises to take a piece of that?
             | 
             | I'm not sure if I'm explaining the idea well.
        
             | toast0 wrote:
             | I think you would end up with a lot of onsite finish work
             | with prefabbed walls that won't end up saving much time.
             | And it makes transportation a lot more difficult.
             | 
             | That said, searching for prefab walls brings up a lot of
             | things, from whole wall panels, to just prefabed wall
             | framing, and of course, prefabed whole houses. So, it's out
             | there, it's probably a matter of what a builder is familiar
             | with and what's cost efficient for a particular job.
        
             | CalRobert wrote:
             | You can, a random example of someone doing this is
             | https://prefabhome.eu/en
        
             | bluGill wrote:
             | Houses are mostly prefad - everthing is a standard
             | dimension before it arrives on site.
        
             | explorigin wrote:
             | SIP walls are basically this. It's a foam-core panel board
             | with chases built in for electrical.
        
           | cbames89 wrote:
           | It's ~21% the cost of a home, it's actually the single most
           | costly and labor intense category. That being said it does
           | only take 14-21 days to frame a home.
        
             | brudgers wrote:
             | At scale it takes significantly less time because the
             | designs are familiar and there are not mobilizations and
             | demobilizations. The next framing job is on the next lot.
        
               | janalsncm wrote:
               | So if a technology could cut that cost in half it would
               | be desirable even if it took twice as long because in
               | real terms your final cost drops 10% and only takes 2
               | more weeks.
        
           | jqpabc123 wrote:
           | _Anyway, market rate housing sells at market rates no matter
           | how it is built._
           | 
           | This is a demonstration project.
           | 
           | If there were any economic advantage, I would expect them to
           | be eager to demonstrate it.
           | 
           | But such does not appear to be the case. $450-600K for a
           | simple, single story ranch 30 miles outside of Austin is not
           | exactly awe inspiring.
        
         | torginus wrote:
         | I never understood how 3D printing buildings even come about.
         | Desktop 3D printers work by melting thermoplastics that
         | solidify when cooled down and is ready for the next layer.
         | 
         | With concrete, you have to wait for it to set before you can
         | print on top of it. D
        
           | ben_w wrote:
           | I think it happened because a nerd like us wanted to make a
           | castle for their kid to play in, and that became an effective
           | concrete printer, and that got in the news and inspired...
           | mostly buildings that would have been easier with
           | prefabricated concrete slabs, and which almost completely
           | fail to take advantage of the opportunities that 3D printing
           | can offer.
        
           | dhosek wrote:
           | This page from Cemex might answer some of your questions
           | 
           | https://www.cemexventures.com/3d-printing-in-construction/
        
             | dhosek wrote:
             | Tt's worth noting that this article makes it sound like
             | ICON invented everything from scratch, but the technology
             | is much older than the company.
        
         | 9cb14c1ec0 wrote:
         | That's the selling price. It doesn't say anything at all about
         | construction costs, but more about the housing market in
         | general.
        
           | janalsncm wrote:
           | I disagree. I checked Georgetown, TX for comparable homes in
           | the area (3b/2ba, ~1500 sqft) and it seems many houses are
           | going for under $400k. But "Dyce" sells for $470k.
           | 
           | https://www.lennar.com/new-homes/texas/austin-central-
           | texas/...
           | 
           | Just as a random example, this is a comparable house (bigger
           | in fact) and selling for $365k.
           | 
           | https://www.redfin.com/TX/Georgetown/346-White-River-
           | Dr-7862...
           | 
           | I think this is a really cool technology but it's not
           | competitive yet.
        
             | tantalor wrote:
             | You misunderstood. If I can build a house for half the
             | cost, that goes to my profit margin, not a discount for the
             | buyer.
        
               | janalsncm wrote:
               | As Jeff Bezos says, your margin is my opportunity. So
               | yes, it would drive costs down. But we aren't even there
               | yet because the houses aren't being sold because they're
               | too expensive.
               | 
               | Another way to pad your profit margins would be to raise
               | the asking price of the $360k home by $100k. There is a
               | reason people aren't doing that.
        
               | dghlsakjg wrote:
               | That's not how real estate works.
               | 
               | Amazon deals in commodity goods that are easily
               | substituteable.
               | 
               | Housing is different because every single one is unique
               | (by virtue of location) and also incredibly scarce
               | (again, location).
               | 
               | Housing markets tend to strongly fight any tendency
               | towards underpricing. When a house is underpriced, buyers
               | will get into a bidding war and push the price back into
               | the fair market price.
        
         | nyclounge wrote:
         | That is what I was thinking. I mean what is nice about those
         | prefab housings like the ones you see on Amazon and Walmart is
         | that they are really cheap!
        
       | egypturnash wrote:
       | Oh look, a suburb printer. Thirty minutes from Austin? I wonder
       | if there's any grocery stores or places to gather any closer. So
       | what if it's printed? Still looks like a miserable place designed
       | more for cars to live in than humans.
        
         | CyberDildonics wrote:
         | Seems a little defeatist and missing the forest for the trees.
        
         | throwawaymaths wrote:
         | you don't have to wonder. 8 minutes by bike:
         | 
         | https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Lennar+at+Wolf+Ranch/wolf+ra...
        
           | anonym29 wrote:
           | Transportation from point A to point B isn't the _only_
           | function of most cars on the road these days.
           | 
           | Relevant to central Texas in the summmer: 115deg bike rides
           | do not sound fun.
        
         | jdbernard wrote:
         | Lol, Georgetown isn't really a suburb of Austin. It's a
         | separate city that is almost as old as Austin, home to the
         | oldest college in Texas, and is the seat of an entirely
         | different county. So yeah, there are a few places to gather and
         | get groceries. ;)
        
         | nullc wrote:
         | No one is going to make you live there. Other people have
         | preferences that are different from yours and are not less
         | valid.
        
       | iamleppert wrote:
       | Why would someone want one of these ugly homes for $400k when for
       | that price you can buy something much nicer?
        
         | seanmcdirmid wrote:
         | Texas is McMansion country, and these seem to be a notable
         | upgrade over those at least. Kind of a throw back to ranch or
         | shotgun houses.
        
         | silisili wrote:
         | I'm usually neutral on suburban hellscape buyers, but it's
         | getting ridiculous. It made more sense to me I guess when 1/4
         | acre lots were standard. But these...man. The houses appear to
         | be just a few feet from each other, and the yards are utterly
         | pointless.
         | 
         | I can't believe I find myself saying this, but it would have
         | been much nicer to just build nice condos in the middle, and
         | use the rest as shared greenspace.
        
       | mwambua wrote:
       | I wonder if 3d-printer lines will someday become a desirable
       | aesthetic - like film grain.
        
       | OutOfHere wrote:
       | Tornado-proofing, if actually so, is enough reason to prefer it,
       | although I'm quite skeptical that it is protective as such.
        
       | xnx wrote:
       | Glad to see new building techniques being attempted in real world
       | scenarios. 3d printed structures will be most compelling when
       | they do more things that are difficult or impractical with
       | traditional techniques: curved walls, built inside,
       | ornamentation, patterns, etc.
        
         | lnsru wrote:
         | There is nothing you can't do with classical drywall. Curved
         | walls, ornamentation, patterns, integrated furniture... you
         | name it. 3d printing has a huge limitation here - you need
         | support to print over empty area. I am sure it's not fun
         | removing concrete support pieces from huge concrete structure
         | without cracks.
        
           | dghlsakjg wrote:
           | > There is nothing you can't do with classical drywall.
           | Curved walls, ornamentation, patterns, integrated
           | furniture... you name it
           | 
           | Okay, I name compound curves. Can I do that with drywall?
        
             | lnsru wrote:
             | Yes you can. It's the frame behind drywall then. Probably
             | CNC cut plywood construction. And it's more art than
             | anything you might get from standard construction company.
             | And crazy decorative art can be made from gypsum and
             | integrated into drywall.
        
       | kouru225 wrote:
       | Can we please 3D print a city block next time?
        
       | beretguy wrote:
       | Good thing is it provides better insulation than wood.
        
         | ternnoburn wrote:
         | A lot more CO2 though, and less repairable.
        
         | AngryData wrote:
         | Maybe if you compared it to the cheapest 2x4 construction that
         | would cost 1/4 the amount. If you spent even just half of the
         | structural cost on a better wood design you can have offset
         | 2x6s 12 inch spaced stud walls for an 8 inch thick wall space.
         | I don't see how any masonry work no matter how low density
         | could have better insulation values.
        
       | userbinator wrote:
       | 3D printed concrete, to be exact; and the cost benefits over
       | traditional cast concrete seem unclear to me.
        
         | nullc wrote:
         | There is a huge amount of time and materials-- for the forms--
         | that go into building a cast concrete structure. Those are the
         | bulk of the cost. Additionally, shapes with voids or curves are
         | even more expensive to form via traditional means while the
         | printing technique can do them naturally.
        
       | ternnoburn wrote:
       | If you have the ability to pump concrete, and a gantry across the
       | whole site, why wouldn't you pick and place concrete blocks or
       | other materials rather than concrete the whole thing on site?
       | 
       | Also, aren't these walls significantly more CO2 unfriendly than
       | lumber, and more difficult to renovate? What if I need to get a
       | builder in to do repairs, is there a concrete wall guy who knows
       | how to repair them?
       | 
       | Can it print multi family housing?
       | 
       | It takes four weeks to print, which seems long to frame a single
       | story three bedroom house. If the home buyer isn't feeling
       | savings, what's the draw here.
        
         | tmountain wrote:
         | It's a gimmick. There is no point other than marketing.
        
           | FrustratedMonky wrote:
           | "It's a gimmick"
           | 
           | Early attempts always look gimmicki.
           | 
           | Putting a camera in a phone, crazy, who needs it, just a
           | gimmick. I use my phone to dial numbers and make calls.
           | 
           | This looks like it has a lot of room to grow and adapt.
           | Materials change.
           | 
           | Just look at how 3d printers have changed in 10 years.
        
             | ibash wrote:
             | 3d printers haven't changed that much... they've gotten
             | easier to use, sure, but the materials and quality we're
             | printing is about the same as 10 years ago.
        
               | FrustratedMonky wrote:
               | Maybe it was 20? I just remember they took expense
               | fluids, hard to keep, fragile. Then month ago I was in a
               | Micro Center, and there were dozens of very fancy
               | printers that could take dozens of types of line feeds.
        
               | 6SixTy wrote:
               | Feels like 3D printers have changed. A slicer from 10
               | years ago is not going to generate as good a print as one
               | from today. And it feels like the variety of filaments
               | from 10 years ago has greatly changed.
        
               | bhhaskin wrote:
               | 3d printers have changed significantly. They used to be
               | very finicky and hard to get a decent print. Lots of
               | tweaking and it was different for every printer.
               | 
               | They have evolved into true click and forget machines.
        
               | postalrat wrote:
               | I tear apart medical and other machines to recycle parts.
               | I do often see 3d printed parts inside commercial
               | machines, probably because they are making so few of them
               | and it's more economical to just print a couple
               | specialized parts.
        
             | lm28469 wrote:
             | Survivor bias helps a lot here. For every thing that sticks
             | you have thousands of absolute flops that we all forget
             | very quickly
        
         | Retric wrote:
         | It's mechanically less complex than using existing materials
         | and allows for a new range of possible shapes. Moving a printer
         | head around a gantry vs highly precise manipulation of objects.
         | 
         | 3D printing homes is currently a terrible option, but the
         | result is visually distinct which should help sell the homes.
         | It doesn't need to be good to make someone money.
        
         | xrd wrote:
         | Is it purely that this robot never takes vacation and never
         | asks for a raise? Feels a lot like this permits building a home
         | largely without human labor, which I'm sure the VC class would
         | be very excited about.
        
           | mastax wrote:
           | This only helps with the framing and cladding. You still need
           | all the labor for interior finishings, plumbing, electrical,
           | HVAC, roofing, foundation, and site prep. That's 80%+ of the
           | cost. Assuming the 3D printed walls are even cheaper than
           | wood frame, which is doubtful.
        
           | Dig1t wrote:
           | Not only that but also quality is consistent, more so than
           | with human builders.
           | 
           | The quality of timber framed houses can vary considerably
           | depending on who built them.
        
         | amelius wrote:
         | Because you can just run the electrical wiring and plumbing and
         | cover it all in concrete (?)
        
           | rescripting wrote:
           | That seems like a huge drawback? Running new electrical and
           | plumbing and doing repairs becomes much more difficult.
        
             | amelius wrote:
             | Yes, plan in advance ...
        
               | lm28469 wrote:
               | Every home builder is planing in advance, the problem is
               | that down the line you'll realize mistakes you didn't
               | think about, 100% of the time. You also can't plan
               | failures in advance that good, and if you do care about
               | that you certainly won't encase all your utilities in
               | concrete
        
               | amelius wrote:
               | Well, I guess the idea is that if anything fails you just
               | print yourself a new home ;)
        
               | rescripting wrote:
               | Blessed be the developer who has never had to refactor
               | anything.
        
               | obscurette wrote:
               | Things change. Sometimes a lot and radically. I happen to
               | live in the house I renovated 30 years ago. I had to
               | change a lot of things during these years since then.
        
             | kleiba wrote:
             | Welcome to Germany.
        
         | GeekyBear wrote:
         | If you happen to live in a flood plain, concrete is much less
         | susceptible to water damage than a traditional timber frame
         | building.
         | 
         | I would also imagine that a home with a concrete exterior (with
         | appropriate roofing) would be more likely to survive a
         | wildfire, in areas susceptible to those.
        
       | dhosek wrote:
       | When I was working at USC-ISI back in 2009-10, there was a
       | project about doing 3D printing for construction taking place
       | there back then. I was a bit surprised to learn that not only was
       | this company not derived from those efforts, but according to
       | their website, "In 2018, we told people we were going to 3D print
       | a house and unveil it during SXSW in Austin, TX before we knew
       | how to do it." I wonder what ever happened with that ISI research
       | work.
        
       | magic_smoke_ee wrote:
       | Seems pointless and expensive, and it's concrete that doesn't
       | lend itself to modification or repair. 3D printing in this case
       | appears to be used as a tech gimmick rather than an actually-
       | scalable process, or it would already be in-use everywhere.
       | 
       | The most inherently sensible home would be protected from wind
       | (derecho, hurricane, and the uncommon tornado), fire, flooding,
       | and severe heat and cold (and associated climate control costs)
       | by building mostly underground on flat, stable, high ground.
        
         | Simon_O_Rourke wrote:
         | > The most inherently sensible home would be protected from
         | wind (derecho, hurricane, and the uncommon tornado), fire,
         | flooding, and severe heat and cold (and associated climate
         | control costs) by building mostly underground on flat, stable,
         | high ground.
         | 
         | If I had the luxury of time and money that's the kind of home
         | I'd build out, probably with a few Maginot line type turrets
         | peeking out from the "roof".
        
         | RobGR wrote:
         | I have toured the Icon houses at Wolf Ranch. I went through
         | their show house, but I also went to some of the houses under
         | construction and examined them and talked to the workers a bit.
         | You couldn't approach them them while the printer was running
         | -- note also, they have a next-gen printer that looks more like
         | a cement pumper crane arm, these were the previous ones.
         | 
         | Anyway the modification of them is addressed in some of the
         | videos in the show house. Essentially you use a circular saw
         | with masonry teeth to cut new holes, they provide shade-
         | matching grout to fill in an old hole. It's less flexible than
         | sheetrock but about what modifying a cinder block wall would
         | be. Unlike most cinder block commercial buildings, the wiring
         | is inside the wall and not in an exposed conduit, there might
         | have been one exception in a bathroom or something.
         | 
         | Over all, to my non-professional opinion, it seemed more
         | expensive than traditional "stick built" but also higher
         | quality, probably worth it if you wanted a high quality
         | structure.
         | 
         | I have also visited their site in South Austin on St. Elmo, and
         | the small "tiny houses" they built in the Community First
         | village for the ex-homeless, but I wasn't able to go inside
         | those.
         | 
         | My overall impression is that it's a great technology that will
         | be used for more and more structures. Thus far I think they
         | have been too traditional in their floor plans, they have been
         | focusing on showing that they can build real up-to-code houses
         | that banks will accept as collateral. Hopefully with their new
         | cheaper printer, maybe in some area outside of HOAs and zoning,
         | they can starting making some more interesting houses -- like
         | round towers Victorian style, for example.
        
       | jiveturkey wrote:
       | I think everyone is missing the real reason for this. From TFA:
       | 
       | > requires fewer workers
       | 
       | what TFA didn't say, and which I'm sure is also true, is that the
       | workers can also be less skilled.
       | 
       | I found it fascinating that interior walls are also concrete, and
       | wifi signals are blocked. I betcha cellular doesn't fare too well
       | either, and not easily fixed with multiple access points.
        
         | janalsncm wrote:
         | I don't care how many workers it takes if the result still
         | costs $600k.
         | 
         | Unless the houses can sell for half of traditional housing
         | costs their main market will be building houses on the moon.
        
           | jiveturkey wrote:
           | The builder cares. The buyer doesn't care too much either way
           | what the construction technique is. They will be sold on the
           | high insulation value, tornado resistance and so on. Not the
           | fact that it costs less to build which is opaque anyway.
        
       | mikebelanger wrote:
       | How would plumbing and wiring work? The article states that the
       | wall is a semi-hollow, corduroy pattern, so do the printers leave
       | openings in the walls so pipes/wiring get shoved into them after?
        
         | RobGR wrote:
         | Yes. I visited that site and examined some of the partially
         | constructed buildings, and talked to a couple of the workers.
         | 
         | They have videos discussing how you would add a light switch or
         | remove one -- basically a mansonry hole saw, and matching grout
         | to fill in.
         | 
         | It seemed slightly more trouble to do modifications than a
         | cinder block wall, but the quality and strength was much
         | higher. I went with low expectations but I was impressed.
         | 
         | I didn't see any walls at the stage of construction where I
         | could see what the insulation was, whether is was expanding
         | foam or fiberglass.
        
       | wstrom wrote:
       | for more detailed info watch
       | https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=video...
        
         | SapporoChris wrote:
         | Why not a direct link?
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPTps7e9SqY
        
       | binary_slinger wrote:
       | Lots of cynical takes here. Its cool. Time will tell if this
       | method makes sense. One concern I have is in Texas the extreme
       | weather and clay soil causes foundations to move. Lots of houses
       | have foundation problems. Foundation shifts will likely translate
       | into cracks.
        
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