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Startup Builds Houses by Pumping Concrete into Inflatable Forms

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Re: Startup Builds Houses by Pumping Concrete into Inflatable Forms

#111
post #70
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still dont understand why people keep talking about " House ". When 90% of area that needs urgent "housing" are in needs of Tower Blocks / High Rise Residential Buildings. We Need to find a way to quickly and cost effectively build a lot of mid to high quality apartments. Better heat isolation. Network Pipes ready rather than relying on WiFi. Note: Yes, I know zoning and planning etc are still the biggest hurdle.

Because Americans regard living in anything other than a detached house as a failure.

I hate apartment living. People on all sides, you have to live like a mouse, no room for any activities.

Re: Startup Builds Houses by Pumping Concrete into Inflatable Forms

#112
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds really interesting. Do you have any links to learn more about your prefab designs and a company that assembles these designs?

Not in the Netherlands but in Sweden one of the biggest house makers is Älvsbyhus, you can select a base model (begin by selecting number of floors/layout, then size) and customize colors and some details online. https://www.alvsbyhus.se/vara-hus/

Basically trailers or RLBs. We have those…

Re: Startup Builds Houses by Pumping Concrete into Inflatable Forms

#113
post #70
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still dont understand why people keep talking about " House ". When 90% of area that needs urgent "housing" are in needs of Tower Blocks / High Rise Residential Buildings. We Need to find a way to quickly and cost effectively build a lot of mid to high quality apartments. Better heat isolation. Network Pipes ready rather than relying on WiFi. Note: Yes, I know zoning and planning etc are still the biggest hurdle.

Because Americans regard living in anything other than a detached house as a failure.

You better tell that to the people living in the county with the highest per capita income. Message to Manhattan residents -- you're failures!

Re: Startup Builds Houses by Pumping Concrete into Inflatable Forms

#114
post #49

In what way is concrete a sustainable building material? It's a huge carbon emitter, a poor insulator, concrete production is devastating to natural habitats turned into sand quarries, etc. Plant-based construction materials, e.g. hemp, seem to be vastly superior on every ecological consideration. Plus, an unreinforced concrete dome has to be one of the inherently least population dense structures, and density potent…

Yeah, replacing wood, which is a carbon sink, with concrete, which is a huge emitter of CO2, seems like a bad trade.

I prefer to live somewhere that lasts more than 30 years.

Re: Startup Builds Houses by Pumping Concrete into Inflatable Forms

#116
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time I’ve lived in an apartment or condo the whole building smelled like trash. They need a better solution for managing waste disposal instead of a stinky room on every floor.

I thought the universal solution was a chute for rubbish to be thrown down ultimately landing in an external bin outside the bottom of the building?

The universal solution is also great for spreading fire. In many places the trash chute violates fire code

Re: Startup Builds Houses by Pumping Concrete into Inflatable Forms

#117
post #57
post #16

There have been many variations on building houses with prefab forms, going all the way back to Edison. Works fine, but the result is a concrete box. The shell is not the big cost item in homes. If you want a small, low-cost box structure, there are companies that will sell you one. Concrete.[1] Metal.[2] Steel frame with wood siding.[3] [1] https://precastbuildings.com [2] https://www.butlermfg.com/ [3] https://www.…

I still dont understand why people keep talking about " House ". When 90% of area that needs urgent "housing" are in needs of Tower Blocks / High Rise Residential Buildings. We Need to find a way to quickly and cost effectively build a lot of mid to high quality apartments. Better heat isolation. Network Pipes ready rather than relying on WiFi. Note: Yes, I know zoning and planning etc are still the biggest hurdle.

In the US even zoning to allow 5 story, 25 foot wide row homes to be built everywhere residential housing is allowed would make it easier to develop a lot of housing quickly and cheaply. It’s cheaper to build 1,000 units all at once than 2 units at a time, and if you can fit 500+ units on 500 feet of street frontage, you don’t need to buy a square mile of land in order to build a profitable development.

Re: Startup Builds Houses by Pumping Concrete into Inflatable Forms

#118
post #87
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still dont understand why people keep talking about " House ". When 90% of area that needs urgent "housing" are in needs of Tower Blocks / High Rise Residential Buildings. We Need to find a way to quickly and cost effectively build a lot of mid to high quality apartments. Better heat isolation. Network Pipes ready rather than relying on WiFi. Note: Yes, I know zoning and planning etc are still the biggest hurdle.

Every time I’ve lived in an apartment or condo the whole building smelled like trash. They need a better solution for managing waste disposal instead of a stinky room on every floor.

Not faced that problem here in Berlin, neither in the the place I'm renting long term now nor in the series of AirBnBs I was in back in 2017 while starting to look for a place.

Whatever Germany is doing, copy it.

Re: Startup Builds Houses by Pumping Concrete into Inflatable Forms

#119
post #87
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still dont understand why people keep talking about " House ". When 90% of area that needs urgent "housing" are in needs of Tower Blocks / High Rise Residential Buildings. We Need to find a way to quickly and cost effectively build a lot of mid to high quality apartments. Better heat isolation. Network Pipes ready rather than relying on WiFi. Note: Yes, I know zoning and planning etc are still the biggest hurdle.

Every time I’ve lived in an apartment or condo the whole building smelled like trash. They need a better solution for managing waste disposal instead of a stinky room on every floor.

That seems like a problem of going to giant scales. Here in Germany the norm for condos or apartments is 2-5 stories with 1-6 apartments per story. That gives you 2-30 units per building, and at that scale a couple of weekly emptied trash bins on the ground floor or in the parking garage do their job.

This is also a scale where construction and maintenance is straightforward, and where the building makes sense in a walkable neighborhood (as opposed to taking 5 minutes to even leave the building).

Re: Startup Builds Houses by Pumping Concrete into Inflatable Forms

#120
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Americans regard living in anything other than a detached house as a failure.

How would I let my pets run around in the garden? Where do I put my wood fired pizza oven? How do I teach my kids how to grow potatoes and build things? Where do I put the koi pond? There is perhaps some platonic ideal of an apartment where you can live a similar quality of life to a house. But in the reality that we actually live in currently, living in a house usually has a much better quality of life so it's natur…

It depends what you want from a home. I'd prefer a house than my current apartment, but a different set of preferences makes apartments perfect (and more people in apartments necessarily make it easier to supply houses for those of us who prefer houses).
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